PRS-T3 Problems after corrupt/ booby trapped Epub

[roger the rabbit]

Hi all.
I am having problems with my PRS-T3S and wonder if anyone here has experienced similar or can shed some light. The reader is only some 15 months old

Shortly after loading and deleting what turned out to be a corrupt Epub, the reader then, out of the blue, appeared to be continuously discharging the battery over a period of 4 days even when totally shut down. (I was getting 14/21 days immediately previously).
Thinking it was a dud battery, maybe from being on the dealer shelf or a demo model for a long time, I replaced it.

The problem has remained exactly the same. I doubt now it is just a battery problem as the recharging time has not shortened.

I then did a re format of the internal memory plus a soft (paperclip) reset then a full factory boot hard reset.

Nothing has helped.

It has the latest firmware 1.1.01.17210 and in case it had become corrupt I tried to re install, but neither direct or via the PC updater will do an overwrite / update just saying the reader has the latest version.

Anybody know how I can force the firmware to be refreshed?

????? any other ideas???

[Rizla]

Delete all your books and hard / factory reset. That should do it. But it sounds like you've already done that. If you do a factory reset, I figured it would reset to original FW. It doesn't? Then you need to get it to original FW maybe. I appreciate you've already tried this stuff. Sorry I can't be more help.

Do you have an SD-card in there? Remove that too. This is why I no longer buy new. I had a 650 that died on me (faulty power switch connected mobo) after about 15 months. Never again. If it doesn't work out for you, I recommend ebay.

[roger the rabbit]

No - no SD card in, all books deleted by the reformat, I also hoped the hard (factory) reset might revert it to the original firmware, but it did not.

[Rizla]

What FW does it have after the hard reset? What FW did it come with?

Did you do a manual factory reset as opposed to doing it from the menu system?
https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answer...h5cWZ6bQ%3D%3D

[cybmole]

Surely is is impossible for a "rogue" e pub to corrupt firmware ?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Surely is is impossible for a "rogue" e pub to corrupt firmware ?

It would be very embarrassing to the developers if it did happen.
But hardware certainly can be damaged by rogue software.
As demonstrated rather famously by Stuxnet.



What could possibly be happening in the Sony firmware to instantly degrade the battery capabilities, I don't know. It does seem fairly unlikely, but nevertheless, the OP's Sony is misbehaving in exactly that way...

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Surely is is impossible for a "rogue" e pub to corrupt firmware ?

Some epubs were known to upset the oddly fragile OS of the Sonys. The only fix was to remove the book and factory reset. The impact of the book continued after removing the book! This resulted in odd battery drain

In addition, the T1s were known to slow down for no known reasons (maybe the T2 and T3 too, but I own a T2 and it has been resilient).

[cybmole]

But firmware is in flash storage, not normal ram, so how can an e pub file alter it ?
Surely a factory reset does what it's name implies, unless it does not repair damage to any indexing database?

[cybmole]

I do recall, when I had a sony, having to manually delete a corrupt .db file on device. Maybe some such corruption is causing indexing to run continuously, which would drain battery. IIRC their is only one .db file on device to delete, and it is easy to find.

[DoctorM]

I'm confused by the statement that a factory reset restores the original firmware. That's the first I've heard that... and I've been trying to find a way to roll back a firmware version to root a T1.

[robko]

Originally Posted by DoctorM

I'm confused by the statement that a factory reset restores the original firmware. That's the first I've heard that... and I've been trying to find a way to roll back a firmware version to root a T1.

This varies by company. For instance a factory reset on a Kobo takes the device back to the firmware version originally on THE DEVICE. So a new Kobo Glo bought today has a much newer firmware version "baked in" (call it version C for demonstration purposes) than the original Glo's had (call it version A). Lets say the current firmware is version D and you have both an old and a new device both on version D. On the new Glo a factory reset will only take you back to version C. On an old one it will go right back to version A.
Other companies seem to reflash the "base" version (i.e. Kindle) so when you factory reset it now goes to a version, not the original.

[filmo]

How many books are loaded onto you T3 Sony reader?
On my T1 Sonr reader it locks up trying to process 2000+ book library. Turn off cover display in library solves this problem. Some poorly formated books also cause this problem.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by robko

This varies by company. For instance a factory reset on a Kobo takes the device back to the firmware version originally on THE DEVICE. So a new Kobo Glo bought today has a much newer firmware version "baked in" (call it version C for demonstration purposes) than the original Glo's had (call it version A). Lets say the current firmware is version D and you have both an old and a new device both on version D. On the new Glo a factory reset will only take you back to version C. On an old one it will go right back to version A.
Other companies seem to reflash the "base" version (i.e. Kindle) so when you factory reset it now goes to a version, not the original.

Or more specifically, I believe Kobos essentially have a recovery partition which resetting uses to restore.

Whereas Kindles simply update the main firmware, and resetting just cleans out specific locations which contain user settings. If you jailbreak and bork the firmware, you're screwed (well, you could do a serial port unbrick, or on older devices use Kubrick).

I wouldn't be surprised if Kobo was fairly unusual in that regard.


If the Sony firmware has been borked, it is likely beyond the help of a factory restore.

[cybmole]

Maybe an obvious already checked thought, but have your resets turned on wifi. If it used to be Off but is now On, that will run down the battery more quickly....

[roger the rabbit]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Maybe an obvious already checked thought, but have your resets turned on wifi. If it used to be Off but is now On, that will run down the battery more quickly....

No WiFi is off.