i897 boot loop confusion - Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Before I screw anything up any further I figured it's time to ask.
I'm using Odin and I flashed ICS(ICS_4.0.3_MR1-RC4.2_Captivate.zip) awhile back and everything had been running fine for a couple months now.
I noticed longer load times during loading animation when powered up(Figured it was just 'cause of more start up apps) eventually it stuck looping @ animation screen. Out of frustration I was hitting the lock key while loading up and somehow managed to stop the animation loop and lock the screen which enabled me to use the phone again for the day until my phone was turned off by accident
In my attempts to resolve this issue, I tried clearing all cache's(Delvik,Partition etc.) and reflashing the rom to no avail.
I figured if I formated /boot and than reinstalled it might work, *BIG* Mistake. I could only access download mode so I couldn't reinstall /boot
I reflashed using the speed kernel to get back recovery mode and than flashed my ICS.zip again only to be still stuck with this boot loop issue. I've found the topic http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=731989 as a last resort.
How can I recover from boot loop without losing my data? Thanks.

3randon said:
Before I screw anything up any further I figured it's time to ask.
I'm using Odin and I flashed ICS(ICS_4.0.3_MR1-RC4.2_Captivate.zip) awhile back and everything had been running fine for a couple months now.
I noticed longer load times during loading animation when powered up(Figured it was just 'cause of more start up apps) eventually it stuck looping @ animation screen. Out of frustration I was hitting the lock key while loading up and somehow managed to stop the animation loop and lock the screen which enabled me to use the phone again for the day until my phone was turned off by accident
In my attempts to resolve this issue, I tried clearing all cache's(Delvik,Partition etc.) and reflashing the rom to no avail.
I figured if I formated /boot and than reinstalled it might work, *BIG* Mistake. I could only access download mode so I couldn't reinstall /boot
I reflashed using the speed kernel to get back recovery mode and than flashed my ICS.zip again only to be still stuck with this boot loop issue. I've found the topic http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=731989 as a last resort.
How can I recover from boot loop without losing my data? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off what do you mean by data? Do you mean your photos and music that is stored on the internal or external SD or do you mean the apps you've installed and any data or settings related to them or your current setup? If you're talking music and pictures, with the exception of rare cases your internal and external SDs should never be effected by a basic flash but the link you provided suggests that it will wipe everything if you use the master clear option. If mean the other "data" I mentioned theres no way around that short of a backup prior to a flash.
Now as far as the link you posted I've never used it so I don't know if it would help. However I would suggest this... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1300843 go to the third post and use the KK4 one-click without bootloaders. That should hopefully fix your situation and again unless something weird happens it won't touch your photos and whatnot.
On a side note have you attempted getting back into recovery from the bootloop, rewiping the usual, and flashing the rom again? Sometimes that corrects problems.

m1batt1 said:
First off what do you mean by data? Do you mean your photos and music that is stored on the internal or external SD or do you mean the apps you've installed and any data or settings related to them or your current setup? If you're talking music and pictures, with the exception of rare cases your internal and external SDs should never be effected by a basic flash but the link you provided suggests that it will wipe everything if you use the master clear option. If mean the other "data" I mentioned theres no way around that short of a backup prior to a flash.
Now as far as the link you posted I've never used it so I don't know if it would help. However I would suggest this... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1300843 go to the third post and use the KK4 one-click without bootloaders. That should hopefully fix your situation and again unless something weird happens it won't touch your photos and whatnot.
On a side note have you attempted getting back into recovery from the bootloop, rewiping the usual, and flashing the rom again? Sometimes that corrects problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should be more specific when refering to data, I need my text message, pictures and videos everything else is synced online. I'm looking into the link you've suyggested now and I have tried wiping the caches(delvik,partition) and reflashing the rom to no avail.
I've looked @ the kernels you've suggested and looks good except I'm not sure what it means by wipe(What will it wipe?) and why not the one with the bootloaders since I'm having bootloop issues?
Thanks

3randon said:
I should be more specific when refering to data, I need my text message, pictures and videos everything else is synced online. I'm looking into the link you've suyggested now and I have tried wiping the caches(delvik,partition) and reflashing the rom to no avail.
I've looked @ the kernels you've suggested and looks good except I'm not sure what it means by wipe(What will it wipe?) and why not the one with the bootloaders since I'm having bootloop issues?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pictures and videos shouldn't be touched but unless you've backed up your messages they will be.
As far as what I linked they aren't kernels they are complete stock ROMs built into a one-click program to take you back to stock. It will wipe and repartition the internal memory that the ROM is installed on. It shouldn't touch your storage memory though.
As far as not using the one with boot loaders, you could but you already have the boot loaders installed if you're on ICS and reflashing boot loaders can potentially hard brick your device. Also flashing ROMs don't touch the boot loaders so they should be intact and using the one-click without boot loaders is the safer choice.
Sent from my SGH-i927 using xda app-developers app

Related

Help restoring with Nandroid after a bad .zip update

I tried to flash a theme update from zip in recovery mode and it messed something up royally. Now when I boot the phone it shows the HTC logo then just goes black and never comes back. I made a Nandroid back up right before I flashed and it said it completed it successfully, but when I go to recovery (volume down + power button) and select nand restore, it says its restoring and then restoring complete but when I reboot it still goes to the black screen. What do i need to do differently? I have never had to restore until now.
I'm on Fresh 2.3.3
Try wiping all data and dalvik and then restoring the nandroid.
doojer said:
Try wiping all data and dalvik and then restoring the nandroid.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just tried that and I'm still getting the black screen after boot.
PMDColeslaw said:
Just tried that and I'm still getting the black screen after boot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do adb logcat. It might actually be booting without a bootscreen.
HeroMeng said:
Do adb logcat. It might actually be booting without a bootscreen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you walk me through that? Sorry I haven't ever heard of it.
EDIT: Ok I let it run for a while and it eventually boots up but the boot screens/sounds never show or play. So I completely wiped the phone and reflashed Fresh 2.3.3... still no boot screens or sounds! I don't know what I could have messed up that complete wipe/flash doesnt get rid of. Any ideas? Also now Titanium is saying that it cant get root access because my phones not rooted properly. What tha?
Bump... Still having this issue. The phone is usable but the boot images and sounds are gone
nobody has mentioned this but maybe you just have a bad Nandroid. maybe something did not copy right or something in the phone internally got deleted during the backup/restore process. i saw on android forums somewhere it happened to some person using an Eris. Cant quite remember how he got it fixed but he ended up fixing it somehow.
t12icky0 said:
nobody has mentioned this but maybe you just have a bad Nandroid. maybe something did not copy right or something in the phone internally got deleted during the backup/restore process. i saw on android forums somewhere it happened to some person using an Eris. Cant quite remember how he got it fixed but he ended up fixing it somehow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I thought it might be a bad nandroid too, so I just wiped the phone and flashed fresh without ever restoring the backup and it still has no boot images or sounds. It's the strangest thing. When I flashed the first time to 2.3.3 the re were definately boot images and I flashed from the same file this time.
You might have to just use the RUU and start over from scratch, I had to do that once and it sucked.
Sent from my Hero CDMA using XDA App

CM7 boot looping

Can anyone give me a hand with this?
I was running CM7 n40 with ALSA and dalingrin's 0413a kernel. Watching videos in vevo when the nook froze and reset itself and got stuck looping at the CM7 animation.
I've rebooted into CWR, tried first wiping Dalvik cache, it didn't seem to make a difference. I then tried formatting /cache and reinstalling n40 and dalingrin's 0404 kernel. No joy either.
Short of reinstalling everything, is there anything else I can try?
If you are running from an SD card then your problem is likely the card. If you aren't running from an SD card then... Maybe someone else can help you.
Forgot to add, running from eMMC.
I had the same thing, only with CM stable...ended up having to rebuild my / boot with the file here.... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=914690.
Very last file in first post. Had to flash it then start all over....
Sent from my NookColor using XDA Premium App
You are not alone, mine just did this after updating to the latest nightly and restoring with Titanium Backup. I did not flash a kernel, just the nightly using Rom Manager.
My symptoms were that it seemed to run OK, then I opened the gallery to set a different wallpaper and got constant FCs, so then I restarted. Now I'm watching the circle go round and round.
OK, back to previous, just restored the nandroid backup Rom Manager made prior to the update. Seems to be working fine.
I flashed n40 and dalingrin's oc kernel 0404. Stable and happy as can be.
I'm thinking the issue was with ALSA and experimental kernel 0413a, which has been reported to crash video playback in some cases. Don't know how or why it would corrupt my install though.
Let me just mention a lot of people are claiming false boot loops lately. Sometimes it just takes a long time to reboot, especially after it froze. I've had it take up to 20mins before with the little skateboard android.
So next time unless it's giving you "Touch The Future" and then the CWM treatment, give it a bit to load and see if it does after 10 mins or so. (Usually just after the screen dims, my nook loads up just fine)
No that's unacceptable. Considering the amount of data it should be loading, something is very wrong with your nook if it takes more than 5 minutes to boot.
And yes it was boot looping, the animation restarted itself repeatedly (wasn't just the arrow spinning).
Can't help at all but to offer another data point: I was on nightly 39, ALSA update, and kernel 0413a. Was flicking between homescreens when it locked up, forcing a hard shutdown. When I booted back up, it was stuck in a bootloop. Tried all the usual paths to recovery, but had to resort to a backup.
Moved on to n41 (ALSA included) and kernel 0418c. Stable in every case so far.
I'm having same issue and mine is still not working no matter what I did.
I even tried to restore it back to stock - Format/ Fdisk / DD / etc... tried everything I could find. I even had my back up but couldn't restore. I think I created more problem while I was trying to fix it.
Now I can only boot from SD. So I was not the only one.
Eww, I would never touch any sort of partition change with eMMC installs. Usually I just go back to stock or latest backup. Found out there may be an issue with backups created from CWR flashed to eMMC (MD5 check failure). SO anyone who's made a backp from that, do yourself a favor and boot off a CWR SD and do a backup onto that just to be safe.
Sorry about your troubles, hope you get it sorted. Guess I got away easy with just format and nightly re-flash.

[Q] Odd Problem - Soft Brick

Hi,
I installed Galaxian Soup 1.5.1 beta a week ago and all has been running fine. This morning the tab was blank like it had run out battery so I put it on charge and found it wasn't dead. Tried to reboot and it's just stuck at the "Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9" screen. I was using it fine last night and haven't changed anything!
I've tried ODIN to restore Stock Recovery which said it passed and worked, but still the same problem. It has removed CWM though. When I try to do anything in Stock Recovery it complains about not being able to mount the /data directory.
Is there anything else I can try, do I need to use ODIN to flash a ROM again? If so, can you tell me which file to use as there are hundreds in the Galaxian Soup zip.
Thanks!
Flash stock rom with Odin. Unfortunately you also need to wipe data in stock recovery for this to work, so you will loose everything.
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately this hasn't worked, it passes in Odin but then on the tablet it says E:failed to mount /data, and "your storage not prepared yet, please use UI for format and reboot actions.
Trying to factory reset fails.
Any other ideas?
OK, a bit more detail. I use ODIN to flash the stock rom found here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1483168
It passes and goes into recovery but complains in red letters about not being able to mount /data, can't access /system/csc/XEU/system in yellow and can't mount /cache or a few other subdirectories.
I select wipe data which appears to work although it complains about make_extf4fs failing on /dev/block/mmcblk0p8. It then complains about not being able to mount /cache and other subdirectories again.
I then select reboot, it complains again about not being able to mount /data and /cache and switches off, not reboot. If I turn it on again I'm straight back to recovery.
Got to be something I'm missing here!
Any input appreciated.
It seems your partition tables are messed up, but i have no idea how this could happen if you didn't flash anything that could cause this, maybe a hardware problem?
There is a way to repartition the tables, you need a PIT file for this. I have not done this myself, so unfortunately i don't know much about it. Try to search for a PIT file, but make sure it's for your tab model, otherwise you can mess it up completely.
Many thanks - that fixed it! For future reference and for anyone searching this thread I found the pit file here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1406137&page=9 and flashed it with ODIN together with the standard firmware I mentioned in the earlier post.
It's not all good news though. The tablet now keeps freezing. Even in recovery while I was trying a factory reset for the freezing. This leads me to believe it may be a hardware problem that caused the original brick and ongoing freezing issues. What do you think? Does it save a dump anywhere when it crashes?
Glad to see it worked. Maybe try to flash the stock rom again, now without the pit file. Also try factory reset in stock recovery. If you are still having problems, then im afraid its a hardware problem.
Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. It was hanging even whilst in stock recovery which means it had to be a hardware problem. Took it back to the shop and got a refund, new one is on it's way.
Bit nervous about ROMing the new one! The only thing I can think of is maybe overclocking damaged the cpu, although I only set it to 1.4Ghz. Or I was attaching a card reader and it was complaining about a service crashing when I removed it. Maybe it would have happened whether I messed with it or not!
Mbuxton said:
Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. It was hanging even whilst in stock recovery which means it had to be a hardware problem. Took it back to the shop and got a refund, new one is on it's way.
Bit nervous about ROMing the new one! The only thing I can think of is maybe overclocking damaged the cpu, although I only set it to 1.4Ghz. Or I was attaching a card reader and it was complaining about a service crashing when I removed it. Maybe it would have happened whether I messed with it or not!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been flashing different roms, kernels and recoveries on my tab for more then 200 times probably. And i have been using Galaxian-Soup AOSP ICS rom with molteys kernel for almost two months. Never had any problems (that i didnt create myself). Never used overclock, but havent heard of anyone who has had problems with it either.

Keep phone on long enough to transfer files?

I have had a ATT captivate for almost 2 years now. It falls in the IMEI range specified by ATT. But it wasn't really a problem until very recently.
It got much worse about 3 weeks ago when the phone kept constantly rebooting. It would load the OS, begin media scanning, once that concluded, it would immediately reboot (almost every 20 seconds). Only way to stop the reboot cycle is to take out the battery. No new apps were installed, no system changes were made when this happened.
I am able to get the phone's menu which allows me to wipe and I am able to get the phone into download mode.
I have read (4) of this article regarding sleepdeath and all corresponding articles referenced.
This is what I did...
1) Performed hard reset, cleared storage. This eliminated all third party apps, returned the phone to stock (I think), but the phone is still rebooting.
2) Attempted to install a brand new rom (CM) via CWM = Problem got much worse. Still rebooting but this time, after the ATT logo appears, the screen changes to static (noise) and reboots. Followed instructions and diles from here.
3) Since the phone became useless, I hunted around to return it to stock again and used this. The phone now boots up into the OS, but now it's back to rebooting.
I repeated steps 2 and 3 just to make sure I didn't miss a step, but same problem.
I have 2 goals:
1) Get the phone working, if at all possible!
2) If that's not possible, recover the 300 pictures that are on the device.
My challenge is that since the phone keeps rebooting every 20 seconds, by the time it connects to my PC via USB as external storage, it reboots! This ofcourse is also preventing me from loading a ROM directly on to the SD card.
So if anyone can help me to do the following:
1) Point me in the right direction to how I can keep the phone in a certain mode or setting (download mode doesn't work) where I can transfer files, recover my pics, and perhaps load a custom ROM?
2) Next steps?? Am I even on the right track? Since the stock rom keeps the phone rebooting, will a custom ROM solve the problem (have not been able to get a conclusive answer on this on the threads referring to sleep death (which this is an exaggerated version of) or is the phone a lost cause?
I know I can call ATT and try to haggle a replacement (since the phone is out of warranty), the only benefit being they don't renew my contract, and I don't have to upgrade.
Any help or guidance is much appreciated.
Wow, bummer
Well i don't know if you can mount the sd card in stock recovery (never used it) but if you can't then you could flash one of the stock one click roms with cwm recovery from this thread.... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1300843
In cwm recovery there is an option to mount sd while connected to pc so you can backup your stuff.
For the reboots, could it be your power button? Mine is acting up, and often seems to cause reboots. There are threads about fixing that. Idk just a thought.
Hope that helped a bit
Sent from phone with app
Like the previous post says, maybe try a custom recovery, go to mounts and storage, and mount USB storage. While you're at it, try flashing a compatible ROM through that recovery i.e. GB rom if its a GB kernel with CWM recovery or ICS rom if its an ICS recovery.
Did you try to do a dump of SD card data with adb?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium
The static issue is because you flashed a gingerbread kernel but you don't have gingerbread bootloaders. You can fix this by flashing an AT&T stock one click with bootloaders.
Once there, you can flash corn kernel and use recovery to mount the sd card.
Or I guess you could flash a froyo kernel.. there's a number of ways to do this.
Sent from a jelly bean

[Q] Captivate Boot Looping Help

Hi I've searched some, and I haven't found anything for this setup. My captivate was working fine when I last used it a while back but when I turned it on, for a few weeks now, its been stuck in a boot loop. The problem is that I have never flashed custom roms or anything, its just been its stock- update as officially released,etc. Also, aside from that, I don't have any backups of anything because of computer issues. Is there anything I could do to just get it going again without chancing loosing all of the pictures I have on there?
CheesyMcTender said:
Hi I've searched some, and I haven't found anything for this setup. My captivate was working fine when I last used it a while back but when I turned it on, for a few weeks now, its been stuck in a boot loop. The problem is that I have never flashed custom roms or anything, its just been its stock- update as officially released,etc. Also, aside from that, I don't have any backups of anything because of computer issues. Is there anything I could do to just get it going again without chancing loosing all of the pictures I have on there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you get to Download and / or recovery modes?
You could try a Factory Reset from recovery. All that I have read says that it does not delete pictures and music. You are likely to loose apps you have downloaded and the app data. (Double check to insure this is correct.)
If a factory reset does not work things get a bit more complicated. For example, you could possible move files from your phone to your PC using adb if you can get to download mode.
dawgdoc said:
Can you get to Download and / or recovery modes?
You could try a Factory Reset from recovery. All that I have read says that it does not delete pictures and music. You are likely to loose apps you have downloaded and the app data. (Double check to insure this is correct.)
If a factory reset does not work things get a bit more complicated. For example, you could possible move files from your phone to your PC using adb if you can get to download mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I've still been researching, anything factory reset is supposed to completely wipe everything on the phone. Is there any way to backup or get anywhere with download mode, because I can get into download mode, but it doesn't register with my computer so I don't know what I can do from it.

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