Sad face - vero 4K+ won’t boot

Hi Sam

I bought my brother a vero 4K+ recently. He has very little knowledge about Kodi/vero but is learning as he goes. Tonight, he wanted to restore from a backup that he’d made, so used an addon that I use all the time to wipe Kodi, called Fresh Start. It has always worked flawlessly for me, but has seemingly messed his device up. The result was a smiley face screen and vero wouldn’t boot after powering off and on a few times. He then downloaded a new image to a usb stick (as he doesn’t have an SD card), but vero wouldn’t boot from it. He finally used the toothpick method, having downloaded a new image to the usb stick and renamed the file ‘kernel.img’ to ‘recovery.img. Still nothing- think he has a black screen now. I’m thinking of going to see him tmrw in Manchester (I’m in Newcastle) to see if I can help but would like to know what you think my chances of being able to help him are? Sorry I can’t provide any more detail at this point. Thanks.

The toothpick method should only be used as a last resort, otherwise it can corrupt the boot environment.

I’d suggest getting a screenshot of the contents of the SD/USB, to make sure it’s been imaged correctly.

The best way to do a fresh start is usually just to reinstall OSMC.

Thanks Sam. In terms of getting a screenshot of the contents…he downloaded dtb.img, fileststem.tar.xz and kernel.img and transferred them over to the usb stick. Would that have changed since he plugged the usb stick in?

Is it possible to get him on this forum so we can help him directly and save you a trip?

That’s a bit odd. Ideally the image should be written to the drive directly so it formats the USB properly.

Ah ok. The osmc installer on his Mac wouldn’t download the files unfortunately (may be an administrator issue on his end) so I downloaded them and shared them with him. Sounds like a bad move on my part. If I go armed with an SD card that has an image written directly to it, do you think there’s a chance it will work? Wouldn’t mind paying him a visit anyway. Otherwise I’ll ask him to sign up to the forum and he’ll be in touch tmrw. Thanks Sam.

Yes I think that’ll work.
I’m hoping to fix the Mac installer this weekend, but need to hunt down a USB-C adapter.

Ok. Thanks. I’ll go to see him first and if we can’t get it working will be in touch.

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The other option – given the fact we may to go in to isolation soon is to backup your device, format it, give it to him and take his back?

Yeah good call. Cheers Sam will let you know how I get on.

Hi Sam. Fresh install sorted it out thankfully. Vero was behaving strangely after the initial reinstall, but the second one sorted it completely. Thanks again for your excellent support, really appreciate it.

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