Question Vizio P50-C1 boot loop

[joreck]

I got a 'defect' P50-C1 TV and am trying to revive it.
The behavior is strange: when I turn it on, the logo displays and once done booting, the screen goes dark (not completely black, though). After a while (app. 30-60 sec, not consistent) it reboots.
Here is what is interesting - after playing with the physical buttons, I enabled the store demo mode, so now after the logo disappears I get a message saying that the demo mode will be activated unless I hit the physical Input button or press it on the remote, along with a 60 sec countdown. When I hit Input, the screen goes dark and sometimes it reboots after a bit, but sometimes the message comes back, but the countdown is at 15 sec. Every once in a while it freezes during that countdown and reboots, but when it finishes, sometimes I can hit Menu a couple times and the menu will actually appear.
Getting into the menu, I have been able to:
*Perform a factory reset - no success
*Eventually perform a full system update (see screenshot) - also no success/change
https://postimg.cc/HjkX8FY7
*Change other settings (e.g. turn CEC off, disable audio, turn timers off, enable quick start, etc) - nothing helped, though.
After a while the TV will reboot again; I was actually surprised I was able to pull off the update!
During the system update I was able to verify that the whole display works fine and at some point actually sounds started playing and the Neflix logo displayed for a couple seconds. Then the screen went to this:
https://postimg.cc/cvBLm4T1
There is no visual damage to any of the capacitors.
When googling this I found that a ton of people are having issues with Vizio TVs rebooting, but haven't found anything close to this and also no good fixes. Somebody said that they got new main and power supply boards and it didn't help them.
Any idea what I could try? Thanks in advance!

 

[Okie83]

I believe I found a solution to the constant "re-boot" problem.

A little background information: 7-10 days ago, my 4-year old Vizio P65-F1 Smart TV got stuck in a re-boot loop. I called Vizio who told me the tv needed a "hard" re-set, so I unplugged everything, press this and that button, but no luck. After trying for 55 minutes, nothing worked and the representative concluded it was a circuit board issue.

When we first bought the tv and plugged it in, we DID NOT accept the Vizio SMARTCAST program, automatic updates, or upload of VIzio data option,. My wife and I believe Vizio forced an update that sent the tv in to the loop. (This is similar to regular computer and smart phone updates from Microsoft, Apple, etc.,) We have had no power surges or similar electrical issues. Our tv has had no updates since purchase, but it is hooked up to our internet and we watch PLEX and U-tube videos each week.

The short and simple "possible" fix for this is: (I found this on internet from a person who had our same problem.)

1. Unplug everything from your tv. (I'm sure you've done this numerous times.)
2. On the back/side of tv, press down the "On/Off" button for at least one minute.
3. After one minute, while pressing down the On/Off button, plug the power cord back in to the television. (When the tv was plugged back in, it started the "loop" process again and I thought nothing had changed BUT,
4. After 10-12 minutes, the "Update" screen appeared. My wife got the tv remote, NOT cable box remote, and navigated the following steps:

- Menu>Network>Choose Wireless Connection>enter your Wi-Fi password>press "Connect".
- To get to the update section: Menu>System>Check For Updates>select "Yes". (DO NOT TURN OFF TV.
The tv will run multiple updates and eventually restart itself. My wife had to watch it every half hour to see what it was asking for during the updates. The total update time was around five hours.
You will have the SMARTCAST input option along side the HDMI1, HDMI2, etc. For us, we keep everything on HDMI1 to view our normal cable. We don't stream or watch any other cable option networks.

After these steps, it appears our television is back up and running. No guarantee this will fix your problem, but it appears to have fixed ours.
Have a good day, Okie83.