Long story short I find myself in a boot loop and am a little hesitant to try what I believe to be the 'next step' to recovery in case I am mistaken and totally fubar my new toy. (this is my first android device and I'd prefer not to brick it in the first 24hrs!)
As to how I got myself into this situation here's a play by play.
1) Researched internet for best value tablet with awesome dev community. Found my gtablet and xda! (buy, buy, buy!)
2) I spend the week leading up to taking delivery of my new tablet reading everything I can get my hands on.
3) Unpacked new tablet and played with stock rom briefly before saying farwell.
4) Installed clockworkmod .08 and then TNT Lite 4.4 and everything worked wonderfully
(youtube.com/watch?v=mY_FvJnWNEw&feature=related) used this method
5) when I turned my gtab on for round 2 I find myself in a boot loop, I figured there's an issue with something I changed so since clockwork seems to be working brilliantly and the update.zip file in root is the same I wipe data/factory reset and wipe cache partition and then rerun the update. This still leaves me in a boot loop...
6) In further reading the recommended fix seems to be repartition sdcard and then reinstall rom with clockworkmod off of sdcard2. I put the update.zip file with \Recovery\command (edited to point to sdcard2) onto the microsd popped the micro sd into the tablet and restarted... the tablet did not read the microsd when i started up clockworkmod. And so I am left with questions at this point and a semi-bricked device.
am I correct in trying to repartition the sdcard as my next step?
does the mircosd need to be of a certain format?
have I done something ridiculously obviously wrong??
Thanks in advance for your any help or guidance you can provide...
I'm experiencing the same thing man. However, i have another g-tablet that i haven[t cracked open yet and i'm wondering if i can just partition and copy/paste the folders from the g-tablet that hasn't been opened to get the device back to stock.
Hello!
I have just recently (last night) successfully recovered from your *exact* same problem. Short answer...Yes, Install CWM on your micro card, partition the sd card (2048 and 0). I have my microsd card formatted to FAT32.
Here is my thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1028118
I specifically used "butchconner"'s first post although all of the responses were friendly and helpful!
Best of luck!
Pat
Wait a minute everyone!!!! (Talking about gilpin)
He said when he tried to boot the microSD card, he couldn't find it in CWM.
If CWM is up, that's the main thing he needs??!!!
If you can get into CWM, go to the Advanced Menu and run the Partition, Fix Permissions and Wipe Dalvik Cache options. Then go to the Main Menu and run
the Wipe Cache and Wipe/Reset Factory Settings.
Then re-boot and see if your tablet is okay.
If it's not (and CWM is still working), you can put the appropriate ROM update.zip
in /sdcard and then select and load it through CWM.
Hope this helps.
Rev
geedup,
If you are boot looping also, you need to re-partition and the nvflash back to
stock.
The following thread pretty well covers nvflashing:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=861950
After you nvflash, check to see if you still are getting boot loops.
If so, you need to load CWM and do the same thing as gilpin. When
you finish the CWM routine either it will be working -- or you can
nvflash again and it should be good to go.
Let me know......
Rev
working again...
Thanks for the fast replies all! I repartitioned my sdcard (2048, 0) reset permissions, cleared data and then rebooted. This seems to have fixed my problem as I booted cleanly and everything is working again!
Related
First let me say that I installed CWM once already so I am fairly confident that I understand the basic steps. However, after I had initially installed CWM I tried to install a new ROM, but my tablet just hung on the "Viewsonic Birds" screen for like 45 mins. So, I shut down and booted to CWM but now my tablet is empty. I mean literally empty because I wiped everything in order to install the new ROM and somehow I messed that up big time because even that .zip file is no longer there. After some searching through the forums, I found a stock image of TnT 3588 and got it loaded, but in doing so lost CWM. So, I reinstalled CWM and saw it load (saw the cardboard box etc.), rebooted holding down Vol + key and saw the 'recovery key detected'. Then it goes to a screen with a progress bar and then it just boots normally....
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
I'm having the same issue after a nvflash that didn't take. Can't get into recovery.
I've had a few issues with that also. I try the SD card installer, drop it on the card named update.zip, reboot, it looks like it installs, but after rebooting it won't let me boot to CWM. So, I try the internal installer, drop it on the SD card named udpate.zip, it installs, I reboot, and go right into CWM. So either when I connect my tablet it somehow doesn't mount the SD card but mounts one of the internal partitions, or the SD and Internal installers were mixed up...
I received my G Tab from woot on Friday. Yesterday I went through the process to install VEGAn Gingerbread. NVFlash, CWM, and then the ROM.
All was great until today when I decided to add an external card. The only micro SD I had laying around was a 2GB I used in an old phone. Used windows to format it to FAT32 and then inserted it properly into my G Tab. It wasn't mounting so I removed it formatted it again with Windows and then the G Tab mounted it. Hooked up the USB cable to move over some files and after going though the USB screens the G Tab locked up. All you could see was the spinning wheel. Windows wasn't detecting anything either. I left it for 10 minutes with no change and turned off the G Tab.
I removed the micro SD card and turned the G Tab back on. No joy, The Gingerbread screen was in an infinite loop. Decided to flash back to stock and try again.
After booting into APX mode (BTW, what does APX stand for?) and ran NVFlash, everything appeared to load properly. When the G Tab restarted it was stuck in an infinite reboot loop. First the Viewsonic screen than the GTablet screen and then reboot. I used NVFlash again with the same results.
The G Tab was very nice for about 24 hours.
Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated. BTW, I am not a programmer but I try to carefully follow directions.
jerirat,
When I see boot loops, I think partition -- you need to repartition the tablet.
To do that you will need to install CWM. You can try and see if you can load
from a microSD card, or you can look at the sticky at the start of the General Forum
and load with nvflash.
When you get CWM loaded, go to the Advanced Menu and Partition (2048 and 0),
Fix Permissions and Wipe Dalvic Cache. Re-partition takes a few minutes.
Then go back to the Main Menu and Wipe Cache and Wipe/Reset Factory Data.
Reboot and see if things are working. If not, shut down and nvflash down to the
bekit 1105 (Version 2638). Then you can OTA up to 3588 or if you want D/L the
.zip version and install it. Getting to 3588 you can go and do what you want.
Rev
I was in a similar situation. Repartitions in CWR as butchconner suggested and it should fix your problem. It did for me.
Had the same thing happen to me only when I tried to repartition, something went wrong and it would not complete. If this happes to you, there is a utility called "format" that is used with NVflash. Do a search on the forums and you will find it. I'd use it only as a last resort as it completely removes everything from the gtab. Then just do a normal nvflash and it should allow you to repartition. Good luck!
So far so good, had to move the bootloader.bin up one directory level for the batch file to work. Repartitioning the SD card right now...
Wiped/reset everything you pointed out and I'm now rebooting. Looks like the stock ROM is loading.... and it's loaded.
Thanks! I'll have to reload the Gingerbread ROM but at least I'm not borked anymore. (I should have my wifi pw memorized by now since I've entered it sooo many times in the last day or so. )
Hi all,
I searched long and hard for an answer to this one, but I can't make heads or tails of it. It started when I noticed that any apps I installed wouldn't stay through reboots, and any uninstalled apps came right back. So I tried reflashing Flashback 7.0 and 7.2, but the apps were still there. It does look like 7.2 installed correctly, although the apps were still there.
Then I tried flashing several different roms (TnT, Cyanogen, Vegantab, stock), but they wouldn't boot. Flashing back to Flashback allowed the tablet to boot, but the data was still there.
I tried manually formatting /data through cwm, but I got the lovely "Error formatting /data" message. Doing the normal cwm data wipe and repartition (4096,0 and 2048,0) didn't do anything either. I tried NVFlashing back to stock 4349, no good. I tried Flashback loaded with cwm 3.0.2.8 and the stock 1.2 recovery, but no avail. I blew away the partition table and nvflashed, no good. I tried pulling the battery, no good. I tried flashing the FORMAT utility, still stuck with this data. No matter what I do, it will only boot after installing Flashback 7, and then it retains the state it was in before going wonky.
The tablet works more-or-less for every app currently installed, apps load fine, all hardware appears to work fine, but once it's rebooted everything goes back to how it was when it went belly-up.
This has gotten the better of me, I'm hoping there's some nuance that you brilliant folk know of that I'm missing. Thank you for your time.
Both /data & /sdcard reside on the internal sd and are not touched by nvflash or by installing a new rom (all of which go on the internal nand (not sdcard). There are serveral ways to clear them. You can clear /data by doing a "factory/data reset" & repartitioning in CWM wll destroy/recreate both /data & /sdcard (so make sure you backup anything you want to save on /sdcard before you repartition). The standard repartition is 2048,0, but in some situations it is benefitial to repartition to 4096, 0 & then immediately repartition back to 2048,0.
After installing a new rom you should always do a factory/data reset, wipe cache & wipe dalvik to clear out data/installs from the prior rom.
Al
Thanks Al,
I forgot to mention, I've already repartitioned several different times, going up to 4096,0 then down to 2048,0 as I've seen recommended elsewhere. The wipe data/factory reset option also doesn't seem to be affecting the data staying put.
I remember a person with a similar situation. I believe rajeevvp had the person do some testng & it came out (in that case) to be a bad internal sd. He developed a way to use the external sdcard as the internal sd. I'll see if I can find the post or you can PM him.
Al
See this post http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1156200 and specifically post #44 Guide to swap internal and external SD card assignments on the ViewSonic gTablet for users with partly-functional internal SD cards.
Al
Looks like the same issue all around. Thank a million, here's to hoping it works.
Get me a dmesg output first.
Second, since you're on the 1.2 bootloader branch, don't flash the custom CWM zip file which is only for bl 1.1. Just skip that step (step 1). The rest of the steps are bootloader-independent. Step 1. is only for letting you make backups and restores using the external SD card instead of the internal one.
Third, I'd like to see the results of the test commands given in the thread that aabbondanza posted above.
Finally, for CWM 3.x and higher, I have another (and easier) technique that I think will work for backups and restores, but, I never tested as I didn't want to change bootloaders. Let me know if you're willing to be a guinea pig for testing this.
rajeevvp, the result of the test directory/file creation on /data and /sdcard were similar to the other poster, with the directories and files not being retained after unmount or reboot.
The results of the test commands are attached. Thanks again for all your help. Additionally, of course I'm willing to be a guinea pig for anything you've got in mind.
sktsswth said:
rajeevvp, the result of the test directory/file creation on /data and /sdcard were similar to the other poster, with the directories and files not being retained after unmount or reboot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From the dmesg1.txt file I see that you have the non-standard internal SD card make that seems to cause this sort of problem:
<6>[ 10.001007] mmc2: new high speed SDHC card at address aaaa
<6>[ 10.007139] mmcblk3: mmc2:aaaa SE16G 14.8 GiB
<6>[ 10.011722] mmcblk3: p1 p2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can either return the tablet to VS or try my workaround hack along with a new CWM for 1.2-based bootloaders (soon).
Either way, I'd like to continue this discussion further in this thread.
rajeevvp said:
From the dmesg1.txt file I see that you have the non-standard internal SD card make that seems to cause this sort of problem:
You can either return the tablet to VS or try my workaround hack along with a new CWM for 1.2-based bootloaders (soon).
Either way, I'd like to continue this discussion further in this thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since some of these tablets are showing up with different internal sd cards than most of us, is it possible that when we are having these people nvflash back to stock, that the bct's config of these new chips would be different & we are causing the problem by flashing the incorrect bct back to the device? Would it be safer to modify our nvflashes to read & use the user's bct when nvflashing back to stock?
Hi there
I am not very tech savy and I managed yesterday to install cyanogenmod on my i9100. The problem was that specific nightly I installed had a issue with not mounting the sd card. I read on the forum that this would be fixed in today's update.
So I loaded the new update of cyanogenmod on my sd card like I did yesterday thinking that the mount issue would be resolved if I boot into CWM wipe factory data and cache and the install the new ROM from the SD CARD. Basically do exactly what I did yesterday just with the new rom.
Alas the sd card would not mount. The only thing that could mount was internal sd storage. I did not save the ROM there so now my phone does not switch on when I press the power button but is does switch on when I want go into recovery and dowload mode.
This is what I did today
I installed siyah-v3.2b8 via odin
Then I did the same with CWM recovery
After this I booted into recovery mode and wiped factory data and cache.
My intention was to next install(or flash not sure what the right word is) CM10.1
Any help please. I have been looking around on the forums for solutions, but none are so similar to this. As I am just starting to learn how all of this works, I am not sure wether other solutions apply.
I am worried that I bricked the phone.
Thank you so much for any help. I will continue to look for a solution until I get a response.
BOOTLOOP
mattslbbr said:
Hi there
I am not very tech savy and I managed yesterday to install cyanogenmod on my i9100. The problem was that specific nightly I installed had a issue with not mounting the sd card. I read on the forum that this would be fixed in today's update.
So I loaded the new update of cyanogenmod on my sd card like I did yesterday thinking that the mount issue would be resolved if I boot into CWM wipe factory data and cache and the install the new ROM from the SD CARD. Basically do exactly what I did yesterday just with the new rom.
Alas the sd card would not mount. The only thing that could mount was internal sd storage. I did not save the ROM there so now my phone does not switch on when I press the power button but is does switch on when I want go into recovery and dowload mode.
This is what I did today
I installed siyah-v3.2b8 via odin
Then I did the same with CWM recovery
After this I booted into recovery mode and wiped factory data and cache.
My intention was to next install(or flash not sure what the right word is) CM10.1
Any help please. I have been looking around on the forums for solutions, but none are so similar to this. As I am just starting to learn how all of this works, I am not sure wether other solutions apply.
I am worried that I bricked the phone.
Thank you so much for any help. I will continue to look for a solution until I get a response.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get that I am in a boot loop.
Any ideas anybody. Most thankfull.
FIXED
mattslbbr said:
I get that I am in a boot loop.
Any ideas anybody. Most thankfull.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I went into cwm ( think it comes with Siyah.)
I went to the following setting on the list after plugging the phone in the PC in recovery mode
- mounts and storage
then
- mount from usb storage
The internal SD was recognized and I just copied Cyanogenmod zip file over.
I then installed zip from internal sdcard.
and voila....it booted right in and the new nightly build sorted out the SD card problem. So far no further issues.
Thank you for the admin moving my post to the correct place. And I hope this helps.
First off, I am no expert so please be gentle! I previously rooted my old Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and installed ICS, which went OK, but the phone became quite slow and unstable. I was advised to install RemICS and downloaded all the zip files from this forum, and put them on the external SD card. I followed the developer's instructions to the letter, as well as reading everything I could find on the subject. The reset and data wiping went fine, but the installation of the ROM didn't. It halted with an error message -`ROM incompatible, trying to use an invalid partition'. I repeat that this is supposed to be the specific ROM for the i9000. The phone now won't boot into recovery. It stops with an orange Android logo and the text `Powered by Mackay Kernel'. It won't boot into download mode either. The Mackay screen stays there however long I leave it. I really need help from the ROM developer but I can't post to that forum. How can I either boot into recovery or into download mode? Is this ROM reliable? What could I have done wrong?
More info:
Presumably everyone is on holiday! But just in case anyone is reading, there is further news. The reason I could not start recovery mode was that the button sequence was different from what I had been told. It now boots reliably into Mackay (which of course is TWRP). I have found that the phone is unable to mount the partitions DATA and SYSTEM - they seem to be corrupted. Hence it has not wiped DATA, although TWRP wrongly reports success. I have tried updating the partitions to ext3 or ext4 but this fails every time. I could format the thing from Windows but that will wipe everything including recovery of course. I need a tool to repair these partitions, but have not found anything so far. This may well have been the reason the phone was getting creaky in the first place.
I have copied a new ROM to the external SD card, using a card reader, and inserted this into the phone. Strangely the TWRP file manager reports that EXTERNAL SD is a sub-folder of SD CARD, and that is empty. The file manager does not show the real external SD card. But the real external SD shows up on the Windows USB connection. What is going on?
When I try to mount the partitions, DATA and SYSTEM can't be checked - the other partitions (Cache, sdcard, and emmc are all checked).
kingGrn Copeland
Well for the benefit of anyone else with the same problem, I have managed to re-flash the ROM back to stock. It just took 3 days of intensive web browsing until I understood how to do it, and found software that worked - a lot of stuff out there has errors.
To summarise, the problem was:
1. Data and System partitions became damaged, so phone became unstable.
2. Attempt to upgrade ROM failed because of damaged partitions.
3. Could not boot phone into recovery or download because button combination was different from what I was told.
The solution was:
4. Boot into download mode using correct button combination.
5. Re-flash back to stock ROM and re-partition using Odin.
Yes, someone did tell me that, and I would have done that straight away if I could have gotten into download mode. We live and learn
The solution was:
4. Boot into download mode using correct button combination.
5. Re-flash back to stock ROM and re-partition using Odin.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks this wa useful for me too.