My Gigabeat F40 stuck on the "system error" screen after formatted on a Win10 PC

[samsiu2009]

I just bought a used Toshiba Gigabeat F40 from a guy on Craigslist. It was working fine ,but I wanted to delete all the songs on the player, so I did something silly,I formatted the F40 with Windows 10 NTFS quick format. So ,the F40 now has nothing on it .I found out I deleted the OS and bootloader. Now,I cant boot up the F40 ,and it always stuck on the "system error" screen. My computer can detect the F40 as an USB drive. Can anyone help me to restore the F40? If anyone has the original firmare  GBSYSTEM folder with bootloader (FWIMG001.DAT) , please kindly send to me or reply to this message ,thanx!

[saratoga]

You can get replacement files here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GigabeatFXPort#Improved_Boot_Time_Optional

You will also have to reformat to fat32.

[LambdaCalculus]

You can get replacement files here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GigabeatFXPort#Improved_Boot_Time_Optional

You will also have to reformat to fat32.

I know I'm revisiting a very, very old topic here, but just to add to saratoga's advice:

Before you can use the dummy firmware files on the Gigabeat F, you need to first copy in the original firmware files from the Gigabeat software CD (e.g. the entire GBSYSTEM folder), and allow the Gigabeat to run it at least once, so it'll recognize any drive in the device, before installing Rockbox and replacing the firmware files with the dummy files. I've had to do this with a Gigabeat F that I had replaced the drive on with an SSD; the Gigabeat wouldn't accept or acknowledge the drive otherwise and would halt with a system error on startup. Once the OF ran at least once and acknowledged the new SSD, I was free to install Rockbox, replace the OF with the dummy files, and even flash the Rockbox bootloader to the device so I wouldn't need the OF ever again for any purpose.

I'm not sure of any of the legal status of the Gigabeat Room CD's contents, as even though it's been years since its release, I'm sure Toshiba still holds copyright on it and wouldn't appreciate it being shared too freely. However, that doesn't mean that there probably aren't sources to its contents floating around somewhere on the intarwebs. Search and find out.

[burkjavier]

Toshiba, to their credit, still has the 3.0 software up on their site : https://support.toshiba.com/support/modelHome?freeText=2288413 , then "Drivers and Updates".

The 3.0 Full Update EXE, if you open it in 7zip, will be able to extract just the firmware files which looks to exist under \\FWUP\update\ver3\GBSYSTEM\FWIMG\ . I'm pretty sure this will get a broken player working again, assuming the drive has been reformated back to FAT32.

[burkjavier]

Error on my part, sorry - looks like the required files are only partially on the EXE.

If you still have a Gigaroom install on your PC, the files should actually exist under the "3" subfolder under the Gigabeat Room installation.  Always a good idea to back that up, just in case.  Software seems to install backup firmware the first time you connect your player to your PC.