I just bricked my Sansa Fuze...? *cries*

[Sakura90]

Well... there it goes. My beloved little Sansa Fuze (v2) :'(

Let me tell you the story. I was trying to make a font so I plugged and unplugged the Sansa 2 or 3 times (plug, copy fonts, unplug, try fonts, plug again to copy others). I did that 2 times. Then I turned the Sansa off (for half an hour more or less), looked for more fonts to convert, converted them to FNT, turned on and plugged again the Sansa.

This is when the first oddity happens. On the Sansa, in USB mode a big USB plug is displayed and below the status bar. On a corner of the status bar some colored artifacts appeared, forming a little square, just at the right corner of the bar. I didn't care, the device and SD card appeared on the Explorer and I copied the files.

Then I safely removed the Sansa (like I always do, it removes both drives, internal memory and SD) and turned the wheel to get the screen on. The screen was all blank, with only the letters "SW1" on the top left corner. The buttons didn't respond. I unplugged the USB and that screen remained, so I turned off the Sansa.

Brick.

It never turned on again, nor by the power switch nor connecting the USB. Tried holding the power switch on for a minute and nothing. My little Sansa is a well and sound brick.

Why? WHY? *cries*

Maybe I was careless, but forever the USB driver or whatever on Rockbox wasn't the most stable. Sometimes I plugged the Sansa, and while the USB plug on the screen showed up, the device hanged and the drives didn't appear on the Explorer. Keeping the switch to power off the Sansa for several seconds turned off the device and, upon trying again, everything worked.

Sometimes it was the reverse, upon disconnecting the device hanged with the USB plug screen and switching off and on made it start again. Still, this case was very rare, the hang upon USB plugging was more common, but nothing to bothersome, usually it didn't hanged.


Any ideas? At this point I'm not so sure if the last display was "SW1", I barely read it. But those letters stuck to me, "SW1", that must be it. What do they mean? I connected the Sansa thousands of times to the PC and it all went well.

I've had Rockbox since the days of the e250, then moved to the Fuze because I love the tiny size, I have proper Japanese support and find music player apps for phones lacking (and ofc, the Sansa is much more comfortable to use).

Is there anyway to revive my little thing? Is it dead forever? Should I get another one? (the old model with the wheel, I don't like the crappy new one with the touch pad). Thing is... I live in a crappy country where importing stuff is a pain, even getting currency exchange is near-to-impossible here... :'(


Thanks for the help


P.S.: I was using a build from several months back, hard to tell now...

Was going to update it to 3.11.2 (saw it today, I don't come to the site too often) but got carried away trying the fonts... <_<

[saratoga]

Let the battery run dead, then when it reboots update to the current dev build which probably has this fixed. 

[Sakura90]

Run dead? But it appears to be off (I switched it off the last time and that was the last thing the Sansa did). Won't the battery take months to run dead on a powered off device?

Or leaving it like this for a day should run the battery to 0?

[saratoga]

Takes like a day or two.

[Sakura90]

Well, I leave it like this then, and pray for it to turn back on after the battery runs dry in 1-2 days. I'll post again after that time to tell what happened...

I'll miss it so much... *prays*

[AlexP]

It has crashed with the screen off and hence looks like it is off.  In this state it will take a few days for the battery to die.

[Sakura90]

I see... I just tried connecting it to a wall charger and still dead. Stupid battery, it was almost full when it crashed.

I was thinking... maybe I could disassemble the Sansa, melt the soldering joint of one of the battery cables (red or black), remove it and put it back again on the PCB. That way I can "force" disconnect the battery and shut this thing off. Anyone ever did a "hard shutdown" like this?

But from what I read and saw, reattaching the wheel connector can be quite tricky (link). Also the clips the hold the case together might break (it happened to me before with other things, like external HDD cases that aren't supposed to be opened).

I miss the good old days of the Sansa e200, just pop the battery out and fixed. Anyway, I'll wait for 3-4 days more before trying opening the Fuze.

Any idea what could have caused or triggered this crash? Or was it just random?

[belushka]

you just need to wait for battery to die. I soft-bricked my fuze also a week ago by installing the latest dev. version of rockbox which was still buggy. The way to check if the battery has died is to plug in the headphones and you should hear a click when you plug them in-out, when there's no more click the battery has drained and you should plug it in your usb.

[saratoga]

you just need to wait for battery to die. I soft-bricked my fuze also a week ago by installing the latest dev. version of rockbox which was still buggy.

Which revision?  This should have been fixed by then.

[belushka]

yep, it is fixed by now, I know
I guess it was more like 2 weeks ago.

[Sakura90]

As you all said, after the battery died it came back to life (4 days ago). I installed the lastest build and had been connecting the USB several times these last days, even plugging and unplugging like when I did when it soft-bricked. It all went good and fine, so whatever was fixed it definitely works now, thanks

[jethro192]

I've just done something similar to this to my Sansa Fuze V2.  I installed the new firmware and was using it without any major issues until I selected one of the Cabbie themes.  It worked for a moment but then came up with an error message, so I rebooted it.  At this point, it was trying to reestablish the database and got stuck on step 9/9. I plugged it back into the USB port on my Mac to ensure it would still detect.  It was detected with no problems, so I ejected it.  The drives associated with my Fuze turned gray and I unplugged it and it promptly kernel panicked.  It no longer turns on and resetting does nothing, nor does plugging it back into the USB port.  I think I can hear some slight popping when I plug and unplug headphones so I'm hoping that the battery drain trick will allow me to reboot.  In the meantime, has anyone had any problems like this?  I mean, I've unplugged things a bit too early more than once, but I've never had anything like this happen before.

[saratoga]

In the meantime, has anyone had any problems like this?  I mean, I've unplugged things a bit too early more than once, but I've never had anything like this happen before.

Yes, thats whats being discussed in this thread.  Presumably you're running some older build if it got stuck.  Once it reboots, update your build.