Rockbox Technical Forums

Installation / Removal => Manual Installation => Sandisk - Installation/Removal => Topic started by: tachyon on August 26, 2007, 06:35:26 PM

Title: Stuck in a loop of doom?
Post by: tachyon on August 26, 2007, 06:35:26 PM
Hey everybody, so apparently my player has given out on me.. 3 days after getting it. I just installed rockbox a few minutes ago, everything was working fine. I then switch to original firmware to add some new music (because windows doesnt recognize e200 when in rockbox mode). However now when i try to boot to the sansa firmware to add more music it wont let me.

Holding left while turning on, the boot load screen comes up and it goes to the sansa menu screen, but then half way through "refresh database" it freezes and the player reboots back to rockbox.....


 I am unable to connect to the computer and thus unable to uninstall rockbox. Any suggestions???
Title: Re: Stuck in a loop of doom?
Post by: phisher on September 02, 2007, 10:27:32 PM
i have resurrected my e260 twice from this problem. once i had it sent back to get replaced the other time i got a way to fix it.

i have noticed that somtimes RB (rockbox) will leave "droppings" i dont know if anyone else has seen this but as i use RB ir-removable files appear in random places on the drive, i believe them to be corrupt files from some application either sandisk or RB. linux cannot remove them so the only way to remove it is to format it and start over.

to test and see if you have corrupted files start the "dsktidy' plugin in the the plugins section. it should scan and abruptly stop and say "plugin returned error." if it does follow these steps. if it doesn't you may try and follow these steps but i dont know the outcome.

either way when sansa goes to refresh its database it tries to read these corrupt files and gets stuck. there is no timeout on the refresh to my knowledge since sandisk wasn't made with RB in mind so it will try over and over to read it and appear 'locked up'.

so heres what you need to do.
use rockbox to delete the .rockbox folder. i dont know how it helped but the process worked after i did this.

now...

start your sansa in 'recovery mode' and make sure your machine is in MSC mode. to start recovery mode power down your device and then turn the 'lock' key on, press power while holding the REC key on the side and hold it in. if all goes well a screen will show up that looks like this...
*********************
welcome to recovery mode
*********************
you may then release the REC button and plug your machine into your computer. a 16mb format section will show up in 'my computer' open it

now you will need the latest .mi4 firmware for sansa you can download it at daniel haxx somewhere, i have since forgotten. look through these forums and site. there will definitely be references around this site.

drop the new firmware into the 16mb format folder and ONLY the firmware. if you drop anything else in you may very well trash the thing.

unplug the sansa and let it reboot. make sure you turn off the "lock" key. rock box should not start since the patched firmware has now been replaced.

the newer firmware (within the august 07 revision) over looks the damaged files and the damaged rockbox folder (which is now gone) and proceeds to scan videos and any wma formats it can find, it will totally overlook Mp3. i think this is a fix made by sansa incase a corrpted file appears but i really dont know.

anyhow you should have USB support now and you should immediately proceed to copy your intact data off and then format your device to get rid of the corrupted files. i have not formated yet and i have yet to read about it so please read the customer manual about reformating. once done proceed to install the LATEST version of rockbox.


this is a whack job process so MODS if theres a better way to do this please let us know.
Title: Re: Stuck in a loop of doom?
Post by: Febs on September 03, 2007, 07:25:35 AM
i have not formated yet and i have yet to read about it so please read the customer manual about reformating. once done proceed to install the LATEST version of rockbox.

So you're giving advice to other people about something that you haven't tried yourself and that may well damage their player?  As Bagder said here (http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=12171.0), "You should basically never ever format your sansa 'disk'."