iRiver iHP-140 problem

[toweliechaos]

Hi, apologies if this is covered elsewhere but searching has proved fruitless.

My 140 went a bit gooey, so I thought I'd format it - bad idea.

Trying to use the Rockbox utility, and it won't mount despite it appearing in Windows quite happily.

I can boot into iRiver firmware and it looks OK except for pressing the NAVI button opens a folder view that appears to have Japanese characters in it and won't do anything i.e no options.

If I let it boot into rockbox (6) it just hangs on the rockbox version, battery status etc. screen doing nothing.

Connected via USB, I can drag folders and files onto it in explorer quite happily.

I don't appear to be able to remove rockbox and start anew or simply repair rockbox.

Any clues?

[toweliechaos]

Really, no-one got anything to add?   

[toweliechaos]

I know it's older kit but is this really it?

No help at all? 

Disappointing.

[monoid]

You can reinstall RB manualy. Just copy appropriate files to iRiver. No need to do it using RB utility.

It is not clear, if you formated the disk or not. How big the disk is, how did you formated it (if you formated it) and so on. What kind of bootloader you have. Too many unknowns to help you.

[toweliechaos]

I have tried putting the .hex file but with no joy.

As I stated in the OP:

Formatted the hard disk in Windows using Disk Manager
It's an iHp-140 - this means it is a 40GB disk

No idea what bootloader I have. If you have any suggestions on how to revert back using a manual approach, please let me know and/or ask any further questions that may facilitate the process.

thanks in advance...

[gevaerts]

Formatted the hard disk in Windows using Disk Manager

Did you format it as FAT32? NTFS won't work.

[toweliechaos]

Thanks! I had formatted as ntfs and probably tried exfat as well. Used some partition software to format the whole thing in fat32 and then I managed to use the utility to install rockbox successfully.

Many thanks for the suggestion.

[toweliechaos]

Hmm...

The rockbox utility works fine. I added a bunch of music to the device and all seemed well. If I boot into original firmware, the device plays files quite happily. However, if I boot into Rockbox, I get a problem with the database and can't play any files. I have tried all sorts but always get the same issue.

The database message comes up with 'building database...141 found' etc. and just hangs with the disk spinning. I've left it like this for 24 hours with no change! So I reformatted the device and reinstalled rockbox - all fine. This time I tried to initialize the database before I put any files on it (literally nothing on the device except rockbox) and it showed 'building database...1003 found' and then did nothing. Disk stopped but no sign of the database being ready.

I've had a look through the forums with no joy, so apologies if the answer is in there somewhere. Any clues?

[toweliechaos]

It would appear that the disk on the player is knackered.

Using more powerful utilities, the disk appears to be reporting large numbers of bad sectors and trying to run a chkdsk /f on it only gets to around 15% and then sits there forever. It took a few hours to get to 15% and then 3-5 hours later, it hadn't moved on.

Probably safe to say then that the disk is irretrievably goosed. Now it's just a question of whether sticking a MK8007GAH in to replace it is worth doing...

Thanks for those that helped.

[audiomodder1]

if you decide it is not worth it I would love to buy your broken player off you, as it looks like I bricked mine >_<