Completely removing all traces of rockbox

[cormie]

I'd consider myself quite a high usage user when it comes to music. On average, I'd say I have it on 20 hours or more out of every 24 hour day. I have RockBox on my H140 and have had the same problem on a few builds. After it's played for a few hours, some times it might on be 1 hour, or less, my player will just freeze. The music will stop, the buttons wont work and the screen freezes. WPS is still visable at last playing point but the progress bar and timers etc are frozen.

Once I press the reset button, it always boots back up with no problems, but of course, it's something I wish didn't happen. It's not the battery or anything like that, I've been using my H140 for 2 years, RockBox for about a year now, or however long it's been out:)

Has anyone else experiences the same problem, or is this a known bug that just hasn't been worked on yet? As I said, I've tried a few different builds and they have the same problem. It didn't happen before though on earlier builds. I think it started happening after I put a new build on the experimental version of RockBox posted on misticriver. Before this it was fine. Since then I have deleted all RockBox files off my H and have replaced them with a new build. Still the same

Any suggestions welcome:)

[bluebrother]

Have you actually cleared the settings? (Press Rec while booting, it should say "Cleared") Deleting all files doesn't clear the settings! Sounds to me like a conflict of the settings block.

[cormie]

Thanks for the reply, but could you expand a bit if you wouldn't mind? Do you press REC before booting after you have deleted RockBox off the HD, to boot into iRiver and then every time you press play to boot, without pressing record, it will boot into iRiver as if RockBox was never on it, or do you press rec after pressing play to boot into a RockBox that is installed?

If you could explain exactly what I should do and how I should do it (what should be on the HD when I do it etc) I'd really appreciate it:)

[Febs]

Turn the player off.  Turn it back on, and then press and hold the record button.

Alternately, clear the settings using Main Menu -->  Manage Settings --> Reset Settings.

[cormie]

Ok I'll try that thanks, but do you know if that does something different than deleting all the RockBox files, including the rockbox.iriver file as I've done that and had the same problems. See I wont be able to tell if this will work now for another few hours. If it happens again that it;)

[bluebrother]

This doesn't delete any files, it deletes Rockbox' settings. The settings are stored in a special block on disk, so there is no file you can delete to remove the settings.
As I said, clear the settings. Nothing else. You don't need to remove Rockbox itself to clear the settings.

[cormie]

Great. I will try that so and post back here with the results. Probably take maybe 2 days before I know for sure it is not acting up again:)

[cormie]

Noooo! it just happened again

I held record and it cleared the settings, put on the latest daily build and it still happened


Is there any way I can totaly erase all history of RockBox and just start again? Maybe even update the iRiver firmware and all too.

[bluebrother]

Is there any way I can totaly erase all history of RockBox and just start again? Maybe even update the iRiver firmware and all too.

Sure.
- backup all your music from your player
- format the player, maybe using the format feature of the OF (windows can't format drives larger than 32 GB with FAT)
- flash your player with a original firmware -- either a patched or a vanilla one
- now you should have the OF running again. If you installed a patched OF you may want to reinstall Rockbox
- put your files back ... and hope it won't happen again. If it does I fear this to be hardware related.

Another idea ... maybe it's a broken file that causes this?

[cormie]

Ok thanks. I'll try that when I get a chance. I take it OF = original firmware?

Don't think it's a file issue, happens randomly.

[pabouk]

The procedure described by bluebrother does not erase all the Rockbox history! The Rockobox settings are stored outside the disk partition and format does not erase them.

You have to:
a) Erase the settings after installing Rockbox again.
or
b) Erase the sector with the setings (it is the last but one sector on the first track of the HDD). You can also erase the whole disk:

Code: [Select]

cat /dev/sda

(replace /dev/sda by actual location of your iriver's HDD) and then repartition it again using fdisk.

[cormie]

That sounds a bit complicated. What do I do with that code?

[nls]

That code would go in the terminal. But before reflashing/formating (as I don't think it would help), I would try scandisk or similar on the disk to find/repair broken stuff, if that doesn't help try going back to an older build and see if the problem goes away and if it does then find out on wich date the change that broke it happened and then report!  

[bluebrother]

Code: [Select]

cat /dev/sda

(replace /dev/sda by actual location of your iriver's HDD) and then repartition it again using fdisk.

errr ... this won't write anything to the disk but rather print the content of the disk to the terminal. Not nice ...
If you want to go that way, dd is the thing you need to use. Assuming the sector is also 0x3d (as it is on my h120) the command to use would be

Code: [Select]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda skip=61 count=1

But I'd suggest using the menu entry in Rockbox to clear the settings.

[pabouk]

Code: [Select]

cat /dev/sda

(replace /dev/sda by actual location of your iriver's HDD) and then repartition it again using fdisk.

errr ... this won't write anything to the disk but rather print the content of the disk to the terminal. Not nice ...

Sorry, I did not know that the forum eats the < and following characters. It was:

Code: [Select]

cat < /dev/zero >/dev/sda

I also forgot to mention that it works on UNIX type operating systems (Linux, BSD, OS X etc.). Using dd you have better control over the process of erasing (more options) of course. And yes, it is only for advanced users, the preferred option is to erase the settings in Rockbox.