factory reset worked for me
After trying many SD cards, i finally got the brown box to appear by using the image that jichuan suggests in his troubleshooting section (post 131) and then erasing the files included with the image and copying over jichuan's files from his zip in method #2. Still no brown box until i put the sd card in and restored the nook to factory defaults (hold down power and n keys, releasing when n screen goes blank). The next time i turned on the device, the box appeared.
After trying many SD cards, i finally got the brown box to appear by using the image that jichuan suggests in his troubleshooting section (post 131) and then erasing the files included with the image and copying over jichuan's files from his zip in method #2. Still no brown box until i put the sd card in and restored the nook to factory defaults (hold down power and n keys, releasing when n screen goes blank). The next time i turned on the device, the box appeared.