forced updates on amps bricks system


Have many people had their amps forced  software upgrade and the system is no useable? Tech support is great until they realize it fruitless. after 7 hours my perfectly good working amps are useless and the company offers discount for new ones at 500.00 a piece. 

 

Has anyone ever been able to get something like that working again? 

 

Having a hard time buying more of these when this could happen to any of their products.

 

Needless to say I am not very pleased.  

 

 


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11 replies

Upgrades aren’t forced, and upgrades don’t brick amps or other products.  What can happen is that your device has a hardware issue that is only exposed during a reboot, which can cause issues when a device reboots, such as during an upgrade.

Your issue seems odd since you seem to be implying you had multiple amps fail at the same time? 

yes I have 2 amps both bought at different times about a month apart. had to power one down to move  and then the forced reboot occurred. Sonos Tech support then had me try and reboot the other one and it did a forced upgrade that failed and bricked it. I  have a hard time believing that both well working amps failed the same way, 

 

Now I cannot even retore to old settings. Does anyone know a solution. The Sonos solution is to spend 1100.00 more on 2 amps to fix 2 perfectly good amps.  

melvimbe 8726 replies,  I see you most likely work for Sonos, given you have 8,726 replies. 

 

Why doe the Sonos company continue to say updates are not forced when they really are? What is going on here? Is this a bigger problem then just my 2 Amps?

SONOS staff are clearly identified as such. The rest of us are volunteers.

There is a user option: Settings —> System —> System Updates. Here you can enable or disable automatic updates.

During the updates were there any error messages?

First off, he’s not a Sonos employee. They’re required by the company to have a Sonos tag associated with their name and avatar. He is, however, an intelligent and valued member of this community.

Second off, his analysis seems a lot more on point than your wild claim of ‘Sonos is out to get their customers’ position. 

What it sounds like to me, is that you’ve got some sort of network issues with your system, although a hardware failure, while extraordinarily rare isn’t impossible, either. 

If you’re interested in assistance from this community, please post some more details, so we have something to work with, since we don’t have access to the notes that the Sonos rep may have made on your account, or access to any diagnostics that you may have submitted. 

If you’re just interested in venting, well, you’ve done so. We all feel badly for you. 

so to Buzz,

 

thanks for your reply, I will try that, but I was with Sonos tech support and spent about 7 hours off on on with them, started with chat bot, then to live chat, then to live person, then finally to level 2 tech, tried different phone, different network, hard wire, wireless, load unload program, reset amp, and more,   the techs were great but hit a dead end when they realized their update was flawed and made my amp a  bricknos.  The update started on both automatically and I could not past it, tech support did not know ether. Always error 1013 half way through,  In a perfect world I would be able to reset it to original factoryu settings and disable the update, tech support said that is not an option, their only solution is wait for a possible patch or spend 100. + for 2 new ones. - very disappointing.  

Both systems worked flawlessly up until this. 

if someone knows how to reset to factory and turn off automatic updates that would be very helpful. 

from a comment made by a Tech it implied this bug is a known issue.

 

thanks for looking!

 

 

 

Automatic update or not, it is required that all units and controllers in a system be the same level. If one unit is updated, all must be updated. If you want to install a new unit that is at a different level, the system must be updated. Update is a one way trip, there is no going back.

Here is some marginal information about your error. Try having only one unit powered as you attempt the update. Wire the unit to your network as you attempt the update. I’m reluctant to recommend a Factory Reset at this time, unless you have already Factory Reset this unit. Factory Reset rarely fixes fundamental issues, it erases useful diagnostic data, trashes music service registrations, and erases SONOS Playlists.

Let’s work with one unit and get it going,

Since your issue is likely network related, describe your network for us: Gateway, Router, Network Switches, WiFi mesh points, etc. Be sure to include model numbers.

melvimbe 8726 replies,  I see you most likely work for Sonos, given you have 8,726 replies. 

 

Why doe the Sonos company continue to say updates are not forced when they really are? What is going on here? Is this a bigger problem then just my 2 Amps?

 

As stated already, not a Sonos employee. And as stated already updates are not forced.  You do have to make sure that all your apps and speaker firmware are at the same level, which can sometimes be a challenge, but plenty of people have decided not to upgrade for various reasons.

 

First off, he’s not a Sonos employee. They’re required by the company to have a Sonos tag associated with their name and avatar. He is, however, an intelligent and valued member of this community.

 

When it comes to issues like this though, I am far from the most helpful.  I think Buzz has OP on the right track. 

I had the exact same scenario happened to me. I spent hours on the phone with Tech Support. The update on the connect amps failed. I was told to buy two new ones as a solution. Both connect amps before the update were working perfectly fine.

At a given age, each model has a failure signature. This doesn’t mean that they will all fail at exactly the same time in the same manor, but the failure mode(s) changes over time. Early failures could be cracked buttons, missing feet, assembly errors, etc. Later failures will involve internal components. I have come across rumors of partial memory failure and this can be frustrating. For the sake of discussion assume that a small portion of memory has failed, but during normal operation this area is not used. During an update a large compressed file is downloaded. As this file is uncompressed its memory footprint expands. Then various areas of the firmware must be updated. It’s a tricky process similar to changing socks while running. If this business expands into the defective area of memory, the unit will crash and may not be able to restart. It is possible that a Factory Reset or an additional attempt to update will avoid the defective area.

While Mother Nature is never fair and units can fail at any time, it is curious that both of your units failed at exactly the same time. If this is a memry issue, it’s possible that memory failed weeks ago and at different times for each unit, but the update attempted to access the area in both units.

A wild card work around attempt would be to power down the units for a day or more, make sure that they are cool, then attempt the update. It’s possible that the cool memory will work long enough to allow a successful update.