So, if you are preparing your stick on a Mac or on Linux you definitely know that some things should be considered. For example, to work with a FAT32 stick and don’t use a GPT partition table (for the very uncommon situation that you may have converted some of your sticks to GPT).

But, surprise (not really): even when you’ve prepared the stick the right way, Onkyo can spit out an error during the update. Mainly in the 80% region with an error code around 80, e.g. 7-84.

The solution is as easy as it is dumb:
– Take the power cord out
– Use a Windows system to prepare a FAT32 stick with MS-DOS partition table. Sorry, but yeah, really, use a Windows system!
– If you want to be really sure: use the built-in unzipper in Windows to extract the Onkyo firmware update zip
– Copy the unzipped firmware file onto your stick
– Put the power cord back in, start again with the new stick

In my case, after a couple of fails with the first stick which was prepared on Ubuntu, this stick did the job straight away. So I hope it will do the job for you too!

Pro tip: If you want to control your Onkyo (or Pioneer) receiver with a really good app, check out ONPC. It’s open source, free, available for Android and iOS, and can do a few tricks the official app can’t.

This post is part of my tutorials.