So I flashed a new ROM by the Spanish guys at Team Force (great looking ROM), via CWM, and so naturally I got the boot loop problem.
Normally solvable by turning off the phone, booting into recovery and then performing a factory reset, right?
Here's the problem - this appears to be one of the only android cellphones in existence where you CAN'T boot into recovery using the normal power + volume key combinations.
Essentially, I've bricked the phone without actually REALLY bricking it.
Did I miss anything, or does it sound like a quick end of line for this phone?
Edit: Well, if I connect my phone via USB and have ADB running in the background, holding the volume up key during the boot loop does bring up recovery mode.
It seems to me that the installation of said ROM simply doesn't fully complete before it tries to reboot itself, which could be why this is happening.
I bought this tablet exactly a year ago, never modified or rooted it, and suddenly a lot of apps started having issues. Went to reinsall a few of them then suddenly the whole OS froze.
Rebooted and the Dopo splash would show, then the android logo showing movement like it is trying to boot but gets stuck there.
Tried going into recovery by holding the power and volume button, that *worked* but when selecting factory reset then it crashed again.
So I repeated the process and now it won't even boot into recovery using the power and volume button!
Tried running the battery dead and restarting, tried using the reset button pinhole. Nothing worked.
I installed adb and fastboot (I use linux) and went through most of the simpler procedures.
adb connects and I can run its shell and view my files that are on the tablets. Ran the command to see its debugging output and noticed that the boot loop was because the filesystem turned everything except userspace to read-only!
Now here is what is real odd.. when I try pushing a file onto the tablet using adb, it instantly becomes corrupted when reading it back.
Like if I make a simple text file called hello.txt with some text in it saying "Hi there!", when I push that file onto the tablet, then read its contents it is gibberish.
This leads me to believe the whole filesystem somehow became corrupted and can no longer write files properly.
There doesn't seem to be a way to run fsck or anything alike and I can not put any files on the tablet because they instantly become garbled.
No use in running fastboot when the tablet no longer can go into the recovery screen either by vol+power pressing or by adb reboot recovery. Both simply just try to boot the tablet normally now, unlike the first time I tried
Assuming I have the factory .img file is there any way I can fix this?
Or does this sound like the hardware got damaged?
I fear the worst at this point.
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!
**The problem as it stands**
My Galaxy S6 Active is stuck in a sort of bootloop, except it never seems to attempt a boot. If it was turning on, without any combination of keys, it would go to the "No Command" screen. From there all I can do is force reset (power + volume down) to get it to restart to the same place or as it displays the Samsung splash screen, press volume up + power + home, it goes to the download screen. From the download screen, I can use my pc to flash a rom (that may not be correct) to the device and according to Odin, that is a success but my device freezes on "erasing".
Imgur album with pictures of the accessible screens (http://imgur.com/a/Rd9ND)
**Description of the problem when it was booting**
At seemingly random times, the device would freeze and the only way to get it to do anything was to reset it. Sometimes it would enter a bootloop but through key combinations, I would be able to get it out. One time after a bootloop, I had the sense to back up the device's storage, so luckily I have that.
**What I've done**
- I have tried wiping the storage in device recovery -- when it was accessible, I can no longer get to it.
- I have tried using Kies/Smart Switch emergency software recovery -- but when provided with the model name and serial number they would both crash.
- When the device booted, I tried using the standard recovery feature in Smart Switch. I can't remember the exact message but it was something along the lines of "This device does not support initializing"
- I have tried using Odin to flash ROMs (again, I may be using this incorrectly) to the device. I have only tried Samsung release ROMs, meaning ones that have not been modified by a 3rd party. I followed the second and third methods of a guide on XDA forums (https://forum.xda-developers.com/ga...e/downloading-flashing-att-galaxy-s6-t3260744). Odin never throws an error and it always says it was successful. During the device's initialization with this new ROM, it gets to 32% then goes to "Erasing". A few seconds later the animation freezes. I can leave the device here for hours but nothing happens. So I believe more than the animation is frozen.
- I tried using ADB recovery via the device's recovery mode (when it was accessible) but from what I can gather, Samsung uses a proprietary ADB interface that would not work with what I was trying to do (I was following method 3 of the previously mentioned guide (https://forum.xda-developers.com/ga...e/downloading-flashing-att-galaxy-s6-t3260744). I would always get a message saying "ADB server out of date".
I may have done more than that but that's what I can recall.
Any help would be appreciated. Even if you know of a better place to post this, let me know.
Thanks
My s6 active did the same thing on 08/24/17. I have not yet found a solution.
Afternoon
I have a Lenovo 7" tablet which is sticking on boot...to describe:
tablet off, charge screen working fine (green battery)
can get into menu to select fastboot mode or recovery
fastboot works, at least screen appears!
recovery shows dead android/no command screen - how to access recovery?
booting up, get inital orange logo then a 'bing' and start of boot but then freezes on the second logo
tablet not visible on PC, even in fastboot mode (have installed drivers)
I'm looking to get this going but am a bit stumped. I tried reinstalling firmware but can't get SPF Tools to work with any available scatter files; I would like to install TWRP (I found a potential image file on XDA) but can't do this until the PC recognises it....and I'm going round in circles now....any suggestions gratefully received. :good:
Update
OK, post was maybe a bit premature - I've kinda fixed my issues.
Managed to get into recovery after watching many videos (most of which were wrong, but hey-ho, got me on the right path!). At dead android screen, press and hold in power + vol up + vol down together (there is a bit of knack, turn it on its side with buttons facing up seems to be easiest) - this fires up the recovery screen (android standard recovery).
I managed to get over my bootloop issue by performing a data wipe/factory reset and cache wipe, then restarted fine.
As this was a secondhand tablet (my usual purchases - good condition bootloops!) - once it booted up I got into the set-up screens only to discover a Google lock issue. I ran the FRP unlock from here: https://androidfilehost.com/?fid=11050483647474832839 using the instructions from here: http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/f958/lenovo-tab-4-7-essential-tb4-7304f-frp-remove-2322527/ (Voltrans second post, not the original one which has a 404 error on the download site). This removed the FRP lock straight off and now I have a functioning tablet.
I'm probably going to try getting custom recovery on so will see how that goes - I'll post back
and...that's all folks....
OK, despite finding a TWRP recovery online https://twrpbuilder.github.io/downloads/twrp/#441 and downloading it, can I get the fastboot unlocked? no.
Apparently Lenovo locked them all up and threw away the key, so nothing more can be done here.
I tried various iterations of fastboot oem unlock and fastboot flashing unlock, and nothing works, just get an error - and yes, I did put developer options on, OEM unlocking ticked and USB debugging active.... :silly:
So, unless someone can point me in a direction on how to unlock it - I've reached the end of the road with this one