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HELP GXR won't fire up

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Neil Lightfoot

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First, a confession: this cannot be claimed to be the smartest act, and don't try it at home.

My wife brought from London a new A12 28mm for my GXR over the weekend. In my enthusiasm I connected the units, was prompted for a firmware update, and selected yes. A second later I remembered that my SD card was still in the camera with a whole bunch of photos that I hadn't downloaded. I therefore hastily disconnected the lens and body.

The good news is that I successfully interrupted the firmware upgrade and the files copied from my SD card. The bad news is that the body is now completely dead, with no sign of life. No response to on/off. Ditto re-installing the body firmware. And no luck with the other lens too. Clearly a camera body issue. I've tried to connect it via USB to my pc and also no life.

This sounds pretty much terminal to me. Anyone out there who may have experienced the same thing?

To make things worse, I'm in South Africa, with no Ricoh camera servicing, so I would need to send the body for repair. Any recommendations on which service centre would be best to deal with. (The UK contact centre recommended I contact Hong Kong. A note to Germany recommended I send it to them).

Appreciated in advance
Neil
 
Neil Lightfoot said:
First, a confession: this cannot be claimed to be the smartest act, and don't try it at home.

My wife brought from London a new A12 28mm for my GXR over the weekend. In my enthusiasm I connected the units, was prompted for a firmware update, and selected yes. A second later I remembered that my SD card was still in the camera with a whole bunch of photos that I hadn't downloaded. I therefore hastily disconnected the lens and body.

The good news is that I successfully interrupted the firmware upgrade and the files copied from my SD card. The bad news is that the body is now completely dead, with no sign of life. No response to on/off. Ditto re-installing the body firmware. And no luck with the other lens too. Clearly a camera body issue. I've tried to connect it via USB to my pc and also no life.

This sounds pretty much terminal to me. Anyone out there who may have experienced the same thing?

To make things worse, I'm in South Africa, with no Ricoh camera servicing, so I would need to send the body for repair. Any recommendations on which service centre would be best to deal with. (The UK contact centre recommended I contact Hong Kong. A note to Germany recommended I send it to them).

Appreciated in advance
Neil
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, interrupting a firmware update in progress generally speaking "bricks" the device, no matter what the device may be. The reason is that you have interrupted a process that over-writes the instructions that operate the devices at the most basic level, leaving the state of the internal instructions incomplete and inconsistent.

The only recourse you have is to send both body and camera module to Ricoh where they can use more elaborate service tools and techniques to re-flash the firmware to both devices.

In my experience, the firmware update would have done nothing to the image files on the memory card. I understand your panic and why you did it ... the pictures are indeed more valuable than the camera! ... but the emergency save you did was most likely unnecessary.

I don't know which of the services would be better.
--
Godfrey
http://godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com
 
That's why it's so important to not interrupt fw updates and do everything possible to make sure they are successful.
 
You should have just let the firmware update run the course since it wouldn't have erased anything on your SD card. Remember the firmware update applies to the camera and/or lens, not the card. The update file sits on the root folder of the SD card, and it will still be there after the update along with your pictures.

Sorry, but you have no choice but to send it back to Ricoh for service.
 
There is a small chance that if you downloaded the files on to a sd card as per the "alternative method" upgrade insert it in camera and follow the Ricoh button combination press per their site instructions that the upgrade "might" work. Certainly once you have confused the firmware in the camera it is very much in the lap of the gods. However I doubt if you can make it any worse and there is no harm trying - you might just strike it lucky.

--
Tom Caldwell
 
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