I've been trying to upgrade to ICS (root or not is unimportant to me) for two weeks. I've followed every instruction, every guide out there and then some. I think I finally backed myself into a corner and don't think I'll be able to get out of it this time.
I have a TPT 64GB WiFi US model. Despite running the thing stock, it simply refuses under all circumstances to find OTA updates. That is, since I have owned it (since 2011), not once has the regular System Update OTA app indicated that there was any sort of update. I even followed all the Lenovo KB articles that tell you how to clear the Dalvik cache, delete stale update files, etc. to try and get it to patch. Nope. It's like my device is some kind of counterfeit that isn't even a real ThinkPad. I am totally at a loss.
So I ended up rooting it to try and force the updates down its uncooperative throat.
I was able to upgrade as far as 0039_0089, but every single time I try to boot up ICS, no matter what guide I followed, no matter whether my bootloader is CWM or stock, no matter whether I factory reset or wipe Dalvik, no matter whether USB charger or devices are plugged in or not, no matter whether I'm rooted or not... regardless of ANY variables WHATSOEVER, the thing just boot loops as soon as it tries to boot ICS.
I spent 24 hours trying to stop it from boot looping when it boots ICS. Things I've tried:
Tried some guy's "no-bloat" nandroid backup of 0039_0089, then to ICS after restoring stock files, using CWM with the removed asserts
Tried GodfatherIP's nandroid of 0039_0086, upgrading to 0039_0089, then to ICS using CWM with the removed asserts
Tried returning to stock recovery, which at first resulted in having no recovery kernel at all, but eventually I somehow managed to get stock recovery back, and had a non-rooted stock 0039_0089 based on GodfatherIP's nandroid plus the stock upgrade to 0039_0089
Tried installing the unmodified A310_0069_0130 on top of the above, using stock recovery, and it seemed to upgrade without a hitch
Rebooting, power cycling, wiping cache, and/or factory resetting had no impact on the ability of the above image to actually boot
Tried installing the unmodified A400_0069_0130 on top of the above, using stock recovery, and it seemed to upgrade without a hitch
Rebooting, power cycling, wiping cache, and/or factory resetting had no impact on the ability of the above image to actually boot
Basically, every single last thing I've tried has resulted in an utter failure to boot ICS -- not even once -- under any circumstances. I don't think I'm missing anything; I've literally followed instructions step by step. And just in case 99% of the developers/guide-posters got it wrong, I've followed at least a dozen guides, so statistically at least one of them is bound to be right, right....? Well, apparently not?
Right now I have a boot-looping system that's been factory reset and cache wiped, with stock recovery. All I can do is attempt to apply signed updates. I obviously can't go back to a nandroid backup.
Do I have any recourse at all, or do I have to throw my $600 unit in the trash? Right now it's basically only useful as a cutting board. I can't believe this has been so excruciating -- never in 3 years of rooting 10+ Android devices have I ever experienced anything this awful. And the problems are compounded by the fact that most of the guides out there are only for ROW or UK, leaving US devices in the dark / untested, so that may be one reason why I'm having issues.... probably nobody has even tested their methods on US builds except GodfatherIP, but even his methods proved futile for me.
I just want ICS... a unit that works... root is completely irrelevant to me, it always has been. But between the out of the box updater being completely and fundamentally broken, and the utter failure of all rooted attempts to upgrade to ICS, I am at wit's end.
Am I the only one experiencing this or has anyone overcome a similar situation?
Related
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.
Well for starters, high everyone!
I have an issue with my S4 and I've searched all over but none of what has been recommended helps.
The issue I have is that my phone will restart about every 10 minutes (give or take). I used Reboot Logger to determine this. The phone only restarts when it is idle. It WILL NOT restart if I am using it (screen is on). The weird part is that it doesn't even go through the whole reboot sequence. The screen will stay black the entire time. The notification button pulses and the home buttons will light up like it was restarting though.
I had a bad battery and had it replaced with a stock Samsung battery. I've tried pulling the SD card, pulling the battery for 10 minutes, pulling the battery while the phone is on, and I've performed two factory resets.
The one thing I have noticed is that, after performing the factory reset, I get an "error" under the little android dude. This also happens if I do a cache wipe.
My model is the SPH-L720 running on android v4.3. The phone has never been rooted and there are no software or firmware updates that are found.
I was beginning to think that this was a hardware issue but the consistency in reboot intervals makes me believe otherwise. At this point I'm at a loss. I rooted my old phone but my experience in that area is very limited. I have read that the cache partition is bad from the factory on some of these (hence the error message) so I was thinking about rooting the phone and trying to use a good cache partition, but that's the only other option I could think of.
sounds like a voltage prob....or mem prob... id redownload a new rom..wipe wipe wipe..reinstall and that should fix it
Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda app-developers app
Insufficient voltage at idle was my first thought too, but if you haven't undervolted (since you aren't even rooted), that seems less likely. If I were you, I'd root the phone so I could do more to figure things out. Maybe try bumping up the voltage a little on the lower clock speeds.
Ok, first of all, do not root your phone. As you admitted yourself, you have limited experience in this area, and there is nothing that rooting will do for you. Not to mention, if you think you have a bad cache partition, you don't need root to fix it. Your phone is stock, running the stock kernel, there is no reason to suspect voltage issues that are not hardware related. If you root the phone, you will likely trip KNOX, and void your warranty.
My personal opinion is that your phone has a hardware problem. If you want to truly start over, either recover your phone through KIES, or better yet, download and flash via ODIN a stock MK2 ROM from this forum. Since this is a stock, signed ROM, you will not trip KNOX, and it will rewrite every partition properly on it's own. This is all assuming you don't have a hardware problem. But do not go ahead and try to fix anything yourself besides what I mentioned. You will not succeed, and likely lose your warranty in the process.
Edit: did you buy this phone new or used? If you bought it used, more than likely somebody ruined it for you. And more than likely, you can fix it. If this was a new device, more than likely it will be a warranty issue. That's why you shouldn't do anything to void the warranty.
If you're going to use odin for anything, just make sure you follow someone's directions step by step. Otherwise very bad things can happen.
im also having a slightly similar problem
Problem : The screen after a sleight amount of time of being on, or sometimes instantly when opening the lockscreen it freezes for 10-15 sec then shoots black lines across it, then reboots.
Things ive tried :
1. Installing a new rom ( from AOKP 4.4 and Triforce 4.3)
2. Changing modem (from MJA, MK2, NAE)
3. Changing the type
of Gapps i was using. (4.3 gapps for triforce, aokp 4.4 gapps, and pa gapps)
Current Phone Info:
Rom: aokp_jfltespr_kitkat_nightly_2014-02-08
Modem/Firmware: NAE
Gapps: Pa.gapps 4.4.x
Let me know if you need anything more! plz!
I'll look into Odin before I root. The phone was also purchased new. I spent most of today monkeying around with different settings to see if I could trigger the issue as well. As it turns out, the phone will only restart at idle if it's plugged into the charger, or the wifi is on. If wifi is off and it's not plugged in it's fine. I am also using the stock Samsung charger that came with the phone. Again though, if I'm actively using the phone it doesn't happen (charging or connected to wifi). I did turn the phone off earlier to charge it but would keep freezing at the sprint logo upon boot up. I thought it was bricked for a second... I wiped the cache (didn't do a factory reset) and that fixed it, but now I have that stupid issue where videos won't play on wifi, only on 4G or 3G. It's an issue I thought I had solved.
Le sigh. This is frustrating. The Odin option is looking to be my best bet it seems.
Tizamarou said:
im also having a slightly similar problem
Problem : The screen after a sleight amount of time of being on, or sometimes instantly when opening the lockscreen it freezes for 10-15 sec then shoots black lines across it, then reboots.
Things ive tried :
1. Installing a new rom ( from AOKP 4.4 and Triforce 4.3)
2. Changing modem (from MJA, MK2, NAE)
3. Changing the type
of Gapps i was using. (4.3 gapps for triforce, aokp 4.4 gapps, and pa gapps)
Current Phone Info:
Rom: aokp_jfltespr_kitkat_nightly_2014-02-08
Modem/Firmware: NAE
Gapps: Pa.gapps 4.4.x
Let me know if you need anything more! plz!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since you are running a custom source-built ROM, first thing to do would be to ODIN a stock ROM. If the problems go away, you have your answer. If not, this would likely be a warranty issue. Of course you tripped KNOX most likely already.
sputnik767 said:
Ok, first of all, do not root your phone. As you admitted yourself, you have limited experience in this area, and there is nothing that rooting will do for you. Not to mention, if you think you have a bad cache partition, you don't need root to fix it. Your phone is stock, running the stock kernel, there is no reason to suspect voltage issues that are not hardware related. If you root the phone, you will likely trip KNOX, and void your warranty.
My personal opinion is that your phone has a hardware problem. If you want to truly start over, either recover your phone through KIES, or better yet, download and flash via ODIN a stock MK2 ROM from this forum. Since this is a stock, signed ROM, you will not trip KNOX, and it will rewrite every partition properly on it's own. This is all assuming you don't have a hardware problem. But do not go ahead and try to fix anything yourself besides what I mentioned. You will not succeed, and likely lose your warranty in the process.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright I'm a little confused as to what exactly I should be using. I found this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2575470
which is a stock ROM. Although I also found this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2259513&highlight=odin
which is the stock firmware.
Which one do I use, or do I use both of them?
Dfeeds said:
Alright I'm a little confused as to what exactly I should be using. I found this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2575470
which is a stock ROM. Although I also found this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2259513&highlight=odin
which is the stock firmware.
Which one do I use, or do I use both of them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Neither. Use this one : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2601443
Follow instructions in the thread. This is a completely stock rom with no root or mods and will not trip the Knox bootloader. If you flash anything other than this, including custom recovery, cf autoroot, etc, you will void your warranty.
rebooting
i had this problem once and it was related to a corrupt file on my sdcard believe it or not. there are Defraggers out there for your android file system and internal SD card but your Ext sc you would have to do on your PC. it worked for me. the one i used is called CLEAN i got it off amazon app store.
cyberweasal
Dfeeds said:
Well for starters, high everyone!
I have an issue with my S4 and I've searched all over but none of what has been recommended helps.
The issue I have is that my phone will restart about every 10 minutes (give or take). I used Reboot Logger to determine this. The phone only restarts when it is idle. It WILL NOT restart if I am using it (screen is on). The weird part is that it doesn't even go through the whole reboot sequence. The screen will stay black the entire time. The notification button pulses and the home buttons will light up like it was restarting though.
I had a bad battery and had it replaced with a stock Samsung battery. I've tried pulling the SD card, pulling the battery for 10 minutes, pulling the battery while the phone is on, and I've performed two factory resets.
The one thing I have noticed is that, after performing the factory reset, I get an "error" under the little android dude. This also happens if I do a cache wipe.
My model is the SPH-L720 running on android v4.3. The phone has never been rooted and there are no software or firmware updates that are found.
I was beginning to think that this was a hardware issue but the consistency in reboot intervals makes me believe otherwise. At this point I'm at a loss. I rooted my old phone but my experience in that area is very limited. I have read that the cache partition is bad from the factory on some of these (hence the error message) so I was thinking about rooting the phone and trying to use a good cache partition, but that's the only other option I could think of.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sputnik767 said:
Neither. Use this one : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2601443
Follow instructions in the thread. This is a completely stock rom with no root or mods and will not trip the Knox bootloader. If you flash anything other than this, including custom recovery, cf autoroot, etc, you will void your warranty.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That solved my problem, thank you! I spent the last couple days testing it just to be sure I wouldn't be crying wolf. The phone has yet to restart on me even while charging or using wifi. The error message I would receive after a cache wipe or factory reset went away as well. It makes me wonder if the bad partition was what caused my old battery to fail.
Dfeeds said:
That solved my problem, thank you! I spent the last couple days testing it just to be sure I wouldn't be crying wolf. The phone has yet to restart on me even while charging or using wifi. The error message I would receive after a cache wipe or factory reset went away as well. It makes me wonder if the bad partition was what caused my old battery to fail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great, I am glad it worked out, and hopefully your problem is resolved. I doubt that your old battery failed due to a bad partition, and I have to wonder how your partition got messed up in the first place, but that's just a curiosity and is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Just remember that if you decide to root, cf_autoroot works but will trip the KNOX bootloader and potentially void your warranty.
So this issue has persisted throughout wiping data/factory resetting. I'm really not sure what this is.
Basically what happens is that my phone will gradually get slower and slower until it freezes and then reboots. However, after it reboots, it will go into a boot loop. What I will then need to do is basically wait it out by shutting it off. Then, I wait for an hour (maybe more) before I try turning it back on again, at which point it returns to normal.
Any idea? I thought it might be a memory leak? But how would that affect rebooting? I'd like to also mention that at one point my recovery somehow disappeared as well. I managed to re-flash TWRP using Flashify, but I haven't dared going back into the recovery, because last time when I had lost my recovery, I ended up thinking that I had to wipe my phone completely (because even Download Mode wasn't working correctly).
By the way, I'm running an AT&T LG G2 d800, on the "d80010q" firmware 4.2.2. I'm rooted, with Xposed modules running, as well as the camera mod flashed. No other modifications have been made except for buildprop and systctl (kernel) changes through android tuner.
Same issue
Hello,
I am having this exact same issue. Did you ever find a fix for this? I have been searching for hours. I have tried numerous things, flashing back to stock with lg flash tool, installing different roms, it happens on all roms.
Thanks
Hey all,
First post here on XDA and I'm hoping someone with more experience than me will be able to give me a hand! Until last week or so, I was running an up-to-date version of Lollipop (5.1.1), when my tablet started randomly freezing up on me, requiring "soft resets" to get it going again, or simply shutting off on me. Thinking it was software related, I tried wiping the cache with no success, so ended up doing a full factory reset. The issues *seemed* to clear up for a day or so, but came back, and so figuring it was Lollipop related, I wiped out the OS and installed CM12.1 (which was my first experience working with ADB and fastboot, and first time installing a non-stock ROM) with a TWRP recovery. A few days later, the freezing and shutting down issues began popping up again, with the shutdowns *usually* happening during sleep, but the freezing happening at anytime from initial "Google" logo to boot animation, to the middle of running an app. I had made a backup on TWRP when I got CM12.1 configured the way I wanted it, so I performed a soft reset when it froze on me, and booted into the bootloader. The tab kept freezing in the TWRP window before I could select a restore, so out of desperation I tried just doing a factory reset from within TWRP. Long story short, something must have happened during that reset, because it kept hanging on the boot screen. I thought I may have unknowingly messed something up, so I tried downloading and flashing a stock KitKat (4.4) ROM from Google's site, but kept encountering bootloader errors during the flashing and ended up only being able to boot to the bootloader screen (apparently got a faulty 4.3 bootloader in that ROM, which gave me a headache until I was able to get straightened out). I have been able to get a stock bootloader (4.23) up and running now, along with a stock recovery (going with Lollipop now, so stock for LMY47V) going, but that's it. I've tried flashing the stock lollipop image via shell script (I'm running a Fedora 23 machine), via individual commands, and via "fastboot update -w factory_image.zip" without success. ADB sideload still works via recovery, but I wasn't able to sideload the OTA packages for 5.1 either. The common errors that pop up seem to indicate an error (corruption? fragmentation?) on the cache partition, but I'm not a dev when it comes to Android, so I'm at a loss here... I keep getting "E: failed to mount /cache (Invalid argument)", and other errors associated with accessing/opening files further down the /cache tree. Would this error be more likely to be a hardware issue, or would it be a software/firmware issue? I've had similar errors before with USB drives, when they would start to bad and partitions begin failing, but have always been able to rebuild them and get my data back. If something like this is happening on my N7 and the cache partition has indeed become somehow corrupted and failed (but not physically....), is it possible at all to rebuild partitions on Android in a similar manner? I've scoured the web, but haven't been able to find anything that can help me out with something like that, so I figured my best bet before condemning the N7 to the junk drawer was to see if any of the pros around here had any words of wisdom that *might* get me back up and running. Thoughts and advice much appreciated!!
Thanks!
(Oh, I apologize for the lengthy post, but I wanted to be sure to provide enough background info..... Sorry for the lengthy read!!)
Honestly that sounds more like a hardware problem than a software problem.
During the early stages of booting, everything that happens is extremely deterministic - meaning that it should be completely repeatable in terms of the order & timing in which activities occur.
So, for it to behave erratically during early boot suggests that it is not software, but marginal hardware. If hardware is barely meeting logic levels or timing requirements, a small amount of random noise (which is always present) can cause a fault to occur at any time - and that sounds approximately like what you are observing.
Further, you replaced your ROM entirely and the problem persists - again suggesting that the problem is hardware, not software.
The most cost effective way of dealing with repair of a $200 tablet is - unfortunately - disposing of it and buying a replacement.
Sorry.
Thanks for the reply!! Shoot, that's what I was leaning towards too. What is the life expectancy of these tablets? I mean, I got 3 good years of use out of it, so I'm not going to complain, but it seems like they should have lasted longer... Would it be worthwhile to maybe grab a cracked screen N7 off eBay for parts and try to get my tab working with those parts maybe? I'm hoping the rumors are true about Google coming out with a new tab this fall, but I'd love to get mine working before then lol...
Hey all! I'm having a strange issue regarding boot looping that I can't seem to find an answer to on here or anywhere else, I hope you guys can help.
So my T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S5 (SM-G900T), purchased in May 2014, while perusing Facebook the other day, randomly shut down in the middle of perfectly normal use and started bootlooping. I had never had the problem before. The device had been rooted for months (I forget what method I used) but it was running a stock Lollipop rom. The first thing I did was factory wipe and cache wipe through Android stock recovery. It worked!... for a couple hours. Then the bootloop started again.
I went and sought a new stock rom, believing that somehow mine had been corrupted, and flashed it via Odin. I also flashed TWRP. Clean wipes, new rom, dalvic/etc. wipes, and booted into stock Marshmallow. It worked!... for a couple hours. Then it started bootlooping again. I went into TWRP and tried to wipe just caches and whatnot, but it wouldn't start again. Long battery pulls sometimes allowed the phone to boot, but it started looping again after ~5-10 minutes.
So I installed the Twisted Lollipop but couldn't even get that to boot. I went back and found the earliest available firmware for my device (as I bought mine right after it came out) and flashed it. Wipe wipe flash wipe whatever, and a succesful boot. It was looking good! I was able to install a number of OTA updates. I was at Android 5.1 when I decided to call it a night and hold off on the further OTAs for today. Today I got up and got ready for work, all's well. As I'm getting ready to leave, I allow Google to update some apps, and begin installing Facebook, Spotify, Cap Metro (for my area's public transit system) and maybe something else, I don't remember. Anyway, as the updates are downloading or installing and I'm checking my email, boom, crash, bootloop.
What's going on here? I've never heard of hardware causing boot loops, but could it be that? I dropped my phone (although protected by a Spigen case) earlier this summer and it cracked the screen-- could it have messed with the motherboard in some substantial way? I had noticed it getting hotter and the battery lasting less than usual, but I attributed that to the device's age.
Any help, any advice, any direction you could give would be extremely appreciated. I don't have the capital to replace the phone right now, and I use it all the time. Thanks folks!