Character Corruption For Example - ogg to oŧg & .ogg to Įogg

[Denzyl]

Hi All

I updated my late 2007 nonstandard version of Rockbox to an official version after I found that it now supported Album Art & a Last.FM Scrobbler log

I did a clean install on a freshly formated Fat32ext 30Gb HDD & renewed the Bootloader on my IAudio X5L

Since then I have had what I first thought to be a HDD problem, but the nature of the corruption looks more like a UTF-8 / Unicode mix-up.

I have since updated the builds mainly to keep up with the Scrobbler problem like *Panic* Unexpected Event on shutdown, which I got rather regularly. But the random character corruption continues.

It happens most often after I have written a file or folder to or read from my IAudio X5L using the PC.

But is also shows up even if I don't involve the PC.

Out of nearly 5000 files it only strikes 2 or 3 at a time. But if they are Rockbox files, then I can get a boot failure. Until I install a fresh build after which I can delete the old file.

Sometimes the corrupted character shows up as a dotted rectangle.

Apart from if the corruption hits the file extention. The only problem is finding what the new name of the file is.

I also use the Blackglass WPS that uses nedore-9.fnt.
The other fonts installed are helvR10.fnt & nimbus-12.fnt

Other details:-
This is my longest address:-

R:\Classical\Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy\Calm Sea & Prosperous Voyage Overture Op.27\Oliver Dohnányi - Slovak Philharmonic\01 - Meeresstille und gluckliche Fahrt Overture.ogg

This is the most extreme of the names:-

R:\Anime\Mahou Sensei Negima\Dai Mahora Matsuri Live CD 02\10 ハッピー☆マテリアル（メルディアナ合唱団バージョン）.mp3

Examples of change :- Rockbox.iaudio to Ųockbox.iaudio or Œockbox.iaudio

Also I am getting an occasional glitch in freshly installed music files. This I fix by deleting then reinstalling the affected file or folder.

The glitch is not regular & not a dropout. Like you get with a buffer or CPU Bandwidth problem. More like a random error spike. Not surprisingly I am wondering could this be related to the above?

[nls]

The fact that the filename corruption only happens to a few files combined with the glitches you get in audio files strongly suggests a problem with the disk in the player. Or possibly something corrupting data while transferring.

[Denzyl]

Hi Nls

The only disc check programme i had that would recognise the X5L HDD was XP's own but it found no errors

I also tried a XP search for all files on the X5L to see if it was transfer related & ended up with 143 corrupted entries.

The thing is the corruption fell into groups:

• In 37 files ogg became oŧg
• In 28 files 07 became Ä°7 + none of the other track numbers were affected
• In 14 files .ogg became Ä®ogg
• In 13 files R became Å’
• In 9 files r became Ų
• While in 9 files L became ÅŒ

All the other types of corruptions occurred at least twice. The files themselves are still playable, before & after name correction.

So I will check for the obvious dirty connections and check all the cabling as well.

Thanks for the help.

[yapper]

Run a full surface scan using XP (Select the 'Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors' option).

Also try connecting to a USB port which is directly on the motherboard of the computer (usually one at the rear, rather than at the front).

[Denzyl]

Hi Yapper.

Well my PC is a bit ancient. It's an AMD64 3500+, so I only have the 4 USB ports at the back. Currently I have my Zip 250, X5L Cradle & Printer plugged in. But only power to the Zip & X5L are active, I aways only run one item at a time. Bad memories of USB ports & Win95 

I also checked & cleaned all the connections on the cable, cradle & X5L

As you suggested I ticked & ran the 'Scan for bad Sectors & attempt to fix them' on the XP disk checker. After a short while it came up with the Finished Scan Button 'OK'.

I have manually checked the files rather than do the search after running the Disk Checker.

I found 10 versions of this file ųolitaire.rock in the games section interestingly they all reported creation times related to 10 earlier installations before the date & time of the Current Build of Rockbox installed. I deleted 1 of them and they all disappeared???

That was it.

The X5L is now playing a random selection of music to check files while I write this. No glitches so far

[dreamlayers]

Data on disk is protected by error correction and detection codes, and disks are supposed to report read errors.   This is almost certainly something else such as corruption in circuitry (eg. bus, memory) or a software bug.

In the corruption groups noted, if pasted as UTF-16, it seems that the high byte gets changed from 00 to 01 when these errors happen.   That means if there is a hardware error, the bus or storage location is a multiple of 16 bits wide. 

You can compare data files with utilities such as fc /b in Microsoft operating systems.  A few flipped bits might not be obviously audible in MP3 files.

[Denzyl]

Hi dreamlayers!

I think you got it.

I found during the playback test in my previous post. I was getting audible glitches in a few of the files.

So I bit the bullet & reformatted the HDD and started over. But halfway during a 57min transfer of my music. The transfer stopped with a I/O error.

I then checked the disc manually. No filename corruption, but a lot of the music was unrecognisable when I tried to play it.

Here is part of the output on FC /B on a file that was transferred before the stop error, that was scrambled when I tried playing it:-

0039F04E:   50 51
0039FA8E:   40 41
003A0384:   00 01
003A0E8E:   D8 D9
003A10BA:   58 59
003A1598:   40 41
003A34B8:   C0 C1
003A36D2:   48 49
003A43AC:   00 01
003A4880:   80 81
003A62C2:   88 89
003A6AFC:   90 91
003A7EF0:   C0 C1
003A866A:   48 49
003A8880:   40 41
003A90F2:   D0 D1
003A94B0:   D8 D9
003A9B3C:   D8 D9
003A9D3A:   80 81
003ABA44:   88 89
003AC14E:   40 41
003AC274:   90 91
003AC292:   C0 C1
003AD32A:   C0 C1
003ADCC4:   88 89
003ADD56:   00 01
003ADEEE:   48 49
003AE21A:   D4 D5
003AE408 :   00 01
003AE488:   C8 C9
003AE722:   90 91
003AEA36:   88 89
003AEC6E:   00 01
003AF604:   04 05
003AFD3C:   C8 C9
003B12C8:   00 01
003B1F8E:   C0 C1

Looks like I have a hardware problem. As it is over 2 years old & I haven't been that gentle with it, I suppose it had to come.

As this was an insurance replacement for my first X5L whose HDD died when a hotel staff member, after a series of perfectly timed set of coincidental events that Buster Keaton would have been proud of, drop kicked into a wall. After which it gave a on boot HDD dead error

As I still have my first X5L. If the I/O on my current one has died. prehaps I can use it's HDD to get my first one going again. (Assuming I can find all the bits after I took it apart to see what was inside )

Thanks for all the help everyone