DR 1000S and fighting the urge to use profanity....

sarikan · 12-15-2009, 11:46 AM

My DR1000S has a brand new problem. It can't boot. The bottom light, and up and down arrow lights on the right all switch on, and the boot screen appears, while the top light blinks red, after blinking yellow for a few seconds.
I watch the boot screen, animating, until the battery dies. Two days ago, sometime after the 6th or so reset, it booted normally. Yesterday, I simply could not boot the device, and I had it drain its battery at this attempting-to-boot state.
Why? I mean seriously, why? I used this device very carefully, I applied patches, and over a year after spending £500 I am left with a device that has more problems than ever. As a PhD student, I believe that £500 spend like this gives me the right to swear a lot, but I'm still not trying to do that. I am so tired of these mysterious problems popping up every once in a while. I simply want to boot this thing up and read a couple of pdfs, and it is now barely functioning (not functioning at all at the moment), thanks to brilliant updates released by the producer.

Anyway, just in case someone has encountered this (this is different from my previous red light booting error), I'd like to know if there are any solutions.

Kind regards
Seref Arikan

Shaggy · 12-15-2009, 12:10 PM

Did you try removing the memory cards and letting it sit on the charger for a few hours? It may just be another variation of the "battery too low to boot" error.

sarikan · 12-15-2009, 12:14 PM

I did remove the memory card, but did not put it on charger after that.
I've fully charged the device on Saturday, used for half an hour, and shut it down. On Sunday, I've faced this problem, and after some resets it worked. Yesterday, no luck.
Its battery is empty now, and I'll go home and recharge it. It will probably boot and work, but I am so sick of this meaningless struggle just to use the device.
Thanks for your help.

Seref

Shaggy · 12-15-2009, 12:31 PM

It sounds like what you're experiencing is the bug where it doesn't shutdown completely and continues to drain the battery, meaning that the next day when you try to boot it up again the battery is too low.

Some people have reported that closing your documents and safely removing the memory card before you shutdown helps to prevent this from happening. There's also a way, after it shuts down, to use the buttons to see if it's really down, but I don't recall off the top of my head what the exact procedure is.

pauli · 12-15-2009, 05:52 PM

the blinking red top LED in combination with the green leds at the sensors indicate a problem during boot up. iRex support can tell you what is wrong from the combination, it's an error code during startup.
Your DR1000 may have a HW problem related to the sensors. It could even be as simple as a loose connector between the main board and one of the sensors....

sarikan · 12-18-2009, 07:37 AM

Hi pauli,
I'm trying to understand the nature of the problem. It appears it has something to do with the device shutting down automatically. Last night I went home, and this problem would not allow booting, no matter what I try.
So I left the device connected to the usb port, and went to bed. In the morning, the red light was still blinking, but a reset worked this time.
I shut it down and booted a couple of times, and even if I got the constant red light, resetting allowed proper, normal booting. Then I left it open, and read for some time on the bus. Then I did not shut it down, put it into my backback, and after 30 mins or so, it was again in this blinking light and yellow lights state.
Needless to say it is not getting out of that now.

I am reluctant to even report the problem: since the warranty (I assume it was a year) is over now, I can't spend stupid amounts of money to send this back to Irex (I live in London, where everything costs stupid amounts....)

If I can somehow manage to get this device work, I'll try to downgrade to 1.6, where I had the pen not working problem, but it is much better than this s.it storm..

Kind regards
Seref

owl123 · 12-18-2009, 09:00 AM

Are you sure your warranty was just 1 year?

My local distributor's web pages used to inform that there's a 2-year warranty for everyone within EU. A few weeks or months back it must've been changed to 1 year. That's disturbing as I didn't get any warranty card or anything like that.

Shaggy · 12-18-2009, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sarikan

I am reluctant to even report the problem: since the warranty (I assume it was a year) is over now, I can't spend stupid amounts of money to send this back to Irex (I live in London, where everything costs stupid amounts....)

If the bug report helps them come up with a firmware fix, then you would benefit from that regardless of your warranty.

sarikan · 12-18-2009, 11:26 AM

Shaggy,
I seriously suspect that the bug itself comes from the firmware updates, so I guess Irex is getting something seriously wrong here

Joking aside, I'll report the situation to Irex, just out of curiosity. The overall situation is a huge disappointment to me however, I have a long journey to home tomorrow, with my reader not working at all

Kind regards
Seref

Shaggy · 12-18-2009, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sarikan

Shaggy,

Joking aside, I'll report the situation to Irex, just out of curiosity. The overall situation is a huge disappointment to me however, I have a long journey to home tomorrow, with my reader not working at all

If you can show them that the power drain is related specifically to the automatic shutdown (which I think is what you said above), that would be good information for them to have.

sarikan · 12-18-2009, 12:59 PM

I've managed to reset it after keeping it on charge for about 2 hours. The first thing I did was to downgrade to 1.6. Now the battery shows 58% I guess there was something with 1.7 that was causing incorrect readings about the battery state, who knows?
I need to use the device, so I won't be able to hunt bugs for Irex, and I'll wait for 1.8 if that ever comes up..

Kind regards
Seref

Shaggy · 12-18-2009, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sarikan

Now the battery shows 58% I guess there was something with 1.7 that was causing incorrect readings about the battery state, who knows?

You're not the first person I've heard that from. We were speculating in another thread a while ago that the battery driver may have been changed in the 1.7 firmware, and there seemed to be a bug in it. At least one other user had similar issues with poor battery life in 1.7, which seemed to be coming from the driver under reporting the charge level.

Mackx · 12-19-2009, 07:17 AM

When you go to Settings->About the versions of the hardware and software are shown. I assume that the 'Micro Application Version' is related to the processor containing the battery driver. My SD (R1.7.1) says 0.41.

tjdean256 · 12-19-2009, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shaggy

You're not the first person I've heard that from. We were speculating in another thread a while ago that the battery driver may have been changed in the 1.7 firmware, and there seemed to be a bug in it. At least one other user had similar issues with poor battery life in 1.7, which seemed to be coming from the driver under reporting the charge level.

If it is a bug, why does it seem to be so sporadic? In other words why doesn't everyone have the problem?

sarikan · 12-21-2009, 07:01 AM

Ok, here is a long update. I've downgraded to 1.6, and the blinking red light + green lights problem went away, or so I thought.
The next reset caused the always on red light problem, which is more comment then my three lights thing. So I said, let me go to 1.5 and see what happens then.
After I've copied files required to downgrade to 1.5, it asked if I wanted to restart, and before I could say yes, the three lights came back!!!
I knew that whatever I did, it would not be able to boot. So I said yes, it restarted and could not boot because of three lights thing. I had a 14 hour journey the next day, so I left it as it is, trying to boot, and it ran out of battery of course.

Yesterday, I've put it on charge, waited for about 4 hours or so, and booted it. Surprise suprise! It booted, got stuck on post install updates, and after a reset and a boot without the sd card, it worked. Suspecting that the auto shutdown was the problem, I turned it off, but that setting change did not get saved at the first time. I've left it open to do a few battery charging cycles.

Today, I've put it on charge, and screen got kinda scrambled, but did not boot. I've left it as it is, and after two hours, I've booted, only to face a very annoying double columns of ghosting on the left of the screen with a thinner vertical one close to top.

After a couple of resets, the columns disappeared but the horizontal one remained (slightly). Now the device is on and it is charging, and ghosting columns seems to come back if no screen refreshes happen for a while

I've sent an email to learn the status of my warranty, I bought the device on 18/10/2008, so I dont' have much hope.

I'm amazed at the amount of time I've put into identifying the pattern for the problem, and I'm still unable to have a single, reproducable problem. I'm writing all of this down, so that prospective buyers can be aware of the joys that wait them.

12-15-2009, 11:46 AM	#1
sarikan Zealot Posts: 131 Karma: 34 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: none	DR 1000S and fighting the urge to use profanity.... My DR1000S has a brand new problem. It can't boot. The bottom light, and up and down arrow lights on the right all switch on, and the boot screen appears, while the top light blinks red, after blinking yellow for a few seconds. I watch the boot screen, animating, until the battery dies. Two days ago, sometime after the 6th or so reset, it booted normally. Yesterday, I simply could not boot the device, and I had it drain its battery at this attempting-to-boot state. Why? I mean seriously, why? I used this device very carefully, I applied patches, and over a year after spending £500 I am left with a device that has more problems than ever. As a PhD student, I believe that £500 spend like this gives me the right to swear a lot, but I'm still not trying to do that. I am so tired of these mysterious problems popping up every once in a while. I simply want to boot this thing up and read a couple of pdfs, and it is now barely functioning (not functioning at all at the moment), thanks to brilliant updates released by the producer. Anyway, just in case someone has encountered this (this is different from my previous red light booting error), I'd like to know if there are any solutions. Kind regards Seref Arikan Last edited by sarikan; 12-15-2009 at 11:49 AM.

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12-15-2009, 12:10 PM	#2
Shaggy Wizard Posts: 4,293 Karma: 529619 Join Date: May 2007 Device: iRex iLiad, DR800SG	Did you try removing the memory cards and letting it sit on the charger for a few hours? It may just be another variation of the "battery too low to boot" error.

12-15-2009, 12:14 PM	#3
sarikan Zealot Posts: 131 Karma: 34 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: none	I did remove the memory card, but did not put it on charger after that. I've fully charged the device on Saturday, used for half an hour, and shut it down. On Sunday, I've faced this problem, and after some resets it worked. Yesterday, no luck. Its battery is empty now, and I'll go home and recharge it. It will probably boot and work, but I am so sick of this meaningless struggle just to use the device. Thanks for your help. Seref

12-15-2009, 12:31 PM	#4
Shaggy Wizard Posts: 4,293 Karma: 529619 Join Date: May 2007 Device: iRex iLiad, DR800SG	It sounds like what you're experiencing is the bug where it doesn't shutdown completely and continues to drain the battery, meaning that the next day when you try to boot it up again the battery is too low. Some people have reported that closing your documents and safely removing the memory card before you shutdown helps to prevent this from happening. There's also a way, after it shuts down, to use the buttons to see if it's really down, but I don't recall off the top of my head what the exact procedure is.

12-15-2009, 05:52 PM	#5
pauli Groupie Posts: 185 Karma: 119824 Join Date: Feb 2008 Device: iLiad, DR1000S, HTC Hero, DR800SG	the blinking red top LED in combination with the green leds at the sensors indicate a problem during boot up. iRex support can tell you what is wrong from the combination, it's an error code during startup. Your DR1000 may have a HW problem related to the sensors. It could even be as simple as a loose connector between the main board and one of the sensors....

12-18-2009, 07:37 AM	#6
sarikan Zealot Posts: 131 Karma: 34 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: none	Hi pauli, I'm trying to understand the nature of the problem. It appears it has something to do with the device shutting down automatically. Last night I went home, and this problem would not allow booting, no matter what I try. So I left the device connected to the usb port, and went to bed. In the morning, the red light was still blinking, but a reset worked this time. I shut it down and booted a couple of times, and even if I got the constant red light, resetting allowed proper, normal booting. Then I left it open, and read for some time on the bus. Then I did not shut it down, put it into my backback, and after 30 mins or so, it was again in this blinking light and yellow lights state. Needless to say it is not getting out of that now. I am reluctant to even report the problem: since the warranty (I assume it was a year) is over now, I can't spend stupid amounts of money to send this back to Irex (I live in London, where everything costs stupid amounts....) If I can somehow manage to get this device work, I'll try to downgrade to 1.6, where I had the pen not working problem, but it is much better than this s.it storm.. Kind regards Seref

12-18-2009, 09:00 AM	#7
owl123 Addict Posts: 234 Karma: 214 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy NotePro 12.2, InkBook	Are you sure your warranty was just 1 year? My local distributor's web pages used to inform that there's a 2-year warranty for everyone within EU. A few weeks or months back it must've been changed to 1 year. That's disturbing as I didn't get any warranty card or anything like that.

12-18-2009, 11:26 AM	#9
sarikan Zealot Posts: 131 Karma: 34 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: none	Shaggy, I seriously suspect that the bug itself comes from the firmware updates, so I guess Irex is getting something seriously wrong here Joking aside, I'll report the situation to Irex, just out of curiosity. The overall situation is a huge disappointment to me however, I have a long journey to home tomorrow, with my reader not working at all Kind regards Seref

12-18-2009, 12:59 PM	#11
sarikan Zealot Posts: 131 Karma: 34 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: none	I've managed to reset it after keeping it on charge for about 2 hours. The first thing I did was to downgrade to 1.6. Now the battery shows 58% I guess there was something with 1.7 that was causing incorrect readings about the battery state, who knows? I need to use the device, so I won't be able to hunt bugs for Irex, and I'll wait for 1.8 if that ever comes up.. Kind regards Seref

12-19-2009, 07:17 AM	#13
Mackx Guru Posts: 999 Karma: 19985 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Netherlands Device: iRex DR1000S	When you go to Settings->About the versions of the hardware and software are shown. I assume that the 'Micro Application Version' is related to the processor containing the battery driver. My SD (R1.7.1) says 0.41.

12-21-2009, 07:01 AM	#15
sarikan Zealot Posts: 131 Karma: 34 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: none	Ok, here is a long update. I've downgraded to 1.6, and the blinking red light + green lights problem went away, or so I thought. The next reset caused the always on red light problem, which is more comment then my three lights thing. So I said, let me go to 1.5 and see what happens then. After I've copied files required to downgrade to 1.5, it asked if I wanted to restart, and before I could say yes, the three lights came back!!! I knew that whatever I did, it would not be able to boot. So I said yes, it restarted and could not boot because of three lights thing. I had a 14 hour journey the next day, so I left it as it is, trying to boot, and it ran out of battery of course. Yesterday, I've put it on charge, waited for about 4 hours or so, and booted it. Surprise suprise! It booted, got stuck on post install updates, and after a reset and a boot without the sd card, it worked. Suspecting that the auto shutdown was the problem, I turned it off, but that setting change did not get saved at the first time. I've left it open to do a few battery charging cycles. Today, I've put it on charge, and screen got kinda scrambled, but did not boot. I've left it as it is, and after two hours, I've booted, only to face a very annoying double columns of ghosting on the left of the screen with a thinner vertical one close to top. After a couple of resets, the columns disappeared but the horizontal one remained (slightly). Now the device is on and it is charging, and ghosting columns seems to come back if no screen refreshes happen for a while I've sent an email to learn the status of my warranty, I bought the device on 18/10/2008, so I dont' have much hope. I'm amazed at the amount of time I've put into identifying the pattern for the problem, and I'm still unable to have a single, reproducable problem. I'm writing all of this down, so that prospective buyers can be aware of the joys that wait them.

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