Positron User's Guide: Troubleshooting

As you might expect, things can and will go wrong with technology. This document will give some hints as to how to deal with problems.

Operating System Issues

A common problem is that you plug my Neuros in to my computer, but it is never assigned a device. There are several possible causes for this:

Database Problems

Database problems frequently cause the unit to freeze while you are using it, or they cause songs to be missing or misfiled. This is usually caused when the connection between the Neuros and the computer is interrupted during transfer. If the OS freezes, the Neuros freezes, or the link cable is disconnected before you unmount the device, the database can be corrupted. To fix this, use the following command:

positron rebuild
This will reconstruct your databases from scratch based upon the music files it finds on the Neuros. If problems persist, there is a good chance you found a bug in positron. Please report it to us using one of the methods outlined below. You will probably want to zip up your WOID_DB subdirectory on the Neuros and include it with the bug report.

Filesystem Problems

Another class of problems generates errors like:

These symptoms suggest the filesystem on the Neuros has been corrupted in some way. Filesystem corruption is usually caused in the same way as database corruption, though it is generally less common. Unfortunately, the best way to fix a corrupted file system is to format the Neuros and start over.

WARNING: The following operation erases the contents of your Neuros and should only be attempted as a last resort.

Music File Detection Problems

While we've tested positron on a wide variety of MP3s, sometimes we stumble across one that is not identified by positron, so it will refuse to add it to the Neuros database. Quite often, this is because the file is corrupted in some way. Many MP3 players are extremely tolerant of damaged MP3s, so some of these files are actually playable. At this time, positron has no override switch to allow you to force a file to be uploaded. This may or may not be a good thing because it is unclear how the Neuros firmware would handle such damaged files. Our suggestion is that you try to acquire the file from another source or recreate it using a different tool. Please contact us about problem files: we are interested in improving our detection algorithm if it fails on legitimate files.

If All Else Fails

If you can't seem to resolve a problem, you have a couple options: