Nokia 6267 restarting itself and how I got around it
I know, I know. I have a very old cellular phone. But since I have enough electronic toys, I couldn’t care less about turning my phone into one. And it happens to be a good one.
Everything was OK until it failed to start. Or more precisely, it started, and then restarted itself. Like this:
And again. And again. It turned out that a defective MicroSD flash card caused it to go crazy. So I replaced the card, and everything looked fine again. But then it had a horrible relapse: It went back to this restarting pattern again, but this time it didn’t help to take out the MicroSD card. What turned out to be really bad, was that it was impossible to connect it to a computer through USB for backup, because it would restart all the time.
It wasn’t a power supply thing. I learned that from the fact, that when the phone was started without a SIM, it asked me whether it should start the phone even so. And it didn’t restart as long as I didn’t press any button on that question.
So it was clear that the phone did something that went wrong a few seconds after being powered on. So the trick was to prevent it from getting on with its booting process, but still allow a USB connection.
Connecting the USB cord while in any of the pre-start menus turned out useless (Use without SIM? Exit from Flight mode?). So I looked a bit at the codes.
What did eventually work, was to use the *#06# code, which is used to check IMEI. The phone showed me the serial number and didn’t restart, and when I plugged in the USB cord, I got the usual menu allowing me to choose mode. From there on it was a lot of playing around, trying and retrying until I finally recovered my phone list.
This also made it possible to reprogram the handset with Nokia’s Phoenix software, which didn’t work otherwise. Neither did the Green-*-3 three finger salute for a deep reset nor the infamous *#7370# code for the same purpose. These two never did anything, even when the phone appeared to be sane.
I should point out, that it’s possible that this trick may have solved a very specific issue on my own phone’s internal messup, and still, I thought it was best to have it written down for rainy days.
Reader Comments
I have had a 6267 for years. I love my 6267 (well, I used to).
I especially love the Notes application.
All my important stuff is in the Notes.
So, problems:
1. my 6267 started to take a long time to send a text message. I checked my wife’s cell phone – no problem with the cell tower.
2. also when I changed locations I would get the same sudden shutdowns and reboots (but not continuously like you experienced). Get back home and it settled down – wierd. I’ve experienced this often.
3. I’m in the Philippines so I bought a ‘factory refurbished’ 6267 from Amazon.com in the States.
4. eventually this 6267 also developed the same problem. So I bought another ‘refurbished’ 6267.
5. after a while – same same. So now I am the proud owner of three 6267s and none of them will transmit text messages worth a damn.
So, I’m using a cheapo for texting & calling but I carry my old 6267 around with me also for all my sensitive data in ‘Notes’ & in ‘Contacts’. And I still update that data when necessary.
If there was an easy solution I would go for it but THREE 6267s???
So now I am searching for a Nokia to replace my 3 6267s with very similar attributes to the 6267, i.e. ‘Notes’ with the same feel and capacity as the 6267. But I don’t want to downsize on the screen.
Can you point me in the right direction, Sir?
Sure would appreciate it.