Database Develop

NookColor reflashes itself back to stock?

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.
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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

What did I do now and other n00b hacking horror stories

Sharing time!!
I did something quite stupid today and, in the interest of both comedy and warning, want to share it with the world.
In my rooted glory I began to think back to the V6 supercharger script that my Droid1 loved so much.
Long story short it did not do well on my droid and I ended up with a boot loop at the "Droid" soundbite. Hard to hide your mistakes when your phone is screaming every 5 seconds. All of the boot loop fixes failed.
Factory reset cleared up the boot loop but thanks to some .apk cleaning I am now stuck with no home screen. Installing a home screen replacement has not helped yet, but at least I have adb and still have root so some .apk moving from the backup directory should get me running in an hour or so.
Feel free to laugh knowing I have been hacking phones since my old xv6800. Also make sure you know the risks when you play with the file system on your phone.

Thanks mate, I feel for you. Yesterday I tried to update my Droid to 5.6.890 but first I had to Unroot it with Petes Motorola Root Tools and restore the /system/app folder. Unfortunately I left the downloaded apk zip in the restore folder which has been also restored to /system/app.
Then bootloop. And drooooooooooooid, drooooooooooooooid, droiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid. ^^
I had to manually root it, this thread helped http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1236465
Then I restored /system/app again, but correctly this time.
Finally I could start the update and everything was working again...

Anyone who has a bricked DROID 3 phone (Verizon only), I may have a solution for you.
Requirements:
Windows platform
7-zip installed (and know how to extract files)
ability to follow all instructions exactly
willingness to factory reset/lose data on their phone
This unbrick method is NOT guaranteed to work, but it's very hopeful for most situations where other methods aren't working. If you are in desperate need of a fix, send me a PM and I'll link you some files to try.
Lastly: I will not be walking through anyone step by step on how to run this procedure -- the included instructions should be more than enough for most people. If you read the instructions and are thoroughly confused, then this fix isn't for you.

Almost back up and running now. Thankfully Marketplace pushed some apps and then notified me about it so I could open up the marketplace and install ADW. Once I got home back it was just a matter of reinstalling and rebuilding.
Oddly my Social Networking widget is no longer working correctly. A shame but only a minor issue overall.
Oddly the bootloop fix instructions you listed did not work for me. ./adb devices showed an entry but no info and told me I did not have any permissions on the device. I am running on Linux so it may have been a driver issue of some kind.

I'm sure what happened to the damn thing the other day, but.
I put my phone into Sleep Mode during a morning of hunting and when I tried to wake it back up it wouldn't respond. It had actually done this before, so I wasn't too concerned. It seems to be an issue with the leaked OTA.
So I pulled the battery, powered it back on, and stuffed it back in my pocket and drove 20 minutes back home. When I tried to check it afterwords it wouldn't wake up again; stuck at black screen.
Pulled the battery again, powered on and waited... and waited... and waited. After several minutes it would reboot again.
Sooo I plugged it into my computer and started to try to figure out what the hell happened. The logcat gave me no good indication as to what might be the issue, it just seemed to hang right after booting.
I deleted my replacement home (Launcher Pro) and that got me a little further. It would boot to the lock screen! But it would never respond to my inputs.
I resorted all system apps. Same thing, not responding, stuck on lock-screen in airplane mode.
I unrooted then re-installed the OTA leak. No change.
So I finally caved and decided to try a factory reset, which if failed, could almost totally screw me out of ADB access or worse.
But thankfully it totally worked! It booted right up and I was able to complete every setup screen without issue. Rooted, Titanium restored my apps and a pinch of data and I was back in business in 30 minutes!
Now I make sure that I never put the phone into Sleep Mode.

Unable to root Kindle Fire HD

Hi!
I got my kindle fire hd today (german edition) and tried to root my device. So i watched the guide on *** and read several articles and forum threads to be prepared rooting the kindle fire. Ok first of all: i might have damaged the screen, although i have no clue how this happened. One of the corner led doesn't work properly anymore. The effect is like heavy clouding on led tvs.
I followed exactly the tutorial on ****. After the first step, the processor starts to heat up and the tablet slows a bit down. After the second reboot the tablet gets really hot and significantly slows down. The screen starts to flicker and the tablet needs about 10 seconds to execute a command. After a reset to factory defaults everything works like charm except the clouding. I changed the usb port, reinstalled the android sdk and even used qemuroot. Nothing works. I am going to send my kindle back and buy another one, but i wont try to root it without solving this problem. Does anyone have an idea??
/edit as a new member i can't post any urls. The first *** is reverendkyle.c*m and the second is an article on redmondpie

Sounds like you received a defective device. Send it back.
Maybe the "German Edition" versions were those that didn't make the first round of quality control checks.

soupmagnet said:
Sounds like you received a defective device. Send it back.
Maybe the "German Edition" versions were those that didn't make the first round of quality control checks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I only mentioned it because my firmware version isn't 7.21 (sorry my fault) but 7.20. Never heard of it, maybe the eu version somehow differs from the us version.

noskill123 said:
I only mentioned it because my firmware version isn't 7.21 (sorry my fault) but 7.20. Never heard of it, maybe the eu version somehow differs from the us version.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
7.20 is on the 32GB that I just received today.

soupmagnet said:
Sounds like you received a defective device. Send it back..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yup, it's the right advice. don't try to force any root, send the device back instead and have a new try with the next one.

The root will work for both 7.2.0 and 7.2.1, barring any anomalies with your specific device. I would use the automated root found on this forum when you try rooting next time, since it'll eliminate any possible mistakes (not saying you made any). Either way, everyone else is definitely right in saying you got a defective device. Luckily, Amazon's pretty good about replacements when you're under warranty. My own device's CPU was running so hot, it smelled like things were melting. Got it replaced with no fuss, and no extra charges.

noskill123 said:
Hi!
I got my kindle fire hd today (german edition) and tried to root my device. So i watched the guide on *** and read several articles and forum threads to be prepared rooting the kindle fire. Ok first of all: i might have damaged the screen, although i have no clue how this happened. One of the corner led doesn't work properly anymore. The effect is like heavy clouding on led tvs.
I followed exactly the tutorial on ****. After the first step, the processor starts to heat up and the tablet slows a bit down. After the second reboot the tablet gets really hot and significantly slows down. The screen starts to flicker and the tablet needs about 10 seconds to execute a command. After a reset to factory defaults everything works like charm except the clouding. I changed the usb port, reinstalled the android sdk and even used qemuroot. Nothing works. I am going to send my kindle back and buy another one, but i wont try to root it without solving this problem. Does anyone have an idea??
/edit as a new member i can't post any urls. The first *** is reverendkyle.c*m and the second is an article on redmondpie
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That’s exactly what happen to me about 10 days ago my KFHD
Get hot and speed is unbelievable slow down but I do manage to reset to factory setting
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=32866304#post32866304
But finally I manage to root my KFHD and switch off upgrade option because I don’t want
The same problem occurs to me again.
My mistake at the first time is I mix up the method using manually method by reverendkjr
And on half way using script giving by sparkym3, so on the second attempt I only use
manually method by reverendkjr doing exactly what he is done and I get my KFHD rooted
I hope this will help you
NB
Even I uncheck automatic update they still updated my KFHD now I am with 7.21
and became unroot yes will start allover again.:fingers-crossed:

Trying to save files while stuck in soft brick

First, I will say that i'm not a developer. I am familiar with backups, rooting and custom roms. I'm just at a total loss with a total loss phone :/
So here's the rundown of my issue/s with my Moto Turbo (XT1254)
The phone is completely "unmolested." My phone is stuck in boot loop, currently. I did bust my screen a few weeks back but it had been working just fine. I picked up my phone to check texts, and I saw the "updating 24 of .... apps." Once finished, it's been stuck in a boot loop since. (Odd thing, my screen now shows split Moto image when trying to boot. Ex: a slot machine with only 2 roller wheels that wont match up)
I have tried to clear the cache several times with no luck of it booting up correctly. I do have files that I was trying to recover since they are not linked to a cloud account, and was trying to avoid a full on reset. I did, however, get frustrated and even tried to reset it back to full factory settings. That did not work either. So, all this being said, I'm back to trying to recover my files (my daughter's first year of life, family stuff, etc), since I cannot get it to even preform a factory reset. Does anyone have some guidance or same issue on this matter? Again, I am trying to salvage my files now while stuck in soft brick / boot loop status.
Thanks any and all who can help me with this!
******* Solved********
I have better diagnosed and fixed my own issue. I'm sorry I don't have pictures or video to better document what I did, but in short, it was as simple as replacing my damaged screen/digitizer, with a new one.
My theory was that during the update, the phone checked over it's systems and found that the digitizer was non-responsive in a few very small areas (this I already knew from using it a couple weeks with the screen damaged) and it somehow caused it to go into a boot-loop. My experience with fixing Playstations 3's, helped shed some light on this for me. I had a PS3 i thought was in good working order, updated firmware to it, and it bricked the system. Come to find out, the blu-ray laser head was no good. Upon the firmware doing system checks, it found that was bad and ended up bricked.
I did replicate the problem by switching the broken screen and new screen back and forth 2 more times after the initial fix. Upon disassembly, (youtube for teardown vidoes) you disconnect the battery from the logic board anyways, so when you boot the phone up, it does a app check and system check again. Every time the damaged screen was connected to the logic board and then powered on, it would end up in boot loop. The new, undamaged screen, would do the required checks, then boot up like normal.
I will do my best to borrow/rent a camera soon, so I can make a short video to show this works.
I'm not going to promise this will work for everyone but with replicated results, hopefully it's a fix for someone!
I hope

Factory reset has not restored Auto-Rotate, Active Edge, and the "ear sensor" when making calls

Hi!,
I'm a long-time reader of this forum, but this is my first post. In the last few days, something happened (I wish I could pinpoint exactly what) where I ended up restarting my phone and it entered a continuous boot loop. The phone was receiving updates per normal and may have received an update not that long ago that required some kind of restart, but I'm not confident about that. Either way, the phone was restarted and it entered into a permanent boot loop.
Before restarting, I'm confident the "ear sensor" that turns the screen off when I'm on a call as functioning. I'm also confident the auto-rotate functionality of the phone was working perfectly.
After I tried to factory reset the phone from the power-volume reset options, I actually ran into a TON of trouble trying to get the phone to properly reset. It tooks me countless tries to eventually get the phone to start after resetting it over and over again. I was stuck trying to get the phone to actually move through the setup steps. SUPER frustrating. I actually went to sleep while the phone was somewhere in the middle of setting up and when I woke up the phone somehow eventually made it through some setup steps.
I'm now using the phone as I normally would, but it's very odd. The phone is a LOT more unstable. At least 3 of the sensors I had working have just completely stopped working.
The phone is in otherwise perfect condition. I'm genuinely confused about how I should go about trying to resetting this thing to a pure stock configuration and slowly installing apps again to make the experience what I'd want.
And no, I'm not a super power user. I am a strong engineer happy to do crazy things like flashing bootloaders and whatnot, but I'm honestly confused about where to start. I understand other versions of this device may have had corrupted persist partitions during updates -- those problems seem like my problems -- but I don't know how I should go about simply flashing my phone at the lowest level into something stock that I can try to build back from.
And obviously when talking to google support their suggsetion is that I mail them the device and wait 10 days without a phone. I'm confused about how that could EVER be a reasonable way to get a phone repaired, sigh -- phones are not toys, they're pretty critical to the day-to-day work of so many people including myself. I'm pretty disappointing with that approach from Google and I had always considered them much better than that before this experience.
Anyway, I'm really lost and I'd love to understand how to repair the software on my phone.
(You all kick ass!)

aliljet said:
Hi!,
I'm a long-time reader of this forum, but this is my first post. In the last few days, something happened (I wish I could pinpoint exactly what) where I ended up restarting my phone and it entered a continuous boot loop. The phone was receiving updates per normal and may have received an update not that long ago that required some kind of restart, but I'm not confident about that. Either way, the phone was restarted and it entered into a permanent boot loop.
Before restarting, I'm confident the "ear sensor" that turns the screen off when I'm on a call as functioning. I'm also confident the auto-rotate functionality of the phone was working perfectly.
After I tried to factory reset the phone from the power-volume reset options, I actually ran into a TON of trouble trying to get the phone to properly reset. It tooks me countless tries to eventually get the phone to start after resetting it over and over again. I was stuck trying to get the phone to actually move through the setup steps. SUPER frustrating. I actually went to sleep while the phone was somewhere in the middle of setting up and when I woke up the phone somehow eventually made it through some setup steps.
I'm now using the phone as I normally would, but it's very odd. The phone is a LOT more unstable. At least 3 of the sensors I had working have just completely stopped working.
The phone is in otherwise perfect condition. I'm genuinely confused about how I should go about trying to resetting this thing to a pure stock configuration and slowly installing apps again to make the experience what I'd want.
And no, I'm not a super power user. I am a strong engineer happy to do crazy things like flashing bootloaders and whatnot, but I'm honestly confused about where to start. I understand other versions of this device may have had corrupted persist partitions during updates -- those problems seem like my problems -- but I don't know how I should go about simply flashing my phone at the lowest level into something stock that I can try to build back from.
And obviously when talking to google support their suggsetion is that I mail them the device and wait 10 days without a phone. I'm confused about how that could EVER be a reasonable way to get a phone repaired, sigh -- phones are not toys, they're pretty critical to the day-to-day work of so many people including myself. I'm pretty disappointing with that approach from Google and I had always considered them much better than that before this experience.
Anyway, I'm really lost and I'd love to understand how to repair the software on my phone.
(You all kick ass!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would try flashing the latest factory image via fastboot.
[Guide] Root Pixel 4 XL with Magisk Android 13
[Guide] Root Pixel 4 XL With Magisk Android 13 Android Security Bulletin—Feburary 2023 Pixel Update Bulletin—Feburary 2023 Introduction This Guide is for Pixel 4 XL owners that want to Root their phone, and enjoy the benefits of rooting it. The...
forum.xda-developers.com
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/guide-unlock-flash-root-for-the-pixel-2-xl-taimen.3702418/ (This is for a Pixel 2 XL but the process is the same. It's basically a condensed version of the one above.)

aliljet said:
Hi!,
I'm a long-time reader of this forum, but this is my first post. In the last few days, something happened (I wish I could pinpoint exactly what) where I ended up restarting my phone and it entered a continuous boot loop. The phone was receiving updates per normal and may have received an update not that long ago that required some kind of restart, but I'm not confident about that. Either way, the phone was restarted and it entered into a permanent boot loop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You did not provide the most important information we need- whether your phone is bootloader unlocked. Probably not, otherwise you would have already flashed it with a full Google image, which returns the phone to "out of the box" condition. You need to determine whether you can unlock your bootloader. If you cannot unlock (allow oem unlock is off and or greyed out in Dev options) then you will not be able to fastboot flash ANYTHING. If that is your case, the next best thing is flashing a full OTA image (sometimes called a rescue OTA) from recovery mode using the OTA via ADB option. This means you need fastboot/adb installed and working on your PC. Instructions on how are on the same Google dev page for OTA's.

So, my phone's bootloader is not unlocked. But I have an update for the crowd that may one day find this. I know your frustration and I can report that my phone is once again fixed.
A day (or two) after I sent this, a set of updates came down to my phone. And WebView was updated. That restored all of my sensors and also restored most of my crashing applications. It was an incredibly odd experience.
My phone once again functions. And the nightmare of owning a Google phone and talking to Google support has ended.