Sansa E200 Bricked by Recovery Mode

[afshin3k3]

would you mind telling me how I can find out that in windows XP?(USB vendor and device ID)

[Bagder]

I personally cannot as I have no idea.

[Bibo]

I have same problem. How can i find device ID? Because player is in manufactory mod, but e200tool can´t find it. Pls help.

[saratoga]

Theres a device id field in the device manager entry for each USB device in Windows.  You could try that, though I have no idea if its the correct number.

Failing that, I'd try google.  There must be USB wire sniffers and debuggers.  One of them could give you the ID.

[afshin3k3]

Hi there

At last I decided to use linux,& it worked (I tried it on both Suse 10 & Knoppix 4) . It could find the device in the "init" step, but I couldn't go furthur. I don't what should I do after , I supposed I had to use the "write"
command to write the BLSD....rom & PP5022.mi4 files , but I don't know the address  and file size. (I write the address  and file size of those files but it didn't wrok)

[Bagder]

I think you want the 'recover' command.

[afshin3k3]

I'm not sure wich command i have to use,
For using "recover" command I have to recover i2c.bin or BL_SD_boardSupportSD.rom or any other file?

[Bagder]

For using "recover" command I have to recover i2c.bin or BL_SD_boardSupportSD.rom or any other file?

Since you're using manufacturing mode, and the recover command implies it, you should use the bootloader. The .rom file.

[illa]

hey party people..  I have a similar problem.

i formatted the 16mb partition in recovery mode then drag and dropped a bin file onto the drive letter, since then, when ever the device turns on, there is only a blue light circle and nothing on the screen.

following the advice is this forum, I got e200tools ruunning in fedora 5.  if i hold down the center button, connect via usb, I beleive I am in manufacturing mode.  Once in manufacturing mode, here is the output of my terminal window:

[root@smtp e200]# ./e200tool recover BL_SD_boardSupportSD.rom
e200tool v0.0.6-alpha (c) by MrH 2006, 2007
Searching for device 0781:0720 ... found!
Initializing USB stub (3460 bytes) ... done!
Writing 'BL_SD_boardSupportSD.rom' to address 0x10600000
Searching for device 6666:e200 ... 9 8 found!
Write at 0x1065fc38
Write done!
Running from address 0x10600000
Searching for device 6666:e200 ... found!
Execution started!
[root@smtp e200]#

does this appear correct?  after this if i unplug the usb cable, it resets and gives me an error saying device is key locked since hold is still on, if i remove hold black screen and blue light.  my other option is to hold down rec while linux is writing the file, and I reboot into recovery mode, once im there I see the 16gb partition, i tried copying various files here but none of them seem to work.

After this happens the only way I can get into recovery mode is to go into manufacturing mode, use e200tools, hold down record as it recovers then I can boot into it...

I tried using e200tools on 2 windows machines so I could use the sandisk updater, but only the os detects the device not the e200 app..

Im staring at this 16mb partition now.. any ideas?

[Bagder]

This is explained in:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200TroubleShooting

[illa]

Thanks...

A word of caution  
Only copy .mi4 files to the recovery partition.
Do not format this 16MB drive
Do not copy anything except one .mi4 file to the recovery partition. This might turn your shiny toy into a paperweight!
Do not copy .rom files to that partition unless you know exactly what you are doing. Again: You might brick your player!
Do not try anything else unless you have to. Again: You might brick your player!

Wow... I'm 5 for 5

[illa]

one of the no no's I did was formatting the 16meg partition.  I did this on a Windows XP machine through Windows explorer...  Is it possible the reason the firmware wont reload correctly in recovery mode is because my partitions are ruined?

I have a e260...
hmm...

[root@smtp e200]# dmesg | grep "Sansa"
  Vendor: SanDisk   Model: Sansa e250        Rev:

-then my partitons
[root@smtp e200]# fdisk /dev/sdb

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 16 MB, 16777728 bytes
1 heads, 33 sectors/track, 993 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 33 * 512 = 16896 bytes

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   ?    23579877    58171077   570754815+  72  Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(23579876, 0, 1)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(357, 32, 45) logical=(58171076, 0, 31)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2   ?     5111804    63779327   968014120   65  Novell Netware 386
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(288, 115, 43) logical=(5111803, 0, 24)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(367, 114, 50) logical=(63779326, 0, 4)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb3   ?    56663075   115330596   968014096   79  Unknown
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(366, 32, 33) logical=(56663074, 0, 24)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(357, 32, 43) logical=(115330595, 0, 22)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb4   ?           1   110218985  1818613248    d  Unknown
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(372, 97, 50) logical=(0, 0, 1)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(0, 10, 0) logical=(110218984, 0, 24)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order


*****************

This looks dirty compared to what I see on http://daniel.haxx.se/sansa/e200.html

[Bagder]

If putting back the original mi4 in recovery mode doesn't work, I suggest you go further down the hackery lane and invoke the manufacturing mode and go e200tool to restore the BL and hope that fixes your problem.

[illa]

yah i've tried 20-30 times with etools recovery.. different roms, once etools copies it over, hold down rec and tried various mi4's, everytime i unplug usb cable...it says firmware upgrade finishes, restarts to a blackscreen

[Hawks-SOAD]

can someone plz make a guide with all the steps to unbrick my sansa im dumb