A few weeks ago I turned on my Sony Ericsson K800i but nothing happened. Blank screen, not the familiar 'buzz' you normally feel when you turn it on, just nothing.

Searching on the web hinted me to look at the infrared 'eye' in the bottom right of the phone. And indeed, when I tried to turn it on there was a small red light in there blinking 5 times.

The 5 times blink told me that the EROM is corrupt. How and why this could have happened from one day to the other, I have no clue. But it did happen. I tried a lot of things (charging it fully, replacing the battery for another one, forcing a firmware update through the Sony Ericsson firmware updater) but nothing worked. It was dead and stayed dead.

Until in one of the forums found a tip that actually worked for me!

These are the steps I took:

  • Download the wotan client from www.wotanserver.com Notice that you don't need an account or credits to download and use it for these steps.
  • Remove the sim card, the memory card and the battery from the phone.
  • If you have never updated the phone using the Sony Ericsson firmware updater, you might need to install the USB driver, to be found at http://www.wotanserver.com/USBFlashDriver.exe
  • Start the wotan client (it will connect to an FTP server and retrieve some updates, allow it do that) and -clear- the login and password fields in the bottom right
  • Click start
  • Now press 2 and 5 together on the phone (and keep them pressed) and connect it using the data cable to your computer. Please notice that the wotan client asks you to press the 'C' button, but you really should press 2 + 5.
  • After a while the wotan client will recognize your phone and it will flash a new EROM.
  • Disconnect the phone if told so, remove the battery and leave it without a battery for a few minutes (I waited 5 minutes).

And that's it! It was alive again, and all my data was still there too.