How to hard reset the headunit?

holding the power button on the head unit normally initiates a reboot, but that assumes it is already running properly. I assume there is a sequence of powering on while holding a button that would get you into a boot menu of some sort, but I don't know what it would be.

What were you doing when this problem began?

Try googling for similar situations with an Accord... The head units seem to be fairly close.

 

Well, you might be in for an embarrassing [and expensive] trip the the dealer for them to 'fix' your car.

I totally get your desire to tinker with things... Personally, I try to resist this temptation because there is a big difference between bricking a few hundred dollar phone and a $30K vehicle !

Please keep us posted... Anything you learn in this painful process could be useful to others who may be faced with this unfortunate scenario.

I saw a reference (not a Clarity, maybe an Accord of Civic) where someone was able to recover by disconnecting the 12V battery for a much longer time (I think it was maybe 1.5 hours). I have no idea whether that makes sense, but it is not hard to try.

 

Just out of curiosity - With a dead, or bricked head unit (or even with it completely removed), is the vehicle operational?
Can you 'start' and drive it without a head unit in place?

 

@Arctiic -
Have you solved this problem? Another forum member has just reported the same thing.

 

@Arctiic , I am having the same problem, the infotainment screen keeps rebooting at H logo, unplugged 12v did not work. Please let me know if you find a solution.

 

Quick update. Since my clarity is still under warranty, so I took it to the dealer. They inspected, the unit has to be replaced. They ordered and replaced it for me.

 

@Arctiic

Thanks for the update.
If you could elaborate on a few related questions, it may help others faced with a similar problem...

1. Please explain exactly how you got this boot menu - You stated that you had this 'recovery.sh' on a USB drive in Port 2... Then what? Did you need to do a battery disconnect again, or just powered up the vehicle as normal?
2. This recovery procedure is specifically to remove Honda Hack. Was it an attempt to install HH that broke your system?
3. Once you got the boot menu above, did you simply do the 'reboot system now' or did you execute one or more of the other options (in which order)?
4. Finally, now that you are up and running again, do you have HH installed and working, or are you back to a factory configuration?

Which version of HH caused this? I installed version 5.1.3 almost a year ago, and it has been trouble-free.
I see there have been 4 versions since then, but I have not attempted to update.

 

Not to bring up an old thread but I'm running into a similar issue where my head unit is very unresponsive and I've been trying to get into the recovery menu to attempt a factory reset. Is HH required in order to boot into recovery? I don't have HH installed and so far I haven't had any luck getting into recovery with a USB drive and the recovery script.

 

After doing some experimentation, I was never able to get a boot into recovery mode as is BUT once I installed HH (which took a very long time), I was able to boot right into it with no issues. Seems you need root (or possibly some other option HH sets) in order to use recovery mode.

Unfortunately doing a cache wipe and a factory reset did not resolve my issue of the infotainment center being very slow and not even able to play bluetooth audio without breaks. Seems like I'm at the point where something needs to be replaced, I guess.

Thanks for the very helpful thread!

 

Perhaps my case may be similar. The other day my radio display fails to boot up when my Clarity start up. The screen remains blank. I tried holding the radio power location as well as removing 12V overnight. Both fails to reinitialize the radio display. I can see the radio display back lit turns off and on but the screen remains blank. What fixes the problem finally was when I removed my usb drive containing music from the center console. The Honda logo came on the screen immediately. The rest of the system came afterwards. I checked my usb drive in the computer and indeed it has become defective. Seem a bad USB drive can hang the radio unit from booting up. Hope this helps.

 

Haven't posted in a while and was about to regarding this issue but solved it. As I haven't seen my solution posted I wanted to at least share it:

My USB port was probably dirty. Leading up to today's issue, I noticed connecting my iPhone was getting very temperamental. It would easily connect but needed to be left undisturbed on the tray. Any nudge and it would disconnect.

This was an early symptom because today, my display because completely unresponsive. It was initially fine this morning until I made a 5 minute stop, and upon returning and reconnecting my phone, it connected but would not accept any interactions on the touch screen.

I was about to start unplugging batteries when I noticed the display was actually giving a few clues. When starting the car, it seemed to go very quickly past the disclaimer warning, into the general car menu and straight to the "no device connected" message (not sure the exact verbiage).

Solution: Thinking there was a minor short circuit down there, I plugged/unplugged my USB cable several times from the car's port. (The phone wasn't even attached to the other end). The thought was to dislodge any foreign matter causing the issue. After doing that a few times, I restarted the car and the unit was fully cooperative. YMMV but I wanted to document this in the hopes it may help someone.