alright. i've mentioned my issues in the posts they pertain to, but i'd like to do a break down of my misadventure and see if any of the avic gods can help. i'll try to explain in as much detail as possible, so excuse the long windedness

i'm running:

-avic-f90bt

(had the 2.0 update done, but no mods up to this disaster, also parking break wire is grounded @ the wiring harness)

-2gb sd card (tried fat16 and 32)

-doing all my computer side stuff on a vista premium laptop w/ a universal card reader and using winrar for zipping

my adventure so far:

-i did the following in WinCE...

-first off i tried to mod my pioneer.ini file, using a trial of winzip. the result was a pseudo bricked unit. unit would start to startup, never lose the "loading please wait" screen, therefor making the navi no longer work because i can't get by the warning because the "loading please wait" was covering the "ok" button. the system would reboot every 3 minutes or so as described by other people

-then i tried reverting to an unmolested data.zip with no change

- my next step was to try backing up my igo folder

- then i wiped my avic's drive and re-installed the updates as described in someone's very handy guide.

- i manually deleted the igo folder on the avic, and copied the old igo folder over.

- the unit never did to the tts part of the update as far as i could tell

- restarted the unit and it would not get past the splash screen, but would still restart after about 3 minutes

- i tried the re-update again with a different 2gb sd card.

- when i got to the part where i transfer the igo folder back, i figured i'd ty just transferring the files the new and presumably clean igo didn't have. from what i can tell, there were no differences. by size or files.

so that's where i am now. i farted around a bit, and noticed i can boot to the avic withing wince. and from there i could listen to tunes! not all was lost. not sure if the unit still restarted every 3 minutes, contacts didn't find anything, navi made it freeze, settings worked, but navi settings made it freeze as well. i also noticed. when booting to avic software and it didn't load, i could access the menu at the flash screen after about the same time as a usual loading time. now i could only access the settings, as the audio button @ main menu is now unresponsive.

that's it so far! gonna keep banging my head against the wall. any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

**UPDATE**

found a backup of my APL2 folder from when i had the post software parking break bypass (system booted and rebooted every 3 mins navi wouldn't work) anyways;

- i took an unmolested data.zip and put replaced the modded data.zip in my backup file,

- i put the backup file on my sd card and overwrote the APL2 folder on the avic (avic was sitting at the stage just after getting wiped and the 2.0 update done)

-SYSTEM BOOTS UP!!!!

-parking warning is back (least of my worries)

-navi works. well. let me elaborate.

-navi doesn't freeze the avic.

-navi doesn't exactly tell you where you are.

-navi is just an arrow on a black screen

i have yet to do the TTS update, or the bluetooth update for that matter, and i think i'd still like to do a clean wipe and steal my buddies clean files. (same deck)

anyways. anyone who knows of something better i could do to get a working gps screen back, it would be appreciated! also. backup your everything before anything!

navi is just an arrow on a black screen

sounds like you deleted your map data ? try the igo hack thread and add some maps

If your buddy's got the same unit, and his is all stock (or, at least working), just get a 2+GB SD card, throw testmode on it, and go copy his entire 'My Flash Disk' to the SD card. Copy the contents back over to your flash disk and you should be good to go...