Samsung galaxy nexus bootloader can't make changes to flash - Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking

My friend's phone somehow got into a reboot cycle. It loads up, launcher starts, notifications start working. Then there is a nullpointer and a core service that is failing to start then it reboots.
So as a solution I thought try wiping data/cache. When booting the bootloader it was already unlocked - not sure if we did that a while ago or what. So going into recovery, trying the data wipe, it says success and then when I start the phone it is the same, no data is gone, apps are there, reboot problem continues.
So next step, try flashing the os. I downloaded the most recent yakju build, jwr66y. My bootloader version is PRIMELA03 and the build comes with MD04, so I try:
fastboot flash bootloader <bootloader_img>
And it reports success, everything looks fine. So I reboot the bootloader and it says BOOTLOADER VERSION - PRIMELA03.
Try fastboot oem lock, says locked. Reboot, UNLOCKED. Tried flashing the bootloader and the main img with and without restarting but always get the error:
Device version-bootloader is 'PRIMELA03'.
Update requires 'PRIMEMD04'.
when trying to flash the stock rom.
I also can't boot the stock image via 'fastboot boot'. It looks successful up until it says booting and goes to the Google screen with the padlock at the bottom and just hangs.
If I try using adb sideload to push the stock update, it says verifying, then aborts.
I also tried flashing the recovery with a cwm recovery but the same problem - it says writing, OKAY, no error message, everything looks fine, then boot recovery and it's the stock recovery.
What it looks like to me is that the bootloader and possibly the entire system is failing to write to the system flash but for some reason thinks it's succeeding. How is this possible? Is the flash dead? Am I missing something basic? I haven't rooted a phone in a couple years so it's quite possible I'm just missing a step.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

I just tried flashing an older stock (imm76i), starting by flashing the radio, but again the radio flash looks successful but the kernel won't flash because it complains about an out of date baseband and sure enough, the old one is still the one it's reporting, not the one just flashed.

tried fastboot erase system and fastboot erase recovery. Both report success but recovery boots as normal and system boots as normal (still in a reboot cycle).
I should also mention, that after the system boots, there is enough time to uninstall an app. It says successfully uninstalled, but after a reboot, the app is still there (this was the first attempt to stop the reboot cycle as a custom keyboard app was suspected). But again, the changes to flash seem to not be sticking.

Hi,
Have you resolved the problem? I'm in the same situation and I don't know what to do to stop the continuous reboot. I've already tried to flash a stock 4.3 factory image, erase the user data or only unlock the bootloader but nothing works. I'm running Android 4.3 stock without root and my bootloader is locked.
thank you in advance.

Related

Trouble getting any non OEM ROM to boot

The Problem: No matter what custom rom I load...it boots into an apparently endless display of the colorful boot animation that comes stock on the Nexus. I have to battery pull to get out of it. I've got an Unlocked/Rooted phone w/clockwork recovery working. I can backup and successfully restore the OEM rom I backed up after each failed custom rom install attempt.
I've been working through issue after issue all evening and have continued to hit the same problem no matter what my approach.
I've got Rom Manager and can download and load ROMS via it's GUI - or by booting into clockwork recovery and doing it manually by choosing the zip I previously downloaded. I've renamed the oem recovery file in system etc... still no joy getting anything to boot successfully except the OEM image I backed up.
Could someone point me in the right direction?
nondem said:
The Problem: No matter what custom rom I load...it boots into an apparently endless display of the colorful boot animation that comes stock on the Nexus. I have to battery pull to get out of it. I've got an Unlocked/Rooted phone w/clockwork recovery working. I can backup and successfully restore the OEM rom I backed up after each failed custom rom install attempt.
I've been working through issue after issue all evening and have continued to hit the same problem no matter what my approach.
I've got Rom Manager and can download and load ROMS via it's GUI - or by booting into clockwork recovery and doing it manually by choosing the zip I previously downloaded. I've renamed the oem recovery file in system etc... still no joy getting anything to boot successfully except the OEM image I backed up.
Could someone point me in the right direction?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How long exactly are you waiting on the boot animation? when you first flash a new rom, it can often take a long time on this screen first boot up. be patient. dont pull the battery unless its been like 15 minutes
can you give us any info on what phone you are using, and which roms you tried?
When you flash a completely different ROM, you HAVE to do a full data wipe in CWM.
When you update the current ROM, you have to do a wipe cache and dalvik cache.
And like the guy above said, it can take a while on first boot.
Sent from Galaxy Nexus (GSM)
Progress
First - Thanks for the help. I did a full data/cache wipe right before attempting to flash a ROM and it worked. Didn't even take longer than usual to boot into the OS.
I had done that earlier but I think it must have been the order I had followed or something. Regardless - I got a ROM up and running and can repeat the process reliably
Of course - there is another hurdle that I don't find anything on so far...if I add the google apps to the ROM I get stuck in a crashing Verizon login wizard. "Touch here" results in a crash message and the wizard restarts.
I can access settings and use the phone - but "Home" is the wizard.

Encryption/Brick randomly

Htc One M8... was running marshmallow sense rom with elementalx kernel.
- S-off
- running Bell marshmallow firmware
- Twrp recovery latest one.
Randomly the phone rebooted while I was using it last night and after that got stuck in a bootloop.
Now it seems to boot up but it goes to a screen where it says "please enter password to decrypt phone" ... I don't have a password so then it tells me to factory wipe the phone.
I can get into Hboot fine... the issue I am having is for some reason along with the rom, the recovery has crashed too... I have tried reflashing a new twrp or even the stock recovery but the recovery just will not boot. Regardless of me flashing the stock recovery... when I try to boot into it, it shows that I am booting into twrp (which makes me assume that the recovery isnt really being flashed)
I tried the RUU method but when I do rebootRUU from fastboot it just boots my phone and its stuck back in the bootloop and doesnt go to Black HTC screen :S.
Kind of stuck... I dont have a windows device otherwise I would try the exe method and lost on how to recover the device. Feels like maybe the flash memory crashed... but its so random
If anyone can help, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
so just tried to run a gpe ruu as well... it did the first step of flashing the bootloader and just rebooted to the normal htc bootloader :S
seems like whatever I do nothing is being flashed to any partition... i found the adb command that fixes encryption for aosp roms... but I cannot run adb because I cant boot into recovery :S

Can't boot into recovery with TWRP

EDIT: I FIXED IT. I had to go back to an older version of TWRP[2.7xx] for it to work on my older firmware.
HTC One M8 AT&T running 4.4.2, unable to update because I haven't been on AT&T for quite a long time.
Yesterday I unlocked the bootloader on my M8 for the first time and attempted to install TWRP[EDIT: ver 3.0.2] so that I could root my phone. I have the proper SDK and ADB drivers installed, fastboot is working just fine. I used the following commands:
adb reboot bootloader
fastboot erase cache
fastboot flash recovery twrp.img
From there I have tried both rebooting into fastboot[which is what the TWRP website says to do] and also going back into bootloader and booting into recovery without restarting the phone. Neither option has worked. When booting straight into recovery after flashing the recovery, my phone just says "loading recovery" in pink letters with the HTC logo on the screen and stays like that. HOWEVER, I've somehow managed to get screenshots while force restarting my phone during that, and it shows the right TWRP screen, I just can't see it. Any advice at all would be appreciated. I did search through other forum posts but I could not find my problem of the screen I cannot see.

Can only boot through bootloader mode, or booting boot.img

I can't seem to get my z2 to boot normally. I can get it to boot in to android if I select Start in the bootloader menu, or if I fastboot boot the boot.img. I've wiped & reset my phone numerous times with ALBUS_C_OPSS27.76-12-28-7_cid50_subsidy-DEFAULT_regulatory-DEFAULT_CFC, only to be presented with a "No command" screen if I try and boot it normally. Any insight to this?
Are you using the right firmware? Try 76-12-25. And your bootloader is unlocked?
I have the same issue with my XT1710-06 on both stock Oreo and LOS 15.1. Tried wiping and reflashing roms and different versions of TWRP but neither of those fixed it. With no recovery it just goes to the "No command" screen, otherwise it will reboot to recovery unless you boot by pressing Start in the bootloader mode. Everything works perfectly normally otherwise though, so I just don't reboot my phone often and go through bootloader each time.

Missing Recovery on Android 10

I just noticed after doing a clean install of the C3 factory image using -w that I am unable to boot to the stock recovery. It seems to be missing from my installation. Any ideas why I may be unable to boot to recovery? All I get is a dead Android logo with "No command" or it boots up my system after restarting. I've tried booting from the bootloader numerous times and never seems to work. Is it possible that the stock recovery was never installed? I did no perform a --slot all when installing Android 10 so maybe that's the issue? Any suggestions would be great as I can't seem to find a solution to this in the forums or Google searching. Thanks.
You have to go one step beyond the no recovery screen to see the recovery commands. If presented with an image of a broken Android with “No Command” printed on the screen, press and hold the Power button. Press the Volume Up button once. Then release the Power button.
Seems I can't even get to the broken Android screen now. In the bootloader if I select boot recovery it just boots my system and never shows the broken Android anymore. Very odd. I'm stumped.
rspkt said:
Seems I can't even get to the broken Android screen now. In the bootloader if I select boot recovery it just boots my system and never shows the broken Android anymore. Very odd. I'm stumped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not sure what you are referring to "boot recovery." Are you entering the bootloader in some way other than volume down +power? The option when using the up/down in bootloader is Recovery mode. That will get you to the broken android and no command. At worst though, you can flash boot.img and get your stock recovery/kernel back/unroot.
sliding_billy said:
I am not sure what you are referring to "boot recovery." Are you entering the bootloader in some way other than volume down +power? The option when using the up/down in bootloader is Recovery mode. That will get you to the broken android and no command. At worst though, you can flash boot.img and get your stock recovery/kernel back/unroot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can enter the bootloader via adb or with the power + volume down no problem. When I select recovery from the bootloader it boots to the Google logo then blank screen and seems to reboot again straight to my system. I may have to try to revert to the stock boot.img like you suggested and see if that solves the issue.
rspkt said:
I can enter the bootloader via adb or with the power + volume down no problem. When I select recovery from the bootloader it boots to the Google logo then blank screen and seems to reboot again straight to my system. I may have to try to revert to the stock boot.img like you suggested and see if that solves the issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get the same thing where it won't boot to recovery from the bootloader, but goes back to booting to system. It's because I'm rooted. Flash the stock boot image and you'll be fine.
rspkt said:
I can enter the bootloader via adb or with the power + volume down no problem. When I select recovery from the bootloader it boots to the Google logo then blank screen and seems to reboot again straight to my system. I may have to try to revert to the stock boot.img like you suggested and see if that solves the issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, that makes better sense. You are pretty clearly in a bootloop. Just confirming the terminology. Flashing stock boot might get you out of the loop, but after rereading your initial message it sounds as if some info is missing. After the flash-all, did it ever get to the setup screen where you enter your gmail account name, etc. Did it get through that to the actual OS, and if so what else did you do that got you into the bootloop? Root attempt?
sliding_billy said:
OK, that makes better sense. You are pretty clearly in a bootloop. Just confirming the terminology. Flashing stock boot might get you out of the loop, but after rereading your initial message it sounds as if some info is missing. After the flash-all, did it ever get to the setup screen where you enter your gmail account name, etc. Did it get through that to the actual OS, and if so what else did you do that got you into the bootloop? Root attempt?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya my phone setup fine through all the initial setup steps as if it was a new device and the system works perfectly. I did root and install Kirisakura kernel but only after few days of using stock. Just noticed after setting everything up the recovery seems to be missing when I tried to boot into it. I may try and start from scratch again cuz obviously something got broken during the factory image installation using -w.
rspkt said:
Ya my phone setup fine through all the initial setup steps as if it was a new device and the system works perfectly. I did root and install Kirisakura kernel but only after few days of using stock. Just noticed after setting everything up the recovery seems to be missing when I tried to boot into it. I may try and start from scratch again cuz obviously something got broken during the factory image installation using -w.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I missed the post by @jd1639 while I was replying. It doesn't sound like anything got messed up as a result of the -w. Because stock recovery is part of boot now, you just need to stay out of there unless you flash boot.img first. Not doing the --slot all wouldn't have any impact unless you install a custom ROM, an OTA or do a manual slot change. Since it was the first time I had done a completely clean wipe in a while when I flashed 10 (after custom ROMs, OTAs, etc), I actually did flash-all (with -w) to both slots. I did a flash-all on B and finished setup, and then booted back to BL, changed slots manually to A and did a second flash-all. Only after that did I start gettin gthe phone ready for daily function. Not sure it helped anything but my OCD, but it was fun to watch the fastbootd thing run a few times. :silly:
jd1639 said:
I get the same thing where it won't boot to recovery from the bootloader, but goes back to booting to system. It's because I'm rooted. Flash the stock boot image and you'll be fine.
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Click to collapse
I never would have assumed having root could cause this issue.

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