Scroll Essential II 55109 DEAD

[percivjr]

I've looked through the forum and seen many similar tales of woe and no happy endings but I'll post my story in the hope that somebody can point me in the right direction.

I bought this tablet as a 'refurbished' unit solely to monitor a security camera. I've installed only VLC and made absolutely no other changes apart from configuring WiFi, etc. It's been in a holder on the wall so has not been dropped.

Two weeks after the guarantee expired, so did the tablet. First, VLC (the only running application) died, returning me to the desktop. VLC could be restarted but it would die again after a few seconds.

I powered off , but upon powering up, it was stuck on the 'Android' screen. I repeated this several times. I tried the 'reset' button at the rear but exactly the same.

A few more powerings off, and the screen illuminated a bit but no images or logos. This happened a few times. Now there is absolutely no life in it at all.

I've tried various button combinations for varying periods up to 3 minutes!

The charger is OK. I took the back off the tablet and measured the battery voltage and that seems OK.

So, does anybody have any suggestions, please?

I would be comfortable trying to re-flash it if somebody could point me in the right direction, i.e. tools and images. I'm assuming it could be re-flashed its present state?

Thanks.......

[Trashcooky]

Hi percivjr,

Glad you have already trawled the forum as you will now be aware that Storage options did not keep the same specs for all their tablets even when they shared (apparently) the same model number.

I have been racking my memory and also Googling to try and confirm which CPU's were used on your model number but unfortunately among those still being sold it appears that there may be as many as 3 chip variations.

Originally the Scroll Essential was the poor relation to the Scroll Excel with the Essential having less Ram and only a resistive touch-screen but as time passed this dissapeared and the later models (like yours I believe) had capacitive screens and improved RAM.

As you are currently stuffed by the sounds of it, and as I am not sure precisedly what CPU your model will have I am going to suggest that you take a chance and try flashing firmware that was known to work on the earlier model Excel.

It sounds like you know how to flash new firmware but if not there are plenty of places to get help. I always found this video for using livesuit very informative.

I would suggest you might try completely at your own risk of course this firmware which may be a downgrade if you were running JellyBean as this is only Ice Cream Sandwich but many who have used this firmware have found it to be stable.

You can find other firmware here if you want to jump in at the deep end and experiment with other firmware versions.

I wish you luck and hope you have not suffered a hardware failure and that it is simply the partitions have become corrupted.

[percivjr]

Thanks Trashcooky for taking the time and trouble to reply.

According to the sales blurb, mine is (was!) a capacitive screen and I seem to recall seeing A13 on the CPU chip when I had the back off. But I can check that.

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't possess one of those new-fangled micro USB cables, but eBay and 99p have put that right.

So I'll trawl through those links you sent and post back the results.

Thanks again.


John.

[Trashcooky]

Thanks Trashcooky for taking the time and trouble to reply.

According to the sales blurb, mine is (was!) a capacitive screen and I seem to recall seeing A13 on the CPU chip when I had the back off. But I can check that.

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't possess one of those new-fangled micro USB cables, but eBay and 99p have put that right.

So I'll trawl through those links you sent and post back the results.

Thanks again.


John.

Apparently the main differences between the Cortex A8 (A10) which was used in the original Excel and that of the Cortex A8 (A13) used in your tablet is that the (A13) does not support HDMI output and cannot usually be over-clocked very easily. Apart from that, the Cortex A8 (A13) should be directly addressable via the usb connection which therefore should allow you to flash a different (compatible) firmware using a Windows PC.

You will need Livesuite and I reckon you stand a pretty good chance with the Yarvik Rom

If you are running Windows 8 or 8.1 or even Win 7 you may well get a Windows warning telling you that the necessary Livesuite drivers cannot be installed because they are unsigned (not approved by Micrsoft) in which case you will need to disable Windows unsigned driver warning . It is up to you if you want to leave it disabled or turn back on again as many legitimate drivers exist which are not approved by Microsoft including some new obscure printers.

The other proviso is to make sure you use the correct drivers for your OS i.e. 32 or 64 bit.

Good luck.

[percivjr]

"Good luck"? It's not luck it's skill!

While I was looking for a suitable image I visited the Storage Options website for some information. And to my utter amazement, it's all there:
http://www.storageoptions.com/support/scroll/firmware
both LiveSuit and images for lots of models.

I had a bit of trouble with the USB driver: initially it loaded OK but it seemed that running LiveSuit deleted it somehow. I found the instructions a bit confusing. Anyway, I persevered, trying as many variations of pushing buttons and USB cable connection sequence as I could (OK so maybe it was luck after all) and LiveSuit suddenly acknowledged that the Tablet was plugged in, the download started then completed in less than 4 minutes.

So looks like it's all up and running again - at least for the time being. I'm going to have a lie down now while it fully charges.

I hope the above link is useful to others.

Many thanks for the pointers and encouragement.


John.

[Trashcooky]

Glad you got it sorted OK. So you are back on the original firmware then?

[percivjr]

No, I'm back to the original problem!

Worked for about 20 mins, then spontaneously dropped back to the 'android' screen, where it's firmly stuck.

I'll try another re-flash, but I'm not hopeful......

[Trashcooky]

Oh dear, might be hardware then.

Sent from my C2 using Tapatalk

[percivjr]

Well, I flashed it again.

This time it worked for a week but now back to original fault symptoms.

So that's it, I guess.

[Trashcooky]

Oh dear, all good things come to an end. My Excel is a 2011 model and my power button has gone soft with no spring back but I am treating it very carefully and so far so good. Looks like you may be in the market for a new tablet then?

Sent from my C2 using Tapatalk