My wife dropped her Karma today and is on the verge of tears. I haven't looked at it yet so I really can't give details, but she says it simply isn't coming up. It's about 5 days out of warranty (just my luck), but she doesn't know where the receipt is anyway. Is there something I can do to get this fixed? She wants me to open it up and take a look, but is there any real point? Is there anything potentially wrong that I could fix myself?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. She is totally hooked on this now and the thought of living without it is already unbearable.

Greetings!

It depends on what is wrong with it. Likely problems could be a crashed hard drive, a wheel knocked out of position or a control that was surface mounted no longer mounted. Fixes depend on what happened.

More details: apparently the Karma comes up, the words appear, the hard drive spins for a bit, and then it gives up and shuts down. Is this a hard drive failure?

Put it into recovery mode (hold down the menu button and powerup). Does it correctly identify the hard drive model? Meanwhile, do the other controls "feel" correct?

I am the wife who dropped the Karma! I booted it into recovery mode and it says the following:
romv0.26
hwrev00000004
hdd: hitachi_dk14fa-20
1. plug in usb
2. start upgrader on pc

Hmm.... That is a good sign. It is seeing the hard drive as part of its system test. Is there anything that you do not have backed up? I would guess that perhaps you damaged something in the database rather than the hardware itself, and an upgrade with the latest firmware with format might correct the problem.

When you power on the unit normally, what exactly happens? Do you see the Rio logo and status messages on the bottom line? If so, can you tell me what status messages appear.

It looks as if it will start up as normal, but when it gets to the screen where it says "Rio Karma - Starting" it waits there and the hard drive spins then it turns itself off

Is there anything that you do not have backed up?

To answer this question (since I manage most of the music for her), everything is backed up. All of the music is on my empeg, so if we lose everything it will just mean a couple of hours transferring the music over from my player.

Do you see the Rio logo and status messages on the bottom line? If so, can you tell me what status messages appear.

Yes it says "starting"

Since the empeg folks are not on line at the moment, you may have to deal with a somewhat more brute force approach - me...

Try reloading the firmware (latest version) without formatting the player. The normal sequence of prompts should be "Starting", "Player Starting", "Loading Playlists" ...

Also, does everything feel like it is firmly in place? The RioStick and the wheel are where they should be and feel normal when trying to operate them? Those would be the most likely problem components if something were jarred loose on impact.

I tried to load the new frimware and it gave me an error:

0xc004a006

-any ideas?

All the buttons and things seem to work fine, the wheel turns and the rio button moves and I can press it in, volume and lock buttons seem fine

Unfortunately, no. I think you may need to wait until those who know what they are doing are on line. They would be able to interpret that error code at least.

Sorry I could not be of more help.

That's ok, I really appreciate your help! At least we have a start!

Thanks Paul. We really appreciate you giving us a hand. Hopefully one of the guys will be able to get her up and running again.

Were you able to download the firmware at all? One last thing to try would be to try reloading the firmware again, but this time check the format box. This would wipe the drive before loading the new player application. If there was a drive head crash, this might help. Unknown, though. Worth a shot at this point.

Edit: One last trick to try. As part of the upgrade, the upgrade package tries to read the drive. Formatting the drive skips that save step and just wipes it all...

One last trick to try. As part of the upgrade, the upgrade package tries to read the drive. Formatting the drive skips that save step and just wipes it all...

Nope, can't even do that. Listening to it it sounds like the hard drive is hosed

All I can say is, dropping a Karma is a very bad idea. I dropped mine and knocked the power switch off the PCB, only saved thanks to Hugo.

Well my wife contacted customer support, but of course dropping voids the warranty even if it'd been within the 90 day period so that's the end of it. And I don't have the cash to buy her the replacement currently, which really stinks since she's going to have surgery on Monday and being able to listen to audio books on her Karma was one of the few things she was positive about. Not much else I can do though.

Not much else I can do though.

Did you, by any chance, purchase it with a credit card that offers some sort of purchase protection? They will often double the warranty period (mine does and I had my laptop repaired that way).

-jk

Nope. But if/when I get another I sure will! Though my wife was told that dropping it voids the warranty anyway, regardless of how long it is. I got the impression that they would have worked with us if it haden't been for the dropping.