Is Anyone Else Experiencing Random Reboots and Can Anyone Help Diagnose?

[SingleDad]

I haven't seen anyone else complain of this, so my preliminary guess is this could be an isolated hardware issue. That being said I wanted to know if anyone else is having issues with their Polaroid PMID701 series tablet just spontaneously rebooting?

My 701 C is doing it a lot...and it seems to be getting much much worse. It's gotten to the point where it makes it unusable since I never know whether I'll get 5 minutes, 10, 15 or a full half hour before reboot.

I did experience random reboots at times with the stock Gingerbread ROM. I do recall the tablet randomly rebooting before I ever started doing much but playing a game or two on it. I honestly just ignored it at first. I just assumed the game I was playing wasn't agreeing with the tablet etc. Now that I've had more use on the tablet I'm seeing the reboots are really quite common. They've been much worse since I upgraded to ICS.

It's aggravating as h_ll because I can't figure out what is causing it. At first I thought it was some rouge app I installed...but I've noticed it randomly rebooting after a fresh flash on a brand new stock ROM with NO apps installed other than the ones with the ROM.

It seems to be purely random. Sometimes it will reboot when I'm sitting at the "Home" screen doing nothing. Sometimes it will reboot when I'm doing something like accessing a settings menu, opening an app, browsing etc.

Sometimes it does a sort of half kernel reboot, and sometimes it does the full reboot.

As I type I seem to be stuck in a boot loop. It will sit on the ICS droid logo with the spinning half circles and sit there for a looong time. Then it will typically go black, show the polaroid logo and start the whole loop over again. Pressing the reset button does nothing but restart the boot loop again. As does holding the power button down. It seems the only way I'm going to recover easily now is to reflash because it's stuck in a boot loop for no readily apparent reason.

It did this yesterday as well. In fact yesterday it really wacked out and ended up rebooting itself a few times in a row. When it was done I got some message that my data couldn't be accessed anymore and the tablet would need to be reset. It then wiped itself clean. I'm sure it just corrupted itself by doing something like rebooting itself before it was fully booted off another reboot. (Luckily I don't keep anything on here I give two craps about losing, because it is terribly unstable at this point.)

It seems the more I use it the worse things get. I will do a format and fresh flash of a ROM via livesuit and it will usually spontaneously reboot right from a fresh ROM flash with no apps installed. I've had it reboot in a matter of a minute or two after a ROM flash or sometimes it takes awhile. It's never a matter of if...but when.

I'm 100% confident this is not caused by any app I'm installing since it does it with a stock rom flashed and NO apps installed. Of course installing apps may end up making things worse but I know it's not the initial cause.

Could this be heat related? My tablet gets warm to the touch but it doesn't seem like it would be hot enough to initiate any kind of thermal shutdown.

I'm very green to the world of Android. Can anyone point me to some sort of log I can access and post to help trouble shoot things?

Since this does this on fresh ROM flashes I'm guessing it's something hardware related. Of course I'm out of the 30 day B.L. return window by about 7 days . Since I've flashed a non stock ROM at one point I'm sure I'm out of warranty as well (although I'm not sure they would know). I'm really trying to avoid the urge to buy another one and swap this one with the one in the box and return it.

[SingleDad]

I realize my initial post is all over the place so I'll tell you what I DO know. (Which isn't much):

1. The tablet spontaneously and randomly reboots with:
a. The stock Gingerbread Rom installed from the factory
b. The stock Gingerbread ROM available for download from S.T./Polaroid
c. Shawn's ICS Rom for the 701C
d. The "official" Polaroid/S.T. Android 4.0/ICS upgrade ROM for the 701C

2. I can't say for sure whether it reboots more on one ROM/OS or another. My impression is that it is doing it more with ICS but it could be because I've had ICS installed the longest?

3. It will reboot while sitting idle or while in use

4. Sometimes it does a kernel reboot and is good for awhile

5. Sometimes it will do a kernel reboot/half reboot and then go right into another one

6. Sometimes it will go black and do a full reboot and work fine for awhile

7. Sometimes it will go black, full reboot and do another one shortly thereafter.

8. Sometimes I want to scream profanities and throw it against a wall

9. It all seems to be getting worse.

10. I've played around with a Micro SD card and link2SD which I love, but I doubt it has anything to do with it. It does reboot on a fresh ROM flash with no SD card installed.

Anyone care to help me begin to troubleshoot this? Since I'm now stuck in a bootloop I'm sure I'll have to try reflashing. I guess I'll go back to stock gingerbread from S.T. and go from there. I'm willing to post any kind of logs etc. if someone is nice enough to take the time to explain what I need to do.

[petrus]

I realize my initial post is all over the place so I'll tell you what I DO know. (Which isn't much):

1. The tablet spontaneously and randomly reboots with:
a. The stock Gingerbread Rom installed from the factory
b. The stock Gingerbread ROM available for download from S.T./Polaroid
c. Shawn's ICS Rom for the 701C
d. The "official" Polaroid/S.T. Android 4.0/ICS upgrade ROM for the 701C

2. I can't say for sure whether it reboots more on one ROM/OS or another. My impression is that it is doing it more with ICS but it could be because I've had ICS installed the longest?

3. It will reboot while sitting idle or while in use

4. Sometimes it does a kernel reboot and is good for awhile

5. Sometimes it will do a kernel reboot/half reboot and then go right into another one

6. Sometimes it will go black and do a full reboot and work fine for awhile

7. Sometimes it will go black, full reboot and do another one shortly thereafter.

8. Sometimes I want to scream profanities and throw it against a wall

9. It all seems to be getting worse.

10. I've played around with a Micro SD card and link2SD which I love, but I doubt it has anything to do with it. It does reboot on a fresh ROM flash with no SD card installed.

Anyone care to help me begin to troubleshoot this? Since I'm now stuck in a bootloop I'm sure I'll have to try reflashing. I guess I'll go back to stock gingerbread from S.T. and go from there. I'm willing to post any kind of logs etc. if someone is nice enough to take the time to explain what I need to do.

Sorry, I don't have this tablet model, but a 10G2, so I won't be able to give specific help, but if your tablet has the same factory quality as arnova ones, here is my personal experience :

* They are cheap, but quality control is really crap. I had to have my 10G2 replaced 3 times before I have a non-broken hardware. For 2 of them, first flash bricked it, and even a flash of original firmware didn't work. I had it replaced without a problem (only drawback : waiting 3 weeks before getting a new one)

* 1 of them flashed without a problem but 2nd battery (past 30%) went down too fast, causing random shutdown. I got it replaced too.

* the 4th one seems all good (yeah!!!), flashed 3 times now, and all good

So my advice : flash original rom, then try to have it replaced if you can.

Don't throw it against the wall. I also was tempted doing it, but it can be considered a "bad behaviour" concerning warranty

[SingleDad]

Sorry, I don't have this tablet model, but a 10G2, so I won't be able to give specific help, but if your tablet has the same factory quality as arnova ones, here is my personal experience :

* They are cheap, but quality control is really crap. I had to have my 10G2 replaced 3 times before I have a non-broken hardware. For 2 of them, first flash bricked it, and even a flash of original firmware didn't work. I had it replaced without a problem (only drawback : waiting 3 weeks before getting a new one)

* 1 of them flashed without a problem but 2nd battery (past 30%) went down too fast, causing random shutdown. I got it replaced too.

* the 4th one seems all good (yeah!!!), flashed 3 times now, and all good

So my advice : flash original rom, then try to have it replaced if you can.

Don't throw it against the wall. I also was tempted doing it, but it can be considered a "bad behaviour" concerning warranty

I hear ya. I'm pretty confident the quality control on these are shotty (at least the first runs) as well. I've heard some people return multiple versions of the same model number before they get one that miraculously plays Netflix without issues.

Mine had a case screw fall out on me. I definitely didn't have it that long or tote it around long enough that it should have loosened on its own.

The latest spontaneous reboot I had on ICS left me in a boot loop. Pressing the pinhole reset button just restarted the bootloop. Likewise with holding down the power button. To recover I just formatted and reflashed the stock Gingerbread ROM via livesuit.

I've decided to start over with Gingerbread from Polaroid/S.T. and start from scratch. I've literally done nothing but fire it up and put in my password for my router. It's been running for 20 minutes or so playing youtube videos without issue. However, it's fooled me in the past. I guess I have to just wait it out and see again if it reboots with this stock rom and go from there .

[SingleDad]

It Does Run Cooler on Gingerbread

Just thinking out loud here, but I will say my tablet seems to run noticeably cooler with Gingerbread (or at least it takes longer to heat up).

I have a Youtube video looped right now and I'm simultaneously streaming radio from the TuneinRadio app..I've been doing that for about 15 minutes now and my tablet seems much cooler than it was running ICS and pretty much doing nothing.

It does get warm in the upper left hand corner on the back, but i really think it ran nearly twice as hot on ICS. The whole let hand back side of the tablet gets pretty toasty running ICS.

[matt]

reboots

The only reboots I've had were the result of pressing the wifi widget too soon after booting.

You might try blowing it out with an air duster but since I don't see any air vents you'd have to open it.
It does seem heat related.

[Lexridge]

It sounds like bad memory to me. Have you tried removing your SDCard completely and see if it exhibits the same behaviour?

My Milestone X (aka Droid X) phone recently had a bad music file or a bad sector on the SDCard, and it would do something strange while scanning the SDCard in the background, overheat, and crash. Same thing over and over again. Then I started suspecting the SDCard, so I removed and reformatted the SDCard. Then, everything was fine again.

Just a thought.

[SingleDad]

Just an Update: Replaced the tablet

I just wanted to update the thread. I battled weird random reboots for quite a while. After dedicating many hours to trying to isolate a cause I was left with the only logical and likely problem being some sort of hardware issue.

I flashed brand new manufacturer firmware and I'd still get reboots on a stock rom with NO additional apps installed. I ran without the external SD, I ran disconnected from wifi to try to rule out wifi being the cause. I even went as far as flashing stock roms and then debloating them to see if I had some weird conflict with preinstalled bloatware.

Nothing seemed to cure the reboots. No one else seemed to experience them. The one person I found in a forum post that did ended up exchanging their tablet for a new one which solved the issue. I also had a loose case screw that fell out of my problematic tablet. Given all of that I decided to stop wasting my time and face the fact that I probably got a dud. I went and bought another one.

So far this 701C has been running Gingerbread and now ICS without issue. It's a little too early to say it's trouble free, but it has performed flawlessly for about a day and a half. I'm returning the bad one for a refund. I'll update the thread later on to confirm whether or not I'm still reboot free. ::fingers crossed::

[bin]

Hello SingleDad,

Happy to heard it smell good way...
(Edit: Oops, i just understand you buy another...sorry)

An other way, but hardware, to find the origine of this kind of crazy probleme is to get the kernel log throught serial port. Yes for that you need to open your tablet, solde some wires and found a common 3,3V to RS232 adapter but with this workaround you can learn a lot about your MID, and for A10 you can increase de kernel log level with "SysRq" and get more information to investigate on probleme.

- Look at for a Stty0 (or Sttyx) into /dev directory on your MID, if exists it smell good...

- Here is the help for SysRq tell by kernel bootlog, SysRq listen on UART0 :

[   48.720000] SysRq : HELP : loglevel(0-9) reBoot Crash terminate-all-tasks(E) memory-full-oom-kill(F) kill-all-tasks(I) thaw-filesystems(J) saK show-memory-usage(M) nice-all-RT-tasks(N) powerOff show-registers(P) show-all-timers(Q) unRaw Sync show-task-states(T) Unmount show-blocked-tasks(W)

- Here is a F20 (near A10 familly) bootlog sample :

http://www.sysfwlab.com/?p=144

Hope you dont need to do that but if somebody is completly lost, is a king of "Last chance" way...

Bin

[SingleDad]

Final Update: W'e're good!

Just wanted to take a minute to update this thread for any other unlucky Polaroid tablet owners who have suffered unexplained reboots.

My new tablet has been reboot free for nearly a week now! I've been using it for 6 days now and haven't had a single reboot. Definitely had to be some sort of hardware issue with the first 701C I purchased. What was specifically causing it to reboot I guess I'll never know.

Here's my advice to anyone who has a 701C that is experiencing random reboots. Back up your data and important apps and then do a factory reset. If it still reboots on you it's obviously not any sort of app you installed.

If you want to be even more sure it's hardware related try formatting and flashing a different ROM via Livesuit. My tablet eventually rebooted with Shawn's roms, the official Gingerbread firmware and ICS firmware from S.T. with nothing installed. I was done wasting my time trouble shooting it because it was nothing I could fix without opening the case or sending it in to S.T.

I was just out of the 30 day return window at B.L. so I had to initiate a redneck warranty claim. (I bought a new one and then put the defective one in the new box and returned it.) Not the way I like to do things, but I'm convinced it was defective from day one. If I had time to reflash roms etc before the 30 day return window was up I would have exchanged the original tablet anyway. No harm no foul.

[matt]

yessss

Great! Does Netflix work now? Been sitting on fence to try it. Watching Anime on crunchyroll -works better on tab than tv.
Course with subtitles don't mind sync issues much. Don't mind croppy whisper loud audio either.

Lateral,
Matt

[SingleDad]

Great! Does Netflix work now? Been sitting on fence to try it. Watching Anime on crunchyroll -works better on tab than tv.
Course with subtitles don't mind sync issues much. Don't mind croppy whisper loud audio either.

Lateral,
Matt

It works..it just doesn't work any better. I still have the issue with most of the videos suddenly running choppy like someone is rapidly pausing and unpausing. The audio pops in and out to. It still freezes at times too. It's always at the same point in the same videos however..so I'm more and more inclined to say it's Netflix's issue and not so much the tablet.