NookColor reflashes itself back to stock? - Nook Color General

something interesting happened to my NC last night. i was messing around with system apks, trying to get better access to the system settings. i copied Settings.apk and SettingsProvider.apk from the 2.1 emulator to /system/app the NC. they didn't work, so i replaced Settings.apk with the original, but forgot to replace SettingsProvider.apk. bonehead mistake. anyway, upon rebooting, the device was stuck in a bootloop. it would get to the white "Nook Color, by Barnes and Noble" boot animation, and just loop over and over. i tried the factory reset twice, but as i expected, it didn't help.
i decided to give up for the night, and left the NC plugged into AC power, bootlooping over and over, just to see if anything would happen. after about 30 minutes, i tried to shut it down by holding the power button. the screen went off, and i set it down. when i looked back a few seconds later, the NC was booting again. this time, it came to the screen shown in the attached photo. on the screen, it says "A new software update is being installed. This will take a few minutes."
the process finished, and the device booted up into a fresh, clean, non-rooted 1.0.0 installation! a real software update wasn't installed. it seems the device decided to reflash the original ROM on itself. can it be that the NC is smart enough to know when something is catastrophically wrong, and flash back to stock? either way, i'm happy to have my NC back in business

pokey and I were talking about this in another thread (though he's better at dissecting this stuff than I am). There's a counter for unsuccessful boot attempts, and after 8 it apparently flashes "factory.zip" from partition 3, which is a full clean factory dump.

This actually happened to me, sort of, two nights ago. I was messing around with system settings, but didn't change anything too important...or so I thought.
Shortly after, I was using my Nook, as it was working normally, and the initial setup screen popped up, said something about being unable to authorize my account, and then went ahead and factory reset itself,forcing me to have to re-root. Pretty annoying, and it was odd, since my Nook seemed to be working fine.

It may be worthwhile to make a modified factory.zip so devices wouldn't lose root, no?
I haven't yet encountered this problem, but it would suck to have to reformat my microSD card if this should happen.

tokyomonster said:
This actually happened to me, sort of, two nights ago. I was messing around with system settings, but didn't change anything too important...or so I thought.
Shortly after, I was using my Nook, as it was working normally, and the initial setup screen popped up, said something about being unable to authorize my account, and then went ahead and factory reset itself,forcing me to have to re-root. Pretty annoying, and it was odd, since my Nook seemed to be working fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine did this exact same thing too. I messed with the settings apks and then when I went back to the B&N home screen an error about not being able to authorize and the device needed to be reset. then it rebooted and performed a reinstall of 1.0.0

clockworx said:
pokey and I were talking about this in another thread (though he's better at dissecting this stuff than I am). There's a counter for unsuccessful boot attempts, and after 8 it apparently flashes "factory.zip" from partition 3, which is a full clean factory dump.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well there you have it. a nice feature, for the reckless
any idea where the counter is kept?
might there be some way to put factory.zip on the SD card, and force a flash? this would just be a parachute in case something gets too messed up for the failed boot counter to work.

This can be done manually too. Look on nookdevs.com for NookColor_UnRooting

Withfeeling said:
This can be done manually too. Look on nookdevs.com for NookColor_UnRooting
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That isn't the same thing. It only fixes a few things (like Ramdisk, obviously), while this thread is referring to a complete clean /system.

clockworx said:
That isn't the same thing. It only fixes a few things (like Ramdisk, obviously), while this thread is referring to a complete clean /system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
actually, in a quiet, unassuming box at the bottom of the nookdevs unrooting page, it does describe a method to flash back to stock. apparently you hold volume down (minus) while powering on. it's easy to miss. i'll break that bit of information out into it's own page.

Ben74 said:
actually, in a quiet, unassuming box at the bottom of the nookdevs unrooting page, it does describe a method to flash back to stock. apparently you hold volume down (minus) while powering on. it's easy to miss. i'll break that bit of information out into it's own page.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nookdevs wiki updated:
http://www.nookdevs.com/Flash_back_to_clean_stock_ROM

Given this possibility, is there a way to backup a rooted NC so it would be easier to rebuild after an inadvertant flash.

Some of us noticed that "quiet, unassuming box".

blacter said:
Given this possibility, is there a way to backup a rooted NC so it would be easier to rebuild after an inadvertant flash.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This, built-in, mechanism seems like a pretty bullet-proof protection against bricking your Nook Color. The Nook Classic has a similar mechanism. I think it's a great idea and I wish all these new tablets had such a capability.

I'm loving the Nook Color but other things require the money right now so it's going back, for now.
I just did the Home+Power key combination and it did a reset. I re-registered the device to make sure Angry Bird and a few other things were gone and they are. I got a notice at the bottom of the home screen saying something about a software update and it just said I was currently on 1.0.0, I clicked it and it went away. But, in Settings and Device Info there is a Erase & Deregister Device option. When I click the option it says the following "This will remove all digital books and files, including side-loaded content, from this device. The titles you have purchased will remain in your B&N account." I find this interesting since it specifically mentions "side-loaded content" and I'm wondering if this also triggers the 'factory.zip' file and as a complete factory hard reset of files and all. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else so I thought it might be worth mentioning.
Cheers

Related

[Q] rooted OK but now it continues to try to boot

I rooted my NC yesterday using the auto-nooter 2.12.25. Things seemed OK. I DLed some apps & used them. Got ADW launcher loaded and began setting it up for my preferences. The NC went most of the way through an update cycle even though I had already updated to version 1.0.1. However this time it never got to the green "n" and then it started cycling through the part where it comes up & writes "nook color", continues until the colors quit flashing & then starts back at "nook color".
None of the buttons seem to have any effect. I tried to follow the 'solution' entitled "NookColor Fix Boot Loops". I tried both the auto-nooter SD card and then when that didn't work, I tried the original manual nooter SD card.
Anyone have another idea to fix this. I'd really appreciate some help. A PM would be great or just answer here.
I had the same problem earilier today, I held down the power button until it did a complete reset (about 8 seconds of holding). It is working great since.
Thanks. I had already tried that, several times.
restore to factory and start again?
add http : // www to front of links with out the spaces i don't have the 8 post count needed to post links and
am not going to just reply needless info to 8 post to get rights to post links to help
don't get me wrong i believe it is a very good policy
unrooting
.nookdevs.com/NookColor_UnRooting
flashback to clean stock
.nookdevs.com/Flash_back_to_clean_stock_ROM
i have not tried any of these methods no need to but i do so much messing up
i guess eventually i will with that said this might be a long way around to your solution
read both carefully
Thanks, nookroot but this is not working.
Method 1 for unrooting - Holding those 3 keys together for over 30 seconds has no effect.
Method 2 for unrooting - I can't unroot with method 2 because the NC has to boot before I can go to settings.
Any other suggestions? In fact it seems that if it ever does power off, the only way to make it power on is to plug in its USB cord & this doesn't always work. When it does it just stats cycling. Sometimes it seems to just power up on its own and start cycling.
Whatever happened, since it's rooted I can't return it to B&N and I don't seem to be able to unroot it. Effectively I have bricked it even though many people say that's impossible.
Edit: something new just happened & I was able to go through the method 1 reset. It's booting now & looks like the B&N screen is coming up. I'm not sure how it happened. I'm going to leave it unrooted until I feel adventurous (or foolish) again.
P.S. Came back with version 1.0.0 SW.

[Q] Nook Color Random Restore (Autonooter 2.12.25)

Not sure if this discussion has already happened.
I have noticed twice since rooting my nook (with 2.12.25) that it has randomly restores back to 1.0.0 (or seemingly).
The first time it was just sitting beside me and it did one of its un-commanded restarts. I noticed that it was reloading the original 1.0.0 version. I lost everything and the nook was unresponsive after finishing. I followed all the hard reset rules and then upgraded to 1.0.1. I then autorooted again and reinstalled all apps.
Last night it did it again while I was using it. I was reading a book and then went to check email. I got an error message something like "invalid authorization" and that it was reloading the base software. I let it do its thing and go through its reboots. I also let it automatically update to 1.0.1 before I touched it. I re-registered it. Now when it loads it doesn't show the normal rooted nook boot screens. When I go into extras I see only the stock apps plus the additional ones that the auto-nooter loads (everything else gone). I tries to get me to log into LogicPD Zoom (Google) but it fails to load.
Has anyone else seems this?
Is there a way to re-load or fix the nook color install without having to go through the complete wipe process?
Once I fix is there some setting we can change to prevent it from happening again?
Thanks
After nootering the nook, I proceeded to load clockwork mod and made a backup of the OS. Now when it auto restores, I can reinstall the backup from clockwork mod by holding both Power and the Nook Key for five seconds when powering on.
Still don't seem to know how to stop the auto restoring though
Mine restarts too, has since I rooted it. Thankfully, there is no data loss, just an inconvenience. If there were a log being kept (like in other OSs), I could at least go there to find out what is crashing it.
Acts like a low memory restart, but that isn't what it is.
TJD
Wanted to add that mine does this also. It has happened 3 times in 4 weeks. Thank god for ClockWork it is not to big a deal now to restore. I wish someone could figure this out tho.
Mine actually randomly boots up (I'll have it off, then hear it start up a few hours later). Not sure it's related, but thought I'd mention it in case it turns out to be.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Mine used to restart everytime it went to sleep. Happens to alot of people. SetCPU and On Demand usually fixes it. There is like 2 or 3 of these threads in Q&A
straby187 said:
Mine used to restart everytime it went to sleep. Happens to alot of people. SetCPU and On Demand usually fixes it. There is like 2 or 3 of these threads in Q&A
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Except they're talking about the system restoring itself, not rebooting.
It has to reboot to restore. Thought if you fix the reboot problem it would help maybe not... My bad
I'm autonooted on 1.0.0 and have never had an ota restore or update.
Sent from my Nook Color
Have you guys made sure to rename the otacerts file after rooting?
There are several active threads on this. In my case it was a faulty power button. I went ahead and exchanged the unit. Replacement is 1.01 and feels like the case is sturdier. Might be imagining that. Check my other posts on the subject. Good luck.
Sent from my NC using XDA app

Nook will turn on by it self after 5 minutes or so

First I thought that I'm crazy but now I can confirm that my NC will boot on it's own after about 5 minutes after power OFF. I have to shut down 2nd time and than it will stay OFF. Any idea what's wrong ?
Thanks
(Yes I did confirm after first shut down that it's actually OFF since no buttons will respond)
Any weather Apps running? Many of them have an option to wakeup in order to update. Check your mail, twitter and facebook apps. It has to be something you installed, I have run every update, tried all the froyo images and both Honeycomb releases and I have not seen that.
To expand on what gedster wrote, it seems kind of crazy and out there but what about any devices on your network that might send Wake on Lan requests? What if something on your network had located your NOOKcolor. I don't even know why a eReader Tablet would have a function for Wake on Lan but it's just another crazy avenue to jog down.
I do have weather app installed but I find it hard to believe that it can wake up OS that is not in standby but completely off. WIFI is also not enabled before shutdown.
Looks like the problem is there only if I used market, if market is not used it will shut down fine and it will not boot on its own.
lifeisfun said:
Looks like the problem is there only if I used market, if market is not used it will shut down fine and it will not boot on its own.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems that's unlikely if you're the only one having the issue, I'd keep digging if I were you.
Looks like you're right I can't replicate the problem every time
The timing when it will boot also varies 5, 15 and even 35 minutes.
Don't know what to do, it's hard to imagine how it can boot on it's own from
complete power off state
I can't believe I'm the only one with this problem
lifeisfun said:
I can't believe I'm the only one with this problem
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just posted a thread about this issue for me less than an hour ago! Funny, no one replied to mine: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=940713. It was pretty long...guess I should've added a TL;DR.
It happens to me on any (or no) power source. Timing varies like yours as well. I'm going to pull my weather app based on the above recommendation, and I will try your Market theory out. Knowing someone else has this issue makes me hopeful that we can find something that we have in common as the culprit.
I did download the newest Honeycomb image yesterday and I'm going to put that SD card in and see if I can get it to turn itself back on on a Market-less, user App-less build. If successful I'll Titanium my 1.1 apps and remove everything non-system, then slowly add until I get this figured out. Keep me posted if you figure something out, I'll be sure to do the same!
In case it matters I bought mine about a week ago and the serial number starts with 20046.
EDIT: Testing with Honeycomb SD now so if that's the case here it should just stay off. I booted into Honeycomb at 9CST and turned it off at 9:01. I'll give it a couple of hours.
I used to have this same problem. I would randomly find my 1.0.1 auto-nootered 950mhz rom nook on, when I knew I had turned it off. interesting part is, this problem completely solved itself after I flashed my emmc with the custom nookie 5.9 img. so it must be an eclair issue and not a hardware issue
woot1524 said:
I used to have this same problem. I would randomly find my 1.0.1 auto-nootered 950mhz rom nook on, when I knew I had turned it off. interesting part is, this problem completely solved itself after I flashed my emmc with the custom nookie 5.9 img. so it must be an eclair issue and not a hardware issue
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really? I've been putting that off because I don't like the idea of not having Clockwork Recovery. I understand there are ways to do the same things using IOMonster's things but I'd really rather just have Clockwork Recovery working. Unless there's a way to get it going that I missed?
Yup, I've been having this issue as well. I really want to flash NF but I want hardware video acceleration.
oscillot said:
Really? I've been putting that off because I don't like the idea of not having Clockwork Recovery. I understand there are ways to do the same things using IOMonster's things but I'd really rather just have Clockwork Recovery working. Unless there's a way to get it going that I missed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you are correct that clockwork does not work with froyo. however the bootable sd card that you would burn automatically starts up clockwork first. you can run a backup and restore, as far as i know, without having to reflash froyo. on a personal note, froyo still has some issues but overall I'm exteremly pleased so far. i really just wanted to get rid of all of the b&n stuff (mainly the status bar) along with any possible way of them pushing an update to break root. I would recommend it, but CM 7 with gingerbread will probably be out sooner rather than later.
woot1524 said:
you are correct that clockwork does not work with froyo. however the bootable sd card that you would burn automatically starts up clockwork first. you can run a backup and restore, as far as i know, without having to reflash froyo. on a personal note, froyo still has some issues but overall I'm exteremly pleased so far. i really just wanted to get rid of all of the b&n stuff (mainly the status bar) along with any possible way of them pushing an update to break root. I would recommend it, but CM 7 with gingerbread will probably be out sooner rather than later.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which I guess brings us back to, why is Eclair doing this, and why does it seem to be limited to lifeisfun and myself?
I'm glad I'm no longer special
My serial # is 200503 .....
Removing all application that I have installed didn't help.
Only 100% way to shut down is to let it boot and immediately shut down.
unknown.soul said:
Yup, I've been having this issue as well. I really want to flash NF but I want hardware video acceleration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now that I understand the power of this things SD slot and that CWR can be run off of an SD, I can totally live with that. Hardware Video isn't a must for me yet, so I may take the plunge tonight after work...BTW, what are people's favorite video apps? I have been playing with VLC stream and convert, which works somewhat with my media server's samba shares. I have the share mounted to a directory on the sdcard since many apps look there exclusively.
More on topic, I couldn't get SD Honeycomb to start itself on its own. I tried booting then shutting down. 2 hrs of nothing 15mins light activity then shutting down. 2 more hours of nothing. About an hour of heavy use, seeing what could be installed, sideloading, testing, editing things like build.prop and rebooting often and trying to get swype working (don't think it's supposed to, but that's "heavy use" for me.) Powered down. Went to bed. Still not on this morning. This looks indeed to be an issue with the B&N stock Eclair.
Mine doesn't turn itself on with no interaction at all, but will turn on every time when you plug in the charger or cable hooked to USB port in computer.
I can turn it off once it is already plugged in and it will stay off, but remove and replug the charger and it is on again.
Strange.
Well, strange that only two or three of us noticed this strange problem.
Yeah, started for me after 1.1 update. Turned it off last night, tonight it was on with 40% battery! I think its 1.1 related, this didn't happen with 1.0.1 ...
I'm sure there's a condition that's causing or exasperating this issue, something common to us all. But at this point since I don't use the Nook as a video player (I actually bought it to read books, but I use Aldiko and the open epub format) I will likely flash Nookie to the eMMC and call it a day. Honestly can't wait to get a clean notification bar on this thing anyway.

[Q] Refurbed NOOK Color dilemna

The LCD has gone haywire on my NC and I can't see any of the screens to reset it to stock.
I am running MIUI on it, and did the 8 consecutive reboots to get it to boot into recovery, but I can't see the options on the screens.
B&N has the replacement on the way, I just need to send this back per the agreement.
Any ideas on how I can get thing back to factory given that parts of the screen is unreadable?
What would you do?
GOODYMAN said:
The LCD has gone haywire on my NC and I can't see any of the screens to reset it to stock.
I am running MIUI on it, and did the 8 consecutive reboots to get it to boot into recovery, but I can't see the options on the screens.
B&N has the replacement on the way, I just need to send this back per the agreement.
Any ideas on how I can get thing back to factory given that parts of the screen is unreadable?
What would you do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use ADB to make it unbootable, just start removing directories.
you can try something like this
Code:
adb shell
format SYSTEM:
format DATA:
format CACHE:
I had the same problem. I used android screencast to help me wipe my nook. It didn't work especially well but it will display the screen on your PC so that you can see what's going on. Unless it's been updated since I did it the screen will be turned 180 degrees and you won't be able to control it from the PC but it will work well enough to help you see what's going on.
http://code.google.com/p/androidscreencast/
Thanks guys...I've never used ADB, but I am downloading the SDK now. Its taking forever.
I think I may be able to figure it out between both of those suggestions.
The only other question I have is about my registration for the Market. I read one place where you should deregister your device before the new one comes in. How can I do that if I can't go into settings?
There's no way to deregister the device without doing it from the device itself. If you do the screencast option you can go through the steps to deregister the device which will in turn return it to factory condition and obviously remove it from your account on BN.
GOODYMAN said:
Thanks guys...I've never used ADB, but I am downloading the SDK now. Its taking forever.
I think I may be able to figure it out between both of those suggestions.
The only other question I have is about my registration for the Market. I read one place where you should deregister your device before the new one comes in. How can I do that if I can't go into settings?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't deregister from the Android Market, although you probably want to deregister the Nook from your Barnes and Noble account and you can do that over the phone with B&N support.
I'm stuck.
I can't get Screencast to work because I can't check to see if it's in debug mode or detected by adb devices.
All I see is the boot recovery screen with a bunch of lines going through. The only option that is visible is "wipe cache partition".
If someone could tell me what other options are on this menu, so I can navigate up and down to reset this thing, that would be great.
Like, how many clicks down or up on each screen to completely wipe and reset to stock.
Or, if I just returned on RMA this thing, as is, would that prevent them from sending me a replacement (which I mistakenly though they did already)?
Who has screenshots of all the boot menus?
Bump - any thoughts?

5.6 update bricked my Fire Tablet 7 5th Gen

Boy am I upset about this. So I get the update and I even liked it looking around at the new freed up internal storage. Well, I clean my history, run ccleaner, etc. like I normally do to restart and when I restart it will not pass the fire screen whatsoever. Now this tablet is not and has never been rooted or tampered with in any malicious way. Launcher hijack and things from this forum are the only tweeks used. It will not work.
I have tried factory reset dozens of times, restart, anything I can do from the hardboot blackscreen (I guess it is called). Somehow managed to make it run the initial setup once, ran through hours of fixing it back the way it was. Restarted it again, bricked again. I can never manage to factory reset it like normal again and I mean I've tried 30 times by now. Only "Fire" loading screen. Has anyone seen this? This is not fair.
CaptainPatterson said:
Boy am I upset about this. So I get the update and I even liked it looking around at the new freed up internal storage. Well, I clean my history, run ccleaner, etc. like I normally do to restart and when I restart it will not pass the fire screen whatsoever. Now this tablet is not and has never been rooted or tampered with in any malicious way. Launcher hijack and things from this forum are the only tweeks used. It will not work.
I have tried factory reset dozens of times, restart, anything I can do from the hardboot blackscreen (I guess it is called). Somehow managed to make it run the initial setup once, ran through hours of fixing it back the way it was. Restarted it again, bricked again. I can never manage to factory reset it like normal again and I mean I've tried 30 times by now. Only "Fire" loading screen. Has anyone seen this? This is not fair.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes - I have (indirectly) seen this on numerous unrooted Amazon Fire devices from several generations following a major OTA update. In most cases the device is NOT recoverable unless the bootloader is unlocked (not possible on 5th-7th gen devices). Boils down to a borked update which is not totally unexpected given the manner in which they are engineered and administered by Amazon. Clearly a very high percentage work without issue. Still sucks if you're a member of the substantial minority...regardless of size. You can try giving Amazon support a call...they might throw you a coupon that can be used against a future purchase (including deeply discounted Amazon/Fire devices during "Black Friday" week).
Just an update on this...
After a few days of not being able to use it I powered it on for the umpteenth time and it properly went through factory reset mode. I was able to manually download the 5.6 update again and it is finally back to normal. Funny thing is I now have even less internal storage than before but at least it is working now. That was a huge inconvenience and I still have no clue what happened.

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