I know this is an old thread but hopefully my information can still help someone. After some extensive research online, the problem with the 2012 Focus radio not turning on (frozen blue squares) is the CD player. When you turn the radio on, it tries to initialize the CD player, when it cannot, it freezes up. My car was doing the same thing, it would show the time, temperature and frozen blue squares. So I removed the radio, just the silver box, not the monitor, I used a small torx screwdriver to remove the bottom panel of the silver box. Once the bottom panel was removed I pulled the gray ribbon cable loose from the connection inside where it attached to the CD player. Once disconnected, I re-assembled the silver box, and put it back in the dash. Turn the key on and it worked, and has worked ever since. I hope this tutorial helps someone out.
Friday, May 25th, 2018 AT 5:52 PM