Hi guys,

found this forum through a friend. Decided tonight would be the night to start the install of my Z2. I just wanted to get the deck in for a trip tomorrow, and maybe get my IPOD box connected. Put the deck in and when it first fires up, the unit powers up, and I see "STARTING UP PIONEER CAR NAVIGATION" for about 2 seconds. After that, the screen is blank and stays blank. It is still backlit, and all the buttons are lit. I have let it sit for 5 minutes and still nothing. On a whim I downloaded the firmware fix and burnt it. Started the truck up with the disk in and same thing: "STARTING UP PIONEER CAR NAVIGATION" shows in the upper left for 2 seconds it goes away, I hear the disc spin/search for a bit, and then nothing. During this time none of the buttons do anything, although the eject button will fold it down and let me insert/eject discs. I don't have any modules attached via the IP bus, but I do still have the IP bus cable plugged in. Could that be an issue? I'm stumped. My Pioneer 7500DVD was a lot less complicated lol.

Any ideas? I have 5 hours on the road tomorrow and would really love some tunes. I've done 2 hard resets with the button as well. None of my amps turn on either, but I'm not sure at what point during the boot process it energizes the remote lead.

Thanks!

Try hit the V button on the left.

I'd disconnect that IP-bus cable just to make sure. Also, reconfirm all your power leads. If that doesn't work I'm afraid you might have a bad unit.

There is also a way to get the unit into a diagnostics mode. If I recall correctly there is a way to do a scandisk or chkdisk function that might tell you if you're having a hard drive issue.

Try hit the V button on the left.

Did that as well. I didn't plug the VSS lead because from what I've read I need to tap into the VSS sensor on top of my tranny. That's for another day. I actually got it to boot one time, and was able to look at songs on the Hard drive, and see that I have version 2.00. I thought I was good at that point (besides my amps not turning on, so I went and wired up the Bluetooth, XM, and IPOD modules. I then fired it back up with the key to ACC (key turned back) and once again I was met with the Starting Pioneer Car Navigation message, and then nothing. 2 more times and then I decided to start my truck. I put it in reverse and backed out of my driveway. At this point it came to the Pioneer splash screen and stayed there. So the only 2 times I've gotten further than the black screen is if I actually drive the truck...freaky. In any case, i's been 6 hours so I'm going to try again in the morning. This think seems sketchy as hell. Are there any more patches or "fix it" disks I should try? I had the firmware disc in but I never got any confirmation that it was actually updating. This deck has be confused as hell. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Service Menu...see if there is anything here that will help: http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic. ... rvice+menu

Also, do you have a GM vehicle? I know there have been some issues with these units starting up while the key is in ACC mode.

I'll check the link. It's a 97 Ford Explorer.

For whatever reason, sometimes the firmware fix worked better after letting the deck cool down for a while. Try letting it sit until morning and try it again

Should there be a progress indicator or anything like that? I did a reset after putting the disc in and drove around for about 10 minutes It just sat in the Pioneer splash screen. I just want to reflash this whole damn thing. I can get into the service menu I see RAM errors, but the time stamps are so off I can't tell if they're old Don't want to clear them in case this has to go back to Pioneer.

**UPDATE**

After looking in the Service Menu, it looks like I have either a bad image or bad memory I cleared all the error logs and rebooted Got back into the service mode after about 5 minutes of letting it stall, and have 102 errors under RAM relating to AVexe, and a myriad of other programs. I'll start looking into a reload .ISO (I assume this is an option) or sending it to Pioneer. *sigh*