Well nightmare, mildly irritating and I have no clue what to do anymore.

My N900 suddenly started to reboot constantly. If I would turn it on when I powered it up it would get to the first Nokia screen, go out again, start up instantly etc etc etc. Only way to make it stop was by pulling the battery out. Same would happen when I'd put it on the charger, it would instantly start up and keep rebooting all the time.

I figered this would be a good time to learn how to reflash it. Found the wiki, followed the instructions but I had one problem, the first flash would go fine but if I tried to do the vanilla flash it wouldn't show me any activity, just instantly a new prompt.

Turning it on I thought I was Mr FixIt as it turned on fine, managed to sync and get all my contacts back in but when I tried to go to applications I noticed I couldn't download the list, let alone an application. Also the browser doesn't work, I just get a white screen. Funny thing is that in the little screens when you switch from one app to another I do see the actual website.

Now I figured I had some sort of in between OS and needed to do it again. So I hooked up with OVI and let him reflash it since I thought he'd pick the right version for sure (think I have it but better safe then sorry) and he did a flash and said it was ok but got stuck at the last 2 options (after the flash, I think it's set back option if you have a backup and finish but then in Dutch )

So summing up the only option I still see open is sending it back and let Nokia deal with it but if there's any other thing I can try before losing it for months I'd be much obliged if you'd let me know!

I am not sure what you mean by "suddenly started.." Have you had it for a long time without problems?

Othervise there is one test you can do. Is it stable when charging from PC via USB?

Hi bsving,

With "suddenly started" I mean that it didn't do it and hasn't done it for as long as I've had it and then from one moment to the other displayed this behaviour.

I couldn't put the USB cable in without starting the whole rebooting hell when I hadn't tried to flash it. Now I can just normally turn it on and off as I please but seem to have half an OS on the phone.

Thanks for your reply!

The reason for asking was that constant rebooting was a problem earlier. The reason was a spread in HW specs that was not accounted for by the power manager. With the charger, this would still happen, but when connected to a PC through USB, parts of the power management was shut off, and the device was stable as a rock. This was fixed in pr1.1.

It seems your problem is something else. I would try reflashing again a couple of times, and do it exactly as described here http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_tablet_firmware (not through OVI), both firmware and the other thingy, emmc. Preferably also do it with Linux, as Win7 is hopeless regarding USB (sometimes it work, sometimes it don't) And don't bother to backup anything, do that manually, could be a part of your problem. Especially read this part:

I would try that first.

Bah, I managed to flash the fiasco one but it won't do an EMMC flash. And I think I need to do the EMMC though as it's acting really strange.

I can boot it normally now but it won't show websites (even though it does show it in the thumbnail screen) and I can't enter the appstore and I get too low memory error for any preinstalled app (like chess and mahjong) I try to open. Not good!!

I've been using the virtual xp pc in Win 7 and that works like a charm but only for the fiasco.

When I try to do the EMMC afterwards (and I didn't put the -R when doing the fiasco) the cmd screen says it's preparing the N900 for flash and then the N900 goes from flash mode to the boot screen with the balls flashing up from left to right and then it freezes. Everytime at the 2nd ball from the left (useless info probably but seeing as there's no such thing as coincidence I'd thought I'd mention it)

So hopefully one of you will have a brilliant solution and otherwise it's time to send my N900 back. I've been using my E90 for a bit but my nostalgic mood is starting to fade.

Thanks for all the help up till now though!

I have never had any problem with all these stuff... I got mine like nearly 1year already. And yet to have those issues. I don't see why people got so much problems with the N900 hmm...

I just came from my car and had a couple of calls on the way. Put my N900 on the kitchen table and after 10 minutes I wanted to check my phone book. My N900 was shut down. Trying to start it didnt help.
So I took of the accu and put it back. Switched it on without luck.
The N900 restarts all time until its out of energy.

Its about 1 year old phone.

Well,

My 2 cents from this...

I was really set on doing the update from 1.2 to 1.3 OTA but even after I managed sorting out the oodles of packages I had installed and removing them I managed to b0rk it anyway.

Because when I was finally done with the update I started adding apps again. And also added modified hildon desktop. After that the phone would just do the well known reboot loop.

So either the packages were still a mess after the update or I just didn't read the warnings thoroughly. But I seem to recall only seeing a warning for 1.2 for modified-hildon-desktop.

Well, as most I ended up flashing the phone (not eMMC).

I was hoping to be able to start a failsafe session, but after looking in inittab and seeing the default runlevel being 2 that would have been a bit hard

Whats the FIASCO image ?

is it for Finland/Europe
a) Latest Maemo 5 Global release for Nokia N900
RX-51_2009SE_20.2010.36-2_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin

btw I can now switch on my N900 as I have connected it to the USB Cable.
Now it says:

All telephony functions, including emergency calls, are
disabled due to a communication error. To recover, you
might have to reboot the device.