Official Slacker Forums

[squigy0]

I emailed support with full details of my problem, my OS's, troubleshooting I've done last week. 0 response.

[Outerlimit]

Try the live chat...

They will still be open for another 1.5 hours... (5pm PST, 8pm EST)

[redfireant3]

I have gone throught the reflash proccess and I get-
Slacker Portable Recovery Failed: not logged in
anyone have this problem yet?

[squigy0]

I was tired of hanging out here and in my email waiting for answers so I tried my hand at the live chat. FrankS in only two sessions was able to get me back up and running!

Those that are still having problems reflashing and getting the player up, try the following:

Prereq 1: Have an XP machine handy with IE7 installed. Frank said that Vista and/or IE6 or IE8 will not work for a reflash
Prereq 2: Get rid of any remnants of the Slacker Software Player and make sure you're using the USB Station Refresher from http://www.slacker.com/support.

1. Run the program C:\Program Files\Slacker\USB Station Refresher\slacker.jukebox.exe Once the Software Player starts up, log into the account associated with the Slacker Portable.
2. Unplug the USB cable from the Slacker Portable.
3. Hold the Power switch in the down position until the Portable's screen turns completely black.
4. Continuing to hold the power switch down, press and hold down the Volume Up ('+') key on the top of the Portable Player.
5. Continuing to hold the Volume Up ('+') key down, slide the power switch to the upmost, or lock, position.
6. You should see the blue "Starting Up" screen with a green bar across the bottom. This indicates that the player is entering flash recovery mode. You can now let go of both buttons, but leave the power switch in the lock position.
7. When you see a screen labeled "Slacker Portable Recovery Program" at the top with instructions to press the Volume Down ('-') key to continue, do not do this yet.
8. Plug the USB cable into the Slacker Portable.
9. Press the Volume Down ('-') key. You should see the Slacker Portable go to another screen indicating that recovery is taking place
10. On your PC, the device should now be recognized as a flash recovery device and a driver should automatically load. (Don't worry if you don't see this, as this can sometimes happen fast and Windows may hide this part.)
11. Once the driver is loaded, you will see a popup window in the Slacker Software Player that a flash recovery device has been plugged in, press OK to continue or Cancel to abort.
12. Press OK.
13. The recovery process takes several minutes, but you should see status updates in the dialog as the process continues.
14. When the recovery process has completed, the Done button in the popup window in the Slacker Software Player should become enabled.
15. Press 'Done' to close the popup window.
16. Your Portable Player should now automatically reboot itself. If it does not, hold the power switch in the down position until the screen goes black again, then let go of the the power switch. Rebooting the player should complete the recovery and firmware update process.

FOLLOWUP 1: You do not need to use the XP/IE7 combinations going forward for your station refreshes. The requirement is only for when you're reflashing the firmware
FOLLOWUP 2: Leave the USB Refresher on the PC and don't bother going back to the Software Player. They recommend the USB Refresher because it's "more robust when refreshing stations via USB."

I hope this helps you all as much as it helped me! Now to start the long process of downloading all my stations again. :P

[kc5f]

... 5. Continuing to hold the Volume Up ('+') key down, slide the power switch to the upmost, or lock, position. ...

Dang. The one hardware problem I have is that my power switch has shifted in the case and I can no longer get it to the lock position. Slacker said it's under warranty, but I didn't plan to worry about it since it was a function I didn't use. Now it looks like I'll have to send it in just to be able to run this procedure...

(And just confirmed with FrankS on the chat. Going on a road trip soon, and it'll have to be without my Slacker. I sure was looking forward to listening to it...)

[quincyliao]

my g1 stuck on the green bar page, and never goes to the "Slacker Portable Recovery Program".
so frustrating that i think i am returning the thing.

[AnitaBath]

Just did a successful reflash with XP-SP3 and IE8.

[jbmcc]

I LOVE MY SLACKER G1!!! My problem got 'terminal' at the beginning of the July 4th holiday. It looks like I need to buy a spare, just so I have a working one. Still it's worth it. Great service for those who do not care to listen to the usual 'morning personalities' in the AM. Thanks!

[bhargrove81]

I love my Slacker G1!!! I am having this problem but mine will not get off of the start up screen,which in turn will not allow me to log onto and sign into my account so i can preform this flash upgrade.

[arribasn]

My slacker G1 will not shut down! I power it down a a second later it immediate starts back up, is there a fix for this? The unit is almost new...

[johnny99]

My slacker G1 will not shut down! I power it down a a second later it immediate starts back up, is there a fix for this? The unit is almost new...

Have you installed the latest firmware?

[hjsiemer]

I am using xp3 and ie8. The re-flash process hangs with the "extracting firmware" message. I tried several times and the problem continues.
thanks

[rldannand]

I had the same problem as everyone else... Running XP/SP3 w/ IE7
It started when I made a custom station and it hung up when uploading music... all night it sat on the upload screen. It has been a brick until I followed the instructions above. I did the battery reomval and everything. I have used the flash recovery method before. I have successfully recovered my protable 4 times until recently.
It may seem elementary - but when I use Slacker, I use everything else on my computer as well. I have Firefox going for safe surfing - Windows Live - Explorer has a bunch of homepages and website notifiers (sites that don't like Firefox). Slacker is playing music and I manage my music library with Itunes.. whew...

Here are a few caveats that I had...

Slacker Jukebox is the program that needs to be running to do a flash recovery. It has been mentioned many times in these forums since I got my G1 from woot more than a year ago. (It's in the USB Station Refresher folder in Programs). It will not start up on its own - in my case anyway. To make sure I had the latest version - I uninstalled USB Station Refresher, and then followed up by running CCleaner to "fix" registry issues. I even deleted the "empty" folder that was leftover so a new install would make a new one. I downloaded the software from slacker and installed it just fine. (I didn't mess with the Software Player program)
Re-booted the computer. I did not start anything else up! Just plain desktop. (Security is probably ok.) This was weird. I wanted to open explorer to get back to this forum and follow instructions - but I have them memorized by now.
Go to the programs folder/USB Station Refresher and start up Slacker Jukebox.
THIS TIME it started without "script errors"! (I guess something messes with it.) Followed each step of the flash recovery process above and dialog boxes popped up as they should.
I hope this helps... I hope it keeps loading my stations.. onward I go..