You can't do a true cold flash without building a custom serial cable, which AFAIK no one one this forum has bothered to complete.

It may help if you describe what you did prior to the device not booting properly.

As far as the battery goes, if the device isn't booted (either into the OS or into a sub-OS for charging) it will not charge the battery. However, you can use an external charger (ebay via china) or a compatible phone i.e. Nokia 5230, 5800.

The drivers are irrelevant, it just wants to use the phone as a modem. This device is flashed pretty low-level so it is in fact possible to brick these, however, you should give it a try in Linux. Windows is more ******ed as far as drivers go.

Open a terminal, cd to the directory flasher is extracted to, make sure you chmod +x it make it executable. Make sure you have the firmware ready, then plug in the usb cable, be sure to plug it into a usb port known to work correctly on the host computer, execute the flasher command with the proper parameters, hold down the specified button for your device and then turn on the device. the flasher program should detect the device.

ok this is what i have done so far. i bought a desktop charging unit from EBAY for my battery.

im going to boot into my PC in linux through the USB bootable Ubuntu.

ill open terminal and cd to the directory of flasher.
the next command is
chmod +x <----is that right??
the next command is
sudo ./flasher-3.5 -F RX-51_2009SE_1.2009.42-11_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -f -RIt
then unplug the device and plug it back in.

if all goes well that should be it????



if this doesnt work i have the number for nokia head office in finland so im going to give the guys in the marketing deparment who gave me the phone a call.

lol good luck to me. is the linux commands i used right?????

Sorry, I was going from memory.

You may need to
sudo chmod +x flasher-3.5

and don't forget you can ./flasher-3.5 --help to get a list of possible commands

sudo ./flasher-3.5 -F RX-51_2009SE_1.2009.42-11_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -f

I don't know who told you to use the -RIt flags, R is reboot, I is initialize serial port (you don't have that cable), and t, WTF does that flag do, it isn't documented...

the linux thing didnt work. also tryed it on a mac.

by the way i won my phone on the blogs.nokia.com website. i just found out someone else has the exact same issue as me. he also won his phone on the blogs.nokia.com website. this is very strange. nokia are not getting back to me.

im gonna try and use the battery from my friends 5800 and see if it makes a difference tmrw, then try and reflash again. i have low hope it will work. i really hope nokia get back to me. i called the head office in finland and they have no idea what i was on about. i got a feeling all the contest winners are going to have the same issue if they try to reflash like i did.

dont see why nokia service will not repair your device even if you did win it. Its clearly still in warranty.

its because im in australia and the NSC here have never seen it before and dont know what to do since the phone isnt released here.

i want to send it back but i need it to be organised. thats why i want nokia to get back to me but i got nothing. have sent heaps of emails

worked like charm, thanks a lot ^^

micalil:

Did you have the same issue as me????? im going to get my other friends 5800 battery and try that again in a few hours

******just to let you guys know. nokia called me just now about my n900 being bricked after a NSU. they are investigating it. they got every bit of detail off me. might be getting a replacement. it seems to be an issue with a batch of them if you try to flash it.********

they finally got back to me after all the emails.

congratz, felbutss.

sorry to hear that you have suffered these. =] hopefully you can get a new one soon.