Sansa Clip+ stuck on flower logo after reformat

[ccc]

I reformatted my sansa clip+, and now I can’t reinstall my OF. USB mode works, and I am able to run rockbox.

However, when I boot to OF by using left+power, the sansa logo comes on, followed by the flower, a black screen, sansa logo again, and it’s stuck on the flower.

I’ve redownloaded the OF, used two diferent wires, and even reformatted the clip+ again. Any help will be appreciated

[tapeworm]

Re-formatting does not affect the firmware, so there must be something else that corrupted it. Rockbox, while it patches the original firmware with its bootloader the main portion of it resides in the memory that does get erased during a format. Did you re-install Rockbox? Completely and correctly?

Give us some more details about why & how you re-formatted, if and how you re-installed Rockbox, exactly how you have attempted to re-install the OF, and I’m sure we can help you get it going again.

[ccc]

Well, my clip+ decided to die on my after going on a run, and when i got home, i took the memory card and IEMs out, and left it to sit in rice for two days, in case moisture was what caused it to hang. Then, i did a hard reset, by holding the Vol up button and power together for twenty seconds, waiting for another twenty, and then the power button again. Think i read it somewhere on this forum while waiting for it to dry.

So, the clip+ turns on, and boots into rockbox. However, the memory card I had inside during the run was corrupted, so i decided to reformat the card, and the player too just for the heck of it. Reformatted to FAT, all settings default, and quick reformat off, using the default win 7 reformatter. Wrong decision. 

After the reformat, it connected to my PC just fine, but was not recongised as SANSA CLIPP, but some generic flash drive. First I tried to get the OF working, by putting the sclppa.bin from the thread at the top of this forum into the root, but when i unplugged it, it still shows the rockbox logo and tells me to plug it back in, as there are no rockbox files. I switched it off, and booted into the OF, using left + power. Sansa logo, flower, black screen, logo, and then stuck on flower for ten mins, when i rebooted it using home+power. 

Then, I tried to get rockbox going. Connected to PC, ran the utility, and everything was normal, in that nothing was different from the other times i rockboxed this clip+. Played around in rockbox to test if it was stable, then tried reinstalling OF. Same results. That’s when I decided to post on the forum for help.

Thanks for taking the time to read this long ass post, and any suggestions on what to do would be very welcome

[tapeworm]

Wow, don’t know really where to begin here . . .

First, a “reset” is performed by simply holding the power switch up for (normally) 20 secs. or so. I don’t know where you got the idea about the Vol. Up button.

Did it rain on your run, or why would you put the player in rice for 2 days? If it did indeed get wet, 2 days isn’t enough time to draw the moisture from deep inside the player, and turning it on before this happens can short things out inside. If the player didn’t get wet, you could have tried the (correct) reset procedure immediately.

About the memory card, how did you come to the conclusion it’s corrupted? And why would you think you needed to just go ahead and format the player too? What (memory) size is the player and the card? Only 2GB and less should be formatted as FAT. Anything above that needed to be formatted as FAT32. And _ don’t _ use the Quick Format Windows option. If you formatted it (the player) incorrectly, as it sounds like you might have, that is most likely why your computer is not seeing it as a CLIPP anymore and just as a generic drive.

This problem should have been addressed and corrected before you went ahead and started monkeying around with the firmware. Thats a totally separate issue and again, (from what you’ve said) didn’t need to be ‘fixed’ in the first place, so why mess with it?

But it seems you didn’t stop there. Obviously, the (original) firmware wasn’t working correctly when you were trying to boot into the OF. So your next (il)logical step was to mess around with the Rockbox installation?

I think the only way to get this going again is to format it again, erasing everything including the Rockbox folder and files, then manually re-installing a fresh, unadulterated copy of the original firmware to wipe out the Rockbox bootloader patch. Once you get it working correctly in the OF then, and only then should you even think about putting Rockbox back on.

Your first priority is wiping the memory of all things Rockbox and optimizing it as it should be (FAT32?). Next, you need to get the firmware re-installed so you can operate the player. Thirdly, load some music on it and make sure things play and work as they are supposed to. Then, you can use the Rockbox Utility to add that program.

Always remember, fix one thing first. Trying to fix one thing with another only messes up both.

[tapeworm]

Wow, don’t know really where to begin here . . .

First, a “reset” is performed by simply holding the power switch up for (normally) 20 secs. or so. I don’t know where you got the idea about the Vol. Up button.

Did it rain on your run, or why would you put the player in rice for 2 days? If it did indeed get wet, 2 days isn’t enough time to draw the moisture from deep inside the player, and turning it on before this happens can short things out inside. If the player didn’t get wet, you could have tried the (correct) reset procedure immediately.

About the memory card, how did you come to the conclusion it’s corrupted? And why would you think you needed to just go ahead and format the player too? What (memory) size is the player and the card? Only 2GB and less should be formatted as FAT. Anything above that needed to be formatted as FAT32. And _ don’t _ use the Quick Format Windows option. If you formatted it (the player) incorrectly, as it sounds like you might have, that is most likely why your computer is not seeing it as a CLIPP anymore and just as a generic drive.

This problem should have been addressed and corrected before you went ahead and started monkeying around with the firmware. Thats a totally separate issue and again, (from what you’ve said) didn’t need to be ‘fixed’ in the first place, so why mess with it?

But it seems you didn’t stop there. Obviously, the (original) firmware wasn’t working correctly when you were trying to boot into the OF. So your next (il)logical step was to mess around with the Rockbox installation?

I think the only way to get this going again is to format it again, erasing everything including the Rockbox folder and files, then manually re-installing a fresh, unadulterated copy of the original firmware to wipe out the Rockbox bootloader patch. Once you get it working correctly in the OF then, and only then should you even think about putting Rockbox back on.

Your first priority is wiping the memory of all things Rockbox and optimizing it as it should be (FAT32?). Next, you need to get the firmware re-installed so you can operate the player. Once this is accomplished, then reset the USB mode to MSC as re-installing the firmware will default back to Auto Defect and Rockbox will only install and operate in MSC mode. It’s also a good idea to format the player again using the on-board Format option. This makes sure it is formatted as it should be. Then load some music on it and make sure things play and work as they are supposed to. Now you can use the Rockbox Utility to add that program back.

Always remember, fix one thing first. Trying to fix one thing with another only messes up both.

[ppv]

My player had the same problems before it bricked. It all started when Rockbox froze on boot screen, then I decided to reformat the player and install the latest original firmware and you know what? I got the exact same problem with the double flower logo and freezing. In an attempt to recover the player, I disassembled it, shorted the two pins which allow direct access to the flash memory, and tried to re-format it again, but this time I got 30MB unnamed USB drive (?) instead of 1-4GB drive and finally the player bricked completely. I still don’t know what made it brick, whether it was Rockbox, or the new firmware, or flash memory failure. But it’s a fact: I had to by a new 2GB player. I guess, I’ll keep away from installing anything on it and won’t use its internal memory at all. Most of my music is on microSD cards anyway. I just hope this one will work longer than its predecessor, which broke after 14 months’ use.

[ccc]

Sorry for the late reply, been really busy at work. I’ll try what tapeworm suggested over the weekend, and report back.

The player did get slightly damp from a light drizzle, but placing it in the rice was just a precaution I took just in case any moisture got in via the sd slot. I’ll make sure to keep it there longer in the future. I’m pretty sure I read about that weird reset procedure somewhere on this forum, and it DID get my player reset, do not sure what’s the problem with that.

I assumed how I knew the memory card was corrupted is self explanatory, I plugged it into my comp, the files could not be read. Fixed with a reformat.

The only reason why I put rockbox in when the OF was unusable was that the rockbox logo still appeared when I started the player, and trying to reinstall the OF lead to a message telling me to insert a USB wire. Only thing I could do at that point, given that I’ve already reformatted it, was to try to boot into rockbox, and if that worked, troubleshoot from there on. Not sure how that was trying too many things at once?

[ccc]

alright, I’ve reformatted the player as fat32. the first thing i notice is that windows treats it as a rockbox media player when i go to disconnect it, even thought there’s only “clppa.bin” in the root. the device still boots into rockbox if i do not press left when powering up. any ideas?