Develop Bugs

[Q] Root, OTG, and USB Storage Questions

I know my way around fastboot, adb, command line pretty well, but I just got my N7(2013) last night, so in that sense, I'm a Noob.
Questions:
Can I just root with SuperSU without TWRP? Or will the stock recovery not let me do that? i.e. is there a signed SuperSU? I would rather keep my stock recovery, if possible.
After I root, do USB storage devices connected via an OTG cable "Just Work"? Do I have to manually mount them? Does it enable a Menu?
Is there any way to enable USB Storage (The other way, when N7 is connected to PC) once I root? Is anybody working on this?

Linuxslate said:
Can I just root with SuperSU without TWRP? Or will the stock recovery not let me do that? i.e. is there a signed SuperSU? I would rather keep my stock recovery, if possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Suggest you do
fastboot boot twrp.img
instead of flashing twrp onto the tablet's recovery partition
This will run twrp temporarily to install SuperSU's update.zip but will leave stock recovery on your tablet untouched.
Linuxslate said:
After I root, do USB storage devices connected via an OTG cable "Just Work"? Do I have to manually mount them? Does it enable a Menu?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Recognition is automatic. Mounting is not. So yes, you need to mount them. Whether you do that manually or through a helper app like stickmount is up to you
Linuxslate said:
Is there any way to enable USB Storage (The other way, when N7 is connected to PC) once I root? Is anybody working on this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doubtful. N7 doesn't have a real sdcard partition formated fat32. It has a simulated sdcard kept in the /data/media folder. MTP/PTP are the only ways Google wants to support storage going forward.

Thanks, sfhub;
Great trick about running twrp once.
That way I can have root, and my stock recovery.
Thanks for the other info, too.

No MTP or Storage show on PC
I am running windows 7 64 bit and I have managed to get root on my new Nexus 7, but now when I plug my tablet into the PC it says on the tablet connected as media device, but it never shows up anywhere on my pc so that I can transfer files on to it. The nexus 7 never shows up as an extra drive or as an media device. Please help. can not seem to find any info on this problem. the usb icon at the bottom of the screen does say eject nexus 7 when I click on it, and if I have usb debugging turned on it says ADB device connected but I still can not see it anywhere on the pc. Please help

Are you running stock or custom ROM?
If you running stock, you can try disabling USB debugging or try this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2391236
If you are on custom ROM, it appears there may be an MTP issue with some ROMs.

Yes I am using the stock rom .all I did was root it and I have tried with no success with usb debugging turn Off as well. I have even tried to uninstall the drivers I used to root the tablet , but can not find them to uninstall or delete them

In devmgmt.msc the device is either listed under
Android Phone
Imaging device
Portable device
Unknown
Do you see any ? or unknown devices?

In Devices and Printers in the control panel its listed under Unspecified as Nexus 7 but you can not do anything with it there but right click on it and hit eject or properties and it says Google Nexus ADB interface ___ Android Device ___ status working properly and that's it .In Device manager it listed as Android Device ___ Google Nexus ADB Interface.
I Got it Thank you Thank you. I was able to uninstall the drivers there in the Device manager, unpluged the Nexus 7 plugged it back in it install the correct drivers and I am now able to mount my device as a MTP device and transfer files. Thanks again for the Help.

I put Android File Transfer on my Macs:
http://www.android.com/filetransfer/
and gmtp on My Ubuntu Ultrabook, and on my old Xubuntu desktop.
I put the SD card in the Ultrabook, and copied everything I wanted to the N7(2013).
In all cases, it worked pretty much plug and play, but I still consider it a work-around.

[Q] No USB connectivity (trying to update to Lollipop)

So I saw that Samsung had pushed out the Lollipop updates a while back. I thought I'd do an upgrade. I've rooted, which I assume is the reason(or Knox - or both) that I can't do the OTA. So I figure I'll plug in and find out how to push the update...at which point I learn that although I am able to charge fine, my tablet is not connecting to any PCs. I've tried 3 different computers, 2 running Windows 8.1, and one running WIndows 7. No luck. The Windows 7 machine initially said it loaded an unknown USB device, but after I installed the Samsung drivers, it does the same thing as all the others, acts like it doesn't see anything. No device in device manager.
So, I'm not sure how to proceed. I feel like I should get USB functioning before trying to update? I can still boot recovery and try stuff from the SD card as well. Regardless, I'm not sure what I should do first, I'm concerned that USB connectivity appears to be broken.
Thanks!

Does mtp work? Can you see your internal storage and sd card?

You may have disabled mtp in your recovery on accident or on purpose and forgot you did. I would check that first.

acdbrn2000 said:
You may have disabled mtp in your recovery on accident or on purpose and forgot you did. I would check that first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't disable mtp in stock recovery and even if you could it wouldn't affect download mode.

Thanks for the ideas. I got it going. Apparently I have 3 MicroUSB cables that are unsuitable for data use. Super annoying!

I Guess I Discovered a New Form of Hard Bricking on my Device???

I was running the Developer Preview Beta 2 and noticed that my device would no longer communicate correctly with my OTG usb jump drive, I tried all the normal trouble shooting techniques and nothing worked. I than tried connecting my phone to my computer and my computer would no longer connect to my device either. I didn’t think this was a big deal so I was going to just flash back to the May factory image from my computer.
This did not work, so I did a factory reset in TWRP hoping that this would clear out the issue that was stopping the phone from usb communication. It did not fix the issue. So normally in TWRP I can always plug a flash drive into the phone through the otg and explore the files, however for some reason this was still not possible, something has happened to the device where it no longer allows incoming or outgoing usb communication. The device still charges however it is no longer recognized at all by my computer nor does the device recognize usb drives. I have all the latest USB drivers and updates needed. I uninstalled and reinstalled my drivers on my computer as well. The main issue I feel like I am having here, is that the device no longer wants to communicate with usb asides from charging, this is why it is not seeing the otg storage when I plug it in while I am in TWRP.
I am at a loss, I can boot into twrp and explore the device, this is useless as i deleted all the files on the device, TWRP will not allow a usb to be found so i cannot flash anything to the device. My computer does not see the phone so i cannot fastboot anything to the device. I have tried everything, DUECS script, skipsoft, none of them have identified a device. This is further verified by running cmd and typing in adb devices, to which the response is a blank line.
How can a device be bricked, but somehow have TWRP recovery working, along with the ability to boot the device into fastboot/the bootloader (and yes the bootloader is unlocked still)? If anyone has any ideas of how I can get this thing to be recognized by my computer please let me know.

jasonstackhouse said:
I was running the Developer Preview Beta 2 and noticed that my device would no longer communicate correctly with my OTG usb jump drive, I tried all the normal trouble shooting techniques and nothing worked. I than tried connecting my phone to my computer and my computer would no longer connect to my device either. I didn’t think this was a big deal so I was going to just flash back to the May factory image from my computer.
This did not work, so I did a factory reset in TWRP hoping that this would clear out the issue that was stopping the phone from usb communication. It did not fix the issue. So normally in TWRP I can always plug a flash drive into the phone through the otg and explore the files, however for some reason this was still not possible, something has happened to the device where it no longer allows incoming or outgoing usb communication. The device still charges however it is no longer recognized at all by my computer nor does the device recognize usb drives. I have all the latest USB drivers and updates needed. I uninstalled and reinstalled my drivers on my computer as well. The main issue I feel like I am having here, is that the device no longer wants to communicate with usb asides from charging, this is why it is not seeing the otg storage when I plug it in while I am in TWRP.
I am at a loss, I can boot into twrp and explore the device, this is useless as i deleted all the files on the device, TWRP will not allow a usb to be found so i cannot flash anything to the device. My computer does not see the phone so i cannot fastboot anything to the device. I have tried everything, DUECS script, skipsoft, none of them have identified a device. This is further verified by running cmd and typing in adb devices, to which the response is a blank line.
How can a device be bricked, but somehow have TWRP recovery working, along with the ability to boot the device into fastboot/the bootloader (and yes the bootloader is unlocked still)? If anyone has any ideas of how I can get this thing to be recognized by my computer please let me know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would try a different cable as this device is very finicky; that solved my issue of the computer not recognizing the phone.

Is it possible that your device's USB port data transfer function is damaged, but the charging portion is functional, making it a weird hardware failure?
You know, like the old days when the charge port would break or wiggle loose, and sometimes it would charge and sometimes it wouldn't, depending on the angle of the cable in the mini usb port?

Az Biker said:
Is it possible that your device's USB port data transfer function is damaged, but the charging portion is functional, making it a weird hardware failure?
You know, like the old days when the charge port would break or wiggle loose, and sometimes it would charge and sometimes it wouldn't, depending on the angle of the cable in the mini usb port?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would be nice if that were the problem, but unfortunalty I do not think it is. For example, when the issues first began, before I did the factory reset on the device, windows would pop up a message that said unknown device, and failure to connect. After the factory reset in TWRP the computer gave up all together in recognizing the phone. Another sign it was likely not a hardware failure was when the device was on and i was attempting to connect the otg usb to the phone it would give me some weird options. With android P the options were, allow this device to control the usb, or allow the USB to control the USB. that made no sense to me since why would i want the the USB to have any control, it couldnt do anything its not a computer its only a storage device. However, even though I had file transfer selected in developer options, it would not allow this connection. The options were all greyed out and it would not allow the pixel to have control over the usb device.
As for USB cords I have used without fail the google issued USB cord that came with the Pixel 1 xl, It has never faile me or had any issues. It is still fully functional as I was able to use it to connect my girls note 8 to my computer for file transfers and all other things my phone is not doing anymore.
I reached out to google and explained the situation to them, after i told them I was on Dev preview beta and they verified this to be true they told me this is likely a hardware failure and offered to replace the device. I am now waiting on the new device to be sent to me, however still cant accept that i cant recover the current device with an unlocked bootloader, TWRP installed, and access to fastboot/bootloader screen. I have seriously bricked phones before as in they would not even turn on and I was able to get them back up and running, this would be my first ever device I could not recover and what makes it worse is that it actually has TWRP installed and powers on and off just fine.

Sorry for the obvious question: Do you have the latest drivers? I don't have the drivers set to the whole system (Windows), so if I don't CD into my fastboot folder, I can't do anything because the system wide drivers aren't current. Don't know if that could be your issue?
I'm too lazy to fix the PATH of my drivers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I had an issue similar to this. I was trying to hook up a USB c to Ethernet adapter. It worked fine on April's patch but after I flashed Mays the phone wouldn't recognize it. After I plugged it in my phone rebooted and I no longer had access to developer options and it wouldn't read any usb device. Luckily I had a TWRP backup on my device. Once I flashed the backup which was only about a week old everything worked again. I haven't tried using the adapter again. I think something in the data partition got corrupted. I tried just restoring the boot and system partition and that didn't fix it. Try doing an advance wipe and formatting the data partition. That might get you back up and going.

have we even seen a bricked device yet?

twiz0r said:
have we even seen a bricked device yet?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't think it was possible, I still dont understand how this is happening. For the other responses above, I have all the drivers up to date, and I already formatted data, wiped everything. At this point I would like to see if there is anyway to delete TWRP recovery from the device, anything, I have no OS on the device, but for some reason still have TWRP on both A and B.
I almost dont want to give the phone back to Google because I want to figure out what happened and how to fix it, its definitely not broken/bricked like you see when someone flashes the wrong files to a device, it just has no USB connection capabilities which in-turn have rendered the device useless.
When I had Samsung phones if you bricked a device to the point it doesn't even turn on correctly you could always save it still using ODIN. Its weird that the google flagship device and software doesn't have its own proprietary flash software like Samsung, LG and HTC, we just have adb/fastboot, I feel like if we did, i may be able to get this thing started again.

have you tried using something like quickboot from the playstore to be able to get to fastboot?
I had a similar thing happen a few weeks ago on oreo. PC wouldn't 'see' the phone, but it would charge very slowly.
I installed quickboot, booted to fastboot and was able to flash the factory image

Pyr0x64 said:
have you tried using something like quickboot from the playstore to be able to get to fastboot?
I had a similar thing happen a few weeks ago on oreo. PC wouldn't 'see' the phone, but it would charge very slowly.
I installed quickboot, booted to fastboot and was able to flash the factory image
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't access the play store on the device in it's state. I do have access to fastboot. I can boot the phone to fastboot, and into TWRP, only problem is the phone doesn't communicate with the computer in either state. If the pixel had a SD card slot I would just load up a recovery but unfortunately we don't have that luxury

What cable are you using to connect to the PC? Is it USB c to USB c?
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using XDA Labs

Triscuit said:
What cable are you using to connect to the PC? Is it USB c to USB c?
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using XDA Labs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The cable is not the issue, I confirmed this by testing all my cables with the new device that I just received for my warranty exchange. I also tried my luck with Linux, after a complicated installation on my computer I was able to have Linux actually detect the device (partially) when the device was plugged in at splash screen I got nothing, at fastboot/bootloader screen nothing, but once the phone booted into TWRP it came up as AOSP device, when I attempted clicking on the AOSP device being detected by Linux an error message popped up telling me mtp or midi error, not sure for sure what one it said. Either way I couldn't connect for any transfer of information, I tried adb sideload and that failed as well.
This has been an experience for the memory books, glad that old device is gone and I'm back up and running on a working phone. No more beta testing for me, I'll be ready for Android P when they get it out of beta, I don't have the time or patience to deal with any more warranty exchanges.

Sideload offline after wiping OS

Hello all,
I have searched the forum for a bit but I could not find a topic silimar to my problem.
So a couple of days ago I flashed LineageOS 17.1 to my 2013 Nexus 7. After that, I tried installing GApps, but I did not have enough space. I decided to wipe the ROM in order to install a smaller ROM through sideload (as I did with Lineage) whereafter I would install GApps.
So I went into my recovery, wiped my OS and went to boot up Sideload. When I connected it to my pc, and typed "adb devices" it showed as offline. Whereas before it worked perfectly.
I tried the basic things like rebooting my pc/tablet, different USB cable, killing the server and starting it again.
Could someone help me figure it out? I don't have a micro usb OTG adapter, and I'm not planning on getting one except if that's my absolute last resort.
Thanks in advance!

jelles01 said:
Hello all,
I have searched the forum for a bit but I could not find a topic silimar to my problem.
So a couple of days ago I flashed LineageOS 17.1 to my 2013 Nexus 7. After that, I tried installing GApps, but I did not have enough space. I decided to wipe the ROM in order to install a smaller ROM through sideload (as I did with Lineage) whereafter I would install GApps.
So I went into my recovery, wiped my OS and went to boot up Sideload. When I connected it to my pc, and typed "adb devices" it showed as offline. Whereas before it worked perfectly.
I tried the basic things like rebooting my pc/tablet, different USB cable, killing the server and starting it again.
Could someone help me figure it out? I don't have a micro usb OTG adapter, and I'm not planning on getting one except if that's my absolute last resort.
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, no need for Sideload nor OTG. After booting TWRP, just transfer files via MTP. Note that LOS17 requires repartition and no bigger than pico/micro Gapps.
You can automate the entire installation process (including repartition) with CROSS. However LOS17 server is experiencing some issues, but you could drop your existing LOS17 zip file into CROSS' data folder and "Use local ROM file" option.
:fingers-crossed:

k23m said:
Hi, no need for Sideload nor OTG. After booting TWRP, just transfer files via MTP. Note that LOS17 requires repartition and no bigger than pico/micro Gapps.
You can automate the entire installation process (including repartition) with CROSS. However LOS17 server is experiencing some issues, but you could drop your existing LOS17 zip file into CROSS' data folder and "Use local ROM file" option.
:fingers-crossed:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the other thing, I can't transfer files through MTP. My pc doesnt recognize my tablet. I will try the auto installer tho, thanks.

My tablet is stuck as an unrecognised USB device by Windows 10.

Hi there. Sorry if I sound dumb. I'm new to this whole thing and this was supposed to be my first experience with flashing custom ROMs and stuff like that. I was planning to get ready to install LineageOS on my Nexus 7 using a Windows 10 PC. Unfortunately, things quickly went south.
My first roadblock was the tablet not being recognised by fastboot. I checked online for a bit and from what I could gather, the solution was to install the Google USB drivers using device manager. I went into device manager, right clicked my Nexus 7 in "portable devices", selected "update driver" and chose the Google USB driver I downloaded from the official Android developers website. I'm not sure if this is relevant but the tablet was in fastboot mode when I did this. From that point on, my tablet is no longer recognised and it just keeps saying "device descriptor request failed" whether it's in fastboot or normal mode, and regardless of which USB mode I choose.
I tried uninstalling the driver, factory resetting, WugFresh NRT, and using different cables and USB ports. I checked for all sorts of solutions but they either didn't help or they require an unlocked bootloader (which was the very first thing I tried to do before finding out I needed to install the driver for fastboot to recognise the Nexus 7). Does anyone here know of a solution to get this working again? I'm completely stumped on what to do.
EDIT: I tested with a Chromebook and an old Windows 7 PC I had lying around. Neither could detect my Nexus 7 and the W7 PC even said it failed to install the driver as soon as I plugged it in. It seems that the driver update screwed up my tablet somehow and I have no idea how to fix it. I really don't understand how this could have happened considering I followed Google's own instructions for updating the driver.
Does anyone perhaps have a copy of the OEM driver for the 2013 N7 Wi-Fi (flo) model? ASUS don't distribute the driver on their website anymore and I'm out of ideas.

BenSkylake said:
my tablet is no longer recognised and it just keeps saying "device descriptor request failed" whether it's in fastboot or normal mode
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Review this thread and the solutions.
After you have fixed it, you can easily install a new custom ROM with two steps:
RESTOCK - installs USB drivers and unlocks it, latest official stock ROM
CROSS - various custom ROMs, 1-click installation, TWRP, incl root

k23m said:
Review this thread and the solutions.
After you have fixed it, you can easily install a new custom ROM with two steps:
RESTOCK - installs USB drivers and unlocks it, latest official stock ROM
CROSS - various custom ROMs, 1-click installation, TWRP, incl root
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the response. I don't think I'll have enough time to try this today but I might as well ask. Do any of these fixes work without needing a USB connection to a PC, or if they do, do they require adb and fastboot to work? Because if so, I won't be able to use them since my USB data connectivity is completely busted no matter what I plug my Nexus into.

k23m said:
Review this thread and the solutions.
After you have fixed it, you can easily install a new custom ROM with two steps:
RESTOCK - installs USB drivers and unlocks it, latest official stock ROM
CROSS - various custom ROMs, 1-click installation, TWRP, incl root
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just ran the RESTOCK 1 script and it worked wonders! My tablet's USB connectivity has been fixed and as an added bonus, my bootloader is now unlocked. I'll be continuing the process in Linux on my Pixelbook since it doesn't require any driver installations as far as I know. Thank you so much! You're a life saver!