tlex26 | # 1 | 2010-10-25, 06:19 | Report

Last Friday was one of the worst days of my life when my N900 decided not to start beyond the Nokia logo anymore.
Also I couldn't get it to charge

I spent the whole evening trying to get it started up again.
I reflashed the firmware and eventually reflashed the EMMC.
No matter what I did, it never went past the Nokia logo.

Now the insurance company picked it up and said they will send it to a Nokia care center and that i will get it back a soon as they fixed it.

Now I'm using my old N95 and I realized that my N900 was actually the greatest device I ever owned. Not just as a phone and not just as Internet tablet.or a combination of the two.
This little gadget really grew on me. I spent a lot of my spare time on it. I practically never touched my PC at home, since i got my N900. Everything I needed to do, I could do it on my N900.
I browsed a lot on these forums and the Maemo wiki. I tweaked a lot.

I really really hope they can fix it, or I hope that the rumors of Nokia discontinuing the N900 isn't true so i can get a replacement in case it can not be fixed.

9000 | # 2 | 2010-10-25, 06:25 | Report

If it's considered worse day in your life then you must be living in a pretty happy life. XD

In retrospective, you shouldn't reflash when the battery was not fully charge, it'd brick your device.

It's good to hear that you've a responsible insurance company to get help with.

Thanks for the report. Good luck!

tlex26 | # 3 | 2010-10-25, 06:29 | Report

I have to admit, the rest of my life is pretty good :-)

Regarding the battery, I have 2 batteries of which one is always full. I used that one to reflash the device. I'm not a frequent poster of these forums, but a very frequent reader :-)

Thank you for the good luck wishes

maxximuscool | # 4 | 2010-10-25, 06:30 | Report

The N900 is almost impossible to brick it. Brick mean no longer working whether you doing anything and it will not turn on.

People miss used the term and as long your device can still be turned on then it isn't brick. You just need to charge the battery and then reflash it properly. If you currupted the Flash memory then it might be screw. Nokia can may be force flashing it to make it work again.

tlex26 | # 5 | 2010-10-25, 06:40 | Report

As mentioned before, I used a fully charged battery and was able to flash both the firmware and EMMC. This didn't change a thing.

How could I have corrupted the flash memory so badly an full reflash couldn't fix it.

I really hope you're right about Nokia having other ways of reflashing my device so i can get it back soon.

S0urcerr0r | # 6 | 2010-10-26, 01:05 | Report

tlex26:

some questions out of curiousity:


1.) did u ever overclock your N900, and how much?

2.) did u try removing the battery for 20 mins?

3.) u said u flashed both NAND and EMMC... that was a good idea - but did u use 32-bit windows or 64-bit windows to flash it?

4.) did u run any apps that may destroy NAND or EMMC because of too many writes... such software could be software that makes HEAVY swapping to NAND/EMMC?

5.) did u run any other OS on your N900?


i hope everything turns out alright with your N900

tlex26 | # 7 | 2010-10-26, 07:10 | Report

Okay, here are the answers.

1) I never overclocked it.

2) I had the battery removed for aprox. 7 hours (during a good night sleep).

3) I have a 32-bit windows XP machine which i used to reflash my device.

4) To be honest I don't know which apps might cause heavy swapping between NAND en EMMC.
The latest thing I put on it was the homescreen selector for 9 desktops and a couple of QB-widgets.
Last Friday afternoon I couldn't pickup a call because the whole device became extremely slow.
After missing that call i decided to restart my phone where only the shutting down part of the restart worked.

5) I had nitdroid and multiboot on it for a while.
I had put it on my device when nitdroid was at version 0.0.5-4-final.
I didn't use any autoinstaller.
Last time I used multiboot was weeks ago and by accident when i forgot to close the keyboard when rebooting.
Last time I used nitdroid was months ago.
At the time I used the first post on http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58890 to put nitdroid on my N900 and
I used the second post to upgrade it to 0.0.6.
After that i haven't used nitdroid again.

I hope everything turns out alright as well. I did notice that the shop I bought my N900 from is still selling it. So if my N900 can't be restored, there is still an option for a replacement.

Grtz,

Lex

!!Nokia N900!! | # 8 | 2010-10-26, 07:12 | Report

my condolence

geneven | # 9 | 2010-10-26, 07:37 | Report

I'm glad that totally extraneous suggestion about overclocking was disproved.

Since you had a spare fully charged battery, you didn't deserve
this problem. You did the right things, in general, it appears to me.

It would be nice if Nokia would report what they found wrong, but that probably won't happen. If they do, let us know.

rash.m2k | # 10 | 2010-10-26, 07:41 | Report

Remove the memory card and sim card - then try to switch it on.

Better to rule it out!