Holding "Menu" button, plug in USB, tablet doesn't power up. So I can't flash ROM

[problemaddict]

Hello all,

Great site you have here! I picked up a 701c from Woot last week. Seems to be a neat little tablet. I've been fooling around and have thanks to all the info here I've gotten full root and Google Play working. Now I've been trying to flash a new ROM and am having a problem.

I go through the southerntelecom firmware instal guide, get Livesuite working, but when I hold down the MENU button or any of the other buttons and then plug in my USB cord, the tablet will not power itself on. If the tablet is off and i plug in the USB without holding any of the hard buttons, it powers itself on normally. I can't get into recovery/upgrade mode.

Am I missing something? Anyone else have this problem?

I've been using as many search terms as I can think of to search for this problem and haven't found any similar posts...

Thanks for any insight!

Mike

[elektrik]

Hello all,

Great site you have here! I picked up a 701c from Woot last week. Seems to be a neat little tablet. I've been fooling around and have thanks to all the info here I've gotten full root and Google Play working. Now I've been trying to flash a new ROM and am having a problem.

I go through the southerntelecom firmware instal guide, get Livesuite working, but when I hold down the MENU button or any of the other buttons and then plug in my USB cord, the tablet will not power itself on. If the tablet is off and i plug in the USB without holding any of the hard buttons, it powers itself on normally. I can't get into recovery/upgrade mode.

Am I missing something? Anyone else have this problem?

I've been using as many search terms as I can think of to search for this problem and haven't found any similar posts...

Thanks for any insight!
9
Mike

ok, ai'm going to make an educated guess, since I have one of these and have done something similar myself. there have been situations where I get the timing wrong when hold the menu button and then plugging the cable in too late. live suite doesn't recognize the tablet andbif i try to hit the power button, the tablet won't turn on. if I plug the cable in though, it boots. what I do in that case is hold down the power for 10 seconds, let the system boot up normally after hitting power again, powering off and then trying the flash process again. make sue you're holding the menu button down securely, cause sometimes it feels like the button is depressed when it actually isn't (a common problem with this and at least one othe Polaroid model). let me know if that helps. as a p.s., are you sure the computer properly recognizes the tablet? you can check by looking for any notifications you get in the windows taskbar area.
P.s.s. please excuse my typo erros-I'm typing this from my phone ;-)

[problemaddict]

ok, ai'm going to make an educated guess, since I have one of these and have done something similar myself. there have been situations where I get the timing wrong when hold the menu button and then plugging the cable in too late. live suite doesn't recognize the tablet andbif i try to hit the power button, the tablet won't turn on. if I plug the cable in though, it boots. what I do in that case is hold down the power for 10 seconds, let the system boot up normally after hitting power again, powering off and then trying the flash process again. make sue you're holding the menu button down securely, cause sometimes it feels like the button is depressed when it actually isn't (a common problem with this and at least one othe Polaroid model). let me know if that helps. as a p.s., are you sure the computer properly recognizes the tablet? you can check by looking for any notifications you get in the windows taskbar area.
P.s.s. please excuse my typo erros-I'm typing this from my phone ;-)

Thanks for the suggestions elektrik. I'm still getting nowhere. My desktop recognizes the tablet. Using the tablet normally, the only notification i get is the "This device could perform faster if it were plugged into USB 2.0 port". I've tried two different USB cables and two different (front and back) USB ports.

With the tablet powered off, I hold the MENU button (firmly) and immediately plug in the USB cord. I hear the "duh-dum" windows noise indicating that something has been plugged in. The tablet makes no sounds. No matter how long I hold the MENU button, for a short time or for up to a minute, the tablet never powers on. When I let go of the menu button it still doesn't power up. Also, when I plug in the USB and hear the "duh-dum" the Livesuit window disappears. Then the only way I can close Livesuit.exe is with task manager. I've tried uninstalling and re-installing Livesuit v1.07...

I dunno, maybe its my desktop. I think I'll try this on my laptop and see what happens...

Thanks again.

[dolorespark]

With the tablet powered off, I hold the MENU button (firmly) and immediately plug in the USB cord. I hear the "duh-dum" windows noise indicating that something has been plugged in. The tablet makes no sounds. No matter how long I hold the MENU button, for a short time or for up to a minute, the tablet never powers on. When I let go of the menu button it still doesn't power up. Also, when I plug in the USB and hear the "duh-dum" the Livesuit window disappears. Then the only way I can close Livesuit.exe is with task manager. I've tried uninstalling and re-installing Livesuit v1.07...

You don't have any problems here - except that you're killing LiveSuite while it's in the middle of flashing your tablet.

The tablet isn't supposed to power up. Pressing a hardware button while applying power through the USB port activates a separate module on the system that handles flashing. Indeed, this module won't be activated if the device is powered up normally. The "duh-dum" tells you it's working.

And, yes, the main LiveSuite window does disappear but that's not a malfunction, just bad UI design. If you look at the system tray at the far right of the Start bar, you'll see it's tiny icon there. Click on it to restore the main window.

One other thing, since you haven't seen it yet: don't be concerned if the update's progress bar seems to stall out at a couple of points. The first time it's formatting your NAND, and the second time it's copying files to your /system partiton (about 200mb).

You're almost done - hang in there!

[problemaddict]

OH! okay. I thought it was supposed to power up into some FEL(?) mode i've read about or some update mode like on my phone...

Also, the guide says i should hear a couple beeps. Then a Livesuit window should pop up "Tips: Does Mandatory Format?" click YES; then "Tips: Are you sure...?" etc. Those windows don't pop up. Nothing at all happens to tell me the update is happening. Steps 21, 22, and 23 of this guide: http://southerntelecom.com/polaroids...mid701c40.html
aren't happening at all. But you think the update is going on? You're right, the Livesuit icon does stay in my tray, but clicking on it doesn't bring the progress window back up...

thanks for the reply!@! I'll try again and let it sit...

[elektrik]

OH! okay. I thought it was supposed to power up into some FEL(?) mode i've read about or some update mode like on my phone...

Also, the guide says i should hear a couple beeps. Then a Livesuit window should pop up "Tips: Does Mandatory Format?" click YES; then "Tips: Are you sure...?" etc. Those windows don't pop up. Nothing at all happens to tell me the update is happening. Steps 21, 22, and 23 of this guide: http://southerntelecom.com/polaroids...mid701c40.html
aren't happening at all. But you think the update is going on? You're right, the Livesuit icon does stay in my tray, but clicking on it doesn't bring the progress window back up...

thanks for the reply!@! I'll try again and let it sit...

Hey Problemaddict. Contrary to the advice previously mentioned, there *is* something wrong. The clue was the text that said 'this device could perform faster'. Someone who is familiar with supporting a Windows computer would know that, but not the average user. An uninstall/reinstall of the drivers would be in order. Could you provide your system specs and the driver source (Did you run the live Suite driver or choose a different one)?

[problemaddict]

Hey Problemaddict. Contrary to the advice previously mentioned, there *is* something wrong. The clue was the text that said 'this device could perform faster'. Someone who is familiar with supporting a Windows computer would know that, but not the average user. An uninstall/reinstall of the drivers would be in order. Could you provide your system specs and the driver source (Did you run the live Suite driver or choose a different one)?

Thanks elek.
Yeah, something is wrong w/ that puter. The process worked flawlessly the first time through using my laptop. I'm typing this on my elektrik ROM-enabled Polaroid right now!
The computer I was having problems with is an old amd dual core eMachines desktop. I can get you the complete specs if you want them for reference or something. And I used the LiveSuite driver.

Anyway, thanks again to all who responded for your help!!!

[elektrik]

Thanks elek.
Yeah, something is wrong w/ that puter. The process worked flawlessly the first time through using my laptop. I'm typing this on my elektrik ROM-enabled Polaroid right now!
The computer I was having problems with is an old amd dual core eMachines desktop. I can get you the complete specs if you want them for reference or something. And I used the LiveSuite driver.

Anyway, thanks again to all who responded for your help!!!

glad to help! sorry to hear about that e-machine. I remember how sucky those things are!

[jsta6]

can't get my 701c to upgrade?

Loooooong time lurker here.

What a great forum!

I was going crazy pulling my hair out until I came across the post about the STOOOOPID menu key not being held down correctly sometimes...despair...

My 701c was untouched / all stock. Been working for months. Then, it froze. I powered it off, and it has never come back on since...

I don't believe it was from some app I installed, but I can't say 100% for sure...as I just don't remember...

I am trying to put the stock Android 2.3 from Southern Telecom back on. I have already tried the ST 4.0 and elektriks v2 and v3. No dice.

Anyway, I get all the way through step 22, and the yellow bar goes to 1% and just stops...??? Been stuck there for hours (3 1/2).

The time left says "2 minute 59 second".

I have tried this several times already.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

TIA!

[jtintle]

Re: Holding "Menu" button, plug in USB, tablet doesn't power up. So I can't flash ROM

Loooooong time lurker here.

What a great forum!

I was going crazy pulling my hair out until I came across the post about the STOOOOPID menu key not being held down correctly sometimes...despair...

My 701c was untouched / all stock. Been working for months. Then, it froze. I powered it off, and it has never come back on since...

I don't believe it was from some app I installed, but I can't say 100% for sure...as I just don't remember...

I am trying to put the stock Android 2.3 from Southern Telecom back on. I have already tried the ST 4.0 and elektriks v2 and v3. No dice.

Anyway, I get all the way through step 22, and the yellow bar goes to 1% and just stops...??? Been stuck there for hours (3 1/2).

The time left says "2 minute 59 second".

I have tried this several times already.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

TIA!

did you hear a beep when connecting the USB? Also do you have an sd card in the tablet? Try it without the sd card

Sent from my 701c using Tapatalk 2

[jsta6]

did you hear a beep when connecting the USB? Also do you have an sd card in the tablet? Try it without the sd card

Sent from my 701c using Tapatalk 2

Hello and thank you for your reply.

Yes, I heard the first and second beeps. I got all the prompts that I am supposed to get.

Memory card was removed.

[jsta6]

anyone?

[dolorespark]

Yes, I heard the first and second beeps. I got all the prompts that I am supposed to get.

Have you tried another PC, as suggested above? When flashing using LiveSuite, all power comes from the USB connection. If the port can't deliver sufficient current - or if your cable is overly long, or old and tired - you may encounter problems. I've also read that people seem to have the fewest problems when running LiveSuite under WinXP.

[jsta6]

Have you tried another PC, as suggested above? When flashing using LiveSuite, all power comes from the USB connection. If the port can't deliver sufficient current - or if your cable is overly long, or old and tired - you may encounter problems. I've also read that people seem to have the fewest problems when running LiveSuite under WinXP.

Thank you for your reply.

All my pc's are win7/8, but I will see if I can dig an XP box out of the mothballs...

I have tried different cables...

[jtintle]

Thank you for your reply.

All my pc's are win7/8, but I will see if I can dig an XP box out of the mothballs...

I have tried different cables...

also try different usb ports, if you originally tried usb ports in the front try them in the back, make sure you aren't using a USB Hub...