During the upgrade to the 1.06 firmware I got a error message that basically says press the home button and wait for HU to auto recover. The HU never auto recover and tries to install firmware again but now it says upgrading from 0.00 to 0.00. Regardless if I try to go thru the USB or the SD card it just fails and the whole process starts over after I hit the home buttons.  I tried anything the manual says about reseting to factory and I get the unit out of this loop!  Any advice or help on how to at least get it to recover by to Factory  default?  I thought maybe I could try install the 1.02 firmware but I can't find posted anywhere.  HELP!

The screen you are showing, is the update screen. It displayed the whole 8-10 minutes while mine updated. Some have taken up to 20 minutes to complete. Just to go over the process:

Make sure that all inputs are off, if you phone is connected via bluetooth, turn off BT on phone. If you are using sdcard, make sure nothing is connected via usb. Make sure emergency brake is on or bypassed. Your sdcard or usb thumbnail drive should be Fat32 and only have 1 folder on it named AVH4000NEX. If usb thumbnail is used, use usb1 only. The attached screenshot should show up until unit reboots. If it does not update, i would redownload the firmware and unzip directly to reformatted drive.

For all i know, you may have done all this already.

Good luck

Pretty much tried all this. It sits on this screen for about a minute then show a failed upgrade status.

Pretty tried all this. It sits on this screen for about a minute then show a failed upgrade status.

During the upgrade to the 1.06 firmware I got a error message that basically says press the home button and wait for HU to auto recover. The HU never auto recover and tries to install firmware again but now it says upgrading from 0.00 to 0.00. Regardless if I try to go thru the USB or the SD card it just fails and the whole process starts over after I hit the home buttons.  I tried anything the manual says about reseting to factory and I get the unit out of this loop!  Any advice or help on how to at least get it to recover by to Factory  default?  I thought maybe I could try install the 1.02 firmware but I can't find posted anywhere.  HELP!

I have a 5000 nex and same thing happened to me.. heres my story http://avic411.com/index.php?/topic/39561-5000-nex-not-updating-stuck-in-recovery/

I was told by pioneer that I would have to send it in. :"( but im going to see if I can get them to email or link me to a copy of 1.01 because mine acts like its looking for 1.01 not 1.06

The screen you are showing, is the update screen. It displayed the whole 8-10 minutes while mine updated. Some have taken up to 20 minutes to complete. Just to go over the process:

Make sure that all inputs are off, if you phone is connected via bluetooth, turn off BT on phone. If you are using sdcard, make sure nothing is connected via usb. Make sure emergency brake is on or bypassed. Your sdcard or usb thumbnail drive should be Fat32 and only have 1 folder on it named AVH4000NEX. If usb thumbnail is used, use usb1 only. The attached screenshot should show up until unit reboots. If it does not update, i would redownload the firmware and unzip directly to reformatted drive.

For all i know, you may have done all this already.

Good luck

I didn't see anything in the directs about renaming the folder to "AVH4000NEX"....I'll give it a shot.

I didn't see anything in the directs about renaming the folder to "AVH4000NEX"....I'll give it a shot.

It should unzip to a folder named AVH4000NEX

The name of the download is AVH-4000NEX_FW-Update_v1.06.zip but the unzipped folder is AVIC5000NEX and that is what I put on my SD card for my 4000NEX.  No renaming and it worked fine.

As for failed firmware updates, my experience is that if the first recovery fails then you need to have the EPROM flashed by the manufacturer.  Does the radio start up okay without the SD/USB plugged in?  That would be different.   Regardless I hope I am wrong in your case.

I thinks the EPROM fried. No matter what is connected it starts on the update screen and eventually fails. Then asks to press the home button and starts the loop over again.

My bad, it does unzip to "AVIC5000NEX"

I had this exact same problem and came across this thread trying to find the solution.

I just created an account so that I could let you guys know what fix worked for me - I ended up using a different thumb drive! That was it. I formatted a different thumb drive to FAT32, extracted the firmware folder to it, and BAM - no more endless firmware failures. It picked up the drive and continued on with the update.

As a note, I had the EXACT same issue the OP had. When I tried the new thumb drive, the screen changed from "0.00 -> 0.00" to "1.60 -> 1.60" and the update itself took less than 5 minutes. Give it a shot, it sure took less time than sending the head unit back to Pioneer.

In case anyone is following this. I talked to Pioneer. The tech wanted to know what brand thumb drive I was using. It was Sandisk Micro cruiser. He told me the hidden .trash folder on the drive could be the issue. I used a freebie 2gb drive I got at a conf and the upgrade went thru without issue. Sounds/looks great. Now the second drive also has a .trash folder but I made sure to empty the trash on my Mac before I ejected. I think this might have also helped.

In case anyone is following this. I talked to Pioneer. The tech wanted to know what brand thumb drive I was using. It was Sandisk Micro cruiser. He told me the hidden .trash folder on the drive could be the issue. I used a freebie 2gb drive I got at a conf and the upgrade went thru without issue. Sounds/looks great. Now the second drive also has a .trash folder but I made sure to empty the trash on my Mac before I ejected. I think this might have also helped.

Thanks I tried this again with 3 thumb drives and 2 sd cards and still getting the same thing.. I found a system dump online and will be trying to start fresh. Will update how that goes for me.

For any of the poor souls that were greeted by the update failed message, flipped out, and nearly took a hammer to their head unit: try a different USB stick! This worked for me!

For the record, I formatted using Windows so it wasn't an issue having .trashes or any other hidden files on the drive. For whatever reason an 8GB PNY stick simply wouldn't work, even after low level formatting the USB drive. I tried another 4GB stick that was laying around and voila, the V0.0 -> V0.0 changed to V1.08 ->V1.11 and the update was successful.

I'd still like to know what property of the USB stick caused this issue but by and large, I'm glad I didn't have to take my headunit out!

I had this exact same problem and came across this thread trying to find the solution.

 

I just created an account so that I could let you guys know what fix worked for me - I ended up using a different thumb drive! That was it. I formatted a different thumb drive to FAT32, extracted the firmware folder to it, and BAM - no more endless firmware failures. It picked up the drive and continued on with the update.

 

As a note, I had the EXACT same issue the OP had. When I tried the new thumb drive, the screen changed from "0.00 -> 0.00" to "1.60 -> 1.60" and the update itself took less than 5 minutes. Give it a shot, it sure took less time than sending the head unit back to Pioneer.

It's January 2016 and in the Avic5100NEX pioneer has the same thing happening.   I following this solution and it worked. Something funky about the first thumb drive so I tried another and it worked.

I had the same thing. Tried uploading files to USB on pc instead of my mac and it worked.

Hi guys,

I have stupidly bricked my AVH-X8700BT (4100NEX)...Original version was 1.03 and I attempted to update to

1.053, It started normally, but after first restart It began to show every time upgrade v0.00 to v0.00 has failed...

I need help recovering it, I tried removing internal SD and now it's even worse, after short period is is automatically powering itself down (no more auto restarts)...

Please give me hints how to proceed, is it possible to put a new not locked SD card with some working base

image and boot and upgrade afterwards....

Regards

Thank you

As per other posters in the thread, try a USB drive connected to USB1. Don't use PNY brand.

@Reptile2001

It worked here!!

Thanks!!

Thanks I tried this again with 3 thumb drives and 2 sd cards and still getting the same thing.. I found a system dump online and will be trying to start fresh. Will update how that goes for me.

can you point me to the system dump?

OMG you guys are my hero. 

"For any of the poor souls that were greeted by the update failed message, flipped out, and nearly took a hammer to their head unit:"

This was me!!!!

So I used 3 different sd cards, on a Mac all following the rules.  Then I abandoned the Mac reformatted the cheapest basic sd card I had on a pc, re downloaded and extracted, and it worked

I don't have a $800 brick, thanks guys!

fwiw to the community, my message was same as the OP but instead of saying USB it said SD as this was the medium I first tried the update with. It appears if your unit has multiple inputs e.g. sd, and usb, it wont let you switch mediums if the update failed. none of my attempts using the USB port ever worked, only sd.

Registered an account to share how I fixed this issue, hopefully it might be helpful to someone.

I bought a used W8400NEX, and when I tried to upgrade firmware from v1.0 to v1.04 I met the same issue. Changed 4 USB sticks and every USB stick give the same update failure error, I realized this might not be a usb stick issue. So I spent some time look at the file folders on the USB drive, and found there's a hidden folder called "System Volume Information" on the USB drive. btw I used windows 10 to reformatted the USB drives.

What I did was manually removed the hidden folder.

1) Open windows command line window 

2) In the command window, switch to the USB drive,  then uses these commands (if usb drive is on E: drive):

• e:
• dir /a
• cd "System Volume Information"
• del *
• cd ..
• rmdir "System Volume Information"

3) I copied the firmware folder to USB drive, put in the radio, then turned on the power, the USB drive got recognized immediately and upgrade started.

4) Follow the instruction to finish the upgrade.