Sansa C250 - "Load main image fail - switch to Recovery"

[DoctorCheesius]

Ok, so I got my sansa c250 from woot, found that it was broken (would freeze after a random period of functioning just fine), got an RMA, and recieved another one, which has been working fine for two days.

Now that I knew it was working, I installed RockBox on it, or tried to. I did a small install, then tried adding the fonts pack and themes (I didn't see the need for the DOOM wad). I disconnected my player, and it tried to boot, but said it was missing a file, and would just cycle over and over until I powered it down. I was able to boot the original firmware. I formatted the device from the Sansa's menus, disconnected it, restarted it, and same thing happened again. (I can't tell you at this time what file was missing, I don't recall, but it may have been an MI4 file)

Here's where I made things worse. I searched the forums here for information on fixing my problem, and while I didn't find the exact problem I had, on other topics I found information on restoring the original firmware. So I downloaded the C200 MI4 from daniel.haxx, booted into recovery mode, put the firmware updater in there, disconnected the player, reconnected it, and it gave me an error - "Load main image fail" and "Switch to Recovery" and asked me to plug in the USB cord. At this point, now I can no longer boot into the original firmware (obviously the upgrade failed). I tried placing a sansa.fmt file on the 16MB_FORMAT partition, that didn't change things in any way.

Looking at the information on http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200Unbrick I saw there was further information, but the page (daniel.haxx again) it refers to only has software for linux, and source code, and I'm running XP Pro, and wouldn't have a clue how to compile source code.

Any help would be appreciated.

[MarcGuay]

Can you still get into recovery mode?  When you rebooted after putting the .mi4 file in the recovery partition did you get a "firmware updating" message?

[DoctorCheesius]

Yes, I did get a message saying that it was installing it, then saying that it was writing main image, that the upgrade was finished, and that it was rebooting the system... and then it goes back to Load main image fail. And yes, I can still get into recovery mode, I just can't get OUT of recovery mode.

[MarcGuay]

When you copied the sansa.fmt file to the partition did you include the mi4 file as well?  Also, is there a text file on the recovery partition?  If so, open it up and find out what firmware version you currently have and try and find a copy of the mi4 file for that specific version (http://files.zefie.com/PMP/sansa/c200/v1/firmware/)  and try restoring the original firmware with that.  I'm hopeful that you can recover it with having to go use e200tool.

[robin0800]

I am pretty sure you need at least two files namely
firmware.mi4 and pribootLoader.rom See the post above as to where to get these.
Rockbox can be installed with all of the different versions except 1.01.07

[DoctorCheesius]

Oh, thank you thank you, I found the correct version on the site you linked me to, put both mi4 and rom files on it for americas, and it worked. THANK YOU. Next step - install rockbox again, but in the meantime, it's not a brick, and I thank you. (It's too small to be an adequate brick, anyway)

*EDIT*
And, just FYI, the install of rockbox went smoothly this time, so I am once again happy with my mp3 player, not just relatively satisfied.

[bertrik]

There's a fix in the SVN archive now to allow rockbox to be installed on sansa c2xx with original firmware 01.01.07. This fix will probably be included in the next version of sansapatcher and the next version of rbutilqt after m1.0.6. I made a list of rockbox-compatible original firmware versions at http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaC200Port

[robin0800]

bertrik
01.01.05 & 01.01.06 Do both have an MSC mode.
What they don't have is a USB setting screen to allow you to select it.
This is why my method, is important, as detailed in the wiki page as this is the only way to get into it.
It is good to note that 01.01.07 has restored the USB setting screen.

[JEJ]

Since I updated to .07 now I want to downdate to .06. At a link provided here I found there are:

    SansaC200A1_01_06.7z    
     SansaC200E1_01_06.7z    
     SansaC200F1_01_06.7z    
     SansaC200G1_01_06.7z    
     SansaC200H1_01_06.7z    
     SansaC200J1_01_06.7z
     SansaC200P1_01_06.7z

How do I know which one to use?

[bertrik]

The alphabetical codes (A, E, etc) indicate a geographical region. I think A is USA and E is Europe, I don't know the exact regions for the other codes (J=Japan?). As far as I know, the A firmware allows you the use the radio, while the E firmware does not.

By the way, if I were you, I'd install the older 01.01.00 instead of .05 or .06, so you don't have to resort to button tricks or extra plug/unplug actions to access the device in MSC mode. If you are able to build sansapatcher or rbutil from source code, I recommend upgrading to 01.01.07.

[robin0800]

F is Europe with FM radio
P is Pacific and includes America

[JEJ]

Thanks for the info. I checked the 07 version I had and since it had a P that's the 06 i installed. Then I installed RB using Sansapatcher and it worked perfectly.