I know there are a few old threads on this issue, but I’m starting a new one as a resource since it turns out the solution is ridiculously simple but isn’t covered in those.
I have a Vontar X4 box running CE 21ne. Everything worked fine except for AV1 decoding, which would freeze at times. I noticed that my box was running an old firmware from 2023 and that Vontar had posted a newer version dated 2024 so decided to try that out. I have an old USB A-A cable, but wasn’t able to get windows to see the box using it, so used the USB upgrade option in the package. The firmware upgrade worked fine (or seemed to) and I did a factory reset as instructed. The android boot worked fine so a I booted back into CE. Everything looked alright until … 20 secs after boot I got the dreaded “Missing partiton ‘super’” error on the screen. And, sure enough, media playback failed. I tried another factory reset in Android - no dice. While there are plenty of old X4 firmware files floating around, they’re all images to be used with the AML burn tool, and I couldn’t get windows to see my box. Oh noes, what to do …
I finally resorted to the ‘try random stuff and see if something works’ method, booted it into Android again and performed the USB update process (using the same 2024 package) a second time. Everything worked exactly as the first time, did another factory reset and then booted into CE. Boom, no error appeared and CE now plays media again.
So, if you get this error after applying a firmware upgrade, don’t panic, just do the upgrade again. Clearly the upgrade process isn’t bullet-proof and sometimes it will fail to create partitions properly, so it might be that the critical element is resetting and erasing everything before the upgrade.
I haven’t tested AV1 decoding on the new firmware yet, am just happy that I have my CE box back and working again.