P2 stuck on boot

[raj]

G'day,

My brother has a refurbished P2 that he purchased a while back. Everything was working well until today when it kept jumping back while playing a recording as though it was locked in a loop. It would respond to nothing, so he powered it down, but then when he powered it back up, he tells me it is stuck with the work BOOT. It just stays there.

He has checked and the drive is spinning up, but it does not go any further.

Is there any "feature" that allows a forced reboot or even a revert a clean system with the firmware doing a reformat or similar?

He is not worried about any missed recordings.

Just to make things interesting, he has all Apple computer equipment.

Any help or tips appreciated.

Thanks.

[prl]

He has checked and the drive is spinning up, but it does not go any further.

The boot loader and the firmware aren't on the HDD. A P2 will happily boot without a HDD connected.

Is there any "feature" that allows a forced reboot

That's pretty much what you've said you've done.

even a revert a clean system with the firmware doing a reformat or similar?

Yes to both, but they are separate steps. You need to make the P2 bootable, and then you can do a reformat, but the latter may not be necessary.

Do you have a copy of the firmware installer for the current firmware on the P2? If so, all you need to do is follow the firmware upgrade instructions to install clean firmware.

If not, get the latest P2 firmware from here, then follow the upgrade instructions.

Note that there are two different firmware files for two different production types of the DP-P2:

• For a DP-P2 with a serial number lower than 1032098B00000 use firmware version 01.05.350 (file DPP2_Firmware_30Nov2010_ver_0105350.wrp in the list linked to above.
• For a DP-P2 with a serial number higher than 1032098B00000 use firmware version 01.07.350 or .351. (file BETA_DPP2_Firmware_01Jun2012_ver_0107351.wrp in the list linked to above)

Don't be concerned that the 01.07.351 is marked as a beta, it's the best firmware to run on that model.

The model numbers are hexadecimal, so, for example, 103209A0... is higher than 1032098B...

An "upgrade" completely replaces the P2's firmware, so you'll get a clean copy.

The USB thumb drive that you do the upgrade from must be USB1.1 compatible and formatted as FAT32.

You can check and repair the HDD's filesystem in the SETUP Initialise section. You can reformat it there, too.

Just to make things interesting, he has all Apple computer equipment.

That doesn't pose any real problems, apart from the possibility that any instructions for getting the firmware update file onto the USB drive will be written with Windows in mind.

It is possible that the underlying cause of the inability to boot the P2 is due to either the firmware or the boot loader being corrupted in the flash memory. That could be a symptom of the power supply for the flash running out of spec. If that's the case, the problem with booting is likely to recur if the power supply is not fixed.

[raj]

Thanks for the quick response. I have passed the information on.

[prl]

No problem.

[raj]

A bit of a follow up.

My brother dug up some information where a key sequence would restart a frozen P2.

It was something like 1234 and then some other key he mentioned. This changed it from Error Boot to Initialise ir initialising and then that changed to Network. It then stalled there because his P2 is not connected to the network via Ethernet.

Are there any boot loader updating utilities and are boot loader updates possible if the boot loader has gone a bit haywire?

Thanks again.

[Paul_oz53]

Hi Raj,

Can't help with your question but I've sent you a PM about an alternative that may be relevant to your brother.

If I can get my T3 working I can offer a good deal on a P2. Should definitely know next week or so.

Paul