My Eken Android Bootloop Fix

I want to keep this a little brief.  My Eken W70 was suffering from a bootloop issue after factory resetting the tablet.  This tablet had gone through a previous update to Jellybean although I suspected that the update was an unofficial one.  So, noting that if I don't fix this, I might as well toss this to the bin, I was emboldened into tinkering it in an attempt to fix it.

Flashplayer and Linux Mint

So a vulnerability was found on Flash that made Firefox disable the Flashplayer until people updated their plugin.  Adobe released an updated version of the last non-Chrome version of Flashplugin for the update but I seemed to be running into some issues with the browser not picking up the latest version.  So, what I did was re-download the latest version of Adobe flashplayer.  Then, I copied libflashplayer.so into /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so and /var/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so.  Then, restarted Firefox and checked the add-ons.  Finally the latest version was recognized.  Back to regular programming.

Random Thoughts

This edition of Random Thoughts is regarding two things.  First is Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut and the Fast Travel feature.  I had made the mistake of fast travelling from Masyaf to Damascus and wondered of a way to fast travel to Acre.  Apparently, if you look at the map, there are icons for "To Kingdom" which when you leave the map through those points, you'll be asked for the option to fast travel.  This only works after Memory 3.

Second is researching on updating the Eken W70 firmware.  The tablet isn't listed in the Eken site anymore and the firmware update files are all bunched up together in the most confusing manner in their FTP site.  As far as I can tell, the W70 and W70+ are similar tablets but the W70+ has a rear facing camera.  I did some research with the Web Archive and this link to identify the proper firmware.  The correct firmware it seems is: W70-1.5.5-1680-NO-WIN8-1.10.zip and the ftp link isn't included as Eken seems to change ftp IPs all the time.

Here are the instructions for Firmware Updating:

1. Download the firmware file
2. Unzip the RAR file to a folder.
3. Open the zipped folder and copy all content in it to an empty SD or Micro SD card.
4. Turn off your device and then insert the SD or Micro SD card into it.
5. The upgrade process will get started automatically when you turn on your device.
6. When the upgrade is finished, remove the SD or Micro SD card from your device.
7. The device will automatically restart again.

That's it!

Error 207 (net::ERR_CERT_INVALID): Unknown error

Last night, I came across a curious issue with secure http connections to Google products on Chrome using my Vista laptop.  I could surf normally, but it would always go crazy when it'd go secure.  Researching online a bit for the issue, I've found that there are various causes for this.

The most common cause of this issue is the system date/time.  People advise to configure your date/time and timezone and sync it to time.windows.com.  I checked mine but it was already correct, so I kept looking.

Some of the other solutions being thrown around were clearing browser cache, playing with the SSL/TLS options on Google Chrome (via Under the Hood).  One serious suggestion was virus infections and a tampered hosts file (e.g. C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts), but I checked and there was nothing wrong with the file.

At the end of it, I found that Google, at one point, posted a note saying they fixed a browser bug, so I decided to update my browser.  Lo and behold, it fixed my issues.  But that doesn't mean it's the be all and all solution.