Farwell my little friend

lynnmi · Post by **lynnmi** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 12:06 pm

We'll absolutly typical, the night before i fly out to NY for the memorial weekend i charge my 404 and guess what.... Flash / reboot / reformat message comes up .

looks like mine has come down with the expanding battery issue - we'll it lasted 2 years of nearly daily usage.

so i have now upgraded to a 605 wifi (160) - nice exchange rate

i suppose is it worth trying to replace the battery or has the the firmware completely gone? and give this to my youngest to watch his cartoons on.

rgds

mike

ETM · Post by **ETM** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 1:07 pm

lynnmi wrote:i suppose is it worth trying to replace the battery or has the the firmware completely gone? and give this to my youngest to watch his cartoons on.

rgds

mike

It cost me $20, a screwdriver and about ten minutes of my time. Damn straight it's worth it.

matelot · Post by **matelot** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 5:52 pm

what is this "expanding battery issue" ?

ETM · Post by **ETM** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:07 pm

matelot wrote:what is this "expanding battery issue" ?

The 404 battery has been known to expand within its enclosure and crack open the back plate, even explode.

matelot · Post by **matelot** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 7:02 pm

ETM wrote:
matelot wrote:what is this "expanding battery issue" ?
The 404 battery has been known to expand within its enclosure and crack open the back plate, even explode.

thanks
but it doesn't sound like this is what happened to OP from his post

lynnmi · Post by **lynnmi** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:55 am

Ok - i've placed an order for another battery, and hopefully i'll be able to get the 404 up and running again.

the first i noticed of the issue was when i was using it the charge was lasting only about 30 minutes on video, so i drained it down using audio a couple of times to get a decent full charge back into the device using my DVR station. leaving it overnight i picked it up in the morning and it had a reformat message on the device, having a closer look at the 404 i could see that the back had come away in the middle - i'd read about the battery issue on this forum so i unscrewed the back and had a look - the battery was like a balloon!! - not wanted any acid in the 404 I took the battery out, but it looks as if you need the battey in situ to power throu any external power.

once i fit the new battery i'll check to see if i've had a HD failure also - hopefully not.

rgds - mike

Post by **roylovelock** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 2:34 am

your correct, the player(s) all run 100% of the time from the internal battery, attaching a mains adaptor wont work, all the mains will do is energise the charging circuit then charge the cells. the reason you could have format come up could be a couple of things, the battery has discharged completly and therefore lost the internal clock settings, it could also be that the battery has gone out of tolerance (which i suspect in this case) and wont spin the hard drive up so the player thinks it corrupt. the other thing it could be is the hard drive has become detached when the battery swelled. the 604 has the same drive in, mine wasnt ever put on correctly when i opened it up the ribbon was on at a skew. i re attached it and all the problems went away. the 404 is a fantasic little machine, imho better than the replacement 405 (2gb). good luck
keep us updated
roy

ETM · Post by **ETM** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 12:14 pm

Yeah, the 404 is definitely worth saving... if only they could fix it so it doesn't crash when using subtitles, it would be the perfect little gizmo.

lynnmi · Post by **lynnmi** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:16 pm

well just as an update - i bought another battery for ┬ú14 in pp and put it in just a little while ago, it came up with repair and low and behold my archos is back up and running.....

excellent...

mike

lynnmi · Post by **lynnmi** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 12:55 pm

Spoke to soon - seems it's stuck again on the format/repair menu.....

looks like it's not seeing the HD....

Post by **roylovelock** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:44 am

have you checked the ribbon on the hard drive?
also, when you are able to get it running correctly run scan disk with repair bad sectors etc. this way the hard drive will flag any failed sectors and wont use them (all hard drives no matter what age have some bad sectors), you may have found that your operating system is being written to a bad sector and causeing the problems.
roy

lynnmi · Post by **lynnmi** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 10:32 am

OK - story so far..

the 404 died a death the night before i flew out to NY, absolutley typical!

I ended up buying a 605 in the US, with the plan to try and revive the 404 for my son to use, so i ordered another battery and replaced it.
it looked like that was the trick, but alas - it kept failing and locking up so and the next day it died completely.

so i decided to contact Archos service desk and see if i could get it repaired, i sent it of for an estimate, and a letter asking for a consideration in the fixing price since i've bought another machine from them.

But it fell on deaf ears, they would not consider any kind of discount or help with the repair cost which was more than buying a new machine ( ouch!!!! )

i even tried me archos himself but no reply, not surprising i suppose.....

Anyway now awaiting my old broken archos to be returned with oxidation on the hard drive.

Any ideas on harddrive repair?

thanks - Mike

lynnmi · Post by **lynnmi** » Thu May 21, 2009 4:10 pm

update:

see Zif cable post - have ordered a new one and see if that works ..

fingers crossed.

( now where did i put all the pieces of my 404 !! )

Farwell my little friend

Farwell my little friend

Re: Farwell my little friend

404 dead

Re: Farwell my little friend