OK now im officially freaked out.

I just made a bootable disk (i selected the basefile.dat as the bootable image) with roxio and ran it in my z2 that won't boot up. It reset like it was supposed to and then proceeded to say program update started. It then said "Program Update failed. Restarting" and now it just loops through that even after i take the disc out. I can't do anything on it and it restarts before it can even read another disc. I called pioneer all day and the only help i got was that i have to send it in.

Someone please help!

(sorry for the double post, i don't know what else to do)

i don't think your doing it write - you want to use your CD burning program to burn a "data disk" then you want to unzip the file you downloaded and open it - then open the folder called "Z2 firmware update" then inside that you want to drag and drop the folder called "AVICZ1_HD1" and the file "basefile.DAT" onto your disk and hit burn - so when it's done if you look at the contents of the disk all you will see is a file called "AVICZ1_HD1" and "Basefile.dat" that is it. put that disk in your Z2 and it should be all good

at this point, my unit won't even read any discs. As soon as i turn my car on, it will say "Program update started" (even though the disc is no longer in the unit). Within about 2 seconds, it'll say "program update failed...restarting" and then the unit resets itself and the whole process just loops through.

have you tried to reset it? using the small reset button next to the eject? that might get it out of the loop - if that doesn't work, there are several "levels" of resets you can try.. do a search to find them..

I had the same problem. My only suggestion is to keep putting the disk in and ejecting it with each cycle. I had like one file left and it started going through that thing where it says it's updating and failing over and over. But I turned the ignition off and cried for a little bit. Then I came back and right when it turned on it started showing that screen again. Then I pushed the disk and as it turned on the last time the loading screen pulled up. It seemed to load even before it started reading the disk so I don't understand if it read off the disk or off the HD. But thats what happened with me. Just keep putting the disk in and ejecting it out.

so he's saying cry about it for a minute then try it again, it will probably work...

That sucks dude hope you get it fixed.

hey dude did you figure this out yet? im having the same problem with my n1. i just flashed it a few hours ago to downgrade form n3 to n1 software. and it just goes into that loop where it says tis checking the disc, then it says update failed, and it restarts.

let me know how you fixed it :S