Develop Bugs

Soft bricked RT during complete restore.

Good morning all.
So I installed the 8.1 preview through the store when it first came out a few months ago with no problems. Last night I went to try to move over to the official 8.1 release by going to the store then opening the browser then clicking on the link to take me back to the store to retrieve the official update through the store. The store update "application" never showed up(even after a few restarts and repeating the process). I thought it was strange so I said "screw it, i have nothing important on here" and decided to do a full/clean restore.
I plugged the charger in, let it go about its business and walked away. I came back 2 hours later and the screen was black(no "restoring windows" progress"). Let it sit for another hour in case it was doing something I just wasnt seeing. Came back and decided to hit the power button. Screen turned on with the "Surface" start up logo and then I got this error message.
http://i.imgur.com/Q37Af1a.jpg
Now I am stuck in a boot loop where if i hit "ok" it just restarts and brings me back here.
Of course I never made a 8.1 recovery USB. I have the touch keyboard and access to a USB keyboard too.
Any ideas/direction/thoughts AT ALL are greatly appreciated.
EDIT: I was considering using my colleagues RT to create a recovery image to attempt to get this guy booting but it seems as though this is a bad idea due to his SN being copied over to my RT and causing issues. Am I correct in assuming so?

The CD key ought to come from flash ROM, but it depends on how the recovery image works, which I don't know >.<
If you can use his recovery image to boot to command prompt, you can mount your SSD's registry hive and dump the product key data, then decode it on a Windows PC. Then after recovering with the image, even if the product key ended up copying your colleague's Surface's key, you could just go to System and click "Change product key" and type your own key. (In this situation, the desktop will likely be black, a sign that Windows was unable to activate. Changing the key to yours will fix that, of course.)
I'm not saying that this is easy or anything, but this ought to work, with my understanding of Windows NT.
Note that you don't need to bother decoding the registry data if you notice after recovering that your product ID in System is different than your colleague's, and it also says that Windows is activated. This would mean that the recovery image grabbed your CD key out of flash ROM.
EDIT: I guess what I meant to say is that when you boot to command prompt, run regedit. In regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then File/Load Hive. Find your system hive on your SSD, which may be on a different drive letter than usual, in somewhere like Z:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM. Give it some name like "meow". Find the subkey meow\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. Go to File/Export and export that to a .reg file on your USB stick. If there is an option to do so non-recursively (I forget, and I'm on my iPad), use it because that key is big. Once you've backed it up, you're safe to recover, because now you have everything needed to find out your old key if required.
If in fact you do need to use that .reg file to determine your old key, let me know so I can help you out. Some tricks will be required to proceed.
Melissa

munsterrr said:
Good morning all.
So I installed the 8.1 preview through the store when it first came out a few months ago with no problems. Last night I went to try to move over to the official 8.1 release by going to the store then opening the browser then clicking on the link to take me back to the store to retrieve the official update through the store. The store update "application" never showed up(even after a few restarts and repeating the process). I thought it was strange so I said "screw it, i have nothing important on here" and decided to do a full/clean restore.
I plugged the charger in, let it go about its business and walked away. I came back 2 hours later and the screen was black(no "restoring windows" progress"). Let it sit for another hour in case it was doing something I just wasnt seeing. Came back and decided to hit the power button. Screen turned on with the "Surface" start up logo and then I got this error message.
http://i.imgur.com/Q37Af1a.jpg
Now I am stuck in a boot loop where if i hit "ok" it just restarts and brings me back here.
Of course I never made a 8.1 recovery USB. I have the touch keyboard and access to a USB keyboard too.
Any ideas/direction/thoughts AT ALL are greatly appreciated.
EDIT: I was considering using my colleagues RT to create a recovery image to attempt to get this guy booting but it seems as though this is a bad idea due to his SN being copied over to my RT and causing issues. Am I correct in assuming so?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you recover using an 8.1 recovery image form somebody else it won't mess with the keys. Worst case is that you may have to activate and you do not have a key. If you look at this post by Osprey you will see how to get the key from a 8.0 installation. That won't help you of course unless you have access to the registry and hive as Melissa suggested.
I actually recommend you use an 8.0 image to recover your RT and then upgrade. The only thing you have to do is get the image and "burn" it to a thumb drive. There are no steps required to obtain your key. Make a bootable thumb drive with an image you can download from here and start from scratch. Your system will automatically activate going this route. I've done this several times to switch between Preview 8.1 and 8.0. Follow the instructions above from Osprey's post to obtain your key just in case you do need it sometime in the future. Then you upgrade to 8.1 (nothing necessary in terms of activating this way).
Here is a post with a link on how to recover with a USB recovery image. One important point when you put the image onto the thumb drive is that it has to be bootable. Use UltraIso or Rufus to put the image onto the thumb drive (FAT32 formatted).

munsterrr said:
Any ideas/direction/thoughts AT ALL are greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apparently this is a widespread problem, and one of the reasons I haven't upgraded to 8.1. Heres the solution: http://kickthatcomputer.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/windows-rt-8-1-upgrade-fails-with-boot-configuration-error/

Thanks for the replies everyone. My colleague was able to upgrade to 8.1 on his RT with no problems. We were able to copy the image(minus recovery partition) over to a thumb drive and I was able to boot from that and eventually upgrade myself.

Recover / Hard Reset

Anyone have the steps to take to preform a hard reset of fix a non booting device?
I am stuck on the amazon Fire TV part where the boot animation is doing nothing. Can't get past this screen and have been stuck for the last 10 minutes.

jamesrascal said:
Anyone have the steps to take to preform a hard reset of fix a non booting device?
I am stuck on the amazon Fire TV part where the boot animation is doing nothing. Can't get past this screen and have been stuck for the last 10 minutes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
End Result. If you brick you box Amazon has no troubleshooting steps outside of rebooting the box. Once you get past that step and your still having an issue Amazon will issue you a replacement FireTV.
You will need to call Amazon as the Live chat is useless: 866-216-1072 Press 0 and ask to be transferred to the Fire TV department.

jamesrascal said:
Anyone have the steps to take to preform a hard reset of fix a non booting device?
I am stuck on the amazon Fire TV part where the boot animation is doing nothing. Can't get past this screen and have been stuck for the last 10 minutes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, boy. That is unfortunate. What did you do that lead to bricking your box?

I am in the same situation with one of my FireTV box. What caused it was one of the SQLite editor I used to explore the settings database: it changed the permissions on the files. I only realized the problem once I rebooted it
On the other box, I used the SQLite3 command line client from TitaniumBackup instead, and directly did my edit as root. No problem there.
Unfortunately, I am not in US; so if there is a way to do a hard reset, I would be glad to know.

if you bought yours at a local best buy and are a select customer, you may have an extended return policy.

You must have edited something you shouldn't have with the sqlite editor. I edited mine to allow package installs and did a factory reset and its all good. Did you only disable the updates through pm disable com.amazon.dcp or did you also edit the /etc/hosts? Lets get this figured out so others don't end up the same way.

Stupid question, did you pick TWRP as a method of recovery during the rooting process? I did that on my note 10.1 and boy did it mess up that tablet when I tried to recover it. Luckily I had Odin at the time.
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

arman68 said:
I am in the same situation with one of my FireTV box. What caused it was one of the SQLite editor I used to explore the settings database: it changed the permissions on the files. I only realized the problem once I rebooted it
On the other box, I used the SQLite3 command line client from TitaniumBackup instead, and directly did my edit as root. No problem there.
Unfortunately, I am not in US; so if there is a way to do a hard reset, I would be glad to know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you recall which sqlite editor app you used that caused the problem?

Be interesting to know if there's a stock recovery, and if there is, if it's looking for an update.zip file on a thumb drive in the USB slot. We can tell that USB slot is getting polled at start time by the way that certain connections to it will hang the device.
If it were me, I'd try is to obtain a 1 gig or so USB drive, format it fat32 and copy the OTA update to it.
- Leave it zipped.
- Name it update.zip
- pull the plug on the FTV
- put the USB stick in
- power it on and leave it for a bit. Watch it - is the power LED going out? If so, it may doing a recovery install of the signed OTA and rebooting - many Android devices will install anything on the sdcard called Update.zip if it's there at boot time.
The idea is that if there's a stock recovery it may be able to see that USB storage and read the OTA file as a recovery source.

roustabout said:
Be interesting to know if there's a stock recovery, and if there is, if it's looking for an update.zip file on a thumb drive in the USB slot. We can tell that USB slot is getting polled at start time by the way that certain connections to it will hang the device.
If it were me, I'd try is to obtain a 1 gig or so USB drive, format it fat32 and copy the OTA update to it.
- Leave it zipped.
- Name it update.zip
- pull the plug on the FTV
- put the USB stick in
- power it on and leave it for a bit. Watch it - is the power LED going out? If so, it may doing a recovery install of the signed OTA and rebooting - many Android devices will install anything on the sdcard called Update.zip if it's there at boot time.
The idea is that if there's a stock recovery it may be able to see that USB storage and read the OTA file as a recovery source.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There might be something to this idea. There was a review posted on Amazon and the reviewer had a Best Buy box that wouldn't go past the Amazon screen. They said Amazon told them how to use the USB to get it to work. A couple people asked for more info but they never responded. I have tried going back through the reviews to see if they ever did, but there are almost 6000 reviews.

kairnage said:
There might be something to this idea. There was a review posted on Amazon and the reviewer had a Best Buy box that wouldn't go past the Amazon screen. They said Amazon told them how to use the USB to get it to work. A couple people asked for more info but they never responded. I have tried going back through the reviews to see if they ever did, but there are almost 6000 reviews.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have only sideloaded a few apps , no root or root attempt was made before issues.
i have a similar boot issue ( stops at amazon first screen and led flashes white) . i believe my remote is fried , batteries heated up while pressing the home button to pair remote , i removed battery and found the plastic wrap on one starting to burn . i believe remote is toast .
can anyone verify that the boot will stop until remote is paired ?
ps : amazon phone help mentioned reset on remote was hold right arrow key ( ie right circle ) and home button for 10 secs , to reset just the remote ,. nothing helped mine , i say its dead. another is on the way ,. he also said the lack of pairing with remote should not have stopped the ftv boot , it should have gone past first amazon screen . other than restarting the ftv by disconnecting power he offered no other reset method .

bkdg100 said:
i have a similar boot issue ( stops at amazon first screen and led flashes white) . i believe my remote is fried , batteries heated up while pressing the home button to pair remote , i removed battery and found the plastic wrap on one starting to burn . i believe remote is toast .
can anyone verify that the boot will stop until remote is paired ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Removed batteries from remote and rebooted FTV, boots like normal, could not find a way to delete a paired remote otherwise I would have tried that too,

userr12 said:
Removed batteries from remote and rebooted FTV, boots like normal, could not find a way to delete a paired remote otherwise I would have tried that too,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks ,. i called amazon they confirmed normal boot even without pairing ,. also said how to reset "just the remote" ,. right tab and home for 10secs.

kairnage said:
There might be something to this idea. There was a review posted on Amazon and the reviewer had a Best Buy box that wouldn't go past the Amazon screen. They said Amazon told them how to use the USB to get it to work. A couple people asked for more info but they never responded. I have tried going back through the reviews to see if they ever did, but there are almost 6000 reviews.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm trying to find that review now. so far nothing

fireTVnews.com said:
Do you recall which sqlite editor app you used that caused the problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have reviewed the logs of what I did, and it was my fault:
I used a non-root SQLite editor, which means I had to give -rw-rw-rw- access to the database folder and content, which I did.
With the SQLite editor, all I did was to explore the database structure.
Once done, I restored the original permissions, fist -rw------- (chmod 660) on the database folder and database file itself.
Finally I restored read-only -r-------- (chmod 600) to the extra files (settings-*), and that was my mistake: I did not notice my chmod line had 2 entries, with the first one being the database folder (wrong)
If only I would have root write access to the file system with adb, I could easily fix it, with a simple chmod 660 on the database folder.
In hindsight, I was very careless to do that directly on the FireTV; I should have taken a copy of settings.db, and explore it on the PC.

Luxferro said:
I'm trying to find that review now. so far nothing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I took a look again today. Their search doesn't really drill down very well.

Luxferro said:
I'm trying to find that review now. so far nothing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
kairnage said:
Yeah I took a look again today. Their search doesn't really drill down very well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here are all the reviews with the word "USB" in them on one page:
http://firetvnews.com/review_usb.html
I skimmed through it but couldn't find the elusive review.

@Firetv: please review post #15 in this thread, and consider adjusting the post on your website accordingly - when I saw your site, it was stating that adjusting values in the settings databases risked changing the permissions on those databases.
That does not appear to be the case, but rather reflected confusion on the part of the person who was doing the settings changes and permissions changes from the shell at the same time.
I haven't seen a db editor that changes the permissions of the dbs themselves....'
Back to softbricked devices: I see that Amazon sells a thing called a "fastboot cable" which in theory forces the Kindle Fires to reboot into fastboot mode if attached to a computer. I'd be interested in what one of these did in conjunction with an A to A converter, since I haven't seen fastboot mode available yet (that I know of)

roustabout said:
@Firetv: please review post #15 in this thread, and consider adjusting the post on your website accordingly - when I saw your site, it was stating that adjusting values in the settings databases risked changing the permissions on those databases.
That does not appear to be the case, but rather reflected confusion on the part of the person who was doing the settings changes and permissions changes from the shell at the same time.
I haven't seen a db editor that changes the permissions of the dbs themselves....'
Back to softbricked devices: I see that Amazon sells a thing called a "fastboot cable" which in theory forces the Kindle Fires to reboot into fastboot mode if attached to a computer. I'd be interested in what one of these did in conjunction with an A to A converter, since I haven't seen fastboot mode available yet (that I know of)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've definitely been tempted to remove the warning about SQLite databases after reading arman68's update. I haven't, however, because I've been individually contact by someone stating they used a free SQLite app from the Google Play store which caused them to lose their ethernet connection and soft-bricked after a restart.
I have gone ahead and updated the post to reduce the concern and stated that the SQLite Editor app everyone is using here seems to be safe.
Also, a fastboot connection can be achieved with any A to A USB cable. You simply need to boot the Fire TV while it's connected to a computer and it will boot into fastboot. I've done this myself with a Mac (have not tried a PC). The Fire TV displays a white Amazon logo on the screen and stays there until you reboot it without the cable plugged in. There doesn't seem to be much that can be done with the locked bootloader, but then again, I'm not the one to know as that is all new territory for me. Got any suggestions on things to try with fastboot?

fireTVnews.com said:
I've definitely been tempted to remove the warning about SQLite databases after reading arman68's update. I haven't, however, because I've been individually contact by someone stating they used a free SQLite app from the Google Play store which caused them to lose their ethernet connection and soft-bricked after a restart.
I have gone ahead and updated the post to reduce the concern and stated that the SQLite Editor app everyone is using here seems to be safe.
Also, a fastboot connection can be achieved with any A to A USB cable. You simply need to boot the Fire TV while it's connected to a computer and it will boot into fastboot. I've done this myself with a Mac (have not tried a PC). The Fire TV displays a white Amazon logo on the screen and stays there until you reboot it without the cable plugged in. There doesn't seem to be much that can be done with the locked bootloader, but then again, I'm not the one to know as that is all new territory for me. Got any suggestions on things to try with fastboot?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't mean to say you can't hose your device by changing settings with an editor, just that I don't think any of them change permissions. so using them to look but not change is pretty safe, IMO, and I'd hate to see folks discouraged from doing so.
I'm surprised that there's not a better onboard recovery on this device, or at least not one anyone's figured out how to get moving. I'dthink it'd be cheaper for Amazon if the devices had a viable recovery, or if there was a solid reset to factory which actually did a full reinstall of the OS.
Interesting about the fastboot mode - when i connect the FTV to my laptop using an A to A cable I don't get a device recognized in fastboot, but it may be down to not having a driver for it.

[Q] attempted kitkat revert, almost completely unresponsive

I have a bone stock 2013 Nexus 7 32 Gb Wifi, never had a problem with it. A few weeks ago, it notifies me of an update (Lollipop) so I apply it. Nothing but problems since then. It was very laggy and would glitch every few seconds while playing video (either local files or streamed over Plex, both had same issue). Sometimes when I'd wake it from sleep, the screen would look like an old CRT TV with static (except it wasn't moving, it was a fixed image). It would hang like this for seconds or sometimes minutes. Rebooting would usually resolve this for a while.
Tried a few 'lollipop tuning' tweaks, but when these failed to fix the video glitching and lagginess, I decided to revert to kitkat and followed an online tutorial (exactly like the one here except it had me install a standalone ADB/fastboot instead of full SDK) . No problem installing USB driver or setting nexus into USB mode. No problem getting it into fastboot mode and "fastboot devices" correctly listed the device, and "oem unlock" appeared to work fine as well. Running the flash-all batch file also seemed to go normally. But now my device is even worse than before:
- won't boot/run normally... no boot-up logo or video ever displays (or if it does, it's just a partial static image). Appears to get to a 'welcome' screen but the display is all messed (part of the screen is just repeated several times, so you can't see the entire screen). Unresponsive to touch, though it will make some sounds when you press in certain areas, but the display never changes. If I sleep it and wake it up, it shows the 'CRT static' mentioned above for many seconds before showing slowing showing the tiled/corrupted welcome screen. I can access the nexus' file system over USB on my PC even while it's in this borked state.
- display is now blank when getting into fastboot mode... i can time pushing the down-volume and power button so I know I am in fastboot mode ('fastboot devices' correctly lists the device) but the display is now completely black (not on, no backlight) in this mode.
I tried flashing to factory 4.4.4, 4.3, and 4.2 (always using 2013 wifi images) and it doesn't make a difference. Same results. Is there some bit of code that doesn't get reflashed during this reset that could explain why I'm having these issues? Any advice how to fix?

flyingsherpa said:
I have a bone stock 2013 Nexus 7 32 Gb Wifi, never had a problem with it. A few weeks ago, it notifies me of an update (Lollipop) so I apply it. Nothing but problems since then. It was very laggy and would glitch every few seconds while playing video (either local files or streamed over Plex, both had same issue). Sometimes when I'd wake it from sleep, the screen would look like an old CRT TV with static (except it wasn't moving, it was a fixed image). It would hang like this for seconds or sometimes minutes. Rebooting would usually resolve this for a while.
Tried a few 'lollipop tuning' tweaks, but when these failed to fix the video glitching and lagginess, I decided to revert to kitkat and followed an online tutorial (exactly like the one here except it had me install a standalone ADB/fastboot instead of full SDK) . No problem installing USB driver or setting nexus into USB mode. No problem getting it into fastboot mode and "fastboot devices" correctly listed the device, and "oem unlock" appeared to work fine as well. Running the flash-all batch file also seemed to go normally. But now my device is even worse than before:
- won't boot/run normally... no boot-up logo or video ever displays (or if it does, it's just a partial static image). Appears to get to a 'welcome' screen but the display is all messed (part of the screen is just repeated several times, so you can't see the entire screen). Unresponsive to touch, though it will make some sounds when you press in certain areas, but the display never changes. If I sleep it and wake it up, it shows the 'CRT static' mentioned above for many seconds before showing slowing showing the tiled/corrupted welcome screen. I can access the nexus' file system over USB on my PC even while it's in this borked state.
- display is now blank when getting into fastboot mode... i can time pushing the down-volume and power button so I know I am in fastboot mode ('fastboot devices' correctly lists the device) but the display is now completely black (not on, no backlight) in this mode.
I tried flashing to factory 4.4.4, 4.3, and 4.2 (always using 2013 wifi images) and it doesn't make a difference. Same results. Is there some bit of code that doesn't get reflashed during this reset that could explain why I'm having these issues? Any advice how to fix?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So your bootloader is blank right? I would flash a new bootloader asap! And see if that fixes anything

noahvt said:
So your bootloader is blank right? I would flash a new bootloader asap! And see if that fixes anything
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to confess my ignorance here... I'm brand new to flashing android like this so I don't know the answer to your question. If part of tutorial I followed blanks out the bootloader (and doesn't write something in?)... then you're probably right. I shall look into this more tonight when I'm at home with the nexus. Thanks for at least giving me something to look into, that's exactly what I was hoping for!

This sounds more like a hardware issue than software to me. See if you can get a warranty repair or replacement.
From another thread by a user with a blank screen like yours:
Asus_USA said:
a7medmo7eb - We're very sorry to hear of this. Kindly email us at [email protected] with this copied problem description along with the serial number of your tablet and we will do our best to provide you with troubleshooting and servicing options.
If you have any further questions, comments or concerns please do not hesitate to let us know. We will be more than happy to assist you. Once again, thank you for choosing ASUS products and services.
Thank you.
-In Search of Incredible-
Technical Support Department
http://www.asus.com :: http://service.asus.com/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

nhizzat said:
This sounds more like a hardware issue than software to me. See if you can get a warranty repair or replacement.
From another thread by a user with a blank screen like yours:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, you're probably right. I did read up to understand all this stuff a bit more, so I know it's not lack of a bootloader or anything. All img files install just fine, so my pc can talk to the nexus, just the screen is all wonky no matter what i do.
Unfortunately I bought this 1.5 years ago so I don't think it's under warranty anymore. Everything was fine until I updated to Lollipop! Seems a big coincidence that I had a hardware failure at the same time as that update... I feel like Google ruined my tablet...

There is a bug where sometimes when you unlock the bootloader it zeros out the data partition. This might be the cause of your problem. It happened to me when I unlocked mine and I got stuck in a bootloop where it kept booting into recovery then shutting off. I fixed the problem by using fastboot to format data. Also, the flashall script didnt work for me. I put all the .img files in the same folder as fastboot then used these commands.
fastboot format data
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
after this I booted into recovery and did a factory reset for good measure and the problem was fixed. This may solve your problem. It may also be possible that you got a bad download. I hope this helps you

Masterchief87 said:
There is a bug where sometimes when you unlock the bootloader it zeros out the data partition. This might be the cause of your problem. It happened to me when I unlocked mine and I got stuck in a bootloop where it kept booting into recovery then shutting off. I fixed the problem by using fastboot to format data. Also, the flashall script didnt work for me. I put all the .img files in the same folder as fastboot then used these commands.
fastboot format data
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
after this I booted into recovery and did a factory reset for good measure and the problem was fixed. This may solve your problem. It may also be possible that you got a bad download. I hope this helps you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, thanks for the idea, but fastboot wouldn't do "format data", giving me the error: Formatting is not supported for filesystem with type ' '
Googling that makes it not look good. Weird, thing is, it still technically boots up, just the screen is so wonky you can't see where you are or interact with it properly. Not sure what else to try (opening it up and re-seating touchscreen cables?).

Need help unbricking Firestick 4K

I have 2 firestick 4ks.
Both identical in that they are rooted and debloated with (the same) various system apps frozen...
Both been running fine for a month or so...
Where I live I get frequent power cuts.
Yesterday after a power cut... one reboots correctly the other just goes to a black screen.
I connected it to my PC and ADB into it, I reenabled all apps via adb and rebooted, it just went to the same black screen.
So I booted to TWRP and reflashed RBoxes prerooted image, still nothing...
I then installed a stock image (Skel40's).... Still nothing.
Up to this point I had only been wiping Cache & Dalvik and dirty flashing.
I figured that there was a corrupted file that was affecting full boot, so I made the mistake of wiping data and installing stock again...
When I rebooted I had lost ADB!
I could still see the firestick in windows, however it just comes up as "Fire" in device manager with no ADB..
I grabbed an OTG cable and booted to TWRP and tried a few more times... each time gave exactly the same black screen (no orange amazon logo).
Finally I tried wiping system as well in case something was corrupted and reflashed stock.... Still nothing!
So I don't really know where to go from here... (I'm going to backup the other firestick and restore that over this one then reflash stock and see where that gets me...)
Does anyone have any ideas! I can get into TWRP, but I'm not sure it's wiping or flashing things correctly...
Any help greatly appreciated... Thx

Have you done any of the ideas listed in the other thread? Let me know if i can help #lockdown

Michajin said:
Have you done any of the ideas listed in the other thread? Let me know if i can help #lockdown
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Michajin...
Thanks for taking the time to help
I'll fill you in as to what I have and haven't tried...
I have wiped all standard partitions ( cache, dalvik, data, system) and reflashed both rooted and stock images *.*.6.8 and *.*.7.1
I think I may have wiped the Vendor partition, I'm not sure.
Under backup in TWRP I can see the Vendor partition, however under Wipe I see an extra 2 partitions (both) called storage and having not made a backup (I know!... )
I did'nt realise that the storage partition(s) may have been the Vendor partition.
After wiping cache, dalvik, data, system partitions and then flashing stock and rooted images multiple times and still getting a black screen... I tried wiping the one storage then the other and then finally Internal.
A couple of points that I can tell you...
I can boot to TWRP
I can reboot to hacked Bootloader
When I connect the firestick to my windows PC It's senses it straight away for a bout 10 seconds then drops it... It then senses it again and stays connected to my PC.
Windows recognizes it under portable devices as simply "fire" and an empty explorer window pops up, if I right click on the firestick in windows explorer (it shows as drive) I can pull a properties page which shows its serial number...!
On both my firesticks I have modified my build.prop for a faster boot which doesn't show the splash screen.
Both sticks were modified identically about a month ago and once setup had nothing added to them. They just get used for Kodi and catch-up TV apps.
I root them so as to boot directly into Kodi and freeze the bloat.
Both sticks have been rebooted multiple times.. This one failed after a powercut...
I been reading in the main rooting thread and have come across something about sticks not booting properly due to dm_verity failing and having to flash magisk before (or after... I'm not sure) the image flash.
I'm still reading through the thread so haven't tried anything yet... When i get head round what it is, I'll try.
The other 2 ideas I thought to try was to
1) flash an image directly from the bootloader (if possible.. I need to find more info on this) and
2) taking a backup of the working stick and trying that (It's in use a lot... due to #TotalLockdown! we're at 4 weeks with heavy police curfew! So I haven't had access to it)
If have any ideas or thoughts... I would be very grateful. Also I'm happy to try anything...

tinybilbo said:
Hi Michajin...
Thanks for taking the time to help
I'll fill you in as to what I have and haven't tried...
I have wiped all standard partitions ( cache, dalvik, data, system) and reflashed both rooted and stock images *.*.6.8 and *.*.7.1
I think I may have wiped the Vendor partition, I'm not sure.
Under backup in TWRP I can see the Vendor partition, however under Wipe I see an extra 2 partitions (both) called storage and having not made a backup (I know!... )
I did'nt realise that the storage partition(s) may have been the Vendor partition.
After wiping cache, dalvik, data, system partitions and then flashing stock and rooted images multiple times and still getting a black screen... I tried wiping the one storage then the other and then finally Internal.
A couple of points that I can tell you...
I can boot to TWRP
I can reboot to hacked Bootloader
When I connect the firestick to my windows PC It's senses it straight away for a bout 10 seconds then drops it... It then senses it again and stays connected to my PC.
Windows recognizes it under portable devices as simply "fire" and an empty explorer window pops up, if I right click on the firestick in windows explorer (it shows as drive) I can pull a properties page which shows its serial number...!
On both my firesticks I have modified my build.prop for a faster boot which doesn't show the splash screen.
Both sticks were modified identically about a month ago and once setup had nothing added to them. They just get used for Kodi and catch-up TV apps.
I root them so as to boot directly into Kodi and freeze the bloat.
Both sticks have been rebooted multiple times.. This one failed after a powercut...
I been reading in the main rooting thread and have come across something about sticks not booting properly due to dm_verity failing and having to flash magisk before (or after... I'm not sure) the image flash.
I'm still reading through the thread so haven't tried anything yet... When i get head round what it is, I'll try.
The other 2 ideas I thought to try was to
1) flash an image directly from the bootloader (if possible.. I need to find more info on this) and
2) taking a backup of the working stick and trying that (It's in use a lot... due to #TotalLockdown! we're at 4 weeks with heavy police curfew! So I haven't had access to it)
If have any ideas or thoughts... I would be very grateful. Also I'm happy to try anything...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's really strange. Usually these steps should fix the issue :
1) Factory Reset from TWRP
2)Wipe System from TWRP
3) Flash full stock (non rooted) firmware
Of course, you could try flashing each image with hacked fastboot, or just boot, system and vendor with TWRP, which also have an option (install image) for that.
But you will have to convert system and vendor from sparse (.dat) to . img before being able to flash them.

Wiping these should have taken care of you issue.
"After wiping cache, dalvik, data, system partitions and then flashing stock and rooted images multiple times and still getting a black screen... I tried wiping the one storage then the other and then finally Internal."
What stock did you flash from where?
When you flash stock are there any errors?
You should be able to take a backup from you other one also for other one (if you are doing a full backup/restore, i would wipe data and cache after restore)

Thanks guys for the replies, I couldn't respond earlier due to an 8 hr powercut today!
Pretoriano80 said:
It's really strange. Usually these steps should fix the issue :
1) Factory Reset from TWRP
2)Wipe System from TWRP
3) Flash full stock (non rooted) firmware
Of course, you could try flashing each image with hacked fastboot, or just boot, system and vendor with TWRP, which also have an option (install image) for that.
But you will have to convert system and vendor from sparse (.dat) to . img before being able to flash them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Pretoriano80
Yeah... It's really weird... I'm starting to think that the stick is damaged in some way, although the fact I can get in both the hacked bootloader and TWRP confuses me!
I've even wiped each partition 3 or 4 times (and rebooted back into recovery to remount) before writing the new image just to make sure.!
I'm ready to try anything at this point, since the stick is a brick at this point.
I'm not really sure how or what to flash from the bootloader, I'll read up a bit before I try especially your tips about converting from sparse to .img.
(I may have some further questions for you, if that's alright )
I will try to restore a backup from another stick first (if I can get access to that stick for long enough...)
Michajin said:
Wiping these should have taken care of you issue.
"After wiping cache, dalvik, data, system partitions and then flashing stock and rooted images multiple times and still getting a black screen... I tried wiping the one storage then the other and then finally Internal."
What stock did you flash from where?
When you flash stock are there any errors?
You should be able to take a backup from you other one also for other one (if you are doing a full backup/restore, i would wipe data and cache after restore)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Michajin
Thanks again for taking the time to reply... much appreciated...
I have tried this stock image update-kindle-mantis-NS6271_user_2493_0003590962564
https://forum.xda-developers.com/fire-tv/general/official-stock-image-fire-tv-stick-4k-6-t4059777
as well as a update-kindle-mantis-NS6268_user_2315_0003255372676 image (stock that I think i got from the main rooting thread)
I've also used Rboxes pre-rooted image mantis-6.2.6.8-rooted_r1
which was the image that worked fine on both boxes...
I'm happy to try any other image that you might have a link for.....
When I wipe the partitions there are no errors, except for when I wiped the storage partitions - they did throw up an error - although at this point I had already tried flashing new images at least a dozen times,
All the images flash without error as well!
I'm stumped... I've never had any android device brick before... (soft bricks many times! but never a hard brick), and it's weird since I have access to both the bootloader and TWRP.
Tomorrow I'll be able to get a restore image from the other stick, Then I'll try flashing from bootloader..
The only other thing i thought to try was to crack the case open and redo the the whole root procedure from scratch...

Sorry to double-post...
However I wanted to add this as a separate post rather than an edit.
After playing with my firestick for a few days, during which I tried a working backup and erasing from the bootloader and then restoring multiple images (stock and prerooted), as well running the exploit again.
I realised that the OS was loading (I regained ADB after the full restore) despite not giving an image over HDMI (just a black screen).
I was about to give up when I happened to be going through the options in ADBLink and I found the screenshot button.
I gave it a try and to my surprise it sent back an image of the stick with a working OS/screen.
I even manged to navigate through the settings and do a full reset from within FireOS by taking screengrabs.
After the reset it still gave a black screen, I re-enabled ADB from TWRP and was able to verify that it had reset correctly...
From ADB I ran a logcat...
I'm not really familiar with logcat but a couple of things seemed to jump out...
Code:
1) 596 617 I DisplayManagerService: Display device changed: DisplayDeviceInfo{"Built-in Screen": uniqueId="local:0", 720 x 480, modeId 4, defaultModeId 1, supportedModes [{id=1, width=1920, height=1080, fps=60.000004}, {id=2, width=1920, height=1080, fps=59.94}, {id=3, width=720, height=576, fps=50.0}, {id=4, width=720, height=480, fps=60.000004}], colorMode 0, supportedColorModes [0], HdrCapabilities [email protected], density 320, 213.0 x 216.0 dpi, appVsyncOff 1000000, presDeadline 16666666, touch INTERNAL, rotation 0, type BUILT_IN, state ON, FLAG_DEFAULT_DISPLAY, FLAG_SECURE, FLAG_SUPPORTS_PROTECTED_BUFFERS}
2) 1145 1145 I AmazonHdmiServiceManager: resolution applied and hdmi turned off
3) 596 2438 E AmazonHdmiService: Settings client binder died.
Seeing that there were some issues with the HDMI display (Display device change to built-In screen? and HDMI turned off?), I used the screengrab to navigate my way to display settings which wouldn't allow me to change resolution
So to sum it up...
Everything is loading and running correctly, however I can't get an image over HDMI only by getting screengrabs via ADBlink.
Maybe something on the chip (HDMI output) is damaged, I've had the stick for a while and it's had heavy usage, or something has stuck in a toggled state.
I don't know....
If anyone has any ideas how to test it I have full root access via TWRP and probably can get it over ADB, so any help or commands to try would greatly appreciated....
Thanks :good:

tinybilbo said:
Sorry to double-post...
However I wanted to add this as a separate post rather than an edit.
After playing with my firestick for a few days, during which I tried a working backup and erasing from the bootloader and then restoring multiple images (stock and prerooted), as well running the exploit again.
I realised that the OS was loading (I regained ADB after the full restore) despite not giving an image over HDMI (just a black screen).
I was about to give up when I happened to be going through the options in ADBLink and I found the screenshot button.
I gave it a try and to my surprise it sent back an image of the stick with a working OS/screen.
I even manged to navigate through the settings and do a full reset from within FireOS by taking screengrabs.
After the reset it still gave a black screen, I re-enabled ADB from TWRP and was able to verify that it had reset correctly...
From ADB I ran a logcat...
I'm not really familiar with logcat but a couple of things seemed to jump out...
Code:
1) 596 617 I DisplayManagerService: Display device changed: DisplayDeviceInfo{"Built-in Screen": uniqueId="local:0", 720 x 480, modeId 4, defaultModeId 1, supportedModes [{id=1, width=1920, height=1080, fps=60.000004}, {id=2, width=1920, height=1080, fps=59.94}, {id=3, width=720, height=576, fps=50.0}, {id=4, width=720, height=480, fps=60.000004}], colorMode 0, supportedColorModes [0], HdrCapabilities [email protected], density 320, 213.0 x 216.0 dpi, appVsyncOff 1000000, presDeadline 16666666, touch INTERNAL, rotation 0, type BUILT_IN, state ON, FLAG_DEFAULT_DISPLAY, FLAG_SECURE, FLAG_SUPPORTS_PROTECTED_BUFFERS}
2) 1145 1145 I AmazonHdmiServiceManager: resolution applied and hdmi turned off
3) 596 2438 E AmazonHdmiService: Settings client binder died.
Seeing that there were some issues with the HDMI display (Display device change to built-In screen? and HDMI turned off?), I used the screengrab to navigate my way to display settings which wouldn't allow me to change resolution
So to sum it up...
Everything is loading and running correctly, however I can't get an image over HDMI only by getting screengrabs via ADBlink.
Maybe something on the chip (HDMI output) is damaged, I've had the stick for a while and it's had heavy usage, or something has stuck in a toggled state.
I don't know....
If anyone has any ideas how to test it I have full root access via TWRP and probably can get it over ADB, so any help or commands to try would greatly appreciated....
Thanks :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just checking, but have you tried another HDMI cable and different TV? Somehow it is not recognizing the format in the OS. TWRP uses a lower format i believe. I have had a power surge before damaging HDMI here, but I wouldn't get anything with it plugged in.

Michajin said:
Just checking, but have you tried another HDMI cable and different TV? Somehow it is not recognizing the format in the OS. TWRP uses a lower format i believe. I have had a power surge before damaging HDMI here, but I wouldn't get anything with it plugged in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Michajin,
Thanks for your reply...
Yes I have tried multiple TV's, Monitors , and cables... Including the TV that it had been running on for almost a year...
I get frequent powercuts where I live, and often power surges when the power comes back on...
I do use surge protectors, however they don't always work....
One time the electricity board double one of the phases to 440v and knocked out £5k worth of equipment!
So between that and the humidity I think there is some minor damage to the stick... shame because it's still running.
I'm going to see if I can get a logcat from TWRP and see what it says about the HDMI output, not that it'll help...

tinybilbo said:
Hi Michajin,
Thanks for your reply...
Yes I have tried multiple TV's, Monitors , and cables... Including the TV that it had been running on for almost a year...
I get frequent powercuts where I live, and often power surges when the power comes back on...
I do use surge protectors, however they don't always work....
One time the electricity board double one of the phases to 440v and knocked out £5k worth of equipment!
So between that and the humidity I think there is some minor damage to the stick... shame because it's still running.
I'm going to see if I can get a logcat from TWRP and see what it says about the HDMI output, not that it'll help...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you get a display in TWRP, but go black after booting? I wonder if you can force whatever display mode and setting as used in TWRP as your display mode in FireOS. Had you tried another wall outlet (higher mA) ? A long shot at this point that you havent tried it....

Michajin said:
So you get a display in TWRP, but go black after booting? I wonder if you can force whatever display mode and setting as used in TWRP as your display mode in FireOS. Had you tried another wall outlet (higher mA) ? A long shot at this point that you havent tried it....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Correct, I can get a display with TWRP, but it goes black when it boots into FireOS (from which I can get screengrab via adblink of the stick displaying FireOS or whatever app is running).
Up until now (for almost a year) I've just used the power adapter that came with the stick, but it's a good idea to try something more powerful (I have a 2.4a one that I'll try a little later).
Another thing I'm going to try is "adb shell wm size ***x***" "adb shell wm density ***" command to change the resolution & pixel density (I think).
I hadn't thought about power being an issue up until you mentioned it (because so far it hasn't been), but maybe a component has (or is) failed (or failing) so it might need more power...
I can't try until a little later this evening, but at least I have something to try now cheers! I'll let you know how I get on....

tinybilbo said:
Correct, I can get a display with TWRP, but it goes black when it boots into FireOS (from which I can get screengrab via adblink of the stick displaying FireOS or whatever app is running).
Up until now (for almost a year) I've just used the power adapter that came with the stick, but it's a good idea to try something more powerful (I have a 2.4a one that I'll try a little later).
Another thing I'm going to try is "adb shell wm size ***x***" "adb shell wm density ***" command to change the resolution & pixel density (I think).
I hadn't thought about power being an issue up until you mentioned it (because so far it hasn't been), but maybe a component has (or is) failed (or failing) so it might need more power...
I can't try until a little later this evening, but at least I have something to try now cheers! I'll let you know how I get on....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey I have a debloated clean stable rom that will be available soon. You can try that and you need to be sure to have either a usb otg or a hub for transferring this backup which will be titled ftvs4kdebloatedv1.0. Paste this folder to TWRP/BACKUPS/YOUR SERIAL #/ftvs4kdebloatedv1.0.

Skel40 said:
Hey I have a debloated clean stable rom that will be available soon. You can try that and you need to be sure to have either a usb otg or a hub for transferring this backup which will be titled ftvs4kdebloatedv1.0. Paste this folder to TWRP/BACKUPS/YOUR SERIAL #/ftvs4kdebloatedv1.0.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks Skel40
I'll definitely give the clean rom a go
I have an OTG & Hub and the serial number already

hi guys
i have a firestick 2th gen model ly78pr its brick stock on logo , the problem is usb debbug was off and i tried with the key board and otg cable pressing alt + printscreen + i and it does not work as , i tried different combination and nothing help , also i connected to the pc and it does not work with adb it doesnt reconize , if anyone can help to find any solution

Nexus 7 1st Gen No Keyboard After Factory Reset/Can't Connect to Wifi or Complete Setup

ETA: I don't see a way to delete this topic so I'm just updating it. I didn't want to risk waiting another day to not have an answer since I'd already posted other places over the weekend with no response and we need it working for tomorrow morning, so I just went ahead and flashed the factory image from here:
https://developers.google.com/android/images
Everything is in order now! Tips for anyone else doing this, don't skip the step of adding the platform tools to the path environment variables. I did the first time and the flash script wasn't able to find some files because of it and aborted. Everything pushed to the tablet and installed fine after I added the tools folder to system variables.
**********************************************************
This is the only place where I see detailed answers so I registered to ask this.
Status locked/not rooted, just however I bought it when it released plus whatever OTA updates before I stopped using it. Dead in a drawer for maybe two years, I got it powering on again by disconnecting/reconnecting the battery then charging on my PC overnight via USB, but it kept booting to a black screen, no logo, no splash.
I went into recovery mode and did the wipe data/factory reset. I can now get to the welcome setup screen but there are two problems:
1) Errors immediately pop up blocking the screen, making it hard to choose anything because as soon as I hit ok to make an error go away, another pops up. It bounces between "android.process.acore/gapps/media has stopped" with "calendar has stopped/email has stopped" sometimes appearing too but it's mainly the first ones.
2) If I'm fast enough after dismissing an error, I can click next from the language screen to the wifi connection screen. SKIP is greyed out. I can select my wifi but when the password prompt comes up, no keyboard appears after clicking the field to enter one. It's just the blinking cursor.
Keep in mind the errors are still popping up too so I don't know if they're blocking things. I sometimes used a bluetooth keyboard with it, so I grabbed that and tried typing with it just in case and no luck.
Attempts​
I found a fix to try sideloading a factory image via the apply update via adb option in recovery mode, but the google site said it's safer to try sideloading a whole image OTA, so I tried that instead using the zip file there for Nexus 7 2013 wifi (I have 1st Gen but don't see that anywhere so this may be the issue too). After it hit 100% it was aborted for some reason I can't remember now.
But I do remember when I looked up whatever it said, most responses were that sideloading a whole image OTA won't work on devices that haven't been "unlocked" or something.
I found another response to someone with my problem, not having a keyboard after resetting, which said to sideload a keyboard app through adb. I found some gboard apk listed as the version for the Nexus 7 but when I did the adb thing, it aborted because of something to do with e-signature not being verified.
Question​
I can figure out trying to copy over a factory image but since I suspect the main issue now is the Nexus not having wifi access to complete setup then update/install what it needs to stop those errors, I consider that a last resort. So my question for now is for further help on getting a keyboard app or another way so I can type. If I still can't get things working after that, then I'll ask about the factory image.
Thanks!