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Help dead gtab - hardware or software?

oregonian

Lurker
I got the tab from woot, left it charging all night without messing with it. On the first power up, I get the birds, then the gtablet splash screen and then it goes black, and that is where it sits. It will sit black for 10 minutes or more.

It looks like it is off, but if I briefly hold the power button I see the faintest of flashes on the screen.

I can then press the power button, and start the dance again.

<<I am confused, because I don't see anybody else reporting this exact set of circumstances, straight out of the box. Unless I am mistaken and this is what is meant by the 'boot loop' ?>>

After ~12 times of repeating this, I am rewarded with the TapnTap screen, and the gtab boots. It runs! I play with it for hours, enter my kids names in the contacts, check webmail, surf, and turn it off.

I am wondering, is this part of the 'lousy' OS/SW problem, or does this unit have defective HW? I am not willing to start messing with custom ROMs yet. I want to see what the stock OS/SW load is like.


The next time I get try to boot it, I have to go through the same dance, after about 20 repetitions, I finally get a TapnTap screen. I connect it to my laptop and put several movies and some music on to the tab, play some songs, let the kids watch a movie.

For the next day or so, it comes on without hassle each time I press the power on. So far so good.

Charged it all night, and now, after perhaps 50 tries to get it to boot, no luck at all. I always seem to arrive at the blackscreen now.

I can boot into APX mode using the volume (-) and power button, and I think the next step is to try a restore but my dilemma is that I do not know if I am on 1.1 or 1.2, I didn't check while the thing was still booting.

Suggestions would be welcome.
 
I got the tab from woot, left it charging all night without messing with it. On the first power up, I get the birds, then the gtablet splash screen and then it goes black, and that is where it sits. It will sit black for 10 minutes or more.

It looks like it is off, but if I briefly hold the power button I see the faintest of flashes on the screen.

I can then press the power button, and start the dance again.

<<I am confused, because I don't see anybody else reporting this exact set of circumstances, straight out of the box. Unless I am mistaken and this is what is meant by the 'boot loop' ?>>

After ~12 times of repeating this, I am rewarded with the TapnTap screen, and the gtab boots. It runs! I play with it for hours, enter my kids names in the contacts, check webmail, surf, and turn it off.

I am wondering, is this part of the 'lousy' OS/SW problem, or does this unit have defective HW? I am not willing to start messing with custom ROMs yet. I want to see what the stock OS/SW load is like.


The next time I get try to boot it, I have to go through the same dance, after about 20 repetitions, I finally get a TapnTap screen. I connect it to my laptop and put several movies and some music on to the tab, play some songs, let the kids watch a movie.

For the next day or so, it comes on without hassle each time I press the power on. So far so good.

Charged it all night, and now, after perhaps 50 tries to get it to boot, no luck at all. I always seem to arrive at the blackscreen now.

I can boot into APX mode using the volume (-) and power button, and I think the next step is to try a restore but my dilemma is that I do not know if I am on 1.1 or 1.2, I didn't check while the thing was still booting.

Suggestions would be welcome.

I don't think its a hardware issue. I've seen people get stuck on bootloop or apx mode and they nvflash the gtablet to fix the issue. You can nvflash the device to either a stock 1.1 bootloader which is any 3588 stock rom and below or a 1.2 bootloader which is any 3991 stock rom or above. Then you can go from there. Follow the instructions under this link.

NVFlash - Viewsonic GTablet For Dummies
 
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