Fixing my Archos

Well, I was jamming at work, and my Archos slipped off the desk and "crash" hit the floor.

It got to the end of the song, and a message box appears saying

File corrupted

Then I got the dreaded error 

Recovery Code 2, System is damaged. 

Would you like to recover it? 

No, 

repair, 

Format Disk

No and repair didn't do anything. I was afraid of   Format Disk.

After a quick internet hunt, I found out this was a common problem. D'oh! With a common fix!!!

Apparently, the harddrive becomes disconnected by just a little bit.  All you have to do is open it up and push in the harddrive cable.

I tried it, it worked!

Here is my journey:

Backside of the Archos: battery is on the left, harddrive is on the right.

To remove the harddrive, you need to remove 6 tiny screws.

4 on the end by the LEDs

To get the other 2, remove the battery 

The harddrive outer case will come off with a little bit of encouragement.

You can peel back the harddrive to see the flex cable.

Here is where I had a problem.  There are 2 floating nut plates (holding the 4 screws by the LEDs).  One got wedged out of place.  I had to remove the screws holding the motherboard to the case AND separate the LCD from the case.  Royal pain in the tookis! Be careful.

Push the connectors back in.  Note, they looked like they were still connect to me.  If I hadn't read that was the fix, I wouldn't have tried it.

Hope it works for you.