Troubleshooting Noah: Noah fails to boot/flashing OS

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DA_Maz
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun May 19, 2013 8:28 am

Troubleshooting Noah: Noah fails to boot/flashing OS

Post by DA_Maz »

After a long journey in getting my Noah back on track, I decided to gather all the knowledge about this issue I had, so fellow Noahs don't have to search all the topics like I did, haunted by constant fear that 'everything Noah' lies only in their past and won't come back for good.

If you have one of these problems, this thread probably helps you:
-) Noah displays "Loading performance... failed" everytime it is turned on.
-) You did unwillingly and stupidly did some "optimisations" for Noah which involved "updating" or the like in the hope to enhance Noah's abilities. Now Noah constantly asks for keys for everything, rendering Noah effectivly unusable.
-) Everything seems to work fine, except for the most important part: No sound is coming out of your synth.

Problem 2&3 were resulting from problem 1 in my case, so I will just give a rundown of how to solve problem 1 and not run into problem 2&3... so let's start:


1.) "Loading performance... failed"

-) In my case this came out of nowhere. I use my Noah on a daily basis and suddenly, instead of all the wonderful sound Noah usually produces, Noah only managed to display the text "Loading performance... failed" when turned on.

-) As Noah failed to react to any form of input, only bringing it back to factory settings seemed like a valuable option. To achieve this, you need the FlashBox from the creamware-ftp, which seems to be very simple to use. However there are some things you have to be extremely carefull about.


-=FlashBox-ABC=-

-) Go to ftp://ftp.creamware.de/software/Noah/ and navigate to the "Flashtool" folder.

-) Download Flashbox.exe, the *.dmp file (the actual clean factory-OS-file) you need and the dll.zip file

-) Unzip the *.dll-files into a genuine folder.

-) Place the Flashbox.exe-file in the same folder, where the extracted *.dll-files are located. You then should have a Folder containing the Flashbox.exe and the 4 *.dll-files.

-) Now you have to start the Noah-synth, but beware:
Don't start the synth normally by just tapping the power button. Push the power and the utility button at the same time, to enter MINI-OS-MODE. If you succed the display will say something like: "Mini-os mode for flashing OS via USB". Entering this mode is extremely important, as flashing NOAH in normal mode may produce a good outcome only on the surface, it will run you into incomprehensible problems later on however.

-) Because you likely never started your NOAH in the MINI-OS mode, you need to install drivers for Noah all over again. If Windows fails to apply the drivers automatically you need to set everything manually (point 7-13 in the big post in this thread http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=31982 helps you with that)

-) As soon as you installed the drivers for Noah in Mini-OS mode launch FlashBox.

-) Now hit "Write Image". If you get an error massage hit "Get FlashID" a few times until the number stays the same. Select the *.dmp file and press "ok".

-) Now your Noah synth and FlashBox will appear to be frozen (Windows will even show FlashBox as "not responding") but don't mind that, because Windows can't really grasp Noah. Just wait a as long as it takes for FlashBox to confront you with a strange message (took about 10min for me). For me it was "Sector 1to63 burned with NoahDefault.dmp" which only tries to say "process finished" but comes across like a panic inducing: "Internal flash burned out, your Noah is dead, leave the sinking ship".

-) After you can close FlashBox without resorting to taskmanager or the like, your Noah should be ready to be turned off, although nothing changed on its display from the beginning of entering Mini-OS mode. This concludes the usage of FlashBox.
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2.) The factory settings of NOAH or the quest for keys

-) After flashing the internal memory of your NOAH via Flashbox or by hitting the wrong button at the wrong time, Noah will ask you about keys everytime you try to load a plugin.

-) You can find tempting NoKey.oxe files, which make you believe this key-problem will be over in a sec., but you are mistaken. *.oxe files AREN'T KEYS irrespective of their name. *.oxe files are installers for plugins that come without the corresponding keys, hence "nokey". Quite deceivingly, but not without reason.

-) What you need is a key tailored to your specific serial numbered Noah unit. This file is an *.rgy. I hope you kept it, because then you can just import it into the activation-prompt the remote-software confronts you with, everytime you are loading up a plugin. If not, you will have to write an e-mail to the soniccore-support staff. Include the serial number of your Noah (on the back of the rack) and ask them nicely for a new key. They are an awsome bunch, so they will send you the key quite fast (it took them only 1 day in my case) although this Noah-synth is discontinued hardware.

-) Apply the *.rgy file and the activation prompt will be gone for good.
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3.) Noah works prefectly fine (even MIDI lights blink), except he remains completely silent and no sound comes out of him

-) As I said in the beginning this puzzled me for quite some time, but the problem lied in incautiously flashing the memory without entering the MINI-OS mode. So if you have this problem as a result of flashing or tinkering with the NOAH OS in any way, I recommend trying everything from start and always use MINI-OS for memory-flash actions.
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I hope I could help some of you fellow Noahs and spare yourself from going through tons of posts to find the right solutions.

Credit goes out to all the nice and persistent posters on this board who helped out the OPs of all the threads I was surfing through, which in the end helped me to solve my problems, enabled me to enjoy my Noah-synth some more and provided the intelligence that I have combined in this thread.

Thank you

regards
DA_Maz
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