Mecool M8S Pro W - No longer boots

Help & Support Installation & Booting
1

Hi all

Had this mecool up and running for a while, but turned it off and it booted up into Android TV, thought that was odd but just ran the boot to libreelec android app (which is how I boot into coreelec).

But it doesn’t boot into Coreelec any more it just goes to the android system menu with the following:

Boot system now
Boot to boot loader
Apply update from ADB
Etc
Etc

No option gets into Coreelec, just back to Android TV.

I pulled the usb out and recopied across the correct device tree on my PC but same issue?

Any fix? Anyway to extract the Kodi libraries before I format and do Coreelec all again?

Any ideas?

2

Bad USB port connection ???

3

Its the same usb port?

4

Check the pins.

5

Will check the pins tomorrow but I doubt that’s the issue as the usb was never taken out before this booting issue started.

Is there anyway to restore the coreelec install on the USB? Like it still works fine in my PC.

6

I am assuming your will boot OK with its stock Android OS. In this case, try to reinstall CoreELEC on a USB storage and see if it will detect to boot and process through the installation. You may also wanna try with a different USB storage.

7

That’s my next idea too but I don’t want to lose the library on this install, anyway to keep the library or transfer across to new install?

8

If you can access the stick then yes. Copy the following:
userdata/sources.xml
userdata/Database/Myvideosxx.db
On a new install stop kodi and copy those 2 files in.
Delete the following:
userdata/Database/texturesxx.db
userdata/Thumbnails
Restart kodi and your old library should be there - you’ll need to re-cache artwork so it may be a bit slow scrolling at first.

9

Cheers, if I copy the whole of user data it should be exactly the same right?

10

Yes. Although you won’t have any addons you’ve installed.
You could just copy the whole .kodi folder.

11

Man this Coreelec thing is annoying haha, so I decided to go with the format and reinstall route.

Deleted all the partitions on the USB in Windows Computer Management, ran Rufus with the Coreelec image again, but its only creating 2 partitions as below:

Coreelec 512mb FAT32 partition (the one with the device trees)
And a 32mb Linux partition with nothing else in it.

Where is the large linux partition with Coreelec installed, I have done rufus two times now.

12

Rufus log if it helps:

Format operation started
Requesting disk access…
Will use ‘I:’ as volume mountpoint
Deleting partitions…
Deleting ALL partitions from disk ‘\?\PhysicalDrive5’:
● Partition 1 (offset: 4194304, size: 512 MB)
● Partition 2 (offset: 541065216, size: 32 MB)
Opened \.\PhysicalDrive5 for exclusive write access
Writing compressed image…
Remounted \?\Volume{2aeca094-6925-11e9-8367-ac9e17854146}\ on I:\

Found USB 3.0 device ‘Lexar USB Flash Drive USB Device’ (21C4:0CC4)
Found USB 2.0 device ‘Seagate Desktop USB Device’ (0BC2:3300)
Device eliminated because it was detected as a Hard Drive (score 33 > 0)
If this device is not a Hard Drive, please e-mail the author of this application
NOTE: You can enable the listing of Hard Drives under ‘advanced drive properties’
1 device found
Disk type: Removable, Disk size: 32 GB, Sector size: 512 bytes
Cylinders: 3773, Tracks per cylinder: 255, Sectors per track: 63
Partition type: MBR, NB Partitions: 2
Disk ID: 0x53530F81
Drive has an unknown Master Boot Record
Partition 1:
Type: FAT32 LBA (0x0c)
Size: 512 MB (536870912 bytes)
Start Sector: 8192, Boot: Yes
Partition 2:
Type: GNU/Linux (0x83)
Size: 32 MB (33554432 bytes)
Start Sector: 1056768, Boot: No
Found USB 3.0 device ‘Lexar USB Flash Drive USB Device’ (21C4:0CC4)
Found USB 2.0 device ‘Seagate Desktop USB Device’ (0BC2:3300)
Device eliminated because it was detected as a Hard Drive (score 33 > 0)
If this device is not a Hard Drive, please e-mail the author of this application
NOTE: You can enable the listing of Hard Drives under ‘advanced drive properties’
1 device found
Disk type: Removable, Disk size: 32 GB, Sector size: 512 bytes
Cylinders: 3773, Tracks per cylinder: 255, Sectors per track: 63
Partition type: MBR, NB Partitions: 2
Disk ID: 0x53530F81
Drive has an unknown Master Boot Record
Partition 1:
Type: FAT32 LBA (0x0c)
Size: 512 MB (536870912 bytes)
Start Sector: 8192, Boot: Yes
Partition 2:
Type: GNU/Linux (0x83)
Size: 32 MB (33554432 bytes)
Start Sector: 1056768, Boot: No

13

The large partition is created automatically during the first boot

14

Ah good to know. OK so I have to boot first before copying across.

15

OK it boots into Coreelec again and then I put into my PC and copied across the backed up userdata folder.

But when back in Coreelec it has nothing from the userdata folder, it looks like a fresh install with no library etc.

16

is any way to create just the booting partition because the large partition is already created with some data?

17

You can’t copy this data in Windows.
Start your Mecool with the sd card plugged in and copy it using WinSCP or the Kodi file manager.
That’s the reason, why the backup/restore function was integrated into CE setting, to make this whole process a lot easier.

18

You can copy in windows with the right tools, but it wouldn’t pick it up.

Just did an export from my other systems and imported, bit painful mucking around setting it up again but done now cheers.

19

I don’t use Windows OS and I don’t know what happens when you do that. However, it always works for me when I do this similar thing on a Linux desktop computer. For instance, sometimes my kodi on one of my CoreELEC boxes starts acting up, I just do the following:

  1. Properly shutdown the problematic CoreELEC box.
  2. When I plug the SD card (or the USB storage) to a Linux computer, I noticed from the output of dmesg most of the time Linux has to perform partition cleaning on the DOS partition before it executes automount the partitions on SD card. When that happens, I usually unmount the partition(s) and manually execute the cleaning process. Sometimes, it take several cleaning process to just clean the DOS partition. Then, remount the partitions once they are clean.
  3. Manually rename the existing /storage/.kodi directory to something else as a backup. Then, manually copy (or backup) working ~/.kodi directory from my Linux desktop computer to the /storage on the SD card.
  4. Execute sync before umount the partitions. Then, take the SD card to my TV Box to boot.
  5. Upon finishing the boot process, I usually go to the kodi configuration to confirm its settings I want.

The above procedure works all the time for me. I hope that helps.