MX-2300N E7-03 error...

[hekotez]

Hello everyone,
I'll try to make the story short, a client of the company to whom i work for has an mx-2300 that we started servicing not long ago, the machine has very little work (the first intervention i did was to replace the lower fuser roller because it was "square")...
Anyways last friday the client pressed the standby button on the keyboard, and before the machine had done the full powerdown, pulled the plug!!!
After that the machine never worked again, just triggering an E7-03, wich according to the SM means hdd failure...
I dont have experience with this machine, related to this problem. so we hauled it to the importer here in Portugal to get some assistance with it, they went to another machine (same model) took out the HDD and putted it in the defective machine, did a sim 14 to clear the E7-03, then a sim 16 to clear the U2-05 and truth is the machine was working... They told me if we wanted a new HDD Sharp would charge a fortune for it, so i'd be better off putting a new one in it myself...
All fine and well, tho it didnt worked that way... the SM is very vague when it comes to replacing the HDD... From what i was told by the tech when installing a new HDD we reset the 7-03 then the U2-05 (wich seems to be HDD data mismach) we do a sim 62 to format the HDD and then we can do a data import to restore client data (well the data is non existant, the client doesnt use scanner nor printer, uses it just as copier) but the machine doesnt let me do that... i installed a brand new hardrive (original hdd was a 40Gb Hitachi... i tried 4 new HDD's, different sizes, 40, 80, 120, 160 Gb diferent brands and the machine just puts out the e7-03... and doesnt let me format the HDD...
I honestly done believe that its this hard to replace an HDD... and i fear that there might be something more wrong with this machine... it did work with the hdd from another machine, but i cant get to make it work with a "blank" hdd...
The machine does tamper with the HDD (tho when i try to format it the machine throws out a NG result) i plugged the hdd to a comp, and saw 2 partitions made one of exactly 10Gb and the rest on a second partition... tho they arent formatted its just unallocated space, witch i find weird since SM seem to say the machine works with FAT32 system?!

So if anyone would be kind enough to shed me some light on this matter... the distributor was of not much help at all, tried an hdd from another machine on it... worked... and sended me home "just replace the hdd"... but either im being really dumb here or there's some trick to it... or what i fear is there's some other background problem here that i simply cant pinpoint due to the lack of experience on this matter... Thanks alot in advance

[Akitu]

When replacing the HDD are you canceling the errors first before attempting to format the drive? The U2-05 issue must be dealt with before any formatting can take place, as the machine is searching for the original HDD so to speak/

There was also a tech bulletin about upgrading the machines from a 40 GB drive to an 80 GB drive because of excessive E7-03 errors, and with that I would recommend using between an 80-120 GB drive, I haven't had any issues with using a drive that's too large, though I haven't actively gone out and tried to see what the capacity is. As for brand name drives, I don't think it matters as to which brand is used, they all seem to fare the same.

Try formatting the drive externally, and have a firmware reload available for when reinstalling it, sim 14 for the E7-03 and if all is well, the machine will throw a U2-05 error, sim 16 to clear that, and you should be good to go after that.

[hekotez]

After a few times thru the machine i have tried to format the hdd's thru a computer... no avail, truth is i simply cant get rid of the E7-03, i do a sim 14... reboot the machine... and i get a e7-03 again so i never even got to the part of trying to do a sim 62-1 :S ... so clearlly something is not right since i was beside the tech, he did a sim 14, reboot, got a U2-05, did a sim 16, another reboot... and the machine was working... and off they sent me home...
Unfortunatly (and this is why we sell few close to no Sharps) we have very limited support... basically they threw me some crumbs, but if i want the problem solved i gotta take the machine there and pay them to fix it... all the Sharp SM's i got had to be bought too... not to mention a till 303 that i took out of the box to program for a client and it was defective... called to claim warranty and the answer i got was that Sharp had no warranty on the cash registers... so yeah... guess i'll have to pay for the FW too lol

[Akitu]

Odds are that the rapid switching of hard drives may have incidentally damaged the controller board, I've had it happen once at a location about 90 minutes away. Fix was ultimately installing a new hard drive and the board, along with transferring the EEPROM. Firmware is available on Sharp's service site.

I did find in my experiments with the machine with the defective HDD (MX-3501N) that removing the drive and reinstalling it would allow me to cancel the E7-03 and proceed to a U2-05, but only once, and it was still continuing to give NG errors at the formatting stage.

If you can actually get to the stage where you need to update the firmware, PM me your email address and I can send it over for you if you're unable to get it off the Sharp service website.