Develop Bugs

Can't restore or even lock bootloader... Bricked?

I've been lurking for quite some time and haven't been able to find a solution for my issue. Here's what happened:
I cracked the screen on my Galaxy Nexus and got an insurance replacement. I then used ClockworkMod Recovery to copy over from my old device to my new device. All was good for about 12 hours when the new device started boot looping with the flashy color animation screen. I figured that might have been something I did, so I tried doing a factory reset and the like with ClockworkMod Recovery and managed to totally mess the phone. After trying to do a factory reset, the phone wouldn't boot up at all anymore -- I just get the dreaded red triangle with exclamation point. I tried formatting all the partitions with ClockworkMod (which was a bad idea). Ever since then, I've been stuck. I've spent several days so far trying to get this thing working. I have to note that Odin and fastboot modes work perfectly fine.
Among things I've tried unsuccessfully:
Flash to stock using Odin
--Odin says everything is fine, when I flash with a stock ROM that I downloaded. Upon reboot, nothing is any better and I still get the red triangle/exclamation point.
--When I try to use the tar files that ClockworkMod generated, Odin crashes immediately.
Push custom ROMs to /sdcard/ using adb while booted into ClockworkMod in hopes of getting the system to boot.
--This never works successfully. Sometimes I get no error but can't find the zip file. Other times I'll get an I/O error, or even a read-only error. The original backup is giving me checksum errors.
Flash factory ROMs using fastboot.
--I always get the red triangle/exclamation point.
Restore and flash with WUG's toolkit.
--Same thing as when I try to use fastboot. It seems that flashing the device goes fine, but the device will still not boot.
After every time I've flashed the device, whether using Odin or fastboot, I've tried doing a factory reset by pressing power+vol up+vol down and then selecting factory reset. This hasn't made any difference.
I'm about to give up on it and send the device back to the nameless insurance company, but I would like to lock the bootloader first. I can't even seem to lock the bootloader! In fastboot, I type the usual 'fastboot oem lock', and the device reports that it is locked, but after rebooting, the device always reverts back to having an unlocked bootloader.
Have I missed anything? Any thoughts? I'm lost.

Fyi, the red exclamation point is the stock recovery screen.
Try following the instructions in the "flash" link in my sig.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

As well, issue the following commands when in fastboot:
Fastboot erase system
Fastboot erase userdata <- this will wipe by the way, including/sdcard
Fastboot erase boot
Fastboot erase recovery
Fastboot erase cache
And then flash the images in fastboot.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Thanks a ton for the helpful info -- I hadn't tried flashing userdata and system using that method before, and your write-up was definitely one of the more helpful I've seen.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have helped. I used the factory 4.0.2 mysid/toro image on the link you provided. While flashing, the system seems to work absolutely fine, but it just reboots into recovery at the end.
I followed your instructions twice, including erasing the partitions. Also, after each try, I've tried doing a factory reset from recovery and then rebooting (after trying to boot a couple times), though none of this helped.

enginerrd said:
Thanks a ton for the helpful info -- I hadn't tried flashing userdata and system using that method before, and your write-up was definitely one of the more helpful I've seen.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have helped. I used the factory 4.0.2 mysid/toro image on the link you provided. While flashing, the system seems to work absolutely fine, but it just reboots into recovery at the end.
I followed your instructions twice, including erasing the partitions. Also, after each try, I've tried doing a factory reset from recovery and then rebooting (after trying to boot a couple times), though none of this helped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you've flashed the system, userdata and boot images using fastboot, and you are still not able to boot into Android, I can only suspect that you have either a corrupt bootloader or a hardware issue.
And if odin does not work, then unfortunately I would suspect that there is a hardware issue.

This sounds like what happened to my phone as well. Someone else had it happen too. That's 3 nexus's in a week. Mine didn't even last 2 months.
I have a thread about mine and another user posted another thread a day or 2 ago. Mine boots into the system but is not erasable, not writable. Can't lock my boot loader. I've tried odin, adb, everything possible. I wish we could start a lawsuit because Samsung won't help me. I'm in the US and it's a gsm nexus that was purchased before the play store sold it. USA wont accept an international phone and UK Samsung won't take a phone from overseas. Basically they said I'm sh*t outta luck.

Thanks again for the help. I'm going to bite the bullet and just call the insurance company and try to send it back as a defective device. Hopefully they don't rake me over the coals.
I'll post back with an update as to how that goes.

You guys need to learn how to use fastboot and adb commands correctly to restore google's stock images.
Stop realying on toolkits thinking it will help you.
Also learning that the Red Exclamation Android is stock recovery!
Press the Power and Vol Up button will get you the stock recovery menu options to come up!
Not to be mean, BUT I hope the insurance company denies you, you totally screwed up the phone yourself.

I did not screw my phone up myself. My phone was never even rooted. I know very well how to issue adb commands and install images. Learn what you are talking about before you jump onto people or come across as a total di*khead

Alright, replacement phone is on the way. Thanks again for the help. I tend to think it is a hardware issue because of how the issue originally presented itself, but I'm still pretty new to the Android platform. It seemed to me that a watchdog timer was timing out or something similar.
Perhaps this will be the push I needed to start developing Android hardware/software... I'm all about embedded systems and would like to move beyond basic ucontrollers.

[Q] Friend did a bad file flash, Hard bricked phone

Okay my friends wife had an unlucky bad file flash and ended up hard bricking somehow.
And keep this in mind that she never flashed a Int. version.
She flashed the SlimRom 3.1.0-D2SPR then she flashed the custom kernel unlocker file
to use the K747 kernel for slimrom, but the thing was ( She has TWRP ) when she slid the bar to flash
the file, the screen went back to the TWRP home page she waited 5-10 minutes then she tried reflashing the file again
and it said failed. Rebooted and the phone's hard bricked after installing the kernel. ( No LED when USB plugged in for recharge,
No power or haptic feedback. )
Her husband used the same method to install slim rom and his phone is fine
but the screen never went to the TWRP home page, it went straight into installing it.
The thing that boggles my mind is that she flashed everything in order and it hard bricked.
Rom first, rebooted recovery, kernel unlock, cache and dalvik cleared. rebooted recovery
When she tried flashing the K747 AOSP Kernel, she said it never went to the page screen that would show
it install, it just went straight to the home page, retry flashing but failed. ( here's the weird part I've never experienced. )
Is her devices bootloader corrupted? Because all I'm thinking is she's the one in a million of people that has a defective
device itself and a bad flash ( This is what I think ) hard brick her device.
But my suggested solution if correct would be force odin mode via USB Jig or send it in for jtag repairs if possible.
If there is no chance for the both of these solutions then a full blown replacement repair will be the last thing she'll do
because she doesn't have TEP or a warranty on the device.

Spark91 said:
Is her devices bootloader corrupted? Because all I'm thinking is she's the one in a million of people that has a defective
device itself and a bad flash ( This is what I think ) hard brick her device.
But my suggested solution if correct would be force odin mode via USB Jig or send it in for jtag repairs if possible.
If there is no chance for the both of these solutions then a full blown replacement repair will be the last thing she'll do
because she doesn't have TEP or a warranty on the device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, I'm just going to rattle through my thought process on this, just to get things clear in my mind:
Her phone cannot turn on at all. Do a battery pull/replace and make sure that there's no going into recovery or download mode. If that's the case, then JTAG might be your only solution.
This happened when trying to flash a kernel. It seems unlikely that a kernel would screw up the bootloader. I was under the impression that only recovery zips touch the bootloader/recovery partition.
If the kernel or Rom zip was for an international GS3, then it would try to write to the bootloader partition. But since you said your buddy's phone flashed the same files just fine, it seems unlikely that they flashed the international zips.
I've had TWRP fail to flash a zip. Each time I tried to flash a zip, it would say it failed. All I had to do was reboot into recovery (even if I hadn't flashed a ROM, so I had no system file), and then I could flash the file. Sometimes TWRP had those issues for me. Her story reminded me exactly of when that happened to me, but if hers won't load into recovery (or download mode), that's a major difference.
After all that, I honestly have no clue how this happened. It sounds to me like the JTAG is the best bet. You can find them online for around $60. Sorry this happened, and I hope you find a good fix for your friend's wife.

Its possible that you can still fix this....
Couple questions. When you try to turn it on, what exactly happens? does it vibrate? what occurs?
There is a possiblity that you can bypass the idea of holding the power button and vol button, try to adb reboot recovery command. ive had this save me about 5 times now when flashing goes bad.
http://droidlessons.com/how-to-install-adb-on-a-windows-7-pc/
make sure adb is installed...
while the phone is trying to boot, keep typing or copy/pasting or in cmd pressing up and enter after you enter the command.
adb devices
if it gives you the UID of your phone you at least know that you might have the ability to fix it.
From here just type
adb reboot recovery and it will reboot into the recovery to allow you to flash a "good" kernel again.
Bit of advice.. I am always paranoid after going through this so many times of a bad flash. As a result i never stack flashes.. for instance.
if i want to flash a rom, kernel, modem, radio..
i wipe dalvik, flash rom, wipe dalvik, wipe system, wipe cache.
Reboot let android do its thing...
reboot into recovery.
wipe dalvik, flash kernel, wipe dalvik, wipe system, wipe cache.
reboot, let android fully boot up.
reboot into recovery
wipe dalvik, flash radio, wipe dalvik, wipe system, wipe cache.
reboot...you get the point.
Just precations i started doing because of issues ive had in the past. If you have a mac, the commands are a bit different so let me know...

This is interesting, Hamspiced.
I didn't know that flashing a kernal can "brick" your phone.
Do you happen to know why or how this happens? You allude to stacking flashes... I normally only stack gapps with the ROM, but I was wondering if it's important to reboot and go through the setup prior to flashing gapps.
Thanks for the info!

topherk said:
This is interesting, Hamspiced.
I didn't know that flashing a kernal can "brick" your phone.
Do you happen to know why or how this happens? You allude to stacking flashes... I normally only stack gapps with the ROM, but I was wondering if it's important to reboot and go through the setup prior to flashing gapps.
Thanks for the info!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When i had my evo things flashed slightly different.
There were many issues in kernel flashing where if the kernel didnt download properly or you had a bad dl. it will what we called soft-brick. This would allow the phone to "act" like it was booting up but only display a black screen and never boot. Screen would flicker, phone was active but nothing would display and it will not boot loop. kind of just freeze.
We noticed that if we connect the phone to the computer we could actually use adb to access the phone. from there we noticed that we could push recoveries, and even push kernels and radios to the phone even though it wasnt displaying anything.
I figured the easiest way to get through this issue is to see if you can Reboot Recovery through adb if it allows you, and hopefully then you can restore functionality.

Help possibly?
Can you get it into download mode and just use Odin to flash it?

[Q] Soft brick recovery problems on T-Mobile S4

Last night I installed a new nightly update of Cyanogenmod for my S4. Unlike the last few times, it went into a boot loop.
I could not get it to go into recovery. The twrm recovery hung on the load screen. I installed cm recovery. That worked, but reformatting /data causes a reboot.
I got a stock image for 4.4.2 and flashed that. That would boot, but it now claims that the /data partition is encrypted. It does not decrypt with any password I have ever used.
Any idea how I can reformat /data without recovery? I could use heimdall, but I do not have a data.img. Any idea where I can find one?
This is REAL frustrating. I could probably fix it in an adb shell, but I have not been able to get to that either.
Ideas?

May be pining for the fjords.
AlanO2 said:
Last night I installed a new nightly update of Cyanogenmod for my S4. Unlike the last few times, it went into a boot loop.
I could not get it to go into recovery. The twrm recovery hung on the load screen. I installed cm recovery. That worked, but reformatting /data causes a reboot.
I got a stock image for 4.4.2 and flashed that. That would boot, but it now claims that the /data partition is encrypted. It does not decrypt with any password I have ever used.
Any idea how I can reformat /data without recovery? I could use heimdall, but I do not have a data.img. Any idea where I can find one?
This is REAL frustrating. I could probably fix it in an adb shell, but I have not been able to get to that either.
Ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The more I look at this, the more I think that the media that /data lives on is dying/dead. It is the only thing that explains the reboot when I try and do a factory reset. I am going to see if I can get an exchange on the phone. Wish me luck.

SOLVED!
I figured out what it takes to resolved the brickatude.
:cyclops:
Flash back to stock including the original recovery. Use the original recovery to do a factory reset. That works!
For some reason the original recovery will work where the CM recovery bjorks out and reboots the device.
Also, there are rumors that the stock recovery resets the Knox flag. This is not true. It just no longer displays the status every time you boot. The flag is still set, the OS just does not seem to care.
BTW, getting into recovery is a pain in the ass no matter what. It took me about 5-6 tries to get it to work. There seems to be some sort of timing issue as to when you need to release the buttons and you have to get it just right or it won't work. Don't give up.
Also, get the stock firmware from sammobile.com. The other sites listed kept trying to install malware on my machine. (Pretty funny when it tried to claim I needed a Windows update on my Linux system.) At some point I will yank down the malware and see what it does.

M9: TWRP, No OS, (system 0mb)

Hi all,
Maybe you've read my previous post, but I encountered the next problem
My phone was running HDMaximus 7.1.0, no problems. Just reinstalled it last week since I got some Google Play Services errors. Now, my phone rebooted suddenly, and after that it stated: Your phone has been encrypted. Well, I entered my PIN, which was correct, but my data is corrupt.
Tried some things, also with TWRP, and now I'm stuck with the M9, with TWRP, without OS and my internal storage is saying 0mb. Repairing that partition didn't help.
I've tried to sideload it, to push it, nothing helps, because of the internal storage. But the connection with the device is there, so that's not the problem.
Is there a way to recover from this? Maybe with a stock RUU from the SD card, or to rewrite the partitions?
Help is appreciated!
Regards,
Jacco

Fryslanboy said:
Hi all,
Maybe you've read my previous post, but I encountered the next problem
My phone was running HDMaximus 7.1.0, no problems. Just reinstalled it last week since I got some Google Play Services errors. Now, my phone rebooted suddenly, and after that it stated: Your phone has been encrypted. Well, I entered my PIN, which was correct, but my data is corrupt.
Tried some things, also with TWRP, and now I'm stuck with the M9, with TWRP, without OS and my internal storage is saying 0mb. Repairing that partition didn't help.
I've tried to sideload it, to push it, nothing helps, because of the internal storage. But the connection with the device is there, so that's not the problem.
Is there a way to recover from this? Maybe with a stock RUU from the SD card, or to rewrite the partitions?
Help is appreciated!
Regards,
Jacco
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
https://forum.xda-developers.com/verizon-one-m9/help/bricked-issues-return-to-100-stock-t3547433
Read my thread hope this helps.

Thats helping me a lot. I tried it with a stock RUU, 3.35.401.12, but when I start the download mode to flash it, it reboots just as soon when I push the Vol Up button. Weird.
(Phone is doing the whole sequence in about a second, then reboots and nothing happens)

Fryslanboy said:
Thats helping me a lot. I tried it with a stock RUU, 3.35.401.12, but when I start the download mode to flash it, it reboots just as soon when I push the Vol Up button. Weird.
(Phone is doing the whole sequence in about a second, then reboots and nothing happens)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is weird. Did u format data in TWRP by typing Yes, not just factory reset?

Well, I can't get into TWRP anymore. When I select Recovery in the fastboot menu, it goes to the black HTC screen, after that quick flash of the TWRP screen (it worked before) and then it goes to it's white HTC screen.
I'll try to install TWRP via fastboot, maybe that'll help

Just tried to flash TWRP through fastboot, which was finished, but I still can't access Recovery. Weird..

You haven't stated if you are s-off. Have you made sure the stock rom matches your sku?.
Beamed in by telepathy.

Yes,
I am S-OFF. I tried several rom's, but I'll double check that. Good point!

Stuck on Startup

Having some serious trouble. I rebooted my phone and it asked for my password once it was done as always but this time it said it was wrong. I'm certain I used the correct password but even tried my other alternatives to be sure and still a no go. This isn't the decryption option password you get when booting but my lockscreen password. I booted into recovery and it asks me for an encryption password that I never set but I know this is a common issue with twrp. Tried to go back into android but wouldn't let me because of the "wrong" password so I used the failsafe and went into recoveries file manager and deleted my lockscreen settings to remove my lockscreen passcode (tried and proven method, done it dozen times before). Got past my lockscreen this time but now it was saying starting android forever. Figured it was something with the passcode being deleted so I just decidd to factory reset from the recovery and take that loss. NOW the problem is upon booting the rom in trying to start the setup, I'm stuck on the "just a sec..." screen that comes up after you click start. What do I do from here? I cant access anything in recovery because the encryption passcode issue so I'm kind of stuck. Also I'm a work right now and we cant connect our phones (or any USB for that matter) to the computers and laptops because theyre government property and on a secured line. Any help PLEASE, Ill be home later and can try more then.

Well since you already did a factory reset on the device you mine as well just do a clean install of the OFW then get twrp back and flash your ROM etc back. Would probably be better then to deal with everything going on with the device right now.

loeffler23 said:
Well since you already did a factory reset on the device you mine as well just do a clean install of the OFW then get twrp back and flash your ROM etc back. Would probably be better then to deal with everything going on with the device right now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey, I got my phone back working after that and rooted again and flashed same rom. NOW another problem, I rebooted my phone and its not accepting my PIN anymore, nor my fingerprint, and I cant reset through TWRP because of encryption. WTF is the issue, how do I fix this or do I have to flash-all again?