Won't boot, won't boot menu, won't boot USB recovery, WILL boot other OS via USB

[sstillwell]

Well, the subject says it all.  The unit WAS working, but now won't boot normally, won't boot into the boot menu (hold reset, press power on, wait for boot menu).  All I get is the ReadyNAS text on the LED screen.

Booting to the USB Recovery gives me a few flickers of the thumb drive's activity light, but no other joy.  I've tried four different USB sticks of varying sizes and ages.

What's weird is that if I burn a USB thumb drive with the bootloader for Xpenology, I can use the boot from USB function (hold down Backup, press power) to boot into THAT, and it DOES come up and I'm able to find it as a faux-Diskstation.

In all cases the LED display never changes from the initial ReadyNAS text.

Where do I go from here?

[mdgm-ntgr · Accepted solution]

Is it recognised properly as a Pro?

Well if the fans are spinning properly perhaps power it down and check for a build up of dust. This unit would be pretty old by now.

[mdgm-ntgr]

You’ve got a PM.

This will require further investigation.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Well writing a raw image of the flash to the internal USB key seems to have worked fine.

Not sure why USB Boot Recovery didn't work.

[sstillwell]

Something else may be going on - I've created a new volume on scratch disks and it's resyncing, but CPU temperature is 89C and I'm getting warnings.  CPU fan is running.  ALL fans are running pretty high speed.

[mdgm-ntgr · Accepted solution]

Is it recognised properly as a Pro?

Well if the fans are spinning properly perhaps power it down and check for a build up of dust. This unit would be pretty old by now.

[sstillwell]

I already had it opened up earlier to check for loose cabling, etc. - it looks surprisingly clean.  When the resync finishes I guess I'll have a look to make sure the CPU heatsink is tightened down properly - it might have loosened up during shipment here.

[sstillwell]

Hmm, doesn't look like the picture came through.  Yes, it shows up as a ReadyNAS Pro.

[sstillwell]

There we go, that did the trick!  There was a little bit of dust in the heatsink, but nothing horrible.  What WAS a problem was that two of the spring-loaded screws holding the heat sink down were not anywhere close to tight - they were on opposite corners, so the heat sink was kinda on correctly, but once I tightened everything back, buttoned it back up and powered back on, the temperature dropped by nearly half (from 91 C down to 46 C) and the fans are nearly silent now.  I'm betting this has been a problem for a while and that the excess heat had something to do with the EEPROM going wonky.

Hurray!  Thank you for your above-and-beyond assistance...much appreciated.