Recovering from the dead - G 2014 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

So, I was clean flashing Titan Prime back into my XT1064 after testing CM12.
Everything went well, same apps, same configurations as always, no major changes.
I was about to reboot the phone when it did it by itself.
The boot screen (you know, the white one that burns your eyes) showed up, then it went away, and then oh surprise!, it came back again.
So the phone was in this bootloop within the boot screen.
I tried to enter to the Bootloader and the key presses (Power + Volume Down) did not work.
Every time I would try that, the phone screen would stay off for as long those keys were pressed down, and then, Bootloop.
After many tries I was about to let the phone stay in the bootloop until I find a solution here on XDA.
But I tried one more time, and lo and behold, it went into the Bootloader.
From there everything went as normal.
Now, the question is, could I have bad sectors?, could the Bootloader be corrupted?, could I have a ghost trapped?.
Thank you for answers and/or ideas.
And if any of you happens to be in my same situation, do not give up, let it be, try many times, and it finally will work (hopefully)

Strange. There wouldn't be bad sectors in internal memory. If it was me and I had your phone I'd try a complete wipe again. Of course that would be scary because you don't have a clue as to why it happened the first time. I wonder if it's your power button going screwy or maybe sticking.
That's the worst kind of problem, you do everything right and it still screws up then mysteriously fixes itself.

Did you maybe do any special changes/settings or similar things?
As Teil864 al ready says, you could reflash your rom and hope it'll never happen again.

Tel864 said:
Strange. There wouldn't be bad sectors in internal memory. If it was me and I had your phone I'd try a complete wipe again. Of course that would be scary because you don't have a clue as to why it happened the first time. I wonder if it's your power button going screwy or maybe sticking.
That's the worst kind of problem, you do everything right and it still screws up then mysteriously fixes itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You do everything right, the phone gets screwed, it gets fixed, and the problem is something no one else has had so you have no freaking idea of why or what it was.
It is not my power button, the only times I use it is when I turn the screen on, and it would not be the reason because it made a difference when it was pressed.
I will try some fastboot commands to scan sectors, but I need to remember how they worked. The last time I used them it was when I had a Galaxy Note 1.
Lars124 said:
Did you maybe do any special changes/settings or similar things?
As Teil864 al ready says, you could reflash your rom and hope it'll never happen again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As noted on the first post, I did not do anything out of the ordinary. Same apps, same configuration as always.
The good thing is that I now can say I have every app that I need, with the configurations that I need, so I almost never need to change.
Let's hope it will not happen again.

Related

Help! stuck at boot and touchscreen not working!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have a launch day Nexus One running CM5.0.5.3, the OC/UV kernel, and the EPE54B radio.
It has all been running great until today. I took it out of my pocket and it was warm (not hot) to the touch. I noticed the screen was blank but the buttons along the bottom were illuminated. I tried resetting it (power+volume down+trackball) and that didn't do anything, so I pulled the battery. When I rebooted it, it seemed to take a longer than usual time at the initial boot screen, and then went to the animated screen. It stayed on the animated screen for quite a while and then froze. It's stuck on the X mid-formation.
I then booted into the bootloader (which reacts like normal) and went into recovery. I re-flashed CM5.0.5.3, no effect. I wiped cache and system and re-flashed. Nothing. I did it again, and it finally booted up but I could only select things with the scrollball. The volume rocker worked fine, but the touchscreen is completely non responsive.
If I let it sit at the boot screen for a while it will go black eventually and time out.
I'm at a loss. I'm in the process of downloading a stock ROM and am going to flash it next. Anyone have any suggestions? My bootloader is (obviously) unlocked, so I'm worried about warranty work
Update: Just got it to boot (with the stock ROM) and I've got a warning screen saying:
Sorry!
Process system is not
responding.
[Force close] [Wait]
Any ideas?
Reflash CM 5.0.5.3 and then post back
Ok, re-downloading now.
Just flash in recovery?
Flashed in recovery (after wiping)
The phone stays on the stationary initial boot screen (four bars) for about a minute and a half and then goes to the animated cyan X. It stays there booting for probably two minutes before stopping mid-animation. If you let it sit there for a while the screen will time-out, which you can bring back with the power button. Sometimes when you hit the volume rocker you can hear the beep beep but nothing shows on the screen.
What the hell is wrong with my phone?
After an obscenely long time I got it to boot up.
Touchscreen is not responding, trackball is not responding, I have a question mark on the battery indicator, and no service.
I can't unlock the screen because of the non-functioning touchscreen. Live wallpaper is running great, it makes the sound when USB debugging is connected, it just won't react to any input.
I can, however, establish an ADB connection. It shows up on the device list and a remount succeeded.
Would reflashing the radio be of any benefit?
Dang the touch screen is unresponsive? I'm not an expert, but i'll try to give you some ideas.
I had some trouble once and I used settings-privacy then erased everything from within the OS. Then I reported to the screen just before going into recover and hit clear storage. Then went into recovery and wiped everything that I could. After that, flash the Rom that you want.
I've done a full wipe to no avail.
I'd bite the bullet and call htc, don't mention that you have rooted, it may be a hardware thing.
Scaaaary!! But hey, it happens. I would also try wiping for EXT on the SD card if you have been using apps2sd.....May not hurt, mights well try everything.....
Wiped everything, reflashed radio, flashed to stock. Nothing. This is exactly what I was worried about when I unlocked it.
Oh, well.
liam.lah said:
I'd bite the bullet and call htc, don't mention that you have rooted, it may be a hardware thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I'll do that tomorrow. I guess I'll flash everything back to shipping and hope they don't notice.
mortzz said:
Wiped everything, reflashed radio, flashed to stock. Nothing. This is exactly what I was worried about when I unlocked it.
Oh, well.
Yeah, I'll do that tomorrow. I guess I'll flash everything back to shipping and hope they don't notice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Many people have posted that they got a replacement even with an unlocked bootloader. One guy I heard said they charged him $55.
Either way, you can probably get a replacement.

Sliding won't work anymore

Hey guys,
I could need a bit of help! It's now the third time I'm having this problem, don't ask me why. I've got the feeling that I read the whole forum here, but didn't find anything similiar.
The 1st time I didn't change anything (ok, rooted it, but nothing else)
The 2nd time I overclocked it slightly (~850-900 MHz)
Now I'm using MIUI.
But back to the problem:
I'm unable to use the keyboard, every time I'm sliding open the keyboard (even when it's turned off), it "crashes". The screen stops working or it freezes, the only way to turn it off is taking out the battery.
However, the bigger problem comes now: I'm barely able to restart it. It tries booting, but is restarting all the time or the screen is just turning on (in some angles you see that it is turned on but it's black). After many retries, it starts working, sometimes the bootloop is running 15min or i have to manually restart it 10 times or more. The strange thing is that the keyboard works fine, nevertheless I have to choose between using it opened (taking it with me becomes difficult ) or closed...
...the main problem now is flashing a new Rom, I'm currently trying it through the android sdk and adb, but using the power-button + x is easier
I don't think that I can solve the problem, I sent the device two times back (warranty till may 2012), but maybe someone here knows a bit more. My guess is that one of the sensors is broken, or some parts of the display that should manage the sliding process...
Anyway, thanks for your attention!
Web
If you already have Rom Manager, just click Reboot into Recovery..
inches0 said:
If you already have Rom Manager, just click Reboot into Recovery..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried to use one a time ago, but it wasn't working right....
However, now I'm not even able to boot it, the screen just flashes and turns off itself before trying to restart a few moments later....guess I lost my Milestone
Sbf back to stock?
taptaptouch said:
Sbf back to stock?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the computer isn't finding it anymore...I'll back up the data and try use my warranty... I hope that they don't complain about MIUI...
But I'm still not getting the point, why my mobile had these issues three times, although they "repaired" it twice...and nobody else is having the same problem

phone turns off by itself

Hi, this happend already to me few times so I decided to put it on here.
Sometimes when I pick up my phone and try to unlock it nothing happens, fingerprint and button all the same it looks like it completely Off. Then i have to press few times a button to actually start it and it's booting. There is huge battery loss after it boot up. See image.
I am in Stock 4.0.2 no root just few standard apps installed. Nothing fancy. This happend already few times to me. I left the phone locked and when I want to unlock its dead. Also it is behaving weirdly, when I turn it off manually I just need to press longer a button and it's turning on, but here I need to press it few times to work.
Does it happen to anyone else?
terragady said:
Hi, this happend already to me few times so I decided to put it on here.
Sometimes when I pick up my phone and try to unlock it nothing happens, fingerprint and button all the same it looks like it completely Off. Then i have to press few times a button to actually start it and it's booting. There is huge battery loss after it boot up. See image.
I am in Stock 4.0.2 no root just few standard apps installed. Nothing fancy. This happend already few times to me. I left the phone locked and when I want to unlock its dead. Also it is behaving weirdly, when I turn it off manually I just need to press longer a button and it's turning on, but here I need to press it few times to work.
Does it happen to anyone else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly, there's not enough information to understand exactly why it's happening. You need to get a logcat in the time before the reboot; unfortunately, logcats get erased during a reboot so it might be a little tricky getting it if the reboot is seemingly random. Someone had posted this as a possible way of getting the log:
"Retrieving the logs is tricky, since the log cache gets erased on reboot. If the phone reboots even while sitting on a charger, try running adb logcat continuously (you will need Android SDK and USB drivers installed and configured on your PC.) When the phone reboots, look at the last several pages in the command prompt window for any errors or abnormalities."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Otherwise, it's hard for anyone to help. I'm not much help in actually figuring out the issue, but I know if you can get the log, someone else probably can help.
For more information on logcats: Logcat Tutorial
Yeah I was trying to connect it to PC but nothing, so it is turned off. I will try next time to run command when turning on, maybe there will be something but I do not see it working before it gets erased. I was hoping that anyone else is having this problem so it might be rom related. It is completely random so you can;t guess when it happens.
I had it only few times so it's not super annoying but still it is not normal behavior. In addition it is weird that battery went from 55% to 33%, just phone reboot will not drain that much... I hope there is nothing wrong with the phone itself.
terragady said:
Yeah I was trying to connect it to PC but nothing, so it is turned off. I will try next time to run command when turning on, maybe there will be something but I do not see it working before it gets erased. I was hoping that anyone else is having this problem so it might be rom related. It is completely random so you can;t guess when it happens.
I had it only few times so it's not super annoying but still it is not normal behavior. In addition it is weird that battery went from 55% to 33%, just phone reboot will not drain that much... I hope there is nothing wrong with the phone itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check in advanced to see if schedule off is on
Nope it's off
Happened to me to on 4.0.2. Rebooted twice a day.
Solution to me was Qualcomm flash back to stock 3.5.1 and uodate from internal to 3.5.4. OTA 4.0.2.
The theard "how to unbrick".
Not one reboot until now in days.
I think I found a culprit responsible for it. It is Hill Climb 2 game which doesn't close properly sometimes and I think it causes some kind of crash in the system. Is it possible?
terragady said:
I think I found a culprit responsible for it. It is Hill Climb 2 game which doesn't close properly sometimes and I think it causes some kind of crash in the system. Is it possible?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's possible. Not necessarily the reason, but it might be. Either uninstall the app or freeze it using Titanium. Greenify might also work, but that allows the app to start itself up and potentially continue the issue. See if that stops the crashes for a couple of days.
The problem is that it doesn't happen often and only when I quit the game and lock the phone immediately after that. I am not sure if that's a reason though, just guessing because it happens after this last time. I will uninstall this game anyway, it's just time eater

Note 4 Reboot Problem with Weird Temporary Solution

I'll try to make this short.....
I am using N910T3. Phone was charging in car while using (stop by roadside). Out of sudden it shutdown and went into reboot loop and the phone is extremely hot. I took the battery out for soft reset and try to turn on again. Phone will freeze at different screen (Lock Screen, Home Page, Samsung Logo, Powered by Android) and give two separate vibration before reboot.
I thought it is battery problem so I bought a new battery to try, but still the same problem. So I went on to backup all file before I perform hard reset. While doing that, I find out the phone can be use for longer before reboot if it was stay off for a long time. So I have this crazy idea: put it in a fridge. Surprisingly it works! The phone will not reboot anymore and I can manage to backup all file before doing anything else. Also, the phone will not charge if you plug in right after a few reboot.
Then, along with the fridge method, I perform factory reset through normal android setting. Now it will just stuck at powered by android screen while in reboot loop. I then try to flash with Odin, multiple times. Flash by Odin is complete, phone restart, then it freeze and reboot, at different screen (Installing system update, Erasing, powered by android).
Out of frustration I try with the fridge method to flash, and IT WORKS AGAIN!!!. The phone can now boot to welcome screen where you first setup your phone. However, it will then freeze again and reboot while doing so.
There was only this one time, where I left the phone off for a day after flash with a previous stock ROM, turn it on and skip as much setup as I can, finally reach the homepage screen, then will stay on without any reboot issue. I thought I finally fix it. I then power off the phone, put in my Sim Card and SD Card, power it on, then again, reboot issue appear.
I tried flash with latest stock ROM, previous stock ROM (one updates away), flash any stock ROM with pit file. I sometimes will get error code on device after flash (can't remember the exact error). I also cannot boot into recovery mode without flashing a twrp. Sometimes if success, I will get straight to Lock Screen without going through the phone welcome setup process. But again, none of these I tried can solve the reboot loop.
I may went too far and mix up all steps to the phone. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? Or is my phone, as I believe, has a faulty motherboard that cause the reboot loop? Thanks in advance for reading through my problem!
Hello there, I had a Tmo Note 4 which I loved it until the end, it's a hardware problem and there is no fix for it unless you replace the board, by the time you buy the board and what you need to pay for labor you're going to expend a few hundred dollars, I also tried the freezer method but it finally the phone gave up, it does not turn on anymore. That was my experience. Good luck bud.
oscarmaldonado said:
Hello there, I had a Tmo Note 4 which I loved it until the end, it's a hardware problem and there is no fix for it unless you replace the board, by the time you buy the board and what you need to pay for labor you're going to expend a few hundred dollars, I also tried the freezer method but it finally the phone gave up, it does not turn on anymore. That was my experience. Good luck bud.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems like that's the case I guess.....But if anyone has any suggestion please do tell so I can give it a shot.
jackgan said:
Seems like that's the case I guess.....But if anyone has any suggestion please do tell so I can give it a shot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try a firmware flash before newsest. Then take the ota
anyone know if a 910t3 mother board will fit in a 910t frame? Asking cuz I wanna switch them out.

Recovery without losing data

I have a Moto G6 XT1925-5 (64GB version) which doesn't want to start up. It's all totally stock, been updated to Android Pie.
It gets as far as the boot animation, and does that for about 2 minutes, then it boot loops and starts all over again. When it bootloops it gets stuck at the first Moto logo screen (not the animated one) for about 3 minutes before carrying on to the boot animation...
This happened once or twice before, we left it overnight and eventually it started up normally. But it's now been five days and it still hasn't started.
I'm not very experienced with Android hacking/modding, etc but willing to try anything. I managed to get into recovery mode and at the top it says (I presume this indicates the firmware version):
motorola/ali_retail/ali
9/PPSS29.55-37-7-6/16c5a7
Unfortunately USB debugging is not enabled. Is there anything that we can do to recover the data that was on the phone before we wipe it - or is there another method we can try to get it to start up? I saw there's a command adb logcat which looks like it might be useful to diagnose the problem but that also requires USB debugging.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions
There is no chance for you to recover your data in this mode.
WoKoschekk said:
There is no chance for you to recover your data in this mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
There are several other modes available from the bootloader BP Tools, QCOM, etc but I can't work out how any of them are supposed to work.
One question - on the recovery menu, there is an option 'Mount /system'.
I pressed it and it says at the bottom /system mounted, but then there don't seem to be any obvious ways to access anything.
Is there a way to use this to access OS/kernel logs which might give a clue as to what is going wrong?
Thanks again
Step by step...
The first level of the system, which is accessible for you, is called bootloader menu (fastboot menu). From here you can boot into recovery, system, bootloader itself and some other options you mentioned in your post.
None of these options would help you to solve your problem. These are developer's options.
This level is more or less a one way data connection. The main advantage of this menu is to flash single partitions of your device. But there is no way to get a data output of any partition.
In recovery menu you find the options to wipe your data and to mount /system. Mounting /system won't help you, too. This partition doesn't store anything of personal data. It's read only and not writable for anyone. To be honest, nobody knows exactly the meaning of it in this context. Also you won't access any logs from here.
Generally you can't access the system logs. These informations are only buffered data which is cleared with every reboot. The error message of e.g. the kernel log produced by your system when having a bootloop, is only accessible while your device is looping/freezing. The next reboot erases the logs. They aren't stored somewhere on your device. Even for developers it's very tricky to view the log in such cases.
But what would you do if you get the reason for looping? You are not able to access any system partition. You need root user permissions for that. But rooting your phone will erase all data.
Apart from all that your data is encrypted and remains encrypted until you unlock your screen by fingerprint, PIN or password. No chance to get any useful data as a "third person" outside. It would take several years to decrypt it without the matching key for it.
Thanks so much for this detailed explanation, I really appreciate that you took the trouble to answer the questions in detail and explain what the various options are for.
phone5774 said:
Thanks so much for this detailed explanation, I really appreciate that you took the trouble to answer the questions in detail and explain what the various options are for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem!
Maybe you'll find some of your personal data in your Google Drive account...
How the story ended
Thought I'd come back and post in case it's useful for anyone else:-
Due to a religious festival, we left the phone switched off for three days. After the festival ended, we switched it on, and immediately it did the same thing that it had been doing all along (spend a long time on the initial boot screen then a while on the boot animation before boot looping). Bizarrely even though it had been off it did not prompt for the PIN code.
We then held the power button as though to turn it off (but for some reason, throughout the usual power button never actually turn the phone off, it always attempted to restart immediately) and then next time it came on it asked for the PIN and started up normally!
So all in all that was a grand total of 9 days after the problem first happened. Very inconvenient not to be able to use it for 9 days, but it's now working again. We haven't dared to try to restart it since!
Some closing thoughts:
The storage is very full (99%), we wonder if that had something to do with this problem
We have now enabled USB debugging and bootloader unlocking to make recovery easier in future
phone5774 said:
Thought I'd come back and post in case it's useful for anyone else:-
Due to a religious festival, we left the phone switched off for three days. After the festival ended, we switched it on, and immediately it did the same thing that it had been doing all along (spend a long time on the initial boot screen then a while on the boot animation before boot looping). Bizarrely even though it had been off it did not prompt for the PIN code.
We then held the power button as though to turn it off (but for some reason, throughout the usual power button never actually turn the phone off, it always attempted to restart immediately) and then next time it came on it asked for the PIN and started up normally!
So all in all that was a grand total of 9 days after the problem first happened. Very inconvenient not to be able to use it for 9 days, but it's now working again. We haven't dared to try to restart it since!
Some closing thoughts:
The storage is very full (99%), we wonder if that had something to do with this problem
We have now enabled USB debugging and bootloader unlocking to make recovery easier in future
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I read this last post, I immediately think of a sticky power button, because if you keep holding the power button after the phone has booted it will turn off again, and start up again. And it would also explain the weird behavior you just described of not turning off but rebooting straight away. I'd say: see if you are able to clean de button with a very thin needle or a crafts- or surgical knife around the edges, is might just solve your problem...
mcremco said:
When I read this last post, I immediately think of a sticky power button...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that suggestion. Interesting, not something I'd thought of.
For now the phone is working perfectly, provided that have to restart it (i.e. we make sure not to shut it down or let the battery run out) but I'll definitely bear this in mind if the issue happens again.
The power button is working normally to turn the screen on or off meanwhile.
Thanks again for your input which is really appreciated.
First time trying to restart after the above
Since posting the above messages the phone has been kept on all the time and not restarted.
Today for the first time we accidentally let the battery run out and the phone shut itself down.
We nervously plugged it in and tried to switch it back on... and it started properly first time, so perhaps the underlying problem was simply that the storage somehow got too full (in the meanwhile we have transferred many photos and other media to the computer and deleted them off the phone to free up space).
Posting this in case it helps someone else experiencing a similar problem.

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