F500BT Not Going into Test Mode

[sojer]

My avic F500BT was working fine but a couple of weeks ago it broke. It displays the message "System startup in progress. Please wait." After it starts up that message does not go away. I can still press some buttons but I can't use the navigation. It's useless now. I tried resetting it a million times. I did a hard reset, I took the battery out. I tried reinstalling the firmware but that doesn't work. I tried everything. I called Pioneer but they want to charge me $200 to fix it.

 

So I decided to fix it myself. I googled the problem and found this site. (great site BTW, very very informative) I found that others have had this problem too as I've read in other threads. It turns out its rebooting constantly thats why the message never goes away and the problem is a couple of corrupt files called "gpsr000, etc." As it was posted, the solution is to boot the unit into test mode and delete the corrupt files and that will fix it. So I followed all of the instructions.

 

I downloaded the correct test mode files. (test mode v 2.3).

I copied the two folders containing test mode and mitacap onto the root folder of the SD card.

 

Then I put the SD card into the unit to get it into test mode.

 

The problem is, it is NOT going into test mode. It just boots up to the home screen like normal. NO TEST MODE WHATSOEVER!! Everyone else on here seems to get their unit into test mode easy peasy rice and cheesy but it's not working for me. I insert the SD card while the unit is off then turn it on. But it just ignores the SD card and boots to the home screen.

 

For informational purposes:

 

I'm using a sandisk 2GB SD card.

I know the unit is able to read SD cards because it recognizes it in the AV menu.

It is currently has map version: 02.00400 and its version: 3.010200.

 

Is there anyone who can help me? How do I get it into test mode? Is there something I'm missing? What am I not doing right? I saw a thread about getting it into service menu. i was able to do that successfully but that doesn't help me. All I need to do is get it into test mode and its not going into test mode. Any suggestions would help.

[sojer]

NO one can help?

[wnclivin]

Try using a different sd card. Also make sure it is freshly formatted to fat32. I was using the same sd card for over a year and it appeared to be working. However it was secretly corrupting files during the transfer process leaving with error messages and reboots. I used another card, cleared the flash memory, and re-applied 3.1. Now everything works perfectly!