Originally posted by iGlad Luckily I didn't pay too much for it now had that been a £700 camera. I still don't get how they can allow an update to possibly brick your camera.
I'm glad it wasn't too expensive.
As for allowing updates that can brick your camera... Well, it's not completely unheard of but your situation is in the tiniest, tiniest minority. The usual cause is that (one of?) the batteries either weren't fully charged, or
appeared to be fully charged but, under high load, were unable to sustain the necessary voltage and current to write to the camera's EEPROM (or whatever memory device the camera's operating system is stored in). Depending on how old and how well-used the batteries are (and whether they're OEM or poor quality 3rd party items), that's the most likely cause I can think of.
If it wasn't the batteries at fault, then it possibly suggests another element of the camera may have been faulty. The reason I say this is that the process of writing a new code image to a memory device is very straightforward. There's really not much to go wrong so long as (a) the power source is constant and sufficient to complete the task, and (b) nothing fails in the read/write hardware over which the update takes place.
It's cold comfort, I know, but this is generally a very, very reliable process. I've updated the firmware on my K-5, K-3, K-3II, Q and Q7 (in some cases, numerous times) without any problem. Also bear in mind that the same tiny risk exists with firmware update of any camera - Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic (if you search "camera bricked firmware update" on Google, you'll see this). It's not a Pentax-specific thing.
Now that the camera is unresponsive, have you tried taking the batteries out, leaving the camera for a few hours, then fitting a different set of new batteries, to see if the camera starts up? It's just possible that if you're using the same batteries, they have been depleted during the update process.