Database Users

[SOLVED] Suddenly G2 boots only into recovery mode (loop)

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.

[Q] Galaxy S4 won't boot past recovery (urgent)

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!

Massive softbrick (haven't found a solution yet)

Hello everyone,
So here's my story: I got a 6P short after release and it's been amazing. After switching from a S6 I couldn't be happier until 3 days ago.
I was playing around with my phone (checking for updates on the play store if I recall correctly) and I was going to switch from 4g to wifi. I went ahead and pulled down my notification shade and went to press WiFi but misclicked and hit Hotspot which was below it. My phone suddenly froze big time and this is for the first time ever since purchase.
At first I thought I'd wait it out since the device was completely unresponsive, home button didn't work and neither did anything on screen. Buttons didn't make a difference either. 10 minutes went by and I ended up force restarting by holding down power + volume up. First part of my bootup went fine but when it got to the android boot animation after I put in my pin to allow the device to start it dropped from the smooth usual framerate down to 1 frame every 10-15 seconds and it slowed down further until it came to a complete halt around the time the android letters appear.
My first thought was corrupt rom so I went ahead and wiped data from the stock recovery. I was running completely stock with no modifications whatsoever. That didn't do anything. Phone still froze in the same boot phase. Desperate I unlocked bootloader to flash a clean fresh image to try to fix it and to my surprise that didn't change a thing.
As I was getting pretty desperate already I had one more idea and that was to flash up to the Dev preview. To my huge surprise it booted and I jumped from excitement. So I started setting up my phone again. I got past the prompt to insert sim card and I was now at the screen to choose a wifi network. As soon as I clicked into that the phone froze up again and at that point I lost all hope.
I wiped data in stock recovery and shut the phone down for the night. On day 3, today I woke up and tried starting the phone and it worked as if nothing had happened. I went through the setup and set up my phone on the N preview. At a certain point I was planning to go back to the latest official build but for now I was happy my phone was back from the dead. Later today I tried to restart my phone to clear all running apps etc and it froze up on boot.
I'm losing all hope that I'll be resolving this myself so I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone's had this happen to them before and hopefuly for a solution. It's still under warranty so I can eventually send it back to the retailer but I'd rather not have a phone for 3 weeks.
Any and all help is appreciated.
Thank you for reading through my long and probably pretty boring story!

Have you tried flashing the factory image? If yes, did you made sure to wipe/erase the system, boot, vendor, and cache partition before flash the corresponding img files?

To the OP, is there any reason you did not flash to release version 6 instead of Dev preview ?
Also, any reason you can not simply do the "unenroll" from https://www.google.com/android/beta ?
It will require you to setup certain settings again as you will be back to a "factory reset".

DJBhardwaj said:
Have you tried flashing the factory image? If yes, did you made sure to wipe/erase the system, boot, vendor, and cache partition before flash the corresponding img files?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DJBhardwaj, i haven't specifically erased those partitions. I was under the impression wipe userdata along with reflashing did that. I will try that tonight when I get home!
Xdafly, I only updated up to N as a last resort because at first I had a locked BL. I was planning to unenrol but that would've been too late as it self bricked after a restart.

DJBhardwaj said:
Have you tried flashing the factory image? If yes, did you made sure to wipe/erase the system, boot, vendor, and cache partition before flash the corresponding img files?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I just did the erase thingy and my phone booted but wifi won't turn on. Enabling hotspot doesn't brick anymore but I now suspect WiFi might've been the issue. Any tips on how to find out what it could be and possibly fix it?
Edit: 2 restarts and a factory reset later I'm back to bricked same way as before.

try safe mode

mr.dj26 said:
try safe mode
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was my first thought, that was the restart that bricked it again. Safe mode shouldn't have made a difference since I hadn't even logged into Google account for apps.

After reading the very first post; sounds like bad WiFi hardware.
All the hanging has been related to WiFi or Hotspot.

I think you should get a replacement
Sent from my Purified NexusixP
If Someone Helped You Then Dont Just say Thanks...Hit The Thanks Button!

Is your phone rooted and did you install Xposed?
Over the weekend I shutdown my 6p (stock rooted with April security patch, Xposed v80) and charged it. When it turned it back up I kept getting "Unfortunately, nfc service has stopped". Long story short: I ended up factory reset my phone and reinstalled EVERYTHING and I still got into bootloop. Then I came across
https://github.com/rovo89/Xposed/issues/113
https://github.com/rovo89/android_art/issues/28
At the end of the second post rovo89 (developer of Xposed) fixed the bug in V83. I wiped my 6p once more and installed everything with v83. Problem solved.
Good luck!

[Q] sgh 1337 UN stuck on Samsung splash screen (safe strap broken)

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.

Phone restarts at startup.

Well this is my 1st post so first of all hey everyone
I just spent a week in Amsterdam and my phone restarted twice, different times different days and I dont remember what I was doing with it back then.
But as I landed back home I put the phone back from "Airplane Mode" and went on to toggle "Cellular Data" on.
The second I pressed the cellular data shortcut on my the phone restarted itself but this time whenever it would finish the screen would be on but fully black and sometimes it'll show battery precentage at the top but then will restart again in an infinite loop.
Sometimes it'll pop up the "Optimizing Apps" window and will go through all 24, upon finishing it will restart once more and do the same.
I tried using the bootloader and it worked (the bootloader that is) but the phone would do the same thing even after Rebooting from there or shutting down from there and then turning back on.
I contacted tech support on chat but they couldnt help past telling me to go to bootloader and reboot, said I should factory wipe when it failed.
Also tried wiping cache but to no avail.
I have no backup of my phone (wanted to do one before the flight but got lazy and I suck for not doing one sooner) since probably October and google doesnt backup my contacts properly for some unknown reason.
I already downloaded Android Studio with everything included for me to try using adb to sideload stock without wiping but its my first time and I couldnt get it to do anything at all...
I already got the official stock .gz file from the motorola website.
Anyway here are the specs to my phone:
XT1575
Everything is stock. didn't root or change recovery once in my life.
Was fully updated and had plenty of drive space (I have almost 128GB with the 64GB version + 64GB SD)
I'm really lost here so help will be very appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
-Noam

Start with a full wipe and if that doesn't work flash the stock image. Not sure what your question is though as you never really say. Once fixed I would unlock and make a backup so you don't have to deal with this again.

lafester said:
Start with a full wipe and if that doesn't work flash the stock image. Not sure what your question is though as you never really say. Once fixed I would unlock and make a backup so you don't have to deal with this again.
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Click to collapse
The thing I pretty much want to know is if theres a way to either backup the phone now with it connected to the computer while in bootloader or recovery. or a way to flash the stock rom without wiping which I read someone did with his tablet. I cant post source normally because I'm a new user so here it is but change spaces to dots: schnouki net/posts/2014/08/13/flashing-a-stock-android-image-without-wiping-user-data/
Also while in recovery I noticed 2 options under wipe: 1. userdata only. 2. userdata+(insert something I dont remember here) and I was wondering what gets deleted in both? if I delete only userdata what data will remain? something helpful?

Sure you can try flashing without wiping data but being locked I personally wouldn't risk it. No idea about backing up in your state... somewhere I remember a thread on backing up without root try searching in q&a.

lafester said:
Sure you can try flashing without wiping data but being locked I personally wouldn't risk it. No idea about backing up in your state... somewhere I remember a thread on backing up without root try searching in q&a.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Out of curiosity why shouldnt I try flashing with no wipe if ill lose the data anyway? worst case wont I just have to wipe after it fails and flash again?
And I will try thank you
Do you have any knowledge about the 2 wipe options?
Thanks in advance

Well I tried turning the phone on and it took a couple of minutes before loading to a fresh start. It apparently wiped itself on its own. Managed to restore almost everything.
Anyhow the phone takes too long to boot now. Was even stuck at boot and I had to restart it.
Anyway to fix my software? Or at least check for corruption?
Sent from my XT1575 using XDA-Developers mobile app