Possibly bricked TomTom XL 330

I have a friends XL 330 which he tried to update recently.
It now gets stuck at the TomTom logo when it powers up.
From holding down the power button for 20 seconds, I get the diagnostics screen which shows it has bootloader S5.5128

If I power it up while the USB is connected, it shows up as a drive letter and appears to have a full set of 8.410.1218 SE Navcore files. I can read and write to the flash okay.
The unit doesn't get far enough through the boot sequence to ever write a ttgo.bif file, so I can't post the contents here. And yes, he didn't take a backup before he started.

Anyone got any ideas what may be wrong? Next possible steps to take?

I thought of just erasing the flash and dumping the contents of my One XL onto it as it couldn't be any worse than what's already there.

Cheers,
Sean.

The on/off button is also the reset button. Did you notice the unit reset, when you held the button down? It takes 25-30 seconds. Download the TOMTOM CLEAR FLASH TOOL from our TomTom tutorial section & run it 3 times.

Thanks for the quick reply.
I had already found the reset mechanism. By holding it a few seconds too long, I found the diagnostics screen I mentioned in my first post.

Tried the clear flash tool 3 times. Each time the unit rebooted itself but again froxe on the TomTom logo.
Only difference I can see is that I now have an 18kb file called ttn in the root of the unit.
I take it this clears some sort of hidden flash area, not the actual 1GB flash drive in the unit.

Any more ideas will be gratefully received.

Cheers,
Sean.

Just ran clear flash another few times and on the last try it went past the hands logo on the reboot and ended up with a white screen with just a thin blue strip at the bottom. Left it like that for about 5 minutes and then rebooted back to the frozen tomtom logo. :(

Does the clear flash tool require any specific other files to be on the device?
Should clear flash come up with any messages on the device to show that it has run?

I'll try running it a few more times just in case.

Cheers,
Sean.

That white screen is also called "the white screen of death".
But I think you have just done something that causes the freezing.
As long as you can access the TT as a drive letter in the Windows Explorer you should be fine.
If you can't connect to the PC try this :
With the TT off connect to the PC, do a reset on the TT and switch it on - now it should connect to the PC.
Run the TT clear flash 3 times.
Do a clean install of the Navcore on an empty device without map, voices or so and try to boot it.
Report back.

The unit works as a mass storage drive every time, so no issues there.

Ran clear flash 3 times. White screen of death every time.
Deleted everything from the flash and installed 8.410.1218_32MB_devices.
Rebooted and hangs at the tomtom logo.

Did some more digging and found that the unit wasn't even getting far enough to create the Text folder during boot.
That's pretty early on, so maybe it has suffered a HW failure and is hanging up.
I'm just in the process of unpacking the ttsystem file to see what is done before \Text is normally created.

As the mass storage works, I guess it can only be something like the GPS chip initialisation. This model doesn't have FM or bluetooth AFAIK.

Thanks for the suggestions and keep them coming if you have any more.

Cheers,
Sean.

sliderman wrote:The unit works as a mass storage drive every time, so no issues there.

Ran clear flash 3 times. White screen of death every time.
Deleted everything from the flash and installed 8.410.1218_32MB_devices.
Rebooted and hangs at the tomtom logo.

Did some more digging and found that the unit wasn't even getting far enough to create the Text folder during boot.
That's pretty early on, so maybe it has suffered a HW failure and is hanging up.
I'm just in the process of unpacking the ttsystem file to see what is done before \Text is normally created.

As the mass storage works, I guess it can only be something like the GPS chip initialisation. This model doesn't have FM or bluetooth AFAIK.

Thanks for the suggestions and keep them coming if you have any more.

Cheers,
Sean.

Please try to install 9.205 Autoinstaller from our site,

Tried 9.205, same result unfortunately.

Just to clarify where it is getting hung up;
If I hold the power button so it goes through the reset, this is what happens.
The TomTom logo with the hands appears and the sound of the TomTom drums.
The stylised picture of the TomTom appears and the progress bar goes across the bottom.
The splashw.bmp appears.
The backlight comes on. (or maybe it is the brightness increasing)
The unit then hangs.

As an aside, clear flash does not give the white screen of death when 9.205 is installed, but it does whenever the original 7.522 is.

Cheers,
Sean.

sliderman wrote:Tried 9.205, same result unfortunately.
Just to clarify where it is getting hung up;
If I hold the power button so it goes through the reset, this is what happens.

Cheers,
Sean.

Now what happens if you use the on button just to start the unit?

tendriver wrote:Now what happens if you use the on button just to start the unit?

Same, just without the drum sound.

Thanks for all the ideas guys, but it turned out that the upgrade was a red herring.

By unpacking the ttsystem file and changing the boot sequence, I was able to prove that the GL Hammerhead chip had failed.
Trying to get a broken screen unit cheap off ebay now, so I can make 1 good from 2 bad.

Cheers,
Sean.

Thanx for the update.

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