PB 360 RIP

[franklekens]

Hmf. My PB 360 is RIP.

It doesn't respond to anything, and e-mail to service@pocketbook.de (http://www.pocketbook.de/support/) is bounced. Anyone know where they *can* be reached?

I've lately had freezes & spontaneous reboots both with firmware version 14.2 that was preinstalled, and with the later 15.2 firmware. Downgrading back to 14.2 didn't help either.

It's not a matter of corrupt ebooks, since the device freezes or spontaneously reboots even when I'm in the main menu or browsing folders.
It may have to do with an empty battery, although the battery indicator never shows it less than at least half full (and fully full most of the time), and if the battery IS empty, it's definitely broken, since I generally don't use it enough to drain it.

And as of now, the device seems to be dead altogether. I can find no way of getting it back to life. Trying to reset didn't work, even after I expressly charged it for a whole night. It did some kind of half boot, and what I now have is an empty screen with the text 'books' somewhere halfway and an empty square with the text 'configuration' in the bottom right hand corner.

[IndecisiveMe]

I hope you get some answers soon. You could try PMing one of the Pocketbook guys here, you might get a quicker response.

Good luck. I hope it's something that can be fixed.

[tselling]

Did you try removing the battery?

[franklekens]

No, I'm not even sure how to do that without breaking it, so I'd rather not. I'd just have to put it back anyway, since I don't have a replacement for it & don't know where to get one.

Anyway, I've just about had enough of the resets & freezes & don't really feel like tinkering with this any longer.

[Ulli]

The E-Mail should be back again.

[franklekens]

Thanks, I e-mailed again.

This is what it looks like now -- when it's sort of started. At other times, the screen is blank or displays a startup logo (not the default, but a custom picture that I once added and that seems to have stayed in the memory even after I deleted all my custom logos).

[Ulli]

The last cutom icon is cached in memory.

Please try a hardware reset:

Try to power it on.
Press the Center and the upper Wing button.
Follow the advice.
Wait about 20mins.

[franklekens]

Well, I tried and first it said something about possible memory corruption -- the message disappeared too soon to note it down. Then I noticed I was able to get into the configuration dialogue and I'm doing a format memory on the device now. I'll see what happens.

[Ulli]

When you do a hardware reset, the memory will be cleared and reformatted. I recommend to you to try this out (Do backup before)

[franklekens]

Well allright. The backup isn't a problem, whatever's on it is always on my hard disk too.

But look here: it's been reformatted now, or looks like it. But pressing center key + wing button doesn't have any effect. It acts as though I've just pressed the center key.

And actually the formatting doesn't go entirely right. If I format it through the configuration menu choice, the device always hangs at stage 2, "Pass 2 write pattern 1". Or does that take *very* long? To me it looks like the progress bar hangs somewhere between half and three quarters of the way through. Or am I too impatient?

[franklekens]

And I mean it hangs there for far more than half an hour. So I don't think that's supposed to happen.

[Ulli]

Sorry for the unclear advice:

You have to press the upper wing and the centerbutton, while the PB starts up.

[Mickey330]

franklekens:

From reading this thread, it sounds as if you tried an upgrade (which is when you use the upper wing button). I'd recommend you try the hard reset, which is the one with the LOWER wing button.

Same steps apply:

[*Warning* - This process WILL take your reader back to "fresh out of the box" basics, so be sure to back up your device. It won't (shouldn't) affect your SD card - but I removed mine prior to hard resetting...just in case.]

- Ensure PB360 is plugged in (whether to PC or electric power - but active so you can manipulate the buttons)
- Ensure the PB360 is turned off
- Simultaneously press and hold the middle button (the one with the silver around it) and the LOWER wing button (it's the lower when the buttons are on the right hand side)
- While still holding the two buttons, press and release the "power" button on the top
- Once you see some text, you can release the two buttons
- If I remember correctly, the device will ask you to select "enter" to continue - press the middle button again

The PB360 will reformat everything back to factory. This process will take about 10 minutes.

Then, you just have to put everything back the way you had it when you first took it out of the box.

I don't know if this'll fix your problem - but it'd sure be worth a try, yeah?

Good luck.

Marilyn

[franklekens]

Thank you, this helped in the sense that I saw that "Pass 2 write pattern 1" again, but this time it didn't hang halfway through but was completed. At he end it said something about 6 bad blocks: I'm assuming the software is clever enough to somehow have 'flagged' these so these 'bad blocks' can no longer disturb the proper functioning of the device?

In any case, it seems to have restarted. I'll start loading books onto it again &c and see if all goes well now.

By the way: doing this has *not* restored it to factory state entirely. I had indeed upgraded from 14.2 to 15.2 (and downgraded back, and upgraded again, but no matter). But the device info now still says 15.2 as fhe FW version, not 14.2

[Mickey330]

Yeah, my bad, franklekens, for not making that part clear...

I've done hard resets on both 14.2 and 15.2 versions - the PB360 goes to the bare-bones basics of whichever firmware version you have loaded, be it 14.2 or 15.2.

Sorry if that created any confusion - but "Yay" for it maybe working.

More good luck to ya!

Marilyn