Sansa E200 Bricked by Recovery Mode

[Gravian]

First of all a big thanks to you guys for providing this much information and help to everybody.
Now, my problem:

Model: sansa e270 europe (http://epaun.com/e200/1.jpg)
Dumb action : Formated drive & unplugged
Cry for help : Followed the tutorial several times. After dumping both .rom and .mi4 files on the new available partition, unplugged usb cable. When trying to power on, the same blue ring.

After trying this several times, with all bootloader versions (us & eu & c200, btw when using c200 the whole screen was blank) now when I try it I get an error message after unplugging the cable. Even checked the files on nuclearscripting. I checked the CRC most of the times and it seemd ok.

Debug info : screen capture of e200 tool at work (http://epaun.com/e200/2.jpg)
Right after e200tool prints Execution started, this shows up on my sansa : http://epaun.com/e200/3.jpg
Recovery mode starts just fine : http://epaun.com/e200/4.jpg
Hold rec + drop the .rom & .mi4 files
After that hit safely unplug : http://epaun.com/e200/5.jpg
After unplugging the error message appears : http://epaun.com/e200/6.jpg
Then, in shuts down and restarts with the blue ring.

Do you think this is salvageable ? If not I have a friend that's looking for a color screen for his electronics project, I am sure he would be happy with the one on my Sansa but I would rather not give him the satisfaction.

=================================

Ok, here we go:

After several months of shelving my Sansa e250 2gig (regular, not rhapsody) I had just about given up hope on fixing it, but since I had just installed SuSE out of geeky curiosity I decided I would try and give unbricking it another go with e200tool.

Now what had happened was the same as the user above, except a little different, my Sansa was hanging on startup and all the official fixes didn't work so I decided to take a chance and wipe the whole thing clean using OS X, since it can see the hidden partition. The idea was to wipe it clean and fresh install with e200tool and then install rockbox, but when I went to reinstall the files in recovery mode via e200tool they would not write, instead, the exact thing the above user described happened.

*Once in recovery mode via e200tool* Heres what I did, first I made an empty text file called Sansa.fmt, now as everyone should know that formats the player, (mind you it seems a little below the point with the current problem, but I figured since I tried EVERYTHING else) then I copied over the bootloader file and the main rom file like before, selected remove safely from the right click menu and unplugged it.

Now the text was a little different this time and it went by too fast to read, but this time it booted into the sansa screen w/o needing to be plugged into the computer useing e200tool to load the bootloader to RAM, which was a major improvement, but it hung, so I booted into manufacturing mode *and loaded up the recovery mode via e200tool* one more time and just made a file called Sansa.fmt, then selected remove safely and unplugged. After that it booted up just fine!

Now I'm not sure exactly what had happened but I'm GUESSING when you format it with a computer like that you format it in a foreign format that it can't write the files too. One last note, I think you still have to hold down the center button when you plug it in and you still have to hold record when you use e200tool, even if you are stuck in manufacturing mode by default. But either way, it's good practice.

Anyway, post if this helps at all or if you need clarification. I've been seeing this problem on several forums, so I figured that I should give my solution.

Time to install RockBox!

EDIT: Ok, there was a typo, or moreso I forgot to mention something. The changes are in between the *'s. I guess I kinda figured it was obvious what I was doing by what I quoted, but I guess not, sorry.

[Bagder]

so I booted into manufacturing mode one more time and just made a file called Sansa.fmt, then selected remove safely and unplugged. After that it booted up just fine!

This was a typo, right? I don't see how you can create a file like that in manufacture mode...

[Gravian]

Maybe I got the name of the mode wrong? It's the mode you get when turning it on with the center button down. When it booted up it gave me the blue ring and black screen by default and the flash drive wouldn't mount, like I said, I had to use e200tool to even get into recovery mode because I wiped the 16 meg partition clean. Once I did that it gave the the 16 meg partition and from there I made the file and copied over the firmware like I would any USB flash device. If you JUST make the reformat file when it reboots it gives you a plain white text on black formating message. Although, if it matters at all, I think I may have used 260 firmware instead of 250 as it doesn't recognize the USB in windows, it gives me an error that is cataloged here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200Port#Rockbox

Unless of coarse all e200 models experience this problem, but I have only found reports for the e260. Luckily music and files can still be loaded up with the original firmware so I'm not really concerned, the only problem will be explaining that you have to boot with |<< held down to load it up to the person I am gifting this to (I personally use an iPod nano 2nd gen, much better sound quality).

Is my case strange or something? I thought it was pretty standard.

[Bagder]

Ah yeah ok.

When you start it in manufacture mode you can load the bootloader to it with e200tool and when that bootloader starts it can go into recovery mode (and then you can put files on its recovery disk), so yeah it gets a little confusing in which mode you're really in then...

As long as it worked for you I'm fine! ;-)

[lokasenna]

New idiot that bricked his Sansa  

I put my Sansa into recovery mode so I could restore the original firmware but put in some random bin on accident. Now when I switch on the Sansa the circle lights up and no backlight. My computer doesn't alert me to any usb device being connected. I figure this is a hopeless case because if I can't detect it then they can't communicate. Does anyone have any suggestions for this massive idiot? Or is trying to get Sandisk to replace it my only option?

[Bagder]

lokasenna, use manufacture mode:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200Unbrick#Manufacturing_Mode

[lokasenna]

Manufacture mode is where you hold select while powering it up right? There were a lot of posts so I might have confused myself somewhere. But if it is then I've tried going into manufacture mode but my computer still doesn't detect the Sansa. I used e200tool on linux just in case and the program doesn't detect my Sansa.

[Bagder]

Yes that's the mode (I updated the wiki page right now to include the instructions on how to boot into the mode).

So when you do this, what do you see on the sansa display?

Did you run the e200tool as root?

[lokasenna]

The backlight doesn't light up no matter what I do and the wheel stays lit as well. Ran e200tool as root as well, lsusb doesn't detect anything which is why I'm guessing sending it to Sandisk is my only option.

[jc57]

When my Sansa e250 was at this point, it helped to be able to remove the back cover and take the battery out to insure a quick and complete reset before trying the manufacture mode.  I also had to try this on two computers and eventually a Ubuntu boot CD to get the computer to see the Sansa on the USB port (lsusb).  So, keep trying, you may get lucky. -- jc

[aleec]

Hi! Sorry for my English.
After i using e200tool it say

root@alex-desktop:/home/alex/e200tool# ./e200tool recover bl_sd_boardsupportsd.rom
e200tool v0.2.3-alpha (c) by MrH 2006, 2007
Searching for device 0781:0720 ... 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 not found!
Searching for device 0b70:0003 ... found!
Initializing USB stub (4780 bytes) ... done!
bl_sd_boardsupportsd.rom: No such file or directory

root@alex-desktop:/home/alex/e200tool# ./e200tool i2cprogram i2c.bin
e200tool v0.2.3-alpha (c) by MrH 2006, 2007
Programming i2c rom (address=87) range 0x0000-0x2000 from 'i2c.bin'
Searching for device 6666:e200 ... 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 not found!
root@alex-desktop:/home/alex/e200tool# lsusb
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0b70:0003 PortalPlayer, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Who can help me?

[scorche]

When you ran "./e200tool recover bl_sd_boardsupportsd.rom", were you in the same directory that you saved bl_sd_boardsupportsd.rom in?

[aleec]

Yes because md5sum get me check sum. and i can see it in file browser.

[ItzBACON]

Hate to keep dragging out this thread, but I'm still having some issues.

When I first plug my player in under manufacturing mode, lsusb shows it as

Bus 001 Device 021: ID 0b70:0003 PortalPlayer, Inc.

If I attempt to run ./e200tool recover BD_SD_BOARDSUPPORT.rom at this point then it says:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ ./e200tool recover BL_SD_BOARDSUPPORTSD.ROM
e200tool v0.2.3-alpha (c) by MrH 2006, 2007
Searching for device 0781:0720 ... 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 not found!
Searching for device 0b70:0003 ... found!
Failed to claim the interface (-1, Operation not permitted)

If I try and run the i2cprogram from here, it shows me this:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ ./e200tool i2cprogram i2c.bin
e200tool v0.2.3-alpha (c) by MrH 2006, 2007
Programming i2c rom (address=87) range 0x0000-0x2000 from 'i2c.bin'
Searching for device 6666:e200 ... 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 not found!
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Desktop$


I've gotten it to tell me the whole "Failed to claim the interface (-1, Operation not permitted) using the i2cprogram command too, just can't remember how I did it at the moment. Been messing with this thing for a while now, and I'm getting tired.

So is there something I'm missing here? Am I not doing something right? I've read this thread and a few others about a hundred times and I still can't seem to get my player to respond the way it's supposed to. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[JdGordon]

run the command as sudo
$ sudo ./e200tool recover BL_SD_BOARDSUPPORTSD.ROM