I've had my pandora for a little over a month now. Today I booted it up, it displayed the angstrom boot screen however half-way through it cut to black. I read through the forums to see that another user had a similar problem and it was fixed by holding FN+1. I have tried this but to no avail. Is this a known bug and if so how do I go about fixing it?
Black Screen
- Thread starter Asalis
- Start date
slaeshjag
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's fn+I (capital i) 
I'm having the same issue.
I switch on the device, and I can see the Pandora logo and the progress bar just fine (so the display itself is perfectly ok, and brightness is fine as well).
Then, when the progress bar goes away and the graphical UI should take over, the screen just goes black and nothing more happens.
The device is running though, by touching the screen in places where I suspect my icons I can get the NAND and SD-LEDs to flash.
Thus, increasing brightness will only yield a brighter black, but no display contents.
Any ideas?
I switch on the device, and I can see the Pandora logo and the progress bar just fine (so the display itself is perfectly ok, and brightness is fine as well).
Then, when the progress bar goes away and the graphical UI should take over, the screen just goes black and nothing more happens.
The device is running though, by touching the screen in places where I suspect my icons I can get the NAND and SD-LEDs to flash.
Thus, increasing brightness will only yield a brighter black, but no display contents.
Any ideas?
The solution was already posted. FN + Brightness up (FN + I).
Don't keep it pressed but press it multiple times. It won't work before the unit is fully booted up, so wait about 10 seconds after the screen became black.
This should have been fixed long ago, so check that you're using the latest Hotfix (it should say Hotfix 5 in the top right border).
Don't keep it pressed but press it multiple times. It won't work before the unit is fully booted up, so wait about 10 seconds after the screen became black.
This should have been fixed long ago, so check that you're using the latest Hotfix (it should say Hotfix 5 in the top right border).
I'm using Hotfix 5, just checked again.
I tried increasing the display brightness, but gave up after several dozen keypresses.
Can I somehow cancel booting into XFCE during boot time and get a shell instead? How would I proceed from there?
Ah, so the progress bar goes fully to the right?
Then it's something different here, it seems to hang loading X.
Remove your SD Cards and check if they have any filesystem errors, as that would lead to this behaviour.
There's no real way booting into a shell. You could boot from an SD Card, mount the NAND and check what's wrong there... but reflashing the image would be way faster.
Man, you're fast.
Between the progress bar vanishing and the GUI not appearing there is a brief moment where a cursor blinks in the topleft screen position, this is not visible everytime, though.
But eventually I would have to do my first re-flash anyway, if only out of curiosity.
I'm not sure, maybe not fully. When it disappears there are still a few pixels left for it to travel.
Between the progress bar vanishing and the GUI not appearing there is a brief moment where a cursor blinks in the topleft screen position, this is not visible everytime, though.
I tried that. Same behaviour without the SD, though.
I wanted to avoid this, my unit's NAND was still pristine.
But eventually I would have to do my first re-flash anyway, if only out of curiosity.
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Oh gosh.
In preparation of re-flashing, I wanted to switch off the unit.
Because I couldn't find a way to actually turn it off (not just reboot but keep powered) without GUI access, I removed the battery.
After inserting it again, It didn't stay off but turned itself on and started booting, and I just watched, intending to remove the battery again but give it a final chance.
It's back!
I'm in XFCE now, and there's no trace anything ever went wrong.
I don't quite trust this "solution" yet, but I'm happy enough for now to no longer pursue the issue.
In preparation of re-flashing, I wanted to switch off the unit.
Because I couldn't find a way to actually turn it off (not just reboot but keep powered) without GUI access, I removed the battery.
After inserting it again, It didn't stay off but turned itself on and started booting, and I just watched, intending to remove the battery again but give it a final chance.
It's back!
I'm in XFCE now, and there's no trace anything ever went wrong.
I don't quite trust this "solution" yet, but I'm happy enough for now to no longer pursue the issue.
Last edited by a moderator:
WizardStan
Mega GP Mania
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- May 24, 2008
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"Have you tried turning it off and onremoving and inserting the battery again?"
