Can't remove bootloader from Fuze+

[MoeD]

I have RB on a Fuze+ but it crashes whenever you try to make a bookmark (on stop or poweroff). It also crashes when trying to delete a bookmark in the BM list.

This didn't happen when I first installed RB, but it did occur after I was updating the database and stopped that process in the middle (if that's relevant..).

So I figured I would start over and remove RB completely. I tried through the RB uninstaller but it couldn't remove the bootloader. Said I need to do so by installing the firmware update. I did that, with an unpatched firmare file, but the bootloader keeps coming back and restoring the whole RB. I delete .rockbox, even ALL the internal drive files, but they all come back to life once I unplug the cable and RB boots when I power on. I've powered on holding the colume down button and the firmware still did not show signs of updating and as soon as I did a power on with holding the left volume the RB boot loaded again.

Can anyone help with this? I basically bought this player for 2 things - RB bookmarking and reading text files on a larger screen that the sansa clip. Without the bookmarking I can't really use this for my needs.

Thanks!!
Moe

[[Saint]]

Sounds like you have yourself a nice case of filesystem corruption.

If your intent is to wipe out Rockbox entirely you could likely do this trivially by booting the original firmware and restoring the device, and then transferring an unpatched original firmware to the device and rebooting.



[Saint]

[bluebrother]

Are you actually safely removing the player or just plugging the cable? The latter is something you should never do with removable drives (of any kind) and frequently the reason for filesystem errors. Which is, as Saint said, likely your problem. Run chkdsk /f to fix them.

[MoeD]

Sounds like you have yourself a nice case of filesystem corruption.

If your intent is to wipe out Rockbox entirely you could likely do this trivially by booting the original firmware and restoring the device, and then transferring an unpatched original firmware to the device and rebooting.
[Saint]

Thanks for the quick reply. I've booted the original software many times by holding the power button and the volume down button together. I've also followed this with extracting the new, fresh firmware to the device while the sansa OS is running. The player still boots up with RB.

Are you actually safely removing the player or just plugging the cable? The latter is something you should never do with removable drives (of any kind) and frequently the reason for filesystem errors. Which is, as Saint said, likely your problem. Run chkdsk /f to fix them.

How should I run the checkdsk? Just directly on the player's drive when it shows up in the windows explorer?

Thanks, Moe
Post Merge: September 12, 2012, 10:18:47 AM

Sounds like you have yourself a nice case of filesystem corruption.

If your intent is to wipe out Rockbox entirely you could likely do this trivially by booting the original firmware and restoring the device, and then transferring an unpatched original firmware to the device and rebooting.
[Saint]

Thanks for the quick reply. I've booted the original software many times by holding the power button and the volume down button together. I've also followed this with extracting the new, fresh firmware to the device while the sansa OS is running. The player still boots up with RB.

Are you actually safely removing the player or just plugging the cable? The latter is something you should never do with removable drives (of any kind) and frequently the reason for filesystem errors. Which is, as Saint said, likely your problem. Run chkdsk /f to fix them.

How should I run the checkdsk? Just directly on the player's drive when it shows up in the windows explorer?

Thanks, Moe

Reporting back. I did a chkdsk on /f, thorugh windows and through DOS. I then deleted everything on F through windows and DOS reported that everything was indeed deleted. I then added the clean firmware to F. Lastly, I safely removed hardware F Sansa Fuze and RB booted up and all the files on the internal drive restored themselves and we're back where we started. Any idea what's going on?

Thanks,
Moe

[bluebrother]

Reporting back. I did a chkdsk on /f, thorugh windows and through DOS.

Not sure if we're on the same track here. You don't want to run chkdsk on drive F (and there is no drive /f, that's an option). You need to run it on the drive letter your player gets. I.e.

- Click start, run, type "cmd.exe"
- type "chkdsk /f x:", where you need to replace x: with the drive letter of your player.
- wait for it to finish.

And there's no DOS around anymore -- cmd is the command line interpreter, but it is not DOS.

[MoeD]

Thanks again. Sorry about the "DOS" mixup. It looks like DOS used to look so I just get them confused.

I did what you said (the drive happens to be f: also) and it didn't report any errors.

Saint said to boot the original firmware, but I'm not sure how to do this since I already have the new firmware on there. What do I do?

UPDATE: after the chckdsk I deleted all the files on the drive again, added the new firmware, emptied the recycle bin, safely removed the player, unplugged the cable while holding the volume down button. the Sansa OS started and the files I deleted were back. Powered off and on the RB booted and back to square one...

Thanks for your help
Moe

[bluebrother]

Saint said to boot the original firmware, but I'm not sure how to do this since I already have the new firmware on there. What do I do?

Booting the original firmware means booting the Sandisk firmware. It doesn't matter which version of the Sandisk firmware you have installed. The manual tells you which key you need to hold during startup to boot it.

Apart from that I'm out of ideas right now. Might be a hardware failure.

[MoeD]

Thanks!
He said

booting the original firmware and restoring the device

Was there something special I needed to do to "restore the device" or does that also just mean booting with the Sansa OS?

Thanks,
Moe
Post Merge: September 12, 2012, 05:43:18 PMI"ve basically given up on this device. Really annoying that there's no way to just wipe this thing clean of the bootloader. Everytime I erase the files, even with file shredding software, the seem to get stored in some temp location and get resurrected soon after. I even tried to delete those temp folder, but the computer wouldn't let me in any which way. Ready to just throw the thing in the trash. It's cost me much more than it's worth just to troubleshoot with this thing. I guess it was all just an expensive lesson in how insane it is to spend so much time on device. OK - I got the lesson! Gd help me remember it!!