[leddt]

My device does something similar. When a new update comes out, 95% of the time the update will fail. When that happens, it continues to fail no matter how often I retry.

Through much trial and error, I found a way to make the update work every time. This may look stupid, but I swear it works:

  1. Try the update. It fails.
  2. Turn off the console.
  3. Take the hard drive out.
  4. Turn on the console. It will fail to boot and shutdown.
  5. Put the hard drive back in.
  6. Turn on the console. The update will start again and succeed.

I have no idea why this works, it makes no sense to me. But it's been working this way without fail for a few years.

[gozmike]

Thanks man. I tried this out to no avail. When I realized that I was faced with a hefty RMA bill, I tried both removing the battery and letting its settings RAM clear overnight as well as booting without a hard drive. Both had no effect unfortunately.

In my opinion, it's a poorly designed update mechanism that makes it prone to failure. There should be some redundancy built into the process so that the machine can always force itself back to a "known-good" state and at least access the recovery menu.