thread Re: terminal stuck on start up screen in Hardware Setup & Troubleshooting

terminal stuck on start up screen

seagirlrun — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 10:19:36 GMT

My terminal is new, only used once. Purchased two in 2021 just before the end of the year to use at an art exhibition. I used both of them for this two-day show without problems. Then, in August, when I took them out to use them again for a second show, one of them isn't engaging. It charges fine, says it's loading, says it loads 100%, and then goes to a dark screen with only the Square logo. It won't go past this screen. All I can do is turn it off and on. It's not a year old yet and has only been used once. Please advise!

Thanks,

Rebecca

Re: terminal stuck on start up screen

TheRealChipA — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 17:12:16 GMT

Hi @seagirlrun. Your problem sounded eerily familiar to something I read in a beta group I’m in currently. Since those posts are not public and I can’t share them, I did a little digging. There was a problem a few weeks ago with some terminals locking up, or getting stuck in loops. There was a fix made, but it is highly possible that you didn’t get that fix since you haven’t been using yours. Try this….

To perform a factory reset: press and hold the power button (~12s) > wait for the on-screen prompt to advise you to release the power button.

You most likely will have to go through the initial setup phase again, but hopefully that won’t be too painful. Let me know if this doesn’t work, or if you need anything else, and definitely let me know if it DOES work!

Re: terminal stuck on start up screen

seagirlrun — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 17:40:41 GMT

Thanks, Chip! That is exactly what I did after posting my query and it resolved the problem. Thank you so much!