frozen on a book

[bookjunky]

I had a book I was reading just fine. I was reading in landscape mode like always when my thumb hit one of the number keys. Now despite multiple resets, removing the book from the device and putting it back in the book will not open. It is stuck on getting page.

I am up to 45 minutes of resets, deletes, reinstall of book and am ready to throw the device in the trash. Nothing was as reliable as a portable reading device as the old palm os pda's.

I liked the jetbook a lot when I got it and used it a lot but after getting hung up today and seeing the thing get sloowweerr and slloooowwweeer I regret getting it. I only got the jetbook so it would handle my massive collection of pdb's from a succession of palm os pda's.

So here I set with a broken tv and no books.

[Ken Maltby]

I had the same sort of thing happen with my JBL once, after I accidentally hit the
landscape key while reading. It would just keep counting up the pages even after it
had passed the number of pages in the book. It would go back to the main menu from
the "Cancel" key. After a few tries with it just recounting, just let it run and it eventually
quit and I could return to portrait mode and it was good from then on.

If yours is getting slow with it fully charged, you might want to try some of these
maintenance steps to clear up your flash memory and restore your device to the factory
settings: (Since you have the JB, not the JBL, make sure the internal battery is fully
charged.)

Make sure you have a fresh set of batteries in your JBL then:

You should remove any SD card from your JBL and connect the USB cable to backup your
JBL's internal memory, to a folder on your PC's hard drive. There should be a new drive
letter for your JBL's internal memory on your PC now. (If you had an SD card in the JBL,
there would also be a new drive letter for that.)

It is much better to have a USB 2.0 SD/Media Card reader/writer connected to your PC
and work with your SD cards using that, but if all you have is the JBL it is possible
to use it to make your update/repair SD card.

Reformatting the JBL's internal memory to FAT32 is a good idea and running ChkDsk on it
while you have the JBL connected to your PC with the USB cable is a good idea as well.
After the internal memory is cleaned up you would copy the contents you saved earlier
back onto your device.

If you can get to the logo screen then you should be able to do this:

First if you only have one SD card then you will want to back it up to a folder on your
PC's hard drive.

Format an SD card for use during the update of the firmware. (I still use FAT16 for this
although I understand that FAT32 works as well.) The formatting will insure a clean card
and root directory into which the three update folders go.

Be sure to use a firmware update with all three folders to make the SD card. Insert the
SD card into the JBL.

Make sure the USB cable is not connected at this point.

Then you go to the Diagnostics Menu built into the JBL, it is here that you can do the
#13 - Reflash NOR and the #7 - restore factory defaults

To enter the diagnostics screen:
Reset the device. Then hold down three buttons. They are: "on/off" "zoom" and "menu".
When you see the jetBook screen let go of "on.off". Keep holding the "zoom" and "menu"
keys until you see a 16 item screen. It's tricky, so it may take a couple of tries.

Then you can reflash the NOR Memory and restore the JBL to factory defaults.

After that is done reset the JBL.

That should leave you with a clean, smooth running device.

It will also fix that book loading issue.

Luck;
Ken

P.S. If that seems like too much, you could try renaming the ebook file and loading that.

[bookjunky]

Trying really hard here. I work with a mac osx leopard. My card reader is dead I have to use the device to read the card. The card is formatted fat16. I could not figure out how to reformat it on the mac. The device says it has the updated operating system on it but did not properly reset no matter what I did. I put new batteries in the thing yesterday.

[Ken Maltby]

I'm a PC Windows XP x64 guy, so I don't know how your Mac works, when you connect
your JBL to your Mac is there an indication that there are external drives attached?
Does it provide access to those drives? Does the Mac provide utilities that let you format
external attached drives? To FAT32?

Is there a way to display the contents of an external drive?

Luck;
Ken

[bookjunky]

External drives show up on the display much like on a windows pc. I can open it and look at the files and delete or add just like windows. I have to "eject" them from the screen by clicking on them and choosing eject rather than using the taskbar in the bottom of the screen in windows. I can see no option whatsoever to reformat.

I plugged it into a windows netbook and did a search for firmware upgrades and found a link to one on the jetbook site for version 0.16e that I am trying to install via the netbook. It is an executable file that hung frozen at 28% the first try. I did manage to reformat the sd card to fat32 on the netbook. Myh problem is all my books are on my desktop mac.

[Ken Maltby]

Your Netbook should have a USB port. You should have a USB cable for your JBL.
You can use the procedures I posted using your netbook. You can format the SD card
in your netbook by locating the drive letter for the SD card in the "My Computer"
window and right clicking on that drive letter. The same for the JBL's internal flash
memory, it will appear as a drive letter when you connect it to your netbook.

You should create the update SD card on your netbook and do the update following
the instructions provided in the "sticky" at the top of this "Ectaco jetBook" forum.
Do Not do the update using the USB cable and the folders and files on your computer.

Luck;
Ken

[bookjunky]

0.16e is a flop. The little pain is working again though. I really hope this means I cannot use the device in landscape mode anymore it is so much easier for me to hold that way.

[bookjunky]

Thanks for your help. I am beginning to wonder is some of the things that are supposed to be so wonderfully mac compatible really are. I can see me now spending endless hours transferring and converting books to disc for storage so they can be plopped into a windows drive at any time.

[Ken Maltby]

Actually, 0.16e is a major improvement for .epub and .pdf. The update is not that hard
to do if you follow the instructions.

Landscape mode has always worked fine for me. (except that one time when I
accidentally pressed the wrong buttons)

Backing up your JBL's internal memory with all the supplied books to your PC is a good
Idea and you should reformat it and run a file system check/repair utility like ChkDsk
(available on your netbook during the reformat), especially if your JBL is running slower
than it should. (Also, you don't have to put all the supplied books back onto the JBL's
internal memory freeing some space for large updates like the 0.16e.)

Luck;
Ken

[bookjunky]

The latest update did not work. And after over 3 hours of fussing I am done for the day. This is a really great forum though and I will be in on a regular basis. The book chat is great.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by bookjunky

Thanks for your help. I am beginning to wonder is some of the things that are supposed to be so wonderfully mac compatible really are. I can see me now spending endless hours transferring and converting books to disc for storage so they can be plopped into a windows drive at any time.

Apple tends to want to work with their own proprietary programs.

You mentioned a busted SD reader on your Mac, if that was working or if
you got a USB 2.0 SD reader/writer (they can be had for <$5) you should
have no problem moving the files to your JBL or your netbook.

http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=FLM

Scroll down to "Card Readers"

Luck;
Ken