N800 WSOD this morning
 

Purchased N800 from CompUSA Saturday. Surfing fine last night, put it down. This morning, met with WSOD. Stripped SD cards, pulled battery. No luck. Symptoms are white 'NOKIA' screen displayed, 32sec later black triangles emerge from left and display blanks. White screen reappears and this repeats continuously...I installed the latest firmware the day I got it.
In the last 5 days issues have been:-
1. email app sometimes fails to launch. Retry and it works. No error message
2. External SD card was not detect once, power cycle fix it.
3. Crashed once, battery pull/replace fixed that.

So is it dead and needs to be returned to CompUSA (within 21 days still)? Or do I try and reflash with my PC? I've not seen other reports of WSOD on the N800 yet.
thanks, Clive

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Have you been adding RSS feeds or new apps last night ?

Sounds more like an "endless reboot" symptom (plenty of those in recent threads !) than an actual 770-style WSOD (none confirmed yet)...

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Definetly try to reflash, and look at this posting if reflash does not work

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ead.php?t=4016

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I did not add any new feeds nor new apps yesterday. Last thing I did last night was surf. I may have had the email app open, only reason I mention this is that I've been having intermittent problems launching the email app. I have a POP3 account and an IMAP account configured, total about 300 emails/1.5MB.
So from an end user point of view, does one expect occasional failures that require major intervention to recover operability? I'm thinking about reliability when away from a PC (vacations, etc).
I'll try reflashing tonight, but there are no suspect apps/feeds that I can eliminate to potentially avoid the problem again (other than wait for next release of OS2007)
regards, Clive

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

well, if you not sure what WSOD mean, here it is http://www.flickr.com/photos/2811306...7594394071948/
taken from my old broken 770

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I don't know whether to call you (freeman) lucky or unlucky, but that WSOD is definitely much milder than the one my tablet suffered: completely white screen, few vertical lines only visible off-vertical on bootup, then after booting into the desktop, just a few lines.
Sorry for being offtopic. Nonetheless, I have to agree that it does not sound like an actual WSOD.

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

It was my understanding that a true WSOD does not show the Nokia logo-- is this correct or incorrect?

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I can confirm I am definately *not* seeing similar behaviour to Freeman. That looks like bad video hardware on an otherwise operational device. To clarify, what I am experiencing is my N800 refuses to boot successfully, the 'NOKIA' logo being displayed perfectly for 32seconds on a white screen, followed by the display clearing and repeating. No progress bar at the bottom of the screen that you normally see when booting. Nor does the 'charging' symbol get displayed when connected to the charger.

So my confusion here if someone could confirm:-
1. 'White Screen Of Death (WSOD)' refers to a display defect, not necessarily anything to do with a 'white screen' (apps run normally, just looks bad). Unit requires return to a service centre for repair.
2. A White Screen displaying the NOKIA logo and nothing else happens *ever* and the unit appears DEAD is *not* 'WSOD', and failure mode has not been christened with a four letter acronym yet. Assumption is this is a boot process (ie software) failure and does not require unit replacement. Hopefully reflashing restores normal operation.

If 2. assumption above is correct, then I am left wondering why a working unit spontaneously died overnight and requires manual resuscitation.
thanks all, Clive

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Texrat: that is correct and incorrect. Correct because, in the most severe (and most common, I believe) cases, unlike freeman's, the screen looks almost completely white. Incorrect because the failure is not always total, leading to displays like freeman's and because if you look close enough (and usually off-vertical), you can see that it IS displaying something, only that the display is "vertically averaged" (mathematician here, sorry); i.e., whatever is displayed on one horizontal line is displayed along the whole screen as a vertical line. There is some difference between what is displayed on one horizontal line and another, but these are minor.
These are my own observations after suffering a disastrous WSOD during flashing. 770 is currently in repair. I wish they could guarantee me that this will not happen again. The equivalent of EUR400 is three months' pay for us students over here (don't get me started), and posting it to the UK every time is not cheap either. Which is why I'd rather get a N800 than a repaired unit, seeing that some people got the WSOD twice... but I can't afford the upgrade unless I get my money back. Wish Nokia understood that... I had come to more or less depend on the 770 :(

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

2. appears to be true. I connected the USB cable, held 'home' and prayed... two or three flashes of the 'NOKIA' start up screen occurred before the Wizard recognised it was connected, and then I proceeded to reflash the 51-6 image again (same version). 6 minutes download, 1 minute reflash, device turned off by itself. So I'm back running again!
Conveniently the N800 recognised my 28MB backup I made last yesterday (internal SD card), so I decided to accept the restore. Here's something interesting that occurred during the restore:
I got a 'Version Conflict' pop-up stating:-
"Device contains a more recent version of this file:
/home/user/.osso_rss_feed_reader/cache/favicons/puhblxn (and later stgtyat)
Replace the current version with the older backup file?
Most recent version: Wed Dec 20 2006 11:17:41 AM GMT
Backed-up version: Wed Dec 20 2006 04:17:40 AM GMT
Yes Yes to all No Cancel

[also some N800/Documents/<various user manuals> changed, I selected to keep the older ones]

Now I didn't change any RSS settings that I am aware of between the time I backed up and when it died. So to be safe, I picked 'Yes' and choose the version running at the time I made a backup yesterday (older version of all files).

Did something change somehow with the RSS [and documents], suspicious since there seem to be other reports of RSS issues?

regards, Clive

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

So I thought I was home and dry, but no luck....
Backup/Restore apparently does not include installed applications, so you start from scratch. I did my reflash, then restore. All OK so far.
Multiple attempts to re-install osso-xterm have been fruitless. Install of 0.13, 0.13mh3bora2 all succeed, but when you try and run it you see it start then immediately exit with no error - it immediately closes. How does one proceed now? Reflash, delete my backup and start over with a clean slate?

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Bit the bullet and reflashed (2nd time now).
Reinstalled osso-xterm 0.13 and it runs fine. So any idea what was wrong before? I do hope this isn't a taste of things to come - install something that fails, and you are trashed until you reflash and start over!

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

To me, w/ my understanding(or lack there of), WSOD=White Screen Of Death is a problem in which the device still "operational"(if ssh to the device, it can still work), the screen can be as serious as wash off, no display, to as non-life(device) theratening, disfunctional screen drawing. The problem cannot be fixed by anymean of the user, including flash and reflash of the OS bin files.

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I'm in agreement with freement.

WSOD is a bit of a misnomer as it doesn't really describe a white screen, instead it's a situation where the LCD controller has failed or been damaged, the result being a garbled screen display which can only be resolved by sending the device to a Nokia repair center. WSOD seemed fairly common with 770s, but so far unreported on the N800.

Reboot loops may result in a prolonged white screen shortly before the device reboots, but this is not considered a WSOD. The D in WSOD is important - a device in a reboot loop can normally be recovered by reflashing!

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

As in this case. Hopefully this will close this thread which I should have called WSOR (White Screen Of Rebooting) ?

Final question - In order to reflash, the battery is supposed to be full, right? And the charger disconnected. If the battery is dead, will it charge whilst in the 'White Screen Of Rebooting' ? I'm concerned it is software controlled, and therefore won't charge. Could this be a problem?

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

The battery charging is software controlled, however if the device is off when the charger is plugged in, it enters a minimal runlevel. Hopefully this'll avoid the codepath which caused the lifeguard to reset the desktop.

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

OMG. Spent the day playing, email, browsing, etc. No apps/RSS hacking, just using it to surf. Fine
Just turned it off before bedtime, then decided to hook the charger up. White screen with 'NOKIA' popped up when charger was plugged in - hmm, that's strange I thought. Last time I did this it just displayed 'Charging' on a black screen. Can't boot up now. Suffers the same continuous boot-loop as I had 2 days ago (see start of thread). Remember I've already reflashed twice. WHAT IS GOING ON ?
Actions since latest reflashing with 51-6:
- add http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationRepositories (OS2007)
- install osso-xterm 0.13 package (no hacking yet though)
- install MPlayer app
- configure POP3 + IMAP email accounts (200 emails, worked fine)
- do *nothing* to RSS
I have a 1GB SD internal with 128MB Virtual enabled, and a 1GB external SD (both Ultra).
Nice concept, but personal experience is far short of 'satisfied' at this moment. Defective unit, or unstable software not ready for primetime? Any other similar experiences?
Can I debug this via my PC, return the unit, or reflash and wait for the inevitable 3rd boot failure occurence (we need a name for this failure mode!)
thanks, Clive

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Opened bugzilla report #957 with a cross-reference to this thread:-
https://maemo.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=957

Feb 3rd is when my 21days is up for exchange/return at CompUSA. What is the expected turnaround time for Bugzilla responses? I'm leaning toward getting a refund and purchasing a Dell Axim X51v at this time!

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

What did I do wrong? I opened bugzilla report #957 and now I see also #958...

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Just to update, just reflashed (3rd time) to escape the continuous rebooting every 30 seconds loop. Restored my backup, installed MediaStreamer 1.2-11 (I misquoted 'MPlayer' earlier). Let's see how long it takes to fail again, this time with osso-xterm not installed. Just the Nokia apps...My personal best is almost 2 days without reflashing!

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I'm not going to beg you to return that device and replace it with another N800, but I am serious when I say your problems sound EXTREMELY abnormal. I've had my hands on hundreds of these babies and have never seen anything like what you describe. I've been abusing the heck out of 3 personally and they keep cranking with zero defects.

I'm serious too when I say the program guys would love to get their hands on that one (along with full description of the problems)-- the sooner the better.

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Texrat, can you confirm you have installed osso-xterm 0.13 (repository.maemo.org), and enabled 128MB virtual memory? Other than this, pretty much standard. I'll give it another week before trying osso-xterm again!

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I have osso-xterm installed. Haven't tried the virtual memory yet, but I will.

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I rebooted my N800 several times the first day. The second day it would not boot, got to the NOKIA on white background but no boot bar at bottom. Tried several times, the same. Removed the battery for a minute, re-installed. It booted.
The next time I tried this the same thing happened. Removed the battery for half a minute or so, no deal.
Removed internal SD card (the one that came with the N800), it booted fine. Re-installed SD card.

The latter procedure works every time. I have an internal and external card installed at all times, but removing the external card makes no difference. Removing the internal card lets the unit boot fine. I have not installed any third party software, nor enabled or changed any setting. I have used the 'backup' function to back up to the internal card.

To me (with lots of Linux experience) this seems to be a problem of the boot loader, my guess is that it's accessing the card because it's there, but doesn't then move on to boot from its internal flash. I'm guessing of course, but this is exactly like what you see if similar stuff happens on desktop computers. If so, it should be fixable by a firmware update from Nokia.
Unit: Made in Finland.
Sw: 2.2006.51-6

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I'd just exchange the unit for another and see if you still experience the same problems.

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I had no further problems running osso-xterm 0.13mh18bora2 with regard to *any* reboot-loops. This was with some other apps (maemo-mapper, mplayer, ...) installed.
I installed osso-xterm 0.13 (the version running when I had my original problems) and did have some minor problems (email app not starting, browser window closing), but no reboot-loop. I only ran it for a day, since I decided to return my N800 for a full-refund (thank you CompUSA).
I've now ordered a Sharp C1000 which I'm hoping will suit my needs better.
Nice hanging out with you guys.

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Maybe you can post a comparison of the C1000 to N800 sometime in the near future? Would be interesting to hear what you think of the internet experience on the smaller screen, and what (if any) benefits you think the C1000 has over the N800 (and vice versa).

So long. :)

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Is this it? While having virtual memory enabled and the access to the swap is somehow failing?
Everyone with RSOD should confirm!

I´ll be swithing my virtual 128MB off...

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

Well, I have only seen the boot problem, not the RSOD. But then again I don't use swap, although removing the card does resolve the boot problem.

(Re: subject: I guess we still haven't seen a real WSOD on the N800 yet?)

Re: N800 WSOD this morning
 

I can confirm all my testing had 128MB Virtual enabled. But when I had the RSOD (apt naming), I pulled both cards and battery, and it still refused to boot. It showed the 'NOKIA' screen for 32seconds, then blanked and repeated. I assume if one has Virtual swap space enabled and the Internal card has been removed, then it will be disabled? Big oversight if not...
Clive