Fuze V1 Auto install, now will not boot.

[Fury]

I've got a Sansa Fuze V1 that has a cracked LCD screen (+70% black, rest distorted) but was otherwise functional. I've been looking for another dead Fuze with a functional screen to swap without any luck yet.

Upon reading about Rockbox's Blind/visually impaired voice support, I decided to give it a try to see if it would allow me to start music playback reliably without the screen.

Downloaded Rockbox utility 1.2.12 and fuze01.02.31 from sansa's forums

I used the Complete Installation, selected the fuze .bin when prompted, selected a theme, etc....
I then installed a voice file using the accessibility tab.
Everything seemed to complete successfully, so I safely unmounted.

I now cannot get the Fuze to boot up properly. Pressing power lights up the LCD, and I can see the distorted splash animation, but it then shuts off about 5sec later.

I've tried booting original firmware by holding Left while pressing power, with the same behavior (lights up, distorted splash animation, then turns off 5sec later).

When I connect to computer it boots up and stays on, but is not recognized correctly, drivers not installed properly. Two "drives" appeared the first time, but neither is accessible from windows. Now I can't seem to get even those 'drives' to appear.
The Rockbox utility does not recognize the Fuze either. I've also tried putting the Lock on, holding left & connecting via USB, same result.

Edit: Somehow after a bunch of resets/attempts it's recognized in Device Manager again, and drives G and H are back. G is greyed out, H tells me it needs formatting, but says "unknown capacity" and fails to format. Computer Management shows H as 2044.63GB Unallocated, and will not format.

Edit 2: Connecting the Fuze to computer with a 4GB microSD card installed allows me to access the card as Drive G, but Drive H is still inaccessible.

Any suggestions?

[funman]

I've tried booting original firmware by holding Left while pressing power, with the same behavior (lights up, distorted splash animation, then turns off 5sec later).

Edit 2: Connecting the Fuze to computer with a 4GB microSD card installed allows me to access the card as Drive G, but Drive H is still inaccessible.

Any suggestions?

It's dead, Jim.

About the screen, I think I have broken the screens of all the Fuzes I ever had (4 or 5), it's really the weakest point of this player.

You could try entering recovery mode, at least to see if storage is still accessible this way; then flash the (original, unmodified) OF again.

When I first read your description I was going to suggest that you didn't install a rockbox build (.rockbox folder); but if the OF fails as well then it is bad sign and suggests broken storage.


Is the distorted splash animations different when you press left ?
I mean are you sure it's booting the OF and not rockbox?

[Fury]

I used the Rockbox utility's quick start "Complete Install", followed by the voice file. From what I understand that includes the rockbox build, yes?

The 20% of screen that's not black is just the outer edges, and too distorted for me to tell which firmware that it's booting to. It dies after the same 5sec whether started holding left or normally.


I tried the "force MSC" from sansa's FAQ (Lock/hold on, plug USB in while holding left) and internal storage is still inaccessible. It was set to MSC before screen broke, can't check now, but since I have miniSD access I suspect it still is.

Edit: Thinking about it I've got two theories as to what may have went wrong.
1. In my excitement to install rockbox I didn't consider upgrading the Fuze's existing firmware beforehand. The fuze .bin I grabbed for the rockbox process was latest version, and my Fuze was still running whatever firmware it came with.
2. Due to the lack of screen I reset the Fuze too soon after rockbox install, possibly in the middle of the firmware update process I've seen described by others.

A reflash of the original firmware sounds like a good plan, but I've read that the Fuze V1 lacks a "recovery mode", can you point me in the right direction?

[funman]

1. No need to upgrade before installing rockbox, the upgrade happens at the same time because installing rockbox bootloader is nothing more than upgrading the Original Firmware (which we patch with rockbox bootloader)

2. It's likely why it's broken. Normally you have to wait for the Fuze to shut down itself after upgrade completed.
The manual is not explicit about it, we should correct it.

For recovery see: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaAMSUnbrick