Fixing your H10 5/6gb

[shaft0]

Ok, after much searching and little success, I had thought my new *cough got off of ebay knowing the system files were missing cough cough* H10 Iriver was totally buggered. I had searched the forums, opened a help ticket with Iriver, seemingly covering all of my bases, and the thing just wouldn't work.

I'll describe my problem in detail, so that if you're having a similar problem, you'll know exactly what you have to do to fix it.

The device charged, powered on, and connected in UMS mode seemingly fine, except took FOREVER to install drivers, if it did at all. I tried all the fixes in the enumeration post, but none of them worked. I was getting the system files missing when I tried to boot it up normally, so it was in essence, completely screwed. I did, however, have a glimmer of hope, because being the cheapo that I am, didn't want to get turfed on a cheap ebay deal.

If this is happening to you, or if you have exhausted all other options, try the following to get your Iriver to work.

Go to http://www.systemfilesmissing.tk. This site is in Italian, and, not knowing a stitch of Italian, I was forced to use the Altavista translater in order to TRY to make some sense of it.

Go out and get yourself a precision screwdriver kit, and make sure it has a tiny tiny phillips head, and a T5 Torx bit. Take the two screws from the top, and the four from behind the battery. Take the front off (with the screen cover)

There will be pictures that will show you (circled in red) where the philips screws are, take them all out. Now, very carefully, pry from the sides (I used half of electronics tweezers, a knife may work) in order to seperate the top circuit board from the rest of the case.

Once it is out, take the blue halves from the hard drive, and don't disconnect the hard drive (I don't think you can without breaking it, but maybe I'm wrong, I didn't.)

Then, peel all the stickers off the hard drive including the aluminum colored one. You'll see the holes in the pictures, and from here, basically all I did was very carefully nudge the arm so that it was free-moving.

All I did after that was put the thing back together, connected it to the PC, reformatted the drive, and ran the iriver firmware updater to get the most current firmware on it.

Now I'm rocking out to some tunes! Cheers!

[proneto911]

congrads on fixin it ill go here if i get the "cough ebay missing system files h10 cough" or if i encounter that problem but thats good that you fixed it

[druidfire217]

Keep in mind that people who have done this before have had the arm get stuck again. So this might not be a permanant fix (aka. the hd might be starting to die).

[scuderiaconchiglia]

Also, keep in mind that exposing a hard drive to dust is just BEGGING for a head crash. These things are not built in a clean room environment for the fun of it. So be careful out there!

Gary

[redenjaja]

well my h10 also suffers from this one and instead of just using my player as paperweight, i will try this one too!

[redenjaja]

that nadging of the arm was effective.... my h10 is working again! although some told me its just a temporary solution.... i'll post it again here when it will fail again... (i hope i wont be posting again anytime soon! here hehehe)

[Chico777aum]

Hi All

My gf has got an H10 iriver from Dubai. We stay in South Africa where there is no Iriver store let alone a service centre. She had the same problem of "missing files" and when i tried to do a format on the drive it just wouldnt let me go into the drive. It took about 20 mins to show the removable disk icon on mycomputer and then everything just kept on freezing. So definitly no joy there. Being a It technician i see this problem often when hard drives are corrupt. So this is definitly a sign of a corrupt Hard disk.

Im really amazed that the the unjamming of the head trick worked. WOW! Thats amazing and i have the iriver open and infront of me right now! Gonna give it a try and see what happends....or else its just paperweight!. I also thought about upgrading the drive to an 8GB but its almost 50% of the drive itself. And thats not the only problem. Getting the drive is a mission on its own. They dont sell them in SA. I have to buy an seagate pocket drive. take it apart and pray that the 6gb hdd is the same one used in the iriver. Well thats option two and will let everyone know how the "head unjamming session" goes. There will always be a risk of the hard drive crashing after being open but id rather have a timebomb then a paperweight in this case. Oh...and for those who hear music playing when they stick their ear against the iriver. Its not a built in feature. Its ur Hard drive head trying to play DJ! Not good!!!

Thanks alot for the posting Shaft) and redenjaja! Awsome stuff....hope the HDD live alot longer now!!!

Take care all

[Chico777aum]

Hi all
Just took my Iriver for some Brain Surgery using ShaftO's method! You my friend..... ARE A GOD!!! Hope you log on to this wikki again coz I am bowing down to you!!! Not sure where u got hold of the italian site but it works like a charm......
For all of those who have the same problem, dont even think twice about following ShaftO's Steps!! Even Redanjaja would agree.

Thanks Chaps!
Until we meet again!
Chico

[baroqueking]

I bought some broken iriver h10 with this problem Just by the sound of the hard drive i know if he s died or if i can repair it ...i save a lot of music ...
all the h10 i repair have the same cool sound than my new one !they play as well as a new ...can t see the difference...the iriver h10 5 or 6 gb is so well constructed it s easy to do . I try that on a creative microphoto 8 gb.....never again!

[redenjaja]

the problem happened again last december, so i again opened my h10 and repeated the procedure, its working again, but i think there are some bad sectors on its hdd, because some tracks would pause or sometimes when im accessing it on my pc it hangs occassionally. so im just making the most out of it, im saving up for a new player and right now im eyeing the meizu m6 player, cant find it here in the philippines but im hoping to find one soon.... my battery only lasts for 3 hours, so if you have dead h10 maybe you want to donate it to me

[bryyando]

thanks a lot worked like a charm