Hey all,
I had CM7 running on my Vibrant for about 2 months until today when I decided to try out some other ROMs. I got Team Toxic's Crazy8 installed but had an issue where the stock bootloader and recovery were reflashed somehow (I must have screwed something up while trying to edit my sd card partition). So every time Crazy8 would boot, it would act as if I made no changes whatsoever. After each reboot, it would boot without any of my settings, apps, etc. from the last boot.
So I decided to try Bionix instead and figured I'd have to get back to stock. I used ODIN to do this and after reflashing the stock JFD ROM, everything passes. My issue is that now when the phone boots up (after seeing the T-Mobile animation and jingle and the Galaxy S animated logo) the screen just goes black. Power button does nothing. If I hit any of the soft buttons, they light up but the screen doesn't respond at all.
I've reflashed using ODIN multiple times now and the same thing is happening. I've also followed the bootloop fix (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1108499) step by step but to no avail. I know my phone isn't bricked and I'm far from panicked. I just want my phone back.
Thanks in advance,
Luke
EDIT: Also, in the stock recovery (after resetting user data and clearing cache), when I hit reinstall packages it says:
-- Install from sdcard...
Finding update package...
Opening update package...
Installing update...
And then it just hangs there and the progress bar does nothing.
After some more research, I realized I'm getting the notorious mbr checksum error. Found this thread (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=888084) and am currently downloading Eugene. I'll update this thread with my results.
EDIT: Finally got it flashed to stock, and it boots up past the black screen. It took quite a bit of digging and dead links to figure it out. Here is the exact procedure I followed:
1. Download Eugene's Froyo-that-does-not-brick here: http://www.4shared.com/file/dJiyRz3v/EUGENE373_SamsungS_Froyo_PDA.html
2. Open ODIN (as administrator if Vista or Win7).
3. Use the 512 PIT file and Eugene's PDA file (that you just downloaded).
4. Uncheck re-partition.
5. With the phone in download mode, start the flash.
6. When it is done, it will reboot into stock recovery and you won't be able to do anything. Unplug the phone and remove the battery for a second or two.
7. Put the battery back in, but DO NOT try and turn on the phone yet. Hold down just the volume up and down buttons.
8. Plug the USB cable back in. It should go straight to download mode. If you go back into the stock recovery, go back to step 6.
9. Check the re-partition box in ODIN and select the JFD PDA file.
10. Flash again.
You might still get the MBR error message, but you should at least be able to get back into your phone and it should otherwise operate normally.
After trying to fix my phone (black screen with lit soft keys, 2e recovery (no workie), MBR Checksum Error) for 2 days this finally has done it!!!
Thank you SO MUCH for posting this WITH a working link!! I won't ever delete that file again. You really are awesome!!
This is going to be a little long, but I figured the more info the better. I recieved a TF201 from a friend of mine. He already had it rooted and running a custom ROM. It was loaded down with a bunch of stuff so I attempted a factory restore through CWM so I could start over and customize to my liking. Everything went fine (or so I thought) It booted back up to stock interface and still had root intact. I downloaded Astro FM from Play Store just to have a look around and make sure everything was intact. Everything seemed normal but suddenly rebooted and stuck at splash screen. Im able to boot into recovery still so first thing I tried was loading a backup as there were about 6 of them in the list of backups. None of them work, I just get "No files found" error. Next I tried to reload stock ROM with the Install zip from SD option. Also getting no files found error. somehow the SD card has nothing on it anymore even after copying a zip of the stock ROM downloaded from ASUS. The only other thing I can do that I know of is instead of loading recovery, is go into the cold boot menu with the 3 icons in the middle of the screen. By pressing nothing, it says that it is cold-booting Linux. This process just hangs and nothing happens. It does attempt to install MTP device drivers (which were already previously installed) but ends in an error (Failed). Selecting the middle option gives me "Starting Fastboot USB download protocol" but this also hangs and does nothing. Lastly the "Wipe Data" option completes it process and says "Wipe-Data done" but then also hangs and does nothing. At this point Im assuming its Hard Bricked and nothing can be done but I just wanted to see if anyone would be able to help. I have read a lot of similar posts on here but haven't been able to find anything that helps. Most other people with similar problems at least have a way to install from SD but my device wont recognize anything on the card. Does anyone know of anyway to fix this??
To start off, I suffered, what seems to be a common problem, of the fingerprint unlock on Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge randomly being unable to recognise my fingerprint. Followed by my back-up password not being accepted. Unfortunately, I turned off my data and wifi before the phone locked so the problem doesn't seem to be able to resolve itself unless I Factory Reset the phone.
This i am happy to do as long as I can find some way to retrieve the media files from the phone (just pictures and videos). I read up and watched some videos where some people were able to use ADB through Recovery Mode or Field Test mode, and pull the files from the phone. These people however were using older models of Android phones but I decided to read numerous pages etc and go ahead and try.
I set up everything (I believe) i needed on my Mac Book pro in order to use the Adb Terminal. However when I tried to connect my phone Adb couldn't detect my device. I then decided (after reading somewhere to do so) to press "Apply update using ADB" on the Recovery menu. Again, Adb did not detect my device.
i left this screen up on my phone which resulted in "dm-verity verification failed..." appearing at the bottom of the screen. It then switched back to the Recovery menu and continues to show "dm-verity verification failed..." at the base of the screen. Now when I try and power up the phone normally, the start up screen just repeatedly flashes and it goes no further than that.
Im not completely brain dead when it comes to this stuff but I obviously don't fully understand what I am doing, So Im wondering if there is a genius out there who, even after what I've done, can help me pull the files from my phone before I have to Factory Reset!
The problem is, that you don't have the ability to use adb pull through the stock recovery. This kind of thing can only be done via a custom recovery like TWRP, CWM, or Philz. Now that it's not booting, pretty much the only thing to try is to install a custom recovery and boot directly into it before it tries to restart. Make sure you find one for the correct variant of your phone. If yours is a VZW or ATT version, you're in trouble because they don't have custom recoveries like that for them.
My wife was using her phone (completely stock, no mods whatsoever) and it started shutting down processes (contacts, calendar, etc). She held the power button down to manually shutdown and then rebooted shortly after. The next day, it started to do it again, so she did the same thing only this time it stuck on the "M" logo screen. When she brought it home, I held the power & vol down buttons in for 2 minutes and the phone began to reboot but still stuck on the "M" logo screen.
I began searching vigorously online for a solution and have tried everything. **NOTE** - I am completely unsure what version of software the phone was running before this happened. The first thing I tried was RSD Lite with the JB Stock file from Team US Cellular. The flashing fails during certain lines of the .XML file. I took suggestions from other users to delete the lines it fails on and let the file continue the flash. Once it reboots, it is still stuck on the "M" logo screen. I then tried all the other stock firmware files I could and the same result each time.
Next, I tried using ADB and Fastboot tools. My PC recognizes the phone when plugged in and running command "adb devices" shows the phone listed, but whenever I try to run a pull or other command, I get error:closed. I've tried all the solutions of making sure ADB files are updated, running the list of commands to get the daemon connection reset, etc. I can't push/pull anything using adb. I tried using mFastboot with no luck either.
I tried the above steps over and over for 3 days straight, hoping I missed something simple. My final option was to boot into Recovery Mode and run Wipe Data/Factory Reset. When I select that option, about 3 lines of command begin to run and the phone reboots and goes back to being stuck on the "M" logo screen. The command lines and reboot literally happen within 2 seconds. That tells me Factory Reset is corrupted, but I'm not 100% at this point.
Does anyone have any insight on if there is anything I can do at this point? It wouldn't be such a big deal to lose the phone, but we have pics/videos of our 2 year old that we never got backed up at home or in the cloud and they're very important to us. Unfortunately, the phone did not have and SD card. I'm honestly out of ideas at this point and have never felt so defeated.
I got brave and decided to just unlock the phone and attempt to install TWRP on it and that doesn't even work. It says it flashed it, but whenever I choose Recovery, it never boots to TWRP. It continues to use the stock recovery screen. I'm assuming this thing is just completely done for?
Hi Im new to the forum but I am finding it to be a massive resource for all things technical android. I am also new to rooting android but am technically savvy, (10 years in IT will do that). Initially it went just fine, even if a speed bump here or there. I got my Sony Z2 (starting BL unlocked w most recent Sony stock .291 firmware) rooted and flashed with TWRP and SuperSU (UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.76-20160630161323.zip) using rocker00's guide. I was then able to successfully flash ParanoidAndroid's latest (pa_sirius-6.0.3-20160809-signed.zip) and Gapps (A-GAPPS+6.0.1_14.05.2016_v5.2.zip) using TWRP recovery. I got a minor bootloop trying to get PA running, but re-flashing seemed to clear it up. It seemed to work fine although I couldn't figure out how to get the pie controls or the halo notifications to work. Without those things i couldn't see the point, so I decided to try Cyanogen (cm-12.1-20161016-NIGHTLY-sirius.zip). Apparently this uses a different recovery (CWM), I was a little worried but went for it anyway. It seemed to be fine after the first reboot. I rooted fine (same SuperSU as before) and started installing apps via Google restore. But after the next reboot, it started bootlooping. First it would cycle between the Sony screen and a blank screen, But after trying a bunch of things (I'll detail below), it just hangs at the Sony screen indefinitely.
So, what I've tried till now to fix it is:
1) First I tried to reinstall TWRP using the tool from rocker00's post with the phone in fastboot mode. The flash went without error, but did not fix the problem. I have not been able to get into recovery since the bootloop. In the process I also did a fastboot -w, which also seemed to have relatively no effect, although I would get the android robot with the blue progress once before it reboot into the bootloop.
2) With the phone in flashmode I tried flashtooling the kernel again with the same from rocker00's post (D6503_23.5.A.0.575_kernel.ftf). No effect. I also tried flashing recovery a few more times using the script from his post to no effect (i think the phone needs to be booted for this tool to work).
3) I've tried all the relevant commands from this page and this page, hoping to eradicate whatever errant code is screwing with my phone. Since fastboot seems to be the only way to interact with my phone. I tried:
Code:
fastboot flash recovery /path/to/twrp-3.0.2-0-sirius.img
fastboot -w
fastboot update /path/to/pa_sirius-6.0.3-20160809-signed.zip
the attempt to flash PA through fastboot errored with a message about not having "android-info.txt".
I also desperately tried:
Code:
fastboot erase system
fastboot erase data
fastboot erase cache
the one about data errored. the others seemed fine, but didn't change the situation.
This guide was informative yet quite useless to me, since I definitely don't want to start scripting my phone 2 days after starting this stuff. I've also scoured this forum and others for similar situations, which I've found but they all seemed to get resolved by either doing stuff I've already tried or from having a completely irrelevant problem to my own..
I'm really scratching my head here because it is all stock TWRP and Android or should be by now. adb commands aren't connecting due to stock android not having USB debugging enabled, and without being able to boot into the settings I can do nothing to change that. So all I have is fastboot. I also have a TWRP backup image I made before installing PA but till now Ive seen no way to restore it without booting into recovery.
Any help please!!!! This can't be bricked!!
epeace said:
Hi Im new to the forum but I am finding it to be a massive resource for all things technical android. I am also new to rooting android but am technically savvy, (10 years in IT will do that). Initially it went just fine, even if a speed bump here or there. I got my Sony Z2 rooted and flashed with TWRP (twrp-3.0.2-0-sirius.img) and SuperSU (UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.76-20160630161323.zip) using this guide. I was then able to successfully flash ParanoidAndroid's latest (pa_sirius-6.0.3-20160809-signed.zip) using TWRP recovery. I got a minor bootloop trying to get PA running, but re-flashing seemed to clear it up. It seemed to work fine although I couldn't figure out how to get the pie controls or the halo notifications to work. Without those things i couldn't see the point, so I decided to try Cyanogen. Apparently this uses a different recovery (CWM), I was a little worried but went for it anyway. It seemed to be fine after the first reboot. I started installing apps, rooted fine. But after the next reboot, it started bootlooping. First it would cycle between the Sony screen and a blank screen, But after trying a bunch of things (I'll detail below), it just hangs at the Sony screen indefinitely.
So, what I've tried till now to fix it is:
1) First I tried to reinstall TWRP. The flash went without error, but did not fix the problem. I have not been able to get into recovery since the bootloop. In the process I also did a fastboot -w, which also seemed to have relatively no effect.
2) I tried flashtooling the kernel again with the same from rocker00's post (D6503_23.5.A.0.575_kernel.ftf). No effect. I also tried flashing recovery a few more times using the script from his post to no effect.
3) I've tried all the commands from this page and this page, hoping to eradicate whatever errant code is screwing with my phone. Since fastboot seems to be the only way to interact with my phone. I tried:
Code:
fastboot flash recovery /path/to/twrp-3.0.2-0-sirius.img
fastboot -w
fastboot update /path/to/pa_sirius-6.0.3-20160809-signed.zip
the attempt to flash PA through fastboot errored with a message about not having "android-info.txt".
I also desperately tried:
Code:
fastboot erase system
fastboot erase data
fastboot erase cache
the one about data errored. the others seemed fine, but didn't change the situation.
This guide was informative yet quite useless to me, since I definitely don't want to start scripting my phone 2 days after starting this stuff. I've also scoured this forum and others for similar situations, which I've found but they all seemed to get resolved by either doing stuff I've already tried or from having a completely irrelevant problem to my own..
I'm really scratching my head here because it is all stock TWRP and Android or should be by now. adb commands aren't connecting due to stock android not having USB debugging enabled, and without being able to boot into the settings I can do nothing to change that. So all I have is fastboot. I also have a TWRP backup image I made before installing PA but till now Ive seen no way to restore it without booting into recovery.
Any help please!!!! This can't be bricked!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Welcome to XDA!
May I know what fw version did you initially start with? .575 or .291 or any others?
iXaidyiu said:
Welcome to XDA!
May I know what fw version did you initially start with? .575 or .291 or any others?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi iXaidyiu,
I started with .291. i stopped going back to it after the first time as I noticed that the custom recovery stopped working in .291. I have had it at .575 since then. And of course now that I can't get into recovery .291 is not an option unless I find an ftf of it for flashtool.
Another observation I forgot to mention is that I cannot turn the thing off. I have to force quit it (vol up + power) and after a second it boots up again to get stuck at Sony screen. I have noticed that if I do the flash boot buttons (vol down + power) I get a different Sony screen (without the xperia logo). But it sticks just the same. I don't even know if the phone is charging at this point, although it was on the Sony screen all night so there must be some charging happening. How could this have gotten so screwed up? It was working fine and I was doing benign activities at the time it choked
epeace said:
Hi iXaidyiu,
I started with .291. i stopped going back to it after the first time as I noticed that the custom recovery stopped working in .291. I have had it at .575 since then. And of course now that I can't get into recovery .291 is not an option unless I find an ftf of it for flashtool.
Another observation I forgot to mention is that I cannot turn the thing off. I have to force quit it (vol up + power) and after a second it boots up again to get stuck at Sony screen. I have noticed that if I do the flash boot buttons (vol down + power) I get a different Sony screen (without the xperia logo). But it sticks just the same. I don't even know if the phone is charging at this point, although it was on the Sony screen all night so there must be some charging happening. How could this have gotten so screwed up? It was working fine and I was doing benign activities at the time it choked
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well if so, let's just start from scratch, because you seems to have screwed quite badly and complicated.
Firstly, flash .291 firmware with the three boxes under "Wipes:" ALL CHECKED, check also "AUTO_BOOT" on the right column. These steps will return your device into factory state.
After the flashing process has finished, if your device turned on automatically, turn it off, then unplug the device and replug it when pressing vol+ key, this will enter fastboot mode, you can have two ways to follow now:
(1) Select "Flash", "Fastboot Mode", "Select kernel to flash", navigate to the directory that contain the kernel downloaded (I personally recommand Elite Kernel and extracted), then flash the .IMG file;
(2) Open a cmd using shift+R mouse on the blank space in the directory that stores your twrp.IMG (you can download it here), and type in:
Code:
fastboot flash recovery <filename>.img
and press Enter.
In both method, after you have pressed Enter and see there are two "Okay" printed in the CLI, unplug your device and boot it.
During boot, you will see yellow or green LED light blinked, press vol+ button once and hurray, you will be booted into TWRP recovery!
Now you can load your zip onto your SD card and start flashing! Happy flashing!
P's1 When you tried to boot up your device with the vol- button pressed together, you will be booted into SAFE_MODE, in this mode all 3rd party applications will be disabled.
P's2 I personally DO NOT recommend you to flash zip or erase anything using fastboot commands, use TWRP instead
Thank you iXaidyiu. Option 1, although it fails to boot normally, was successful in getting me back into recovery! Now that I'm in recovery, I first tried to restore my back up. But this failed with errors:
Code:
Failed to mount '/system' (Invalid Argument)
Failed to mount '/data' (Invalid Argument)
Failed to mount '/cache' (Invalid Argument)
So then I tried to flash PA again (since that was the only rom I had on my sd card right now) which also failed with the same errors plus new ones:
Code:
Failed to mount '/data' (Invalid Argument)
Updater process ended with ERROR: 7
Error installing zip file '/external_sd/Download/pa_sirius-6.0.3-20160809-signed.zip'
It also said that "This package is for "sirius" devices; this is a "".". Apparently my Z2 is no longer identifying as 'sirius'. I checked the file system, and I can see that the /data, /cache, and /system folders are physically there. Why are they not mounting? Permissions? :s What to do from here?
UPDATE: This "Failed to mount /data error" seemed to be the root of all the problems till now. Others on the net with this error also see boot hanging at the mfr logo. However, I was able to solve it by formatting /data. I still couldn't flash PA due to the 'This package is for "sirius" devices' error, but I was able to restore my TWRP backup, which then solved the "sirius" ID issue, after which I could flash PA just fine! Thanks iXaidyiu for your help in getting me back into recovery! That was clutch to me finding the solution!
@epeace
If you ever face the device id issue again, unzip the ROM, navigate down /META-INF/com/Google/Android/updater-script and delete the following line:
Code:
getprop("ro.product.device") == "sirius" ||
abort("E3004: This package is for \"sirius\" devices; this is a \"" +
getprop("ro.product.device") + "\".");
(probably the first of the code till a semi-colon)
This disable the Device ID check when you flash the ROM.
P's May I know how's your phone charging status? I am curious cuz' I once tried flashing PA 6.0.3 and all working good EXCEPT the battery cannot be charged. It keeps draining itself even though it can sense the presence of the charger but it still cannot charge:crying:
Ok great tip, I'll make that edit for next time. Re: the charging, I think it's charging, but it's definitely charging very slow. But a number of things could be contributing to that, I'm constantly on it right now (setting it up), i'm charging off of my computer (usually slow to begin with), and this phone is a few years old so the battery is not what it used to be. I'll keep an eye on it the next days, and report back here and let you know what I've observed. Thanks again for your help!
iXaidyiu said:
@epeace
P's May I know how's your phone charging status? I am curious cuz' I once tried flashing PA 6.0.3 and all working good EXCEPT the battery cannot be charged. It keeps draining itself even though it can sense the presence of the charger but it still cannot charge:crying:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey @iXaidyiu,
I no longer have PA installed, but in the couple days with it I didn't notice any difference in battery performance compared to other ROMs. I think that shouldn't be a deterrent. At the moment I'm trying out GarvityBox on rcstar6696's vanilla MM/Nougat. So far it feels right, although rooting was a little tricky for some reason. We'll see how that goes!