Develop Bugs

sw3 on Lollipop pairs with phone but does not connect with wear

I fixed (to a certain degree) a bootlooped watch by installing a stock Lollipop Rom. It does not work though, because watch cannot connect with Android wear and therefore not complete installation. (It does pair up with the phone and says wait a minute) Any suggestions?

baronimus said:
I fixed (to a certain degree) a bootlooped watch by installing a stock Lollipop Rom. It does not work though, because watch cannot connect with Android wear and therefore not complete installation. (It does pair up with the phone and says wait a minute) Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Our watches must be brothers as I have had the exact same scenario. I did however get it back going to LP, paired, etc to the smartphone. What I had to do was fastboot format cache, then userdata, then fastboot reboot. I then fastboot flash the .simg file, the recovery.img file and the boot.img file, then fastboot reboot. I then connected to XC which did not work all the way through, but gave me access to be able to use twrp.img (for some reason, twrp would not boot in LP). Then in twrp I adb pushed the LP rom that is signed and after pushed, installed it. Then, I had to leave it alone for the battery drain as it was locked up or something. After it drained, which was evident because it was not warm, I charged it and it is now working again...but only in LP. I cannot get MM installed.
IF you happen to get MM installed and working, please advise your steps.

golfnut22 said:
Our watches must be brothers as I have had the exact same scenario. I did however get it back going to LP, paired, etc to the smartphone. What I had to do was fastboot format cache, then userdata, then fastboot reboot. I then fastboot flash the .simg file, the recovery.img file and the boot.img file, then fastboot reboot. I then connected to XC which did not work all the way through, but gave me access to be able to use twrp.img (for some reason, twrp would not boot in LP). Then in twrp I adb pushed the LP rom that is signed and after pushed, installed it. Then, I had to leave it alone for the battery drain as it was locked up or something. After it drained, which was evident because it was not warm, I charged it and it is now working again...but only in LP. I cannot get MM installed.
IF you happen to get MM installed and working, please advise your steps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your reply. I will certainly let you know of any progress. The procedure I followed was somewhat more simple. I flashed the twrp with fastboot, booted twrp up, transferred the downloaded rom image from the pc to the watch and booted the rom from twrp. It then starts up but fails to play with wear.

baronimus said:
Thank you for your reply. I will certainly let you know of any progress. The procedure I followed was somewhat more simple. I flashed the twrp with fastboot, booted twrp up, transferred the downloaded rom image from the pc to the watch and booted the rom from twrp. It then starts up but fails to play with wear.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Regarding the pairing with phone, I had to go in the phone settings, application manager, open android wear, and clear the data and cache in order for it to recognize my watch. I had previously had it linked to another phone and had the phone connected to a different watch so I think it was getting confused.
Regarding getting past the 5.0.1 update, I have found this post http://forum.xda-developers.com/smartwatch-3/orig-development/tut-how-to-fix-swr50-fastboot-t3258918 and am currently getting OTA updates as I write. I don't know how far I will get, but so far I have had two updates. I did not flash the updates, only the original rom. Then I went into the watch settings, about, and pressed the software or system update (I've been doing it manually each time).
Edit: It allowed me to update all the way to MM, however I got the 4 dots /symbols again when it was rebooted. Up to that point, which the last update was the LCA43, the watch appeared to be working fine. I did not test it much as I was just trying to get all the updates I could. So, while it did not go all the way thru to MM, I still was very happy that I got up to that update.

golfnut22 said:
Regarding the pairing with phone, I had to go in the phone settings, application manager, open android wear, and clear the data and cache in order for it to recognize my watch. I had previously had it linked to another phone and had the phone connected to a different watch so I think it was getting confused.
Regarding getting past the 5.0.1 update, I have found this post http://forum.xda-developers.com/smartwatch-3/orig-development/tut-how-to-fix-swr50-fastboot-t3258918 and am currently getting OTA updates as I write. I don't know how far I will get, but so far I have had two updates. I did not flash the updates, only the original rom. Then I went into the watch settings, about, and pressed the software or system update (I've been doing it manually each time).
Edit: It allowed me to update all the way to MM, however I got the 4 dots /symbols again when it was rebooted. Up to that point, which the last update was the LCA43, the watch appeared to be working fine. I did not test it much as I was just trying to get all the updates I could. So, while it did not go all the way thru to MM, I still was very happy that I got up to that update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I now succeeded in pairing up with the phone. What I did was to flash another Rom which I found in the forum. It's called ROM_SW3_5.1.1.2_LCA43. Now the watch works just fine on Lollipop and updates automaticly. I am going to try and upgrade to MM but I fear its going to get stuck on the infamous four symbols when I do. I am happy though to have the watch up and running again, it was deemed paperweight for a while
Ok stuck again. Still at Lollipop version 5.1.1.2

baronimus said:
I now succeeded in pairing up with the phone. What I did was to flash another Rom which I found in the forum. It's called ROM_SW3_5.1.1.2_LCA43. Now the watch works just fine on Lollipop and updates automaticly. I am going to try and upgrade to MM but I fear its going to get stuck on the infamous four symbols when I do. I am happy though to have the watch up and running again, it was deemed paperweight for a while
Ok stuck again. Still at Lollipop version 5.1.1.2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does yours actually have 5.1.1.2 in the about section? Mine says 5.1.1 with the build as LCA43.

golfnut22 said:
Does yours actually have 5.1.1.2 in the about section? Mine says 5.1.1 with the build as LCA43.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed it does. The Rom comes from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/smartwatch-3/orig-development/rom-sony-smartwatch-3-rom-t3367728
Since the problem occurs only when updating to MM I am led to think that we have a kernel issue?

baronimus said:
Indeed it does. The Rom comes from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/smartwatch-3/orig-development/rom-sony-smartwatch-3-rom-t3367728
Since the problem occurs only when updating to MM I am led to think that we have a kernel issue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I may have stopped updating one to early. Anyway, my watch updated by itself last night all the way to MM, now it is stuck again. I'll have to search and see if there is a way to stop the automatic OTA updates.
I have seen where people have flashed only the kernel. I have not. At this point, it would be nice just to keep it at the last LP. I'll let you know if I find anything. Thanks.

Pixel XL rooted with TWRP updated to February build on its own!

So, something pretty strange just happened. Earlier today I downloaded the latest OTA to my phone to flash with TWRP sometime in the next few days. I was playing around with my phone tonight and setting up Google Assistant to work with my Nest thermostat. The Assistant wasn't consistently recognizing the ability to adjust my thermostat so I did a simple reboot thinking it may solidify things. Much to my surprise, when I rebooted the phone, I noticed the Nougat 'N' in the status bar and when I pulled down the notification drawer it said "finishing upgrade," or something to that effect. STRANGE. I figured, surely my phone didn't just update on its own, so I checked about device and surely I'm on the latest build. Went to reboot my phone and TWRP was replaced with the factory recover and I no longer have root.
In the end, I have no idea how this happened. Everything I have read says updates will fail with a modified system and in fact I've tried updating in the past only to have it fail. Any ideas How or why this happened?

You got a real SMARTPHONE!

mlin said:
Everything I have read says updates will fail with a modified system and in fact I've tried updating in the past only to have it fail. Any ideas How or why this happened?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I can't explain how this happened, I can point out that recovery is part of the boot image. And SuperSU is a "systemless" root method that also modifies the boot image. So your system image would appear as stock.

Sounds very interesting... I hope someone could answer this.

FlashFire? Also, do you have auto-update disabled in developer settings?

i got mine not long ago and had 7.1 on it and i did root and added twrp and in the background it downloaded 7.1.1 and when i did a reboot it installed it with no issue.

turn off auto update

sliding_billy said:
FlashFire? Also, do you have auto-update disabled in developer settings?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for all of the responses. No flashfire. Auto update was on. I thought it was weird that with root, custom recovery and substratum theming that my phone updated, especially given the fact that I have tried to update several times through the system updates menu and it has always failed... No clue why it suddenly worked, and furthermore why it happened out of the blue.

mlin said:
Thanks for all of the responses. No flashfire. Auto update was on. I thought it was weird that with root, custom recovery and substratum theming that my phone updated, especially given the fact that I have tried to update several times through the system updates menu and it has always failed... No clue why it suddenly worked, and furthermore why it happened out of the blue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Purely hypothesis, but this update seemed to touch very few core system files and maybe just by luck none of what normally would cause it to fail was checked for changes. Recovery seems to be it's own animal as running TWRP sideload just wipes all recovery. In your case it replaced it with stock since you ran basically a standard OTA.

fletch33 said:
i got mine not long ago and had 7.1 on it and i did root and added twrp and in the background it downloaded 7.1.1 and when i did a reboot it installed it with no issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I knew TWRP alone wouldn't interfere with the update, but I thought root and other mods would. This is why I wasn't surprised when trying to update previously failed but was super surprised when it suddenly worked.

Apparently my wife's Pixel did this today as well. She said she didn't ever see anything about an update.
Its a Verizon model but was rooted, bootloader unlocked, with twrp installed.
It was previously on the December update just like my Pixel XL, but now is on February.
It currently won't make calls or record video, which is why she even asked me about it. I started working on it and noticed it was no longer rooted or had TWRP. I just got those two back and now have to try to get calls working.

jsbeagle said:
Apparently my wife's Pixel did this today as well. She said she didn't ever see anything about an update.
Its a Verizon model but was rooted, bootloader unlocked, with twrp installed.
It was previously on the December update just like my Pixel XL, but now is on February.
It currently won't make calls or record video, which is why she even asked me about it. I started working on it and noticed it was no longer rooted or had TWRP. I just got those two back and now have to try to get calls working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting, I was on the December update as well. No problems with calls or video though. Very strange that in 2 months the January patch never successfully applied but the February patch did. Good luck with calls and video.

A full factory image flash got everything working. It kept working after installing TWRP, but after I root (SuperSU v2.79 SR3) it stops again.

jsbeagle said:
A full factory image flash got everything working. It kept working after installing TWRP, but after I root (SuperSU v2.79 SR3) it stops again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What stops again?
I am on 7.1.2 Beta and everything works good.
Whats not working for you?

After I root, the phone app gets sluggish, phone call audio doesn't work, the camera app "can't connect to camera" if you try switching to video, and youtube videos don't work in the app. They worked in the browser but had no audio.

jsbeagle said:
After I root, the phone app gets sluggish, phone call audio doesn't work, the camera app "can't connect to camera" if you try switching to video, and youtube videos don't work in the app. They worked in the browser but had no audio.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Granted, after I got the update everything seemed a bit smoother. Audio seemed louder and more crisp.
Have you tried a factory reset?

Scott said:
What stops again?
I am on 7.1.2 Beta and everything works good.
Whats not working for you?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I guess its not even related to rooting. I had reflashed factory 7.1.1, installed twrp, and everything was still working. After I installed a few apps and restarted, all that stuff's not working again.
It doesn't even work in safe mode.
Just did a factory reset and it didn't help.

jsbeagle said:
Well, I guess its not even related to rooting. I had reflashed factory 7.1.1, installed twrp, and everything was still working. After I installed a few apps and restarted, all that stuff's not working again.
It doesn't even work in safe mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats really odd. Maybe its an app thats not updated for 7.1.1.
I would reflash, let it wipe, then run it as a new phone for 24hrs. If it runs fine then I would install only essential apps, one by one and test after each one. Your sure to find the rotten apple that way. :good:
Good luck!

[Q] Root Issues - Are these known? Are there fixes?

I purchased my Pixel 2 XL from the Google store. I had just upgraded to the 8.1 OTA a few days before when i came across this video and used it to root my phone:
https://youtu.be/nFD9sa-WdUM
Here's the basic steps i took:
Unlock dev options and turn on OEM Unlocking
Boot to stock recovery
Go to his highonandroid site and download TWRP 3.1.1 beta2 (img and zip), an outdated fastboot.zip, magisk 14.5, and the USB drivers which i didnt download because my computer is already recognizing my device just fine.
Extract the fastboot files to a new folder and copy the twrp img file to the fastboot folder.
In CMD, unlock the bootloader with fastboot and reboot phone.
Connect phone as storage device, copy over twrp zip file and magisk 14.5 zip files to root folder on the phone, reboot into recovery
Use fastboot to boot the twrp image that we copied to fastboot folder to get into twrp
Unhook the USB cable, set TWRP to read only, install TWRP, hit home button, then install Magisk and reboot
Once booted up, get into Magisk, download proprietary software, run checks and done.
Once this was done, my fingerprint scanner and wifi no longer worked. I could turn wifi on but it would never find anything. I also received the error when rebooting the phone that says "There's an internal problem with your device. Contact your manufacturer for details." When this message is on the screen, if i dont touch the phone and the screen times out, it flickers really bad and never actually shuts off until i unlock it and hit the OK button.
So i decided to give it another go and ran into some big issues. I figured that i used 8.0 instructions on 8.1 and there was enough things different that it caused problems, so i used this link to reroot:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/pixel-2-xl/how-to/guide-unlock-flash-root-pixel-2-xl-t3702418
I went through the first 10-15 pages and the last 10-15 pages and did some searches on the thread and never found any of my issues, but found that a lot of people used different sets of steps and pretty much everything was successful as long as you didnt miss anything and used the most updated stuff. So i did, i went to googles website and downloaded the newest SDK with fastboot, adb, and all that good stuff, as well as the newest 8.1 image (there was a newer version but it had a carrier label on it so i didnt get that one), and the newest magisk and twrp.
I flashed 8.1 and the phone wouldnt boot, nor would it get into TWRP anymore, so i had to use fastboot to boot the twrp image and reinstall the recovery and magisk but it still wouldnt boot. I ran through several different steps and eventually got it to boot up with recovery working. Its the newest 8.1 image, the newest magisk, and the newest twrp, and since then magisk has updated a couple times.
Now on to my issues!
I still get the "Internal problem" popup when booting
I get a lot more random reboots
Sometimes random things just wont work, like streaming plex to my tv or loading an app or something on an app and i have to reboot and it works fine
I've seen numerous times that the "Internal problem" thing is just a mismatch between the system and vendor build.prop files. I dont know what exactly is mismatching between the two but i've tried reflashing them and all sorts of things and nothing ever fixes it.
Does anyone know if there's a fix to any of these three issues, or if maybe looking at my steps i clearly did something wrong? I'm willing to do the whole thing over again if there's a good suggestion, but once i flashed the 8.1 image and went that route, i rerooted successfully 4 times total before i quit doing it again just because of that internal problem popup, i kept figuring something went wrong or i did something wrong. I had no security or anything set before rooting or flashing or anything, and each time i reflashed the operating system, but when i flashed the OS, i had to extract the system file because i would constantly get an error that it was too big and it failed to truncate it, so i've always had to manually install it by first copying it to my phone and installing it through TWRP. Its been an adventure, but these problems suck!

PMad said:
...Its been an adventure, but these problems suck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's called training. For the error, you just need to fastboot flash the stock dtbo.img. This was fixed on the 15.1 version of Magisk so you shouldn't have that problem anymore. I can tell you that rooted, kernel and a few root apps and I have never had ANY random reboots, so one of your apps is causing it or you didn't start from a completely blank slate. Run your phone in Safe Mode for a while to see if you stop the reboots 100%. If so, one of your apps is the cause. If you still get reboots in Safe Mode, you're gonna need to re-install. I suggest using the instructions on the Google web page where you got the full image. (and try to distill your posts down a little, ffs)

v12xke said:
It's called training.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Every new phone is a new adventure, they are all the same but unique at the same time!
v12xke said:
For the error, you just need to fastboot flash the stock dtbo.img.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll give this a shot! Thank you!
v12xke said:
This was fixed on the 15.1 version of Magisk so you shouldn't have that problem anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
15.1 is the version i'm on now but nothing has changed. Which issue was this supposed to fix?
v12xke said:
I can tell you that rooted, kernel and a few root apps and I have never had ANY random reboots, so one of your apps is causing it or you didn't start from a completely blank slate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My concern here is that my settings and apps are literally exactly the same as before root, except for magisk, its my only new app, which would lead me to believe that something Magisk is changing is causing the problem, or something else is happening that i'm not realizing yet.
v12xke said:
Run your phone in Safe Mode for a while to see if you stop the reboots 100%. If so, one of your apps is the cause. If you still get reboots in Safe Mode, you're gonna need to re-install. I suggest using the instructions on the Google web page where you got the full image.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reboots are typically 1 reboot every 1 to 3 days, so its not a terrible issue but its happening and it shouldnt. For flashing the OS, after the first failure when trying to install it, those are the only instructions i've used, but i get that error when trying to install the OS that says something about how it failed to truncate the system.img file and so it wasnt installed, so my work around was to copy the file to the phones root folder, install the 8.1 image then immediately go and manually install the system.img file in twrp since its the only thing that fails, but i still have issues. What is this truncate issue?
v12xke said:
(and try to distill your posts down a little, ffs)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree! hahaha i just wanted to be clear and include all the details, otherwise everyone would have asked me question after question that i could have just included. It ends up being long, a lot happened!
I'll give that dtbo.img a shot and see what that clears up, then if there's issues with rebooting still i'll try safe mode for a few days and see what that does.
Thank you v12xke! (how do you pronounce that? haha)

PMad said:
...I'll give that dtbo.img a shot and see what that clears up, then if there's issues with rebooting still i'll try safe mode for a few days and see what that does.
Thank you v12xke! (how do you pronounce that? haha)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your dtbo.img got patched by Magisk somewhere along the line and that is why the OS is throwing the error. Extract that img file from the full Google image and fastboot flash it, and the error will go away. There is a long thread around HERE on random reboots you should read. The v12xke is a car (Jaguar E-Type) I once owned.

v12xke said:
Your dtbo.img got patched by Magisk somewhere along the line and that is why the OS is throwing the error. Extract that img file from the full Google image and fastboot flash it, and the error will go away. There is a long thread around HERE on random reboots you should read. The v12xke is a car (Jaguar E-Type) I once owned.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So i just tried to do this and ran into one of the issues i had when originally trying to root it... I get into TWRP and it will not take any button presses, like the touch screen has become a screen (minus the touch). Is there a fix for this or do i just need to install TWRP before i use it each time it does this?

PMad said:
So i just tried to do this and ran into one of the issues i had when originally trying to root it... I get into TWRP and it will not take any button presses, like the touch screen has become a screen (minus the touch). Is there a fix for this or do i just need to install TWRP before i use it each time it does this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. You don't use TWRP to flash dtbo.img, you fastboot it while the phone is in bootloader mode.
2. TWRP works just fine if you install it and leave it installed. Make sure you are using 3.2.1-0 (img and zip).

v12xke said:
1. You don't use TWRP to flash dtbo.img, you fastboot it while the phone is in bootloader mode.
2. TWRP works just fine if you install it and leave it installed. Make sure you are using 3.2.1-0 (img and zip).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was getting into TWRP to create a backup of everything and it popped up asking for my password, and i remembered reading that we have to get rid of all of our security before making a backup, so i tried to hit buttons to cancel it and nothing worked, i had to hold the power button. So i eliminated all of my security and went back thinking it was a 1 time issue but it happened again, it took me straight to the main menu but nothing would work. I'm using 3.2.1-0 like you mentioned and i cant press any buttons. I'd like to back everything up before flashing this or anything else.

PMad said:
I was getting into TWRP to create a backup of everything and it popped up asking for my password, and i remembered reading that we have to get rid of all of our security before making a backup, so i tried to hit buttons to cancel it and nothing worked, i had to hold the power button. So i eliminated all of my security and went back thinking it was a 1 time issue but it happened again, it took me straight to the main menu but nothing would work. I'm using 3.2.1-0 like you mentioned and i cant press any buttons. I'd like to back everything up before flashing this or anything else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't need a backup before re-flashing the STOCK dtbo (or boot) partitions, haha. READ UP.

Pixel XL 1 not getting OTA Updates

Hi,
am using a Pixel XL 1 on Android 8.1, bootloader unlocked, patch level of February. Now I have the problem that since about December no OTA updates are shown/offered at all. Therefor I always had to manually update.
Even the manual triggering of searching for updates, which has recently been changed so that the devices explicitly should get the currently available update, does not work.
The device was rooted, but I have unrooted it (Magisk) now, and is running the standard firmware from Feburar on it.
Does anyone have any clue why my device is not offered any OTA updates?

Anyone?

What kind of recovery do you have installed? Stock or TWRP?

Kream24 said:
What kind of recovery do you have installed? Stock or TWRP?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stock. So everything should be as vanilla as possible! I'm really clueless.

i don't get it either. pixels running a non-stock os should get notifications about a new update. they won't install successfully though. i'm guessing, but maybe going through the unroot process to get rid of magisk did not return your os to completely stock. maybe some junk was left behind and that's causing your issue.
my suggestion is to flash a full factory image to start fresh. i would edit the flash-all.bat script to remove the -w option to keep data. if that doesn't work, put the -w option back and rerun to wipe data and flash the factory image. if you really want to see if that fixes your problem, flash an older image like the february or january one, and see if the update notification comes back. or flash the march image to be up to date and wait until april to see if you get the update notification.

altwu said:
i don't get it either. pixels running a non-stock os should get notifications about a new update. they won't install successfully though. i'm guessing, but maybe going through the unroot process to get rid of magisk did not return your os to completely stock. maybe some junk was left behind and that's causing your issue.
my suggestion is to flash a full factory image to start fresh. i would edit the flash-all.bat script to remove the -w option to keep data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I've did already No difference.
if that doesn't work, put the -w option back and rerun to wipe data and flash the factory image.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's just the hassle installing everything from scratch again.
I wish recovery/backup was as easy as on iOS. Without necessity of any tricks, root etc.

Is this phone enrolled in the Android Beta Program ? I've had trouble getting OTA updates on my phone after the beta program ended for it until I un-enrolled from the program, then I got updates like normal. There will be warnings about having to wipe the device, but if your on the the stock/stable version already you won't have to.

shaneledford said:
Is this phone enrolled in the Android Beta Program ? I've had trouble getting OTA updates on my phone after the beta program ended for it until I un-enrolled from the program, then I got updates like normal. There will be warnings about having to wipe the device, but if your on the the stock/stable version already you won't have to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried that one as well. I was on a beta at some point, but unsubscribed from the beta. Also tried to unsubscribe again, but it the well know link took me to a page where it said that there is no beta, hence I couldn't try to unsubscribe again.

When you flashed the full factory image did you use the newest march update? if you did then you wouldnt get anything because you are already current

Gotta say, exactly the same problem.. stuck on 8.0 November lol. Haven't found a solution, too lazy to manually flash for now. Let me know if you find a solution!

have you tried deleting the data and cache on the google services app?

How Do I Flash Factory Image?

It's been some time since I've done this so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I've had my Pixel 2 XL for like a month now...but since day one I've gotten occasional force closes of various apps. Well next week I'm going with a new carrier (Koodo here in Canada) and I thought it would be a great time to flash a factory image to make sure everything is correct. Also when does Google release monthly updates? Is it the first week of April, maybe I'll just wait and flash that factory image when it comes out. Thanks for the help.

acheney1990 said:
It's been some time since I've done this so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I've had my Pixel 2 XL for like a month now...but since day one I've gotten occasional force closes of various apps. Well next week I'm going with a new carrier (Koodo here in Canada) and I thought it would be a great time to flash a factory image to make sure everything is correct. Also when does Google release monthly updates? Is it the first week of April, maybe I'll just wait and flash that factory image when it comes out. Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If your wanting to flash a factory image, you'll need a few things first.
I would highly recommend that you look over the linked thread carefully. It has many links and tips to help you on your way :good:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/pixel-2-xl/how-to/guide-unlock-flash-root-pixel-2-xl-t3702418

acheney1990 said:
It's been some time since I've done this so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I've had my Pixel 2 XL for like a month now...but since day one I've gotten occasional force closes of various apps. Well next week I'm going with a new carrier (Koodo here in Canada) and I thought it would be a great time to flash a factory image to make sure everything is correct. Also when does Google release monthly updates? Is it the first week of April, maybe I'll just wait and flash that factory image when it comes out. Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
https://developers.google.com/android/images

Make sure you have the latest adb and fastboot. Get them from Google...
Go get the latest image and Unzip it. Do not Unzip the folder inside. Move everything you just unzipped into the folder with adb and fastboot.
Now, if you've unlocked and unlocked critical, great. If you haven't unlocked critical, you'll have to. The system image won't install if the bootloader is out of date. Sadly, this will wipe your data.
If both are already unlocked, then open the flash-all file with a text editor and remove the,"-w" and the space preceding, then save the file. Removing the -w will keep your data. Run the flash-all.bat file and in about 10 minutes everything will be flashed.

back to stock
how to back on stock ....i sell the phone and want all stock...no root no boot loader unlocked ...what is the fastest way pls

lomski said:
how to back on stock ....i sell the phone and want all stock...no root no boot loader unlocked ...what is the fastest way pls
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First thing!! Forget fast!! You need to fastboot flash a full factory image with the -w still in the script. Maybe even do it twice. Then go in and do a factory reset from the OS for good measure. Once that is done and you know it reboots you can go through the locking command. I would NOT toggle the OEM switch in dev though.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using XDA Labs

So this has been a a very frustrating experiance but I think I've got everything working again. I don't know how many times I've flashed different factory images and then tried to install TWRP and then install a new custom rom. So I want to explain all of the steps I took (if I remember them all).
0. I couldn't boot into my system but had TWRP installed. At this point I should have tried to get all my data from the sd card via "adb pull /sdcard" .
1. I didn't find any option to fix my system. So I followed this guide to install a factory image (link).
3. I skipped through all of the setup processes and gave my phone wifi. Then I went into the system and did a factory reset.
4. After skipping thourgh the setup again I enabled adb and bootet into the bootloader "adb reboot bootlader"
5. From the bootloader I booted into TWRP by "fastboot boot twrp-3.3.0.0-taimen.img. In the recovery I set the display time out to 300s because for some reason once the phone timed out I could get into twrp any more and the screen stayed black.
6. I transferred the twrp installer and my rom by " adb push TWRP_installer.zip /sdcard/Download" and " adb push ROM.zip /sdcard/Download"
7. I first added the TWRP installer to the flash queue and then I added the rom and then falshed them both. This allowed me to install the rom.
8. For some reason TWRP was not installed. So repeat step 5 and only flash the TWRP_installter.zip
Problems I had:
- In twrp I often got errors that said unable to mount system or vendor. I decided to ignore the error but this thread might help
- Installing TWRP while the stock rom is installed led to the problem that touch didn't work in TWRP
- Entering a pin for the stock rom and then installing TWRP led to TWRP asking for a pin to decrypt my data. Apparently this is not the case if you use a stock image which is older

After flashing stock ROM ota and twrp installer zip the only way to get TWRP to respond to touch is if you disable screen lock and connect to your PC before booting TWRP.
I've found the most reliable way to flash factory images is do it manually with fastboot, latest platform tools installed and a Linux OS like Ubuntu or pop os.
But first do some research and get comfortable with fastboot commands. And dear god don't relock your bootloader unless you're ?% sure it's totally stock.

@schpongo,
Also, a good point to keep when flashing via TWRP is to flash/install ONE AT A TIME. As per the great @Az Biker, you should even reboot to the bootloader after each subsequent flash/install. So, in your case, it seems that you might/should be rebooting to the bootloader three times; one for TWRP installation, one for flashing the custom ROM, and one more for any other subsequent installation (i.e. custom kernel or custom font)...
Also, as it's been said before, but stock kernel doesn't play nice with touch commands on TWRP, and (usually) the only way around it is to reboot into bootloader using the adb command -- as opposed to holding the volume-down button or from an app.
I know you figured this all out already, but it might bear repeating just in case you didn't know and/or to help any other users here...