Dead(?) Vero 2 won't boot or output to HDMI

Ok, I’m not having much luck with my Vero 2. It is now in a state where it does not output to HDMI nor appear to boot.

The sequence of events was:

29/02 - unable to update but otherwise was working fine
01/03 - working fine but did not update (lack of time to do so)
04/03 - the UI had crashed but could access via SSH. So, I issued:
sudo reboot
This hung after 15 minutes
Pulled and inserted power cable to reboot
This caused an init error on the internal storage.
Hard reset again and even its auto fsck shrugged and gave in with init error on the boot volume.

I then wrote the 2016.02-2 release to an SD card and it installed. After installation it sat there saying “installed” but gave no options to reboot. So, no choice: pull the power, remove SD and insert power cable.

It then booted to the setup screen. I entered details and it no matter how many times I clicked Continue on the accept warranty page it just kept scrolling the warranty…

…until the warranty page hung. Forcing, yup, another pull-cable-insert-cable reboot.

And it hung at the warranty page again. Ok, one last time: pull-cable-insert-cable reboot.

And at this point nothing is outputting on HDMI**, nor can I access it over SSH. Nor if I put in the reinstall SD card does anything appear on-screen.

** I then moved the HDMI cable to go to my TV direct bypassing my amp (in case the amp was being funny), but no dice.

Any thoughts? Or is it a dead duck?
Ta.

Not sure what has caused your original problem, but:

No problem with doing that. The installer finishes writing and syncs the disk, so its then safe to pull the power then remove the SD card. The installer needs its message updating to be a bit more clear about this.

This is a bug in the My OSMC walkthrough screen in the 2016.02-02 image which is also affecting Raspberry Pi’s, so you’ll find a lot of discussion about this elsewhere on the forum. It only occurs if you have no network cable connected when the walkthrough runs, so the simplest workaround until a new image fixing this is created is to make sure you have an Ethernet connection plugged in the first time you boot up.

Did you re-write the installer SD card with the OSMC installer before using it again ? At the end of the installation process the installer deletes itself from the SD card and leaves behind only installer.log, so to use it to install again you need to re-image the SD card.

I didn’t, but have now tried this and no luck: still a screen that is as black and blank as a black hole.