Booting Lockup / Freeze

I know I've seen this problem posted before, but I can't find it.

Starting a few weeks ago, my player has been locking up while booting. It only happens occasionally, and pulling the player out and re-inserting it in the dock fixes it every time (never had it lock up twice in a row). Usually it is during the initial boot logo, but yesterday it was after that, when the status at the bottom of the display shows what is booting - it just went into a loop right there. Again, pulling the player out of the dock and re-inserting it fixed the problem.

I only notice this in my car, but I rarely use the player at home or work (maybe one day a month or so). I am running HiJack v236 (yes, pretty old, but the problem started occuring recently), with kernel 2.00.

Any ideas, hints, suggestions?

Thanks!
- Tim

First things to check are the usual stuff 1,the usual stuff 2, and the usual stuff 3.

None of those really apply. The empeg just freezes, but doesn't give an error, and not always in the same spot. If it does freeze, it just hangs and doesn't rebuild the database (as an aside, I haven't resynced or added any music in about 10-12 months). It isn't a bad song, since every time I reboot, it continues with the song that was playing last time when I turned it off.

Thanks for the suggestions though.
- Tim

Still could be a hard disk issue even if it doesn't say "no hard disk".

Best thing would be to plug it into the serial port and see if you can get a boot log of the problem happening.

I will throw the serial cable in my carrying case and reboot it at work occasionally tomorrow to see if I can get it to lock up. I didn't realize the 'No Hard Drive Found' error didn't pop up on the screen, and it kind of makes sense. Its been fairly warm here, and if there was glue holding the cable in place, I wouldn't be surprised to find that it melted enough to allow the cable to get loose.

- Tim

I didn't realize the 'No Hard Drive Found' error didn't pop up on the screen

The "No Hard Disk Found" message does pop up on screen. However in some cases the player can make it past the "is there a hard disk" check only to fail without an on screen message at a later point.

Quote:
and if there was glue holding the cable in place, I wouldn't be surprised to find that it melted enough to allow the cable to get loose.

If you've got the glue, the glue spot is NEVER the problem location. The glue prevents the cable from coming loose in one common spot, so if it's been glued in that spot, then there's no trouble in that spot. The trouble is somewhere else. Carefully and methodically check each and every other possible cause of hard drive trouble listed in the FAQ. Don't just skim that entry or look at the pictures. Carefully read every word and go through every bullet point and follow the sub-links.