How to Stop Clip+ Freezing on "Boot 4.0" Logo Screen When Powering Up?

[Billxtp]

I've had my Clip+ for years now. I installed Rockbox on it right when I got it. It's worked perfectly ever since.

But a couple weeks ago something odd started happening. I have no idea why and don't remember doing anything to cause it.

When I power on now, it will often freeze on a screen with the Rockbox logo and it says "Boot 4.0" at the top. If I wait long enough on that screen, after a while it will switch to a screen that just says "Plug USB cable." If I hold down power and the center button long enough, it will turn off. Then I can press power again and usually it will launch, show "Boot 4.0" really quickly, then switch to Ver. 3.13 at the top and then work properly. (Once in a while, it will freeze on the "Boot 4.0" screen a second time and I have to do power-center button again and power up a third time to get it to work).

Luckily, this is the worst that happens. It doesn't always do the "Boot 4.0" thing. And when it does, I just have to do that power-center button thing and re-power it once or twice to get it to work. But it's kind of annoying to have to do this so often when I just want to turn the thing on and have it work right away.

Is there any way to get it to power on and work every time like it used to? I thought about reinstalling Rockbox since there must be something going on with the firmware or something. But I really would hate to lose all my settings and bookmarks or obviously any of my files on there. Is there anything I can do to fix this powering on problem without disrupting any of that stuff?

[Billxtp]

Can anyone help with this?

Also is the Hardware subforum the right one for this question or should I post it elsewhere?

[Mihail Zenkov]

It looks like hardware problems with internal flash memory.
If you want you can try update bootloader to special version: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,51304.0.html
If updating will going ok - you will able to boot from sd card.
If it fail - you will brick your player.

[Billxtp]

I seem to have fixed the problem.

I rebooted into original Sansa firmware (using Power and left buttons pressed together). I backed up everything on the Sansa first. Then I went into settings and formatted it. Then I used the Rockbox utility to reinstall from scratch. Everything worked then, though it was obviously all new settings and so on.

I also was able to get my original settings back in an interesting way. Just to see what would happen, I copied over my backed up .rockbox folder. When I did that, the errors came back. Not a surprise. Something was bad in that folder. Then I went and ran the Rockbox installer utility again. This time it went quickly and it seems like it just reinstalled whatever file needed fixing and left the rest. Now it's working just as it did before with all my settings but with the error fixed.

So if you have this problem I recommend first going in using the Sansa firmware option and backing things up. Then try just running the Rockbox utility on it and it may just fix what isn't working. If not, then do the whole process and format it, reinstall from scratch, copy over your backups and then run the Rockbox utility one more time.

Mikhail, I'm not sure why you assumed it's a hardware problem without ruling out a bad file somewhere in the .rockbox folder or something. Although I'm not saying you're definitely wrong. It's possible that I fixed it for now but if the memory is bad perhaps it will go bad again in time?

In the meantime, things are working as normal again and hopefully will stay that way.

If anyone has this problem, please don't jump to the conclusion that your hardware is bad. It may just require a reinstall of Rockbox like I did.

[Mihail Zenkov]

Mikhail, I'm not sure why you assumed it's a hardware problem without ruling out a bad file somewhere in the .rockbox folder or something. Although I'm not saying you're definitely wrong. It's possible that I fixed it for now but if the memory is bad perhaps it will go bad again in time?

It hardware problem as player some times work correct. If it was just bad file - player will fail always at same point. IMHO after reformatting rockbox was installed to another sectors. Maybe your player have just few bad sectors. But at most case for sansa players it sign of dying flash memory.

[Billxtp]

Oh I see. That makes sense. So reinstalling is worth trying. If it's just a few bad sectors it may work. But I'll watch to see if a problem starts up again with time. Thanks.