Just fixed my bricked c250 v1! Easy method!

[mengel]

I tried all sorts of things to fix this, but it never would boot up past the intro screen. That's the one that shows the funky looking lizard on it. I could do the thing where you lock the lock button, and hold down the record button, then power it up, and plug in the usb cable. It would then show that 16mb-format folder, with the version.txt file. However, copying over the sansa.fmt, or the firmware files, and then rebooting, didn't get it past that intro screen, even though it said it reloaded. Finally, I found a hint on the Rockbox forums, for a "secret" diagnostic mode. Here's how you get into it:

To get into Diag mode (not the same as recovery mode):

Power off
Turn ON lock/hold switch so it shows the orange
Hold down the "DOWN" BUTTON
Press menu/on while still holding "down" button

It now boots into the diag mode, and rotates between a bunch of choices. I let go of the down button, and it grabbed the format choice, and asked me to confirm. I pressed the center select button, and it said: "now formating". Once it finished, I rebooted it, and it came up to the Language selections screen! Everything now works, and I'm quite happy!!

Perhaps this will work for others, I certainly hope so. Good luck

[CrowdAds]

[Lyrica]

I can't access manufacturing mode. All what I see is that lock image...

[augie]

Thanks! I had to replace the battery on my wife's C250 and at the same time (I don't know ifit had anything to do with the bad battery) it was displaying the locked at SanDisk screen.

After I got into diagnostic mode I had to hit "pause" to stop the choices from scrolling, then >>| to select reformat. After that, everything went smoothly.

I was pleasantly surprised that Napster still recognized the device name after reformatting.

[spikecrystal]

Ok I am at this screen where it is flashing

Upgrade Firmware
Erase SD media
Erase SD NVP

but when I hit the "pause/play" button or hit any button it doesn't do anything, I feel like I'm close to finishing this ridiculously long and complicated endeavor I've embarked on, but I keep hitting problems! Haha, help!?

[saratoga]

You should probably give a little more detail then that, especially since it sounds like you're talking about something completely different then the other posts in this thread.

[spikecrystal]

Originally Posted by saratoga

You should probably give a little more detail then that, especially since it sounds like you're talking about something completely different then the other posts in this thread.

Ok If followed all of Mengel's instructions above, I have the c250 and after I copied the firmware files over in 16mb-format folder then I rebooted and I got into the "secret" diagnostic screen Mengel is talking about above. So now I'm in that diag mode and mengel says to just hit the pause/play button to stop the scrolling options and pick one (the format option) my doesn't stop scrolling. No matter what button I hit, it just keeps flashing and scrolling all the options...

[hassanzia]

i cant get into diag mode????