MP377 wonky bootloader?

Hello everyone,
I have a strange problem with an MP377 19" panel. Short version is the bootloader seems to be stuck.

Normally with these panels, you would see a couple boot screens, then everything would take off booting into your normal panel OS.

On mine, it gets to the BootCE loader, then dies in one of two ways.

First, sometimes it will load to "Enabling update mode..." and then just sit there. Other times, it will display "Loading image from flash...", then a little progress bar, and "Waiting for image update..." underneath.

Now, normally at this point if the panel discovers that the flash partition is corrupt or blank, it will notify that, and then one can connect with PST to set IP address, or ProSave to do an OS restore.

In my case, the little progress bar never moves, so (as far as I can tell) it never enters the next state where ProSave can connect. This means that even with the OS restore function of ProSave, it can never connect because it hasn't enabled ethernet yet.

I should stop here to say everything I've written so far is my understanding of how things work -- I'd be happy to be wrong and find there's some other way to bring it up!

I've attached pictures of the panel showing both stages in which it can get stuck.

What I'm hoping is there's some way to force the panel to see its flash partition as corrupt, or empty, basically some way to force it past where it stops. It's as if the panel is corrupt but thinks it is not, so it keeps trying to load garbage.

I'm completely stumped here so I appreciate any and all help.

You mean it works OK for some time, i.e it runs the HMI program.
But after some time it begins the update sequence for no reason and ultimately fails ?

I am guessing that there is a bit on the flash memory that says "OS update ready to be loaded" or something like that. And that memory bit on the flash memory is bad causing it to occasionally be set when it is not supposed to. And this in turn begins the load sequence which then fails because there is nothing to load.

Are there something that writes often to the internal memory, i.e. some scripts or archiving ?
I once had with OP270 that if you had setup some logging to a flash card, and the flash card was not inserted, Windows CE would default to writing to the internal flash instead, thereby causing it to fill up or fail after a while.

If the internal flash memory has gone bad, I am afraid that it is a bad situation. Maybe Siemens can repair the panel. A spare MP377 19" will be very expensive.

Do you have the source program ? I think the real fix is to migrate the MP377 to a Comfort Panel.

Hi Jesper,
Thank you for your quick reply.
I should clarify this HMI never boots properly, it always gets stuck as described. However, other normal MP377s behave as I described for normal behavior.
You are definitely right regarding migrating to a comfort panel, but that is not something my customer wants to do.
From what I can tell the boot process dies so early it won't even try to read from either SD or CF cards. I have proper programs from another MP377 on each type of card, but it doesn't even try to read them. So it's stuck in a sort of limbo where it can't (or won't) turn on ethernet or either card slot.
I may try Siemens again; I bailed out on them when they quoted me $330 just to talk to me about it since it's so old.
At this point I'd even be willing to short the flash memory by hand to blank it, if that's even possible. As you said, it's entirely possible the chip(s) failed, but I can't help feeling like if I could convince BootCE to see it as blank or corrupt I could kick it back in to letting me use ProSave on it.

You could try to use the restore to factory settings with Prosave.
It goes by the MAC address (printed on the rear of the panel). edit: It also displays at bootup as can be seen in your screenshots.
You connect the PC to the panel, start the restore function in Prosave, and then cycle power on the panel.
When booting up, it should connect to Prosave and start the restore process.

Btw, a Siemens repair will probably cost as much as a new Comfort panel.

Since this happens repeatedly, rather than intermittently, I think you have a good chance of restoring the panel by the restore to the factory settings method.
I think that the problem is that there is a defective update image on the flash memory.
Important is to let the prosave and the panel go all the way through its sequence.
I think that two reboots are required, and it does them both automatically. Dont shut off the panel before it has finished completely.

I will try with ProSave again. Problem I was running into with that was ProSave would just spin and never connect, but there's always a chance something was misconfigured on my side. I'm going to make sure everything is functional with another of my 377s and give that a shot. I'll post back when I know more. And thank you Jesper for taking the time to help me out.

Well, I ran a full ProSave restore on one of my working MP377s, and everything went fine. But now the 19" won't boot past "Enabling update mode..." so I think it may be hopeless.

hi i have similr problem. but i know we can does it .