HDX not booting and stuck on "Starting..."

You could try pulling the power for ten minutes, but in essence hdxs are computers. If it still fails to start, get yer wallet out.

Try proper power down.  Remove ethernet cable.

Switch on and wait until network is being searched before then reconnecting the ethernet cable.

G

Unplug and leave it for a quarter of an hour. Been here recently. £150 to fix but some money coming our way because while it was back at the factory I tried Minimserver on the NAS and it sounded significantly better than the HDX. So that was a good result and the HDX is going. 

You would need a streamer. We used our  HDX with an NDS. Our HDX goes back many years and started as an HDX-HDD. It was subsequently converted to SSD, used with the DAC, DAC/XPS2 and DAC/555PS. Zero complaints, years of enjoyment. When the NDS arrived we kept the HDX for convenience. It could rip, serve, do iRadio and play CDs. It would also serve as a backup source if the NDS fell ill, which happened twice.  It was only when it refused to boot (behaving like yours) that rather than plugging a succession of USB sticks into the NDS, did I have a punt on a NAS based software server, Minimserver being a well regarded candidate for our QNAP. From the first track there was no going back. The HDX had obviously been getting in the way. It might be that our repaired HDX would sound excellent (invisible would be the ideal) but the music sounds so good that we have left the HDX with the dealer and would rather have some money.

At the end of the day its a PC. They can get slow and buggy and they are noisy, both mechanically and electrically. Our HDX has a list of fixes carried out. The boot sector was corrupted (obviously), the CMOS battery was close to flat and the logo was bleeding. I think one or two internal boards were changed too. £150 for all that, on an out of warranty unit didn't strike me as unreasonable.

Exactly the same as our HDX about 12 months ago!  Was perfect prior to this and has been perfect ever since, so can't complain!  

Screen did did exactly the same as yours on startup Paul, and just wouldn't do anything else.

Thanks everyone for all the help.

I have given the HDX to my dealer to sortout.  He is an authorised service agent. My HDX was one of the original versions. It has had the sound card upgraded and had extra RAM added.  However the disks were the two 400GB original version so it is about 5 years old. Just around the time for good disks to fail - at least that is my experience from work.

Assuming it is reasonably economic I will get it upgraded to the 2TB version.

The support from Naim is great.  It is great the way they look after out of warinty products. Naim products maybe more expensive than some compeditors but over the lifetime of the products they are Economical. Products can be serviced, upgraded and because of this maintain trade in value.

For now I am using USB sticks directly into the nDac.  I had forgotten how much better the sub sticks sound however they are not so convenien.

Regards

   Paul

When we did the factory tour, the servicing and repair department was extremely interesting. Some of the tales they had to tell were memorable and some of the equipment they had in was over 20 years old - it was all serviceable. You can't do miracles with old CD mechs but very little else is off the menu.

Agree about the USB sticks. Clunky to operate but very good to listen to. Good luck with it.