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jamesbeat · 02-14-2010, 01:36 AM

***SOLVED!***

Ok, so I fixed it....

I'll put this here in case it helps someone else.

Basically, I ended up repartitioning the drive on my other laptop, installed Windows and ran the flash software. Worked first time!

I'm still not sure why this happened, the USB ports in the first laptop appeared to be working fine in device manager and they work perfectly when I use the computer with Linux.
I use Linux for everything, and the only reason I still have a Windows partition at all is because I have an iphone, so I'm tied to itunes

That makes the situation all the more puzzling because I literally installed Windows and then itunes and left it at that.
Because I don't use the itunes store, I don't even let Windows connect to the internet, any downloading of firmware etc for my iphone and ipod is done through Linux and then transferred to the Windows partition.

In a nutshell, what I'm trying to say is that the reason for my problems today, and the reason why I wasted around 12 hours of my life, was entirely because Windows didn't do what it was supposed to.

So what have we learned?

1. Even though I did everything right, it still didn't work because Windows is crap.

2. If you have a UK PRS 505, you can install the US firmware over the existing firmware, even though the original is a higher version number (or at least I was able to)

3. The Sony embedded software sucks. There's no reason why it couldn't give me an error report so I had something to go on, and there is no emergency backup procedure. If you lose your firmware, you also lose the ability to hard reset.

4. Despite the fact that I wasted a whole day doing something that should have taken less than five minutes, it was worth it to get the 'browse by folder' option.
While it doesn't make the device a dream to use, it at least makes it tolerable.

02-14-2010, 01:36 AM	#7
jamesbeat Connoisseur Posts: 70 Karma: 1796 Join Date: Jun 2009 Device: Sony PRS 505	*SOLVED!* Ok, so I fixed it.... I'll put this here in case it helps someone else. Basically, I ended up repartitioning the drive on my other laptop, installed Windows and ran the flash software. Worked first time! I'm still not sure why this happened, the USB ports in the first laptop appeared to be working fine in device manager and they work perfectly when I use the computer with Linux. I use Linux for everything, and the only reason I still have a Windows partition at all is because I have an iphone, so I'm tied to itunes That makes the situation all the more puzzling because I literally installed Windows and then itunes and left it at that. Because I don't use the itunes store, I don't even let Windows connect to the internet, any downloading of firmware etc for my iphone and ipod is done through Linux and then transferred to the Windows partition. In a nutshell, what I'm trying to say is that the reason for my problems today, and the reason why I wasted around 12 hours of my life, was entirely because Windows didn't do what it was supposed to. So what have we learned? 1. Even though I did everything right, it still didn't work because Windows is crap. 2. If you have a UK PRS 505, you can install the US firmware over the existing firmware, even though the original is a higher version number (or at least I was able to) 3. The Sony embedded software sucks. There's no reason why it couldn't give me an error report so I had something to go on, and there is no emergency backup procedure. If you lose your firmware, you also lose the ability to hard reset. 4. Despite the fact that I wasted a whole day doing something that should have taken less than five minutes, it was worth it to get the 'browse by folder' option. While it doesn't make the device a dream to use, it at least makes it tolerable.