Hacking Frozen on boot screen

[Upas]

I just got my R4 Ds today, as well as a SanDisk 2 GB MicroSD card.

I've tried both chinese and english firmware, as well as multiple formattings, but the R4 gets stuck on the initial boot screen
(where it says "Loading..."). does this mean my unit is defective?

Thanks.

 

[superrob]

Try to pull out the MicroSD card in and out and maybe blow abit into the R4 and the MicroSD card..
That works for me.

 

[Upas]

Nope, the thing still gets stuck at Loading...
if there isnt any card in, it says "Couldn't find TF/SD card"
But it never says theres an error or anything.
I've tried about 5 times formatting FAT and FAT32 and using both chinese and english firmwares.

 

[superrob]

Hmm sounds like a broken R4....

 

[pristinemog]

Maybe your microSD card is faulty. Do you have any others you can try?

 

[iwakura]

same problem, I tried formatting, cleaning the contacts, cleaning the microSD, tons nof stuff. I ended up returning it to the people I bought it from. Good luck though.

 

[pristinemog]

Same with me. I got a Japanese Kingston 1GB that stuck on the Loading.. screen then never worked again. It'd cause my computer to freeze up and such. I mailed it back and instead got a Taiwanese (>_

 

[Upas]

I'm planning on buying a new, smaller microSD card today. (512 or 1 GB) just for testing purposes though.

I've also contacted the place I've bought it from, and though i hope I won't have to send it back in, I'm prepared to do so.

Also, I've been using an SD Adapter, not the USB reader which came with the R4. But I think that could only help. not hurt. The micro SD card works fine on my computer, but not the R4.

 

[JLsoft]

I started getting random Loading screen freezes now and then about a month ago, ejecting/inserting the cart (sometimes several tries :/) worked.

(I don't take the cart out when I swap MicroSD's, I carefully just eject the MicroSD itself and leave the cart in the system)

Well, today it finally started giving the constant Loading freeze no matter how many times I cycled the cart/etc. I figured it was the same 'death' that Tikker and others I've seen on the r4ds.net forums had, and was bummed. Cleaned the contacts...cleaned the pins in the Slot 1 as much as I dared from the slot opening, etc etc. No help...and it wasn't a problem with the MicroSD since it wouldn't give an SD/TF Error! - Can't Find SD/TF! - etc error when there was no card in.

I tried pressing the cart in while booting, and that worked most of the time...but you can't really use it while holding a cart in halfway though, so that was useless, but it did show the R4 actually worked.



...anyway, I just fixed it in a ghetto fashion. I made a shim out of a cut piece of printer/typing paper (folded, 4 paper-thicknesses worked...didn't want to bend the shielding or crack the cart or anything

), and placed it in between the R4 cart and the Slot 1 housing. The spacer/wedge/shim/whatever you want to call it goes on the label side of the cart...the opposite side to the pin edge, of course, in order to press the R4 towards the Slot's contacts a little bit more. Powered on, and it booted right up just like new, and has consistently over the last hour or so of MicroSD-swapping and testing to make sure it was working okay.


So yeah, if anyone still has this problem and still has their R4, just try this...hope it works for you too.