It finally happened: boot loop! - Nexus 5X Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

My 18month old NX5 just switched off in my hand this morning and wouldn't boot past the Google logo.
After a quick Google I realised it was probably the dreaded boot loop; short version is after following an XDA guide to install a patched boot image that shuts down cores or something.
What I really want to know is that it? Will my phone get worse and worse? Should I start shopping around for a replacement?

@mattspew, you may try to start cleanly instead of BLOD patches:
format internal storage, wipe the other partitions, flash the latest firmware and let it boot... If it loops again, I would go shopping: the patched system is slow and may crash nevertheless.

I was running LineageOS when the phone first died; a full wipe and going back to stock was the first thing I tried.
Currently back on "patched" LineageOS and the phone does feel pretty slugging and lots of app crashes.
Thinking about buying a Pixel, or anything really, that I can install LineageOS on with reasonable specs.

Full wipe and formatting is different. I repaired a bootloop this way.

I'm not sure it's worth the effort; not even TWRP would boot until I installed the special patched version.
I'm also pretty sure installing stock using the Google provided script does format partitions.
EDIT: Did it anyway, format and installed stock ROM, still dead. IT'S DEAD JIM!

For what it's worth; I went bought an Oppo R15 today. Seems pretty nice with Nova Launcher.

Related

Boot loop and factory image restore

Hi,
I'm writing here as a last hope, after I've tried every possible solution I could find online. Any help here will be very much appreciated.
Couple of days ago I received my fresh Nexus 5X, that I plan to use with Project Fi.
After unlocking the bootloader (with Google Support blessing!) and installing TWRP+SuperSU, I ran into problems, big problems.
Following the Android wizard setup, I connected to the wifi and the phone started downloading an update of ~79Mb.
When rebooted, though, it started TWRP, and it didn't go ahead.
To play safe, I decided to do a factory reset, using the official ROM from Google, replacing also TWRP with the original recovery (I basically did every step in the "flash-all.sh" script).
That didn't work either, and the phone now gets stuck at the boot animation.
I've tried also wiping partitions using both fastboot ("fastboot -w...") and TWRP, but nothing worked.
Another diagnostic symptom.
I've noticed that the recovery (TWRP for sure, the stock one not so much sure) had problems finding the sdcard partition ("unknown volume for path couldn't mount sdcard installation aborted").
Could that be a source of issues?
I thought that it would be possible to do a factory reset, but I'm probably missing something.
At this point, I'm completely lost and I don't know what to do.
Thanks in advance.
Try the flash all script again with latest firmware and let it boot up completely. It will take a while, once booted, flash TWRP and root if you want.
ntropia said:
Hi,
I'm writing here as a last hope, after I've tried every possible solution I could find online. Any help here will be very much appreciated.
Couple of days ago I received my fresh Nexus 5X, that I plan to use with Project Fi.
After unlocking the bootloader (with Google Support blessing!) and installing TWRP+SuperSU, I ran into problems, big problems.
Following the Android wizard setup, I connected to the wifi and the phone started downloading an update of ~79Mb.
When rebooted, though, it started TWRP, and it didn't go ahead.
To play safe, I decided to do a factory reset, using the official ROM from Google, replacing also TWRP with the original recovery (I basically did every step in the "flash-all.sh" script).
That didn't work either, and the phone now gets stuck at the boot animation.
I've tried also wiping partitions using both fastboot ("fastboot -w...") and TWRP, but nothing worked.
Another diagnostic symptom.
I've noticed that the recovery (TWRP for sure, the stock one not so much sure) had problems finding the sdcard partition ("unknown volume for path couldn't mount sdcard installation aborted").
Could that be a source of issues?
I thought that it would be possible to do a factory reset, but I'm probably missing something.
At this point, I'm completely lost and I don't know what to do.
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wonder if you need a modified boot.img or kernel since you are rooted .In my experience since Android 5.1.1 you need a custom kernel for root and sometimes a modified boot.img after flashing twrp
Sent from my Nexus 5X using XDA Free mobile app
androidddaaron said:
I wonder if you need a modified boot.img or kernel since you are rooted .In my experience since Android 5.1.1 you need a custom kernel for root and sometimes a modified boot.img after flashing twrp
Sent from my Nexus 5X using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's an interesting perspective, actually.
I didn't know that you needed a special image for rooted devices.
Although, I would imagine that's always possible to 'un-root' it, and honestly I was hoping that 'fastboot flash -w...' would have removed any trace of the root.
Is that the case?
Either way, where could I find these modified images?
Thanks a bunch!
Solved
I found the solution which, as it happens when nothing seems to be wrong, was fairly trivial.
Basically, the scripts provided with the stock ROM from Google has problems, and this last command fails:
Code:
fastboot update image-bullhead-mmb29p.zip
saying that system.img is missing.
To fix that, you have to manually extract the content of the files and proceed to flash manually userdata, system, etc...
The problem is that if you don't flash also vendor.img, you're in trouble, and the device will not boot.
Some of the guides that I've found were suggesting that you need to do it for the Nexus 9, and I didn't notice when other guides were mentioning it.
Once you flash the vendor.img, the boot loop is gone.
I'll put it here, I hope it can be helpful to somebody.
Thanks to androidddaaron and k.s.deviate for the support!
(I've thanked also used the thank button near the posts, but if there's more to do, let me know)
Now, back to mess up the Project Fi SIM...

Recover, Root disappearing, WiFi breaking.

Ok I am having some serious issues as of late, I am far from an Android expert but have been using and rooting them since Android started, and I am also a Linux user. So as stated in the subject I have been getting these issues (not always together).
Recovery will disappear after a normal reboot.
Root will disappear after a normal reboot.
WiFi is "broken" after a normal reboot (is disabled, and can't be enabled).
My status bar disappears.
This has happened across a few different roms, but my main is Team OctOs Oct-N. This is making no sense to me at all. These things will happen after a ROM has already been setup and working for a time, that is what has me scratching my head. The only thing I can think of is some system has changed in the Pixel XL ROMs that I don't know about or something. I always start from a fresh phone, flashing google images, installing the rom the proper way, I always follow the devs install procedure for the most part (depending on the ROM) it is flash rom, flash vendor, flash twrp, reboot into twrp, flash gapps. Everything goes good it runs fine, and then some time after, sometimes a few days later, sometimes a few hours later, one or a combo of the issues listed above happen. I though maybe there was an issue with the actual rom. So i decided to try 1 or 2 other roms but some issue still arrives. Also when twrp wont boot (because it apparently disappeared) I reinstall it properly, and one would think I would be able to boot back into the existing system, but it don't, it always boots right back into twrp.
I am at a complete loss and the only thing I can think of is something has changed with the Pixel system that I am unaware of. Any info would be great I know that this is not a good description on what is actually happening but that's it I have no idea at all. Have a great day and thanks.
I have found that to get TWRP to stick I have to flash the zip and whatever else I'm flashing, then boot into my rom, then boot back into fastboot TWRP and flash the TWRP zip again, then boot back into the rom.
Root is tricky on this phone. Nobody can really answer what's going on there without knowing what month bootloader you are using, what app and what version of the app you are trying to use to root.
The other problems really sound Rom related. If you want to go from a truly fresh start with no chance of any corruption on either partition you might want to run flash-all.bat of the Google factory image separately to partition a and then to partition b. That cleared up problems for me in the past but I'm not sure why.
You might also consider running stock and seeing if the WiFi or status bar problems persist.
xxxtncxxx said:
Ok I am having some serious issues as of late, I am far from an Android expert but have been using and rooting them since Android started, and I am also a Linux user. So as stated in the subject I have been getting these issues (not always together).
Recovery will disappear after a normal reboot.
Root will disappear after a normal reboot.
WiFi is "broken" after a normal reboot (is disabled, and can't be enabled).
My status bar disappears.
This has happened across a few different roms, but my main is Team OctOs Oct-N. This is making no sense to me at all. These things will happen after a ROM has already been setup and working for a time, that is what has me scratching my head. The only thing I can think of is some system has changed in the Pixel XL ROMs that I don't know about or something. I always start from a fresh phone, flashing google images, installing the rom the proper way, I always follow the devs install procedure for the most part (depending on the ROM) it is flash rom, flash vendor, flash twrp, reboot into twrp, flash gapps. Everything goes good it runs fine, and then some time after, sometimes a few days later, sometimes a few hours later, one or a combo of the issues listed above happen. I though maybe there was an issue with the actual rom. So i decided to try 1 or 2 other roms but some issue still arrives. Also when twrp wont boot (because it apparently disappeared) I reinstall it properly, and one would think I would be able to boot back into the existing system, but it don't, it always boots right back into twrp.
I am at a complete loss and the only thing I can think of is something has changed with the Pixel system that I am unaware of. Any info would be great I know that this is not a good description on what is actually happening but that's it I have no idea at all. Have a great day and thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has been a real challenge with this phone (but I'm enjoying it). Anyway, the way I got a good stable set up is flashing the factory image to both slots (a/b), then adb/fastboot to twrp.img and flash ROM, then boot up. Then again the twrp.img and flash the twrp.zip and boot up. Then do the root and boot up , then go back and do the kernel (since it's EX and I want the gestures, I boot it up rooted before I flash EX). This works for me although I'm using Pure Nexus ROM. Hope this helps you, looks similar to what was posted by jhs39.

Tinkering with Redmi Note 5, flashing TWRP, trying to enable Camera2, bootloop...

Hello there,
I've recently received my Redmi Note 5 back from warranty service. As much as I like the phone, one thing I always found really disappointing about it is that for whatever reason, it is, as far as I know, the only phone from the Redmi Note series that has Camera2 disabled by default, preventing me from installing GCam. Fortunately, I have found multiple tutorials on how to activate it. Since I've wiped my data before sending it, now was the best time to do some tinkering.
I've used my friend's laptop to unlock its bootloader and install TWRP (it refused to work on my desktop for some reason). the official TWRP web page warned me that the phone uses dm-verity, which is something none of the tutorials mentioned. After some further digging, I found out that should I mess with it, the phone would simply revert any changes, and to prevent this, I needed to flash a dm-verity disabler, such as LazyFlasher
Thinking nothing would go wrong, I decided to try flashing TWRP and deal with the system replacing it with the stock recovery later. All went as planned, and the phone booted into the custom recovery with no issues. It asked me for a password to decrypt the internal storage, which I don't know, so I skipped this step. The first thing I did was creating a backup.
I then tried rebooting, just to see if it would really revert the changes. It did, but it didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. The system became laggy to the point where it was basically unusable, often freezing for more than 30 seconds after just opening an app. Not knowing what to do, I flashed TWRP back, this time with the dm-verity disabler. A tutorial on how to do this that I found recommended I wipe the cache after flashing the tool. I tried doing that, but the process failed immediately. I rebooted the phone, and the next thing you know, I'm in a bootloop. I've let it sit for a while, but even after some time, the system wouldn't start. Fortunately, I was still able to get back into TWRP.
I restored the backup I created earlier. This, for the most part, solved my issues, the system works fine-ish again (aside from an occasional lag, but it's not nearly as bad as it was) and isn't trying to replace TWRP with the stock recovery anymore, but I'm kinda afraid to tinker with it again. I'd really hate having to buy a new phone just because I bricked the one I have (and I didn't even get to flash the tool that was meant to enable Camera2).
What did I do wrong? Should I've formated the internal storage to gain access to it first? Did flashing TWRP without dm-verity disabled somehow mess up the system? Would flashing a custom ROM bypass having to disable it? I'm confused...

Wont boot into android after rom flash(just fastboot menu)

I'm trying to get my phone set up as a backup cause i dont have much faith in my replacement one anymore(very unstable Redmi 9s running jailbroken stock rom). I recently updated it and got a weird boot issue the next day... Everything worked as i was updating and i even hard the UI set up to how i like... but the next day it wouldnt boot past the Zuk powered by android screen. I figured i'd just reflash it again, only to get a vendor error. I then flashed a factory2vendor_z2_plus file, which allowed me to install all my stuff without errors... And it looked like it worked perfectly(lineage-17.1-20200924-nightly-z2_plus-signed, Magisk, and open_gapps-arm64-10.0-micro-20200926 all went in without any errors). I also took the opportunity to update TWRP to 3.4.0(before it was 3.1.1-0) I wiped the dalvik and cache and rebooted.
Upon reboot tho, i dont go into android.... But i dont get stuck on the Zuk powered by android screen either... Instead it sends me to this fastboot page(none of the options, btw, will boot into android).
I'm guessing there's some really minor thing i need to change to fix this, since its just not being pointed to the right file to load up. Can anyone help me out with some pointers? Its all the more frustrating, cause again, yesterday everything was working perfectly fine without having done anything beyond installing the newest nightly lineage build.

A/B partitions out of whack

So, I tried some custom roms out there it has caused some really odd issues on this device. The first one I tried was CalyxOs, then lineage, and Proton. All are good roms, but not what I am looking for. But somewhere along the way things got wonky to say the least. Now, I am not blamming any rom or dev for "breaking" my device. I flashed these roms knowing there is a risk, and the roms listed above work for others. I'm pretty confident, there is something I did along the way that screwed things up. Some of the issues I have ran in to:
Before I flash anything, I learned a long time ago, make a backup and transfer all data on sdcard to your pc.
I generally use TTBU. But recently, when I tried to manually drag/drop my sdcard backup to my device, not all files gets transferred over. Basically all the .apk.gz files. Which happens to be the core of the the backup for the apps.
I started using another backup program, oandbackup, which transfers fine. But my apps/data only gets properly restored about 20% of the time. I say 20% because out of 10 flash back to stock and restores, only 2 will successfully work.
When flashing the rom I have been working on, I use lingeage recovery. But what worked yesterday, fails tomorrow. My method has been, flash lineage recovery, flash rom, boot, test rom, flash back to stock, restore. However, it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes, it will flash fine, I reboot back to recovery and flash gapps, boot system and the loops begin. Flashing a different kernel fixes the bootloop. Oddly though, the stock kernel booted fine on the last flash (mind you, no changes in kernel or rom code). There is a slew of roadblocks and walls I have slammed in to, but this is just to give you an idea as to what I've been trying to work with.
Now, after flashing a custom rom and then flashing back to stock, I always wipe data. But the most recent issue I have encountered, I flashed back to stock. I was on "b" partition. After the initial flash, it boots to fastbootd. Oddly, I was stuck in stock recovery with the little android guy laying on his back. I hit power then vol up and got in to recovery where I selected fastboot and the fashing process continued. After my phone booted, I rebooted back to bootloader, switched to "a" partition, rebooted bootloader, and ran the stock flash script. This way, in my hopes, I would get a fresh and clean flash all the way around. Again, the whole recovery thing happened again, and I resolved it the same way. But when the rom rebooted, bootloops which eventually kicked me back to bootloader. I switched to slot "b" and the rom booted, went thru setup and restored my data, but most apps failed. Luckily, the 1 game I cared about restored this time.
So, yesterday, I wanted to check out stock recovery a little closer, and see if I could use adb. When I tried adb pull <random file on sdcard>, adb did not connect. So, I tried to reboot. Unfortunately, I got stuck at the google boot splash. To recover the device, I had to flash my boot.img.
This morning, I set out on a mission to try and get things fixed back up. I know slot "a" is not bootable, so I figured I would start there. I went to stock images and instead of downloading, I used the online flash tool. nSince I was on slot "b", it flashed to "b" even though I choose to wipe data and force flash all partitions. I tried booting slot "a" but it failed. So, I manually switched to slot "a" and ran the online flasher again. Now slot "a' and "b" both boot successfully. Then I started restoring my sdcard. It is 4.2gb of data. Honestly, not a lot IMO. But it took an extremely long time to restore it. After restoring my sdcard, I ran oandbackup, but I only restored data for 4 apps, which was successful. Everything seems to be running smoothly, and I was able to flash a custom kernel, root, etc with no issues. I guess, when I flash the final beta of my rom, I will see if I got things fixed up or not.
As I write this, I can't help but wonder, what is the root cause of all these issues? One thing I thought of was my cable. I was using one of the usb cables for my oneplus 6t. I switched to the stock cable to test things. I wiped all my data from the sdcard and then restored it with the stock cable. Things went A LOT quicker 928 minutes with op6t cable/2 minutes on stock cable). Since I have things to do today, I have to put this aside for now. But I wanted to get everyone's thoughts and input on this. Have I done something terribly wrong along the way that has caused these issues? Could the cable I was using be the root of all evil in this case? Is this just that wonky of a device, that it has happened to others and a great deal of patience is needed when trying to work on the pixel 4a 5g?

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