Got a Nook Color, decided it wasn't for me even after hacking and custom romming it up and decided to restore to stock and sell. Here's a brief run down:
Followed a guide to flash stock image with custom recovery. When I was rooting I had a micro sd with CR and I had also installed a version to the NC's internal memory. From the guide I read it looked like flashing the stock image would restore it back to stock for everything. Did this and I got the standard boot screens and the setup screen with the girl and the video. Powered it off, cleaned it up, reboxed and put it up for sale. After I sold it I got a call back from the buyer saying it was hanging on the startup screen for nearly ten minutes. That later devevolved into boot loops. I would have originally held by "all sales final" mentality with craigslist buyers but then he mentioned it would flash a screen for a moment that would say "android" before boot looping again. Figured at this point I should be a guy and take it back, mainly because I HAD told him I did not root it. I got it back and it was boot looping, going through the "touch the future of reading" page and the N logo. Forced 8 failed starts and got an error message saying install could not complete. I fiddled some more (this is all while with friends at a Best buy mind you) and managed to get it to boot to screen, register my b&n account, and do a factory reset. After this it operated and ran perfectly fine, and after multiple factory resets, resetup runs, and trouble testing to force issues, it yielded perfect functionality. I even tested to make sure it would accept a credit card and that worked fine.
I'm gearing up to sell it to another buyer but I want to make sure I have my ducks in a row. I haven't fiddled with it beyond what I did the night I took it back but all testing I've done today has been fine. With B&N rolling out a froyo update though I want to be sure the unit is fine and won't give the other guy any trouble. There is no super user login or anything else that would suggest it's rooted or running anything other than stock firmware. I'm thinking that not letting it factory reset after flashing a stock rom may have contributed to my first bout of issues. Is there anything else I can check or look at to make sure the NC is good to go though?
EDIT:
Just performed a successful factory reset with deliberate 8 failed boots. Worked like a charm. Think I'm golden less otherwise advised.
Sent you a PM.
I bought a refurbished TF101 about 6 months ago. I rooted the device and tried various ROMs until I settled upon "Revolver 4 by Gnufabio | 4.1.1 Stable". Life was good, no random reboots, no sleep of death just great. I then installed a game called "Dead Trigger" that came up recently on the Play store. The game did not load, crashed without a FC message and so I uninstalled it promptly. Then I started getting video corruption on my Live Wallpaper (Blue Skies). Random reboots soon followed. Time to start over.
I used CWM and wiped the tablet from there (data, cache and Dalvik) and reinstalled Revolver. It did not work. I used the EasyFlasher tool to return my tablet to Stock using the Asus provided firmware from their website (.24). It seemed to work well, as I started over with my "new" tablet and synced to my account, etc, etc, etc. But now I can't use it without it rebooting every 30secs to 1min. It will go into a Sleep of Death on a random basis also. I have not installed any programs on it, I tried not allowing a restore of my Google settings and cannot for the life of me figure out what is going on.
I am unaware of the SBK version, as their is no indication on the tablet of its serial. What vital step am I missing here to revive this tablet? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
StevieJake
steviejake said:
I bought a refurbished TF101 about 6 months ago. I rooted the device and tried various ROMs until I settled upon "Revolver 4 by Gnufabio | 4.1.1 Stable". Life was good, no random reboots, no sleep of death just great. I then installed a game called "Dead Trigger" that came up recently on the Play store. The game did not load, crashed without a FC message and so I uninstalled it promptly. Then I started getting video corruption on my Live Wallpaper (Blue Skies). Random reboots soon followed. Time to start over.
I used CWM and wiped the tablet from there (data, cache and Dalvik) and reinstalled Revolver. It did not work. I used the EasyFlasher tool to return my tablet to Stock using the Asus provided firmware from their website (.24). It seemed to work well, as I started over with my "new" tablet and synced to my account, etc, etc, etc. But now I can't use it without it rebooting every 30secs to 1min. It will go into a Sleep of Death on a random basis also. I have not installed any programs on it, I tried not allowing a restore of my Google settings and cannot for the life of me figure out what is going on.
I am unaware of the SBK version, as their is no indication on the tablet of its serial. What vital step am I missing here to revive this tablet? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
StevieJake
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The RR and SoD come standard with asus stock FW for most people, there is a new .27 update you could try that apparently fixes things, but it made things worse for me
The serial number is generally on a sticker next to the charger port of the tablet half, B4O > B60 and some B7O are SBK1, after that are SBK2
If you are SBK1 you can use NVFLASH to clean install the OS
I decided on Stock FW Rooted and CWM with PERI, then Guevors Kernel
So far so good, stable for a couple days now
Thanks for the quick reply. I did try the .27 update OTA update after getting back to Stock. No help.
The sticker in question is missing. Unknown SBK. I used EasyFlasher using SBK Ver1 and it worked to install the Stock .24 OS fine.
I will give the Stock FW Rooted a shot and see if that works
StevieJake
steviejake said:
Thanks for the quick reply. I did try the .27 update OTA update after getting back to Stock. No help.
The sticker in question is missing. Unknown SBK. I used EasyFlasher using SBK Ver1 and it worked to install the Stock .24 OS fine.
I will give the Stock FW Rooted a shot and see if that works
StevieJake
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the flash worked with sbkv1, then more than likely the unit is sbkv1. Otherwise, it shouldn't have worked at all . As the other poster said, RR and SoD is pretty common with the stock Asus firmware for some people -- you might try returning to Revolver now that you've gone back to stock, and start on Revolver again with a clean slate.
I am also running the same setup as the previous poster, stock .27, rooted with guevor's kernel. Been that way for only a day right now, so I can't say much about it yet.
Okay, so here is what I have done. I first used NvFlash to flash Stock .24 successfully. I then extracted the ASUS .24 firmware file (zip only) to the MicroSD card which the system took as an update and installed over my good work. It works, albeit with reboots still. I at least got it working and will try some more ROMs (Stock .27 first) with the suggested kernel. I just wish I could get back to the stable Revolver I had earlier.
Thanks for the help and suggestions.
StevieJake
steviejake said:
Okay, so here is what I have done. I first used NvFlash to flash Stock .24 successfully. I then extracted the ASUS .24 firmware file (zip only) to the MicroSD card which the system took as an update and installed over my good work. It works, albeit with reboots still. I at least got it working and will try some more ROMs (Stock .27 first) with the suggested kernel. I just wish I could get back to the stable Revolver I had earlier.
Thanks for the help and suggestions.
StevieJake
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you used NVFLASH to get back to stock, you could have just let the FOTA update you to .27
Then you can root and so on after that
NVFLASH returns the tablet to factory settings, ie. as it was when you unwrapped it on day 1
Not good. My tablet seems to be in an internal storage hell. Every Rom I try to install will crash with moderate use after booting. I have tried NvFlash, EasyFlash, Wolfs Ultimate flash and downgrade, every variation of stock HoneyComb and ICS I can find. I cannot keep this thing stable beyond 5 minutes of use. I have tried multiple factory resets and wipes, run "Superwipe Full" multiple times and nothing seems to work. What can I do to recover this tablet before I just give up and send to ASUS (god help me) for assistance? Any help would be appreciated
Thanks StevieJ
Ouch. Sorry to hear about your troubles. Horror stories like this have prevented me from diving into the root and custom rom scene with my one and only tab. [I am leaning towards a Nexus 7 when it comes out, and will perhaps root etc when I get that. I feel like it's a safer endeavour with a non-locked bootloader]
I'm interested in finding out what may be causing all this, so I'll be subscribing to this thread. Sorry I can't provide anything more than good luck to you.
Sent from my Transformer TF101
Ouch is right! I have rooted every Android device I have ever owned and this the first I have ever had this much trouble with. I just wish I could say I did "X" to cause it to happen. Oh well, maybe somebody knows something I have overlooked.
Note: I have Rogue XM Recovery 1.5.0 (CWM-based Recovery v5.0.2.8) running fine on the rom and it reboots into recovery okay.
StevieJake
steviejake said:
Ouch is right! I have rooted every Android device I have ever owned and this the first I have ever had this much trouble with. I just wish I could say I did "X" to cause it to happen. Oh well, maybe somebody knows something I have overlooked.
Note: I have Rogue XM Recovery 1.5.0 (CWM-based Recovery v5.0.2.8) running fine on the rom and it reboots into recovery okay.
StevieJake
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Click to collapse
Have you tried running it without the WIFI on? I went to my folks place with mine and it rebooted all the time as soon as it started up. It turned out to be a WIFI issue with the Dynalink router my parents were running.
Cheers, Matt.
hairy1 said:
Have you tried running it without the WIFI on? I went to my folks place with mine and it rebooted all the time as soon as it started up. It turned out to be a WIFI issue with the Dynalink router my parents were running.
Cheers, Matt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny you should ask that. I just NvFlashed 9.2.1.24 and was using the tab with no WiFi, no account information and everything worked just fine. I then enabled WiFi to see what would happen and it still worked, but I had not logged in with any account information yet. It still worked fine, as I was able to surf the web with no problems. I then tried to add my account information and started getting crashes using the Play Store, syncing my accounts, etc. It seems to be linked to updating account information and not just WiFi. I will investigate further
Thanks
StevieJake
Adding an account, even a new account, will bring down the tablet. It reboots until it is only a dark screen that requires APX mode (VolUp +Pwr) to rebuild the tablet. I can get into recovery and also factory reset mode (VolDwn + Pwr), but that is it. I'm so confused
I found a CWM backup I had from back in March. It restored fine, but still had problems that resulted in multiple crashes and eventual death again. Oh Bother!!
StevieJake
Fixed it!
Here is what I did. I was always to get the tablet into APX mode (Vol Up + Pwr) so I NvFlashed 9.2.1.24 from this site:
http://xdafileserver.nl/index.php?dir=Asus/Asus+Transformer+(TF101)/. I did this 5 times, never letting the tablet fully reboot after I got the "success" message upon completion. I then did a data wipe (Vol Dwn +Pwr, then select Wipe Data and then Vol Up, Vol Up) 5 times. I then used the same NvFlash 5 more times and let the tablet fully reboot and entered my Google credentials. I had prepared a MicroSD card with the zip file extracted from the ASUS site that contained the latest firmware (.27) and placed in the root directory of the MicroSD card. The tablet recognized it as a system upgrade and installed the firmware grade with no problems. The tablet rebooted fine and showed the installed firmware. I then did a data wipe as described above 5 more times and then let the tablet reboot fully and once again entered my Google credentials. The tablet now runs all programs without faults, has no video artifacts on the live wallpaper I use (Blue Skies) and is running just great. I am able to update all apps with out errors from the Play Store which was also an issue.
I hope this helps someone to get their tablet back, as I used all the resources on this forum to bring this wacky method to restore my tablet. Thanks to all you unnamed posters for your help
StevieJake
I wouldn't expect flashing the same thing numerous times to have any more effect than the first flash, but if that's what it took for your tab to be re-born, so be it!
Congrats on the fix.
Sent from my Transformer TF101
Not so fast!
Although the tablet did last longer (almost 2 days), it ultimately failed again to an unbootable state. Its back to the drawing board again.........
StevieJake
rootblock said:
I wouldn't expect flashing the same thing numerous times to have any more effect than the first flash, but if that's what it took for your tab to be re-born, so be it!
Congrats on the fix.
Sent from my Transformer TF101
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It may just be giving up, electronics are stupid sometimes and fail for no reason. I had a brand new HDD that worked for two days, I left the computer off for three weeks and when I turned it back on the HDD wouldn't even spin up :-/ Good luck buddy.
Okay, I'm done. Just got my RMA and am sending this puppy in. Thanks for all the help, I will try to post the results later when I get it back. Glad I made the impulse purchase for the Nexus 7, as I will not be totally without a tablet.
Thanks for all the help again
StevieJake
RMA and back from the Dead!
Well I got it back from ASUS after the RMA. It had a short visit in Texas, was returned promptly and appears to function normally. I never received any feedback from ASUS on receiving the tablet, what was wrong with it, what they did to it or when they shipped it. But its fixed. Running .27 latest firmware and seems to handle everything I can throw at it.
They did a bang up job so far and I am more than happy with their service.
StevieJake
Hi guys
Im having a nightmare with my vega, I have been running vegacomb for a while without issue and decided I fancied upgrading to an ICS ROM instead, but have hit major problems. I went into rom manager to do a nandroid before I flashed anything, when I opened the app it told me to confirm the device type. it came up saying viewsonic 10 so I confirmed it. Then it decided to re-flash the recovery from within the app, I let it do that too. Then I told it to do a backup of the current ROM, so it reboots and then I get nothing. It does the same thing that normally happens when you go into NVflash (screen backlight comes on, nothing else). I have plugged it into the PC and its not in this mode, its also not letting me get into nvflash using the 2 second hold method. Im really stummped now, I have been messing round with android for a while so im pretty familiar with flashing etc, but without being able to get into recovery im lost. Do you have any suggestions?
OK first, I will say that I have been reading for days and days and am getting nowhere at all. I am running out of time as I am leaving Monday backpacking from OKC to Portland to meet a friend, then proceeding immediately to about 35 national parks. I HAVE to get this thing functional so that I can depend on it on the road for communication. Its current state makes me nervous. I got this tablet already rooted, custom stock rom, and with an unlocked ICS boot loader version 0.3.11. The only problems with it were the common charger/screen response issue. For $100, I can deal with that.
I flashed the Lightspeed from from the main list, everything went well... Until it rebooted the first time. Since then, directly after the bootloader screen, it briefly shows what looks like semi-colorful TV static, then shows boot animation and boots into the OS. It has never frozen on either screen.
I decided Lightspeed was not at all what I wanted, so I flashed CM10. I have yet to find anywhere in the Aroma installer where I can choose the apps installed, ONLY THEME CUSTOMIZATION. After the flash, it kept the boot animation from CM, and loaded right back into what looked like Lightspeed, and shows Lightspeed in the about menu also. I reflashed it, choosing a different boot animation to test, and did the same thing again, except it loaded ZERO extra apps at all, not even the stock bloatware. Nothing from any of the 3 roms. I reflashed Lightspeed, same thing again. No extra apps and just bare basic stuff. EXCEPT SUPERUSER. THAT DID LOAD ONTO IT EACH TIME. I haven't lost root access, the recovery works fine.
I flashed the V8 bootloader, and tried the above again. Same issues still. All of them. I have read until I'm blue in the face. If there is a way to fix this without using a PC, that would be grand. I have very limited PC access.
Anyone have any ideas? I have followed every single step 100%, I'm positive. I'm not new to rooting, flashing, and jailbreaking (doesn't apply here I know),"so lay it on me.
EDIT- I downloaded the 4.0.4 FLEX-Reaper rom and going to try that now and then I give up for the night. Tomorrow is the last day I have to mess with this before I leave. I tried to upload screenshots of the problems, but it won't let me attach them. Maybe that is another problem. Ugh who knows. Help
EDIT- That rom bricked my tablet. Through that brick, I found a working solution for the SoD, found a way to recover without files on external SD, *THIS FIXES THE BRICKS CAUSED BY CM10 AND REFLEX!!!* and I didn't lose anything. This thing is back in pristine order. I can finally sleep! Will post later on how I did it. I need sleep now.
Sometime last night, my AT&T G2 (D800) decided to go from being powered on and idling, to going into TWRP recovery mode. All by itself. I saw this, unplugged it from USB, and tried to reboot into system mode. But it simply won't do anything except boot into recovery. Powering off, trying to get to the bootloader, none of that works.
This is not a custom ROM, it's 4.2.2 stock from LG. I only rooted the phone, which was several weeks ago, and haven't had any problems, aside from TWRP not wanting to back up anything. I've been using Android since the original TMO G1 with JesusFreke's ROM, so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing, hopefully.
The only recent changes I've made are:
I updated busybox about 3 days ago (but have rebooted fine since)
I grabbed several legit apps from the market last night
Last night I also DL'ed, but did not apply, a ~50MB OTA update that has been pending. I don't think that would install without explicit permission anyway, which I didn't give it?
This phone was encrypted from the start. Maybe that;'s what prevents TWRP backups,, but right now I'm seeing TWRP errors/logs saying something like "Unable to mount \data". And yet I can browse to other folders, and see filenames in \etc for example. However, I don't see any files at all in \boot.
Since this phone has no external memory, and it's customized and has numerous configured apps, I really really don't want to have to wipe it. Although at this point, that may not even fix the problem? Even if it did, since I haven't been able to make backup images, it would be a Bad Thing™ either way. (Yes, I do have a secondary plan with Titanium, with backups going to cloud storage, but these are tedious and now a few weeks old. And wouldn't restore the ROM & system en masse.)
Please help.
Solved?
I'm not sure what caused this to occur, but I found somewhat of a solution after digging deep into my Google-fu.
I followed the instructions in this XDA thread and it actually worked. I didn't have adb access, but I was able to use dd successfully. It allowed me to boot into the device, unencrypt it, then arrive at the lock screen.
However, when I put in the lock code, it went apesh!t and played multiple notification sounds, with a blue circular wait symbol. It also flashed the LED from green to blue, as it normally only does during boot. Once I pressed the power button, I was back back into TWRP.
So then I followed Step 2 again, and once in the phone, I used terminal to run the dd command from inside the OS. This might be what it ultimately needs, because the prior attempt in TWRP had an error to the effect of "no space left on device".
I can't call it Solved yet, but it looks good to at least be able to get in and use the phone. I'm backing up with Titanium before I do anything else and will reboot and test its permanency later.
I'm gonna close this thread now that I think I have a handle on what is going on. The fix does survive a reboot, so I believe it's possible to repair the issue permanently per the instructions above. I also ran the phone for 3 hours with heavy app usage and no problems.
I believe what may have happened is my OTA decided to override my choice to NOT update the ROM, as some have reported in this Reddit thread. There's a lot of good info in that one, including how to stop getting nagged by turning the OTA notifications off, or to freeze it entirely with Titanium Backup if rooted.
Anyway, what apparently happens is that when the OTA/upgrade goes to reboot, and encounters a custom recovery, it gets confused... when you try to power cycle or reboot again, it sees the stock recovery still hasn't run whatever it wanted, so it starts recovery again Lather, rinse, repeat.
Fun times.