fear i bricked my avic-z120bt need help

[fixitall]

We fear we have bricked our avic-z120bt when we installed condi's hack and then tried to remove the hack cause it wasnt what we were hopping for now it just turns on says pioneer and then shuts off need help please

[RonS]

Once again someone falls into that trap. I've asked that that be removed before. I consider it a Trojan Horse. Only experts should dabble with it. It is sometimes easy to un-do. There are already several threads covering this. Here is one way to recover. http://avic411.com/index.php?/topic/36854-undo-condis-hack-mode/?hl=hackmode

 

You'll need to get familiar with TestMode (totally different than Condi's mess). Testmode is a built-in Pioneer diagnostic, but the user-interface is very clunky. There is a YouTube video showing how to use it, but unfortunately he call it hackmode (which is confusing).

 

Tip: if you hold the eject button for about 5 seconds while turning on the ignition, the screen should open allowing access to the SD slot. Remove any SD card then try rebooting. 

 

 

Here is another approach. It relies on the alternate copy of the program files. 

 

Before you try any fix, don't make things worse. Make a backup onto SD of all the entire "USER" directory tree.

Then, navigate into /USER. You'll see several files and folders including PRG0 and PRG1. These contain the program files, and a backup.

If a file named PRG,FLG exists (it's just an empty file), the OS loads from PRG1, otherwise it used PRG0.

So the first attempt at recovery is to try using the alternate set of files. If /USER/PRG.FLG exists, delete it. If it doesn't exist, using your computer, create a file named PRG.FLG (you can use Notepad to just create an empty file), copy it to your SD, then - once in TestMode, copy it to USER/

 

Remove the SD then restart the AVIC. See if that works. If it does restart OK, you may notice that you are on an older version of the NAV software. If so, you might want to install the 2013 upgrade.