Help, Cannot Login to Pandora, Login Loop

[litphoenix]

I was having an odd issue with my pandora today. The thing would randomly reset itself for some reason once I put it into its carrying case (when either off/in lower power mode/ or on) and would start up with the boot menu (the menu that would appear when holding the right trigger when turning on the pandora.)


So, figured I would deal with this problem later and left the battery out of the unit for about an hour.


Put the batter back in, I get a login screen, which is really strange since I had configured it to automatically login. So, press enter on the username (which was pre-populated) and put in the password (which was not populated), and the pandora goes to black screen for about 6 seconds, with a flashing cursor in the corner and then goes back to the login screen. And I know I'm entering in the correct password, because when I enter in the wrong password, the username disappears when it kicks back to the login screen. When I have entered the correct password, when I'm kicked to the login screen again, the username remains populated.


Other notes, I'm booting off the nand, hotfix 5. And I've tried booting with no sd cards inserted and the same thing happens. Edit: Oh, and the batteries I have are at 40% charge and 98% charge, so it isn't a low battery issue.


Please help, anyone... I will beg if needed. (and yes I did a search, but most of the problems I saw were people booting off of sd cards and not directly off the unit)

 

[Prometheus]

I hate to say this, but to the best of my knowledge (bear in mind I am no expert, so there may be areas where I've missed some information, though), the only way around that is to reflash.


Wait a bit before acting on that advice, though, as there may well be someone who knows better than I do as to what to do, here.

 

[EvilDragon]

It sounds like one of the resets damaged the filesystem.


You should reflash and check if the battery needs some padding, as it sounds that it's rebooting because it loses contact.

 

[litphoenix]

Figures this would happen before hotfix 6 was finalized. Alright, so getting my 6GB MicroSD card with adapter that I saved just for flashing purposes, unzipping the Zaxxon-HF5.zip file onto it, pad the batteries with some rubber to keep them from wiggling around (which both seem to have a bit of wiggle room at the far ends of them away from the contacts) and cross my fingers.


If it doesn't see it with a right shoulder button boot, format it with the Panasonic SD Formatter and repeat. And I'll flash with the ac adapter hooked up to a battery (because you can never be too careful).


I'll start crossing my fingers shortly and update this soon.

 

[litphoenix]

Looks like that did the trick, thank you EvilDragon & Prometheus. Flashing stuff always scared the hell out of me, since I lost a motherboard to flashing once, but flashing the Pandora is almost too easy. Hopefully the next time I'll have to flash it will be with hotfix 6 and not a moment sooner. : )

 

[Prometheus]

Glad to hear that it worked out alright!


Though I've only had to reflash once (on a previous unit), I feel less concern about flashing the Pandora than most other things, personally, as I know that what can happen to motherboards can't happen here - the Pandora has an "unbrickable" design with what I understand to be an extra bootloader, which I gather means that a user with a specifically-prepared SD Card can rescue their unit without having to RMA it should the worst happen.

 

[Nintendo]

Not only is it unbrickable, but there have been zero reports of motherboards being lost due to flashing the Pandora.

 

[EvilDragon]

The Pandora indeed can not be bricked with a firmware update, you can always force it to boot from SD Card.


Even if the NAND is totally broken at one time, you can put your OS on SD Card and continue to use your Pandora.

 

[ant]

So, I basically had this same problem, although I first encountered this with my plugged-in pandora being strangely off. After experiencing this (insanely frustrating) loop, I did some searching and found this thread, so I (reluctantly; I had some files I would have liked to keep) decided to flash. I downloaded HF6 (previously had HF5), installed it, and all seemed to go well.


But, now when I boot up, it only partly loads XFCE (no desktop icons, for instance) for a brief moment before very quickly flashing the OS loading screen, then gives me a white underscore prompt on a black background, which hangs around for about 5 seconds, before the whole console turns decidedly off.


As you can probably imagine, this is both frustrating and rather worriesome. Any ideas?

 

[EvilDragon]

Could it be you didn't wait for the first boot to complete?


It sounds like a system that's not fully setup.


Try reflashing to HF6 again (or grab SuperZaxxon Beta 2, which is superior, though Beta 3 will soon be out).


Be sure, when booting for the first time, that you DON'T RESET and wait until the first boot wizard appears.

 

[ant]

I did get all the way through the boot wizard...

 

[levi]

FWIW, I've had linux systems before that have got into such a mess that trying to start up a windowing system borks and drops you back to the login screen (thanks, Ubuntu package management). But I could still log in by switching to a different screen (ctrl+alt+f2 on PC, I assume the Pandora supports the same) and logging into a text terminal, and fiddling about with that.

 

[ant]

Just a clarification question here, what is supposed to happen after the installer says "INSTALLATION COMPLETE"? I have been using a reboot command, since it doesn't do anything of its own accord.