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.
Related
My wonderful wife gave me an Acer a500 for Christmas. Awesome gift. I had rooted it immediately with no problems, since all of my phones and families phone are rooted, it just seemed to be the natural thing to do.
As someone that "plays" with their android a lot I did all of the backups. Well, the time came to have my tablet "approved" for use at my company and also have the appropriate "encryption" software and keys added. Just as a precaution I decided to restore the original backup and unroot the tab.
All was going well until I received the update message. I went ahead and downloaded the update and ran it. During the install process it froze. I thought it was just busy so I left it for a good 20 minutes and finally realized it was frozen. I rebooted and it went through a couple of reboots and finally settled on the lock screen. But now I find the touch screen unresponsive.
I plugged in a mouse and keyboard in hopes that I could get back into it and start over, but, although, the mouse shows up, it is jumpy sluggish and will not grab the lock to slide open and eventually freezes.
I have tried all of the "update.zip" files I could find and they all fail at one point or another.
ADB allows me to explore in shell but since I unrooted, I cannot get su privileges.
Acer is of course, useless and the vendor it was purchased from is worthless.
I have been through every thread I could find and tried every trick I could come up with. Now I'm just stuck.
Any help is appreciated
I've had this a couple of times already. Usually just turning the screen off and on a couple of times does the job (the issue seems to be with the driver, also on various custom roms). Just try it after each off-on cycle, most of the time it takes no more than two or three tries, though there are exceptions.
Thanks, but it has been rebooted many many times since it's demise.
Decided to skip sleep tonight and keep plugging away.
I found an update.zip recovery file for an a501. Figured I can't do much worse so I went ahead and ran it.
It froze at about 95% but.........
Good News:
The tablet is responsive and touch panel works again.
Bad News:
It boots straight into system settings and although you can open the settings menu, nothing actually launches.
Decided to try all of the old update.zips and still everything fails.
No more ADB response.
When you originally unrooted your device did you revert back to the stock recovery or did you leave cwm on your device?? If you left cwm on your device that may be the problem with the update.zips and OTAs.
You are sooo right. I've never gone back to a stock rom before and I completely forgot about reverting to the stock recovery.
As a matter of fact, I was on Civato's Flexstriker 3.2.1 rom with the new CWM before I reverted back to the stock rom.
Well, at least we've determined my stupid mistake, but now the question lies: "How do I get back to any working rom?"
Here's an update. I did find an update.zip file that also begins to load but does not finish. It stops at 95% still.
I will attach the photos in case someone notices something otherwise I am at a loss. In addition to all of the above, I tried everything I could to get into APX mode but nothing. I am willing to try almost anything at this point, so all suggestions are appreciated.
Something I noticed was the recovery for the a501 was android with gears spinning in the body. The recovery I have now is a package with an arrow. The recoveries are different. The current update file is Acer_A500_1.145.05_COM_GEN1
So this brings me to a question: Can I put Thor's 1.6 CWM back on the a500 and at least work from there? I do have my original backups and thought I might be able to get somewhere that way.
This is somewhat urgent because I am leaving the country for two weeks on Friday, and need a working phone. I am not sure what happened today, but my Sprint Galaxy S4 (SPHL720TBK) wouldn't connect to WIFI at my house. My tablet would, so I know it was a phone issue. I rebooted then was going through settings, and just checking things. The phone rebooted itself, and when it came back up, it went through a couple of screens, one of which asked about activation. It seemed like it was installing an update from Sprint, which it had been trying to do for a week or so. But it kept failing, saying it didn't have enough space for the download, despite there being several GB free internally and on the SD card. (I figured it must be because it was rooted). After a couple of additional screens on which I could only answer OK, the phone rebooted again, and that was it. It would not boot again. I decided to power off the phone and deal with it tonight. I can boot into recovery, and connect with Odin. I can boot to recovery and connect with ADB (in sideload mode). I know I could just do a factory reset, but unfortunately, I do not have a full backup since the end of January, and I would rather not lose everything. The phone was running v 4.4.2. I had rooted the phone several months ago with CF Auto Root using CF-Auto-Root-jfltespr-jfltespr-sphl720.tar.md5, so it was essentially stock, but rooted. Is there anything I can do to get the phone back on its feet that will not lose everything? Or anyway to copy data from the phone with it in this state? Any assistance will be VERY much appreciated! Thanks!
Fixed it myself
andrewt2323 said:
This is somewhat urgent because I am leaving the country for two weeks on Friday, and need a working phone. I am not sure what happened today, but my Sprint Galaxy S4 (SPHL720TBK) wouldn't connect to WIFI at my house. My tablet would, so I know it was a phone issue. I rebooted then was going through settings, and just checking things. The phone rebooted itself, and when it came back up, it went through a couple of screens, one of which asked about activation. It seemed like it was installing an update from Sprint, which it had been trying to do for a week or so. But it kept failing, saying it didn't have enough space for the download, despite there being several GB free internally and on the SD card. (I figured it must be because it was rooted). After a couple of additional screens on which I could only answer OK, the phone rebooted again, and that was it. It would not boot again. I decided to power off the phone and deal with it tonight. I can boot into recovery, and connect with Odin. I can boot to recovery and connect with ADB (in sideload mode). I know I could just do a factory reset, but unfortunately, I do not have a full backup since the end of January, and I would rather not lose everything. The phone was running v 4.4.2. I had rooted the phone several months ago with CF Auto Root using CF-Auto-Root-jfltespr-jfltespr-sphl720.tar.md5, so it was essentially stock, but rooted. Is there anything I can do to get the phone back on its feet that will not lose everything? Or anyway to copy data from the phone with it in this state? Any assistance will be VERY much appreciated! Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since I didn't spark enough interest for anyone to offer advice, had to spend most of the afternoon/evening fixing these problems myself. Everything seems to be working, so I thought I would pass along key parts of this hard-learned lesson in case anyone else finds himself in such a situation.
First I booted into adb sideload mode, which is all I could do anyway. I installed philz_touch_6.23.9-jflte.zip and the aromafm.zip. I was then able to boot into a "normal" recovery mode. Aromafm was troublesome, and I eventually had to manually put the zip into place for it to work consistently. These are both WONDERFUL , and I highly recommend them both. Thanks very much to the creators! I used the file manager to find the files that I didn't want to lose, and used ADB to pull the files over to my PC. (ADB pull <source> <target>) Then I did a full wipe and factory reset. That did little other than delete all my data, which I had already copied anyway. The phone still would not boot past recovery.
I tried to use ADB to install a new ROM, but got a variety of errors. My phone being an L720T, there are not many ROM's available, at least not for which I could find functioning links. I finally found a TAR, L720TVPUBNG5_L720TSPTBNG5_L720TVPUBNG5_HOME.tar.md5, and used ODIN v3.09 to install that.
I still need to go back and re-root the phone, and install lots of APPS and restore data, but at least I have a functioning phone, and I can do the rest on my plane ride tomorrow.
I found the information I needed in a variety of posts here on xda developers, and would not have been able to get through this without all the helpful advice posted to other threads. So thanks to all of you for the wealth of information available here!
So, I have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle I however think I can get out of it by sideloading using EXT. SD, Im not sure what to flash to solve the dillemma however. So this is the situation. I have a (had) a rooted Galaxy s4 (sgh-i337 ucufnc1) with 4.4.2 android. It had safestrap installed and back ups of everything else in sd card and other locations just in case. The phone was acting buggy, so I formatted the phone with safestrap, the problem persisted, ill get into the issue a bit further down. So I booted back into safestrap, and did a complete wipe, however my sd card must've bumped out, because it didnt delete any media files or so it said, and then after the wipe it crashed. and refuses to boot into safestrap or even past the splash logo. I can get into download mode, but usb debugging isnt on anymore since i wiped it, I can get into the other mode as well ( cant for the life of me remember the name of it atm although i use it frequently) with some luck. I also happen to have all .md5 files from a backup i did about 4 months ago in tact, I cannot for the life of me get them to convert properly to apply them to the phone without safestrap however, if anyone has any insight to this please let me know also.
I can/will list any other information I have if anyone needs it, and if anyone can help it would safe a life!
The reason i reformatted it to begin with, was because media would stall, and when i plugged in the audio jack it'd freeze the entire app using it, then the whole phone would freeze. I believe it was due to lucky patcher but im unsure. The issue began when I altered the auto update file, and even after i rectified it, it persisted. At this time i have a phone soft bricked because it didnt delete all the media files and I assume something bugged onto the kernel image but Im not sure. If I can simply try to restore it to stock kernel then im fine with that.
Ghujii said:
So, I have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle I however think I can get out of it by sideloading using EXT. SD, Im not sure what to flash to solve the dillemma however. So this is the situation. I have a (had) a rooted Galaxy s4 (sgh-i337 ucufnc1) with 4.4.2 android. It had safestrap installed and back ups of everything else in sd card and other locations just in case. The phone was acting buggy, so I formatted the phone with safestrap, the problem persisted, ill get into the issue a bit further down. So I booted back into safestrap, and did a complete wipe, however my sd card must've bumped out, because it didnt delete any media files or so it said, and then after the wipe it crashed. and refuses to boot into safestrap or even past the splash logo. I can get into download mode, but usb debugging isnt on anymore since i wiped it, I can get into the other mode as well ( cant for the life of me remember the name of it atm although i use it frequently) with some luck. I also happen to have all .md5 files from a backup i did about 4 months ago in tact, I cannot for the life of me get them to convert properly to apply them to the phone without safestrap however, if anyone has any insight to this please let me know also.
I can/will list any other information I have if anyone needs it, and if anyone can help it would safe a life!
The reason i reformatted it to begin with, was because media would stall, and when i plugged in the audio jack it'd freeze the entire app using it, then the whole phone would freeze. I believe it was due to lucky patcher but im unsure. The issue began when I altered the auto update file, and even after i rectified it, it persisted. At this time i have a phone soft bricked because it didnt delete all the media files and I assume something bugged onto the kernel image but Im not sure. If I can simply try to restore it to stock kernel then im fine with that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
UPDATE: I resolved the issue, by rooting, safestrapping, ripping the image files, from another galaxy s4 with alike descriptions. then i managed to side load it, then it booted properly, i then reformatted it completely back to 100% factory everything. Now my original problem persists, and i cant help feel that google services is causing it. (examnples of issues" proccess.gapps has stopped. anotrher process error code. phone calls can be made, but not recieved as it seems the server is too busy to n otice it, massive battery drain, audio takes several seconds to play, while video continues to play fine, audiojack is mostly unresponsive, phone calls that are made cannot recieve or send audio during call session, phone may freeze at unlock screen, or any time during operation, may even reboot from process overloading" now keep in mind. i removed every system file and app that the natural reformat will allow. so nothing applied by the user is on the phone, other than natural factory applications. Im digging a bit into the phone as i can but its a slow process whenit starts freezing. if anyone has any idea of what can be causing this, or how to fix this please inform me lol.
Ghujii said:
UPDATE: I resolved the issue, by rooting, safestrapping, ripping the image files, from another galaxy s4 with alike descriptions. then i managed to side load it, then it booted properly, i then reformatted it completely back to 100% factory everything. Now my original problem persists, and i cant help feel that google services is causing it. (examnples of issues" proccess.gapps has stopped. anotrher process error code. phone calls can be made, but not recieved as it seems the server is too busy to n otice it, massive battery drain, audio takes several seconds to play, while video continues to play fine, audiojack is mostly unresponsive, phone calls that are made cannot recieve or send audio during call session, phone may freeze at unlock screen, or any time during operation, may even reboot from process overloading" now keep in mind. i removed every system file and app that the natural reformat will allow. so nothing applied by the user is on the phone, other than natural factory applications. Im digging a bit into the phone as i can but its a slow process whenit starts freezing. if anyone has any idea of what can be causing this, or how to fix this please inform me lol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The best solution must be installing the stock firmware via odin. Since you are on NC1 , You can installed the stock NB1.
Here is guide explaining you using odin, installing NB1, root with towel root, updated NC1, install the safestrap. The guide was not specifically written for that but you can find those steps in the guide.
I will attempt to do this, since nothing since has work. I am about to get a new logic board for the system in the next 2 weeks. Towel root DOES typically work on this system, however the last time I attmpted it it failed to work outright. Im not sure what has changed with the device, but i believe reflashing stock is the best method. The phone now, will boot up, then skip the lock screen and go straight to the home screen, which is black with no pull down bar, or with no signal and there is no way to rectify it. Even if there were, it boots back down and launches back up and becomes locked at the ATT logo.
After a fair bit of messing with it, and recovery mode it will sometimes boot normally where it tells me that processes has failed and askes me to cancel the ''app''. This is the best option to update the phone and attempt root, but getting it here is so difficult because it reboots itself and the mode is rare to acquire. This problem either is due to the kernel, or the rom i believe. I also am to believe the powercell may have some issue, as i replaced the battery a few weeks back and it worked fine for about 1 week.
Booting into safemode doesnt work either as it skips over the lock screen straight to the home screen. Outsidce of replacing the logic board, or attempting another flash im at the end of the short rope i was already on in terms of options.
sway8966 said:
The best solution must be installing the stock firmware via odin. Since you are on NC1 , You can installed the stock NB1.
Here is guide explaining you using odin, installing NB1, root with towel root, updated NC1, install the safestrap. The guide was not specifically written for that but you can find those steps in the guide.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
UPDATE: I found therein two methods to flashback to stock. I did so, then proceeded to attempt to flash from nb1 to nj4. Progress stopped there when it flung an error 7 at me. So this means either something in my phone is corrupted or the file i downloaded from the above mentioned forum is corrupted. I also attempted flashfire, but seen as it STILL crashes at random due to process errors thats almost impossible to attempt.
Sorry for the long post! As a bit of background, I was running stock rom with sytemless root, EX Kernel, TWRP and I had just enabled xposed (the only new variable in my setup). So I plugged my 6P in at the gym before I play some ball. Phone proceeds to random "reboot" a few seconds later, no huge deal I thought. Then it enters The Indestructible Bootloop (IBL). It won't boot past the animated colored dots. Play for a couple hours, phone still not booted; slight to moderate anxiety setting in. I figure, worst case scenario, I have to flash a factory image when I get home. So I try to reboot it a couple times by booting into the bootloader (holding power and down vol), then recovery then reboot. I also flashed the xposed uninstaller and deleted /data/data/de.robv.android.xposed.installer/conf/modules.list: neither worked to solve the IBL. Then I just waited til I got home and tried to plug it into my Win 10 PC. Nothing. Device manager doesn't even recognize it as anything plugged in; moderate to high anxiety setting in. Note that I could previously connect it just fine and device manager doesn't see ANY kind of device connected, so I don't believe it's a driver issue or anything like that. So, through TWRP, I look to see what's on the device storage: I have an old nandroid ( I believe stock unrooted) and a custom rom, Chroma as well as some GApps and a couple custom kernels. At this point I wanted to preserve my text messages so I did a new nandroid then tried restoring the old nandroid as well as flashing Chroma without wiping data. Nothing, still won't get past the colored dot IBL. So then I tried doing a full wipe before trying the old nandroid and Chroma again. Nothing. Figured it may have been a malicious file on my sd card so I deleted a few files that I didn't immediately recognize in TWRP and tried all the above steps again. Still nothing. So I just called Google and they offered to replace it. However I would like to have my phone for the weekend and not have to have a $650 hold on my account. I'm on Project Fi so I can't use a temporary burner phone. I figure I'm probably screwed but hopefully one of you geniuses could help me out. Thanks in advance!
tl;dr: Phone randomly rebooted and entered indestructible bootloop. Windows device manager won't recognize it at all. Tried everything I can, including clean flash of custom rom and an old nandroid: phone still won't get past bootloop.
Hello all,
I have a Nexus 6P, stock, rooted, with Xposed installed. The phone is completely functional for the better part of its life time since I bought it at release -probably first or second batch- (except for random reboots once daily on average, deemed by my investigation and exhausting all options to be a hardware issue or Xposed related).
Today, out of nowhere, the phone randomly rebooted itself and surprisingly it launched the "Android is starting..." dialogue which, if I'm not mistaken, optimize apps for ART. The battery was at 19% before it randomly rebooted, so when it started that optimize apps it went down to 0 (I assume) and it turned off. The charger wasn't connected correctly so that happened. Now the phone keeps restarting itself up to before it gives me the boot up decryption phase of the Data partition and reboots again. I assumed it can't decrypt Data for some reason, so I launched TWRP recovery to try and decrypt data and take a backup copy of my Titanium Backup folder on storage... Unfortunately, TWRP reports "failed to decrypt data" even though I'm 100% positive that the pattern is correct because I'm literally inputting it almost 10-20 times a day for the past two years...
Note: there seems to be a red blinking LED in the top left corner of the the phone. I never even knew this existed.
WHAT I WILL DO
I'll reflash everything system-wise.. I'm ok with that. I'll reflash the factory images, root it, install Xposed, no problem.
WHAT I NEED HELP WITH
I need to extract some folders from my phone storage, namely the Titanium Backup folder. I know the pattern protection of the encryption.
How do I go about doing this?
UPDATE:
Help is urgently needed now indeed: The phone doesn't even turn on to bootloader mode anymore now. It was able to, just half an hour ago. Now all I see it the red blinking LED.
UPDATE2: https://support.google.com/nexus/troubleshooter/3337561?hl=en-GB#ts=3337942
I'll try in 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, please help me with my original problem; extracting data.
I was thinking, if I boot into bootloader mode, can I use adb to pull any folder? If so, will that work in my case with decryption fails or Data partition doesn't seem to mount correctly?
Relevent:
Reviewing some other threads:
TWRP: 3.0.2-2
Bootloader: UNLOCKED
I did NOT upgrade to Android 7.0 nor was I planning to, until Xposed is available.
I did NOT flash anything **new** recently. However, Installed an Xposed module yesterday which caused a bootloop. I rebooted into TWRP, uninstalled Xposed, rebooted into system (which looped once, out of the ordinary) and I uninstalled that module, back to TWRP installed Xposed, and rebooted back into system. It worked for 12 hours and then what I wrote this post for happened as stated above.
UPDATE3:
15 minutes into charging... NOT EVEN A RED BLINKING LED ANYMORE.
Last? UPDATE:
Almost 1 and a half hour into charging and there is no longer ANYTHING. Is it hard-bricked now?
How the **** is this possible? I'm very much capable of solving any sof-brick but not a hard-brick...
Thats a really crappy scenario. Im a little busy right now (not that I can get you out of this regardless) but I sort of skimmed through your post. Are you able to connect adb? If so you might be able to use "adb pull" to get that data.
On my 6p TB is located at:
/storage/emulated/0/TitaniumBackup/
Itll probably be the same location on your phone. Good Luck
KLit75 said:
Thats a really crappy scenario. Im a little busy right now (not that I can get you out of this regardless) but I sort of skimmed through your post. Are you able to connect adb? If so you might be able to use "adb pull" to get that data.
On my 6p TB is located at:
/storage/emulated/0/TitaniumBackup/
Itll probably be the same location on your phone. Good Luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was indeed able to connect to a PC after I saw the problem (the bootloop essentially)... But I didn't at the time as I didn't have a plan of action as to how to get my data, so I turned it off. After sometime, I couldn't do anything with the phone... Not able to boot into bootloader, not recovery, the phone is essentially not turning on to anything, not even the splash screen; like a hard-brick. I'm not sure if this indeed is a hard brick as I've never seen any.. and don't currently know what to try next.
Is the LED still showing? if so, do the bootloader boot combo, and see if fastboot devices gets a response in a command prompt - or terminal if you're a linux guy.
if so, you can boot to twrp, decrypt data - try default_password -, and browse the phone's files from your computer's file browser, the phone will show up as Nexus 6P. That's my suggestion, wish you luck.
TnT_ said:
Is the LED still showing? if so, do the bootloader boot combo, and see if fastboot devices gets a response in a command prompt - or terminal if you're a linux guy.
if so, you can boot to twrp, decrypt data - try default_password -, and browse the phone's files from your computer's file browser, the phone will show up as Nexus 6P. That's my suggestion, wish you luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I honestly declared it hard-bricked.
Will Fastboot show any devices if the phone didn't show bootloader screen?
I'll try again today.
Update:
Didn't work.
check out my post
[Guide] Fool/Noob proof way to do clean installs on Nexus Devices
http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-6p/general/guide-fool-noob-proof-to-clean-installs-t3518311