Nexus 9 can't flash system or vendor/userdata - Nexus 9 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

hello-
i recently tried to root my wi-fi Nexus 9 following the directions i found in this post. (at the time i was running 5.1.1). at the completion of the process my tablet went into an infinite loop of
"Starting apps"
rebooting
"Starting apps"
rebooting
...
in order to revert, i tried to re-flash the stock 5.1.1 image (LMY47X). my N9 originally came with 5.0.1 installed, so i flashed this when i originally got it in order to upgrade to 5.1.1. simply running the flash-all.sh script didn't work for me, however, so i unzipped the image-volantis-lmy47x.zip file and ran the following commands in this order:
flash-all.sh (up to the point it fails)
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
fastboot flash cache cache.img
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash vendor vendor.img
however, this process now fails on #2 with the following message:
Code:
> fastboot flash system system.img
target reported max download size of 518205818 bytes
erasing 'system'...
OKAY [ 0.437s]
sending sparse 'system' (499123 KB)...
ERROR: usb_write failed with status e00002ed
ERROR: usb_write failed with status e000404f
ERROR: usb_write failed with status e000404f
...
upon encountering this error the shell just hangs seemingly indefinitely (i waited for 15min before i finally ctrl-c'ed).
i also tried skipping flashing system.img and moving along with the rest of the steps, but i also encounter this problem when flashing vendor.img.
Code:
> fastboot flash vendor vendor.img
target reported max download size of 518205818 bytes
sending 'userdata' (144698 KB)...
ERROR: usb_write failed with status e00002ed
FAILED (data transfer failure (No such file or directory))
finished. total time: 0.914s
i'd be thankful for any advice anyone can give me on how to get this thing back up and running!

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hsl43 said:
hello-
i recently tried to root my wi-fi Nexus 9 following the directions i found in this post. (at the time i was running 5.1.1). at the completion of the process my tablet went into an infinite loop of
"Starting apps"
rebooting
"Starting apps"
rebooting
...
in order to revert, i tried to re-flash the stock 5.1.1 image (LMY47X). my N9 originally came with 5.0.1 installed, so i flashed this when i originally got it in order to upgrade to 5.1.1. simply running the flash-all.sh script didn't work for me, however, so i unzipped the image-volantis-lmy47x.zip file and ran the following commands in this order:
flash-all.sh (up to the point it fails)
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
fastboot flash cache cache.img
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash vendor vendor.img
however, this process now fails on #2 with the following message:
Code:
> fastboot flash system system.img
target reported max download size of 518205818 bytes
erasing 'system'...
OKAY [ 0.437s]
sending sparse 'system' (499123 KB)...
ERROR: usb_write failed with status e00002ed
ERROR: usb_write failed with status e000404f
ERROR: usb_write failed with status e000404f
...
upon encountering this error the shell just hangs seemingly indefinitely (i waited for 15min before i finally ctrl-c'ed).
i also tried skipping flashing system.img and moving along with the rest of the steps, but i also encounter this problem when flashing vendor.img.
Code:
> fastboot flash vendor vendor.img
target reported max download size of 518205818 bytes
sending 'userdata' (144698 KB)...
ERROR: usb_write failed with status e00002ed
FAILED (data transfer failure (No such file or directory))
finished. total time: 0.914s
i'd be thankful for any advice anyone can give me on how to get this thing back up and running!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google updated the Android SDK (fastboot) in November of last year to enable flashing the extremely large Lollipop system.img files.
Update your Android SDK to the latest and you should be good to go.
FWIW: flash_all does not work.

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RESOLVED. for the benefit of anybody else that may run into this problem...
after much Google sleuthing and gnashing of teeth, it turns out the solution was... to simply switch which USB port on my laptop the cable was plugged into. for the life of me, i don't know why, but i'll take it.
thanks @cam30era for your reply! your recommendation may have been a part of the solution, but as a developer, i keep my SDK reasonably up-to-date, so that particular issue didn't come into play in this instance. nonetheless, thanks very much again for taking the time to provide that info!