Help Bricked Nexus 5: stuck in boot animation

[kawika]

Hi everyone!

Couple of days ago my battery died, got home, plugged it in and turned it on. White google logo appeared, then flying dots and that's pretty much all I've seen since then.

I did go through a couple of posts/tutorials/whathaveyou, but with no to little success. At one point I tried wiping the cache, but interrupted it thinking it froze (and got the e:/cache image not found error). When I read that the process may take a bit longer, I wiped the cache again, let it finish and the error went away. Still didn't bring me closer to booting all the way.

Thing is, I'd like to avoid factory reset to keep my un-backed up data (honestly I'm not even sure if I have anything important on there). I tried flashing the stock cache.img but it won't let me since it's not unlocked.

So, is there any known solution that could save this black and white brick of mine?

 

[Slug]

Hi, and welcome to Android Forums!

I've moved this to the dedicated Nexus 5 sub-forum, so that other users of the device can offer their advice.

 

[kawika]

OK, thanks!

 

[kawika]

UPDATE: I couldn't wait any longer and decided to wipe it, so I ran the factory reset, waited for it to be done and tried booting — yep, still getting the dots …

 

[GrenW]

I would have thought that flashing the factory image would be your best bet now. Quick Google search will find you plenty of online tutorials.

PS I'm assuming you left it for a while. Rebooting after a reset can take up to half an hour

 

[kawika]

Thanks for the reply! I did leave it for a while, dunno if it was half an hour …
I'll try to flash the factory image and see what happens.

 

[mssux]

hi @kawika could you net us know the results?

 

[kawika]

Hi guys!
Sorry it took so long …

A friend of mine helped me and it's working again. Looks like a partition got messed up and even flashing the stock image wouldn't work. I'm not exactly sure what said friend did, but it involved installing TWRP.

If I get more details I'll post them

 

[zarquon]

Hi guys!
Sorry it took so long …

A friend of mine helped me and it's working again. Looks like a partition got messed up and even flashing the stock image wouldn't work. I'm not exactly sure what said friend did, but it involved installing TWRP.

If I get more details I'll post them

I would be most appreciative to know those details.... I am having this same exact issue, have taken the same steps flashing stock image. All these steps I had to have help with because I'm special like that. So... what is TWRP? If your friend can't recreate his procedure, would anyone be willing to make educated guesses?

My N5 is 14 months old so I'm looking at LG to tell me I can make with some $$$ to keep my prize.

And... does anyone know what might cause this cache / partition corruption? Did I have a bad application or malware I should be wary of?

 

[broncobilly]

Download Nexus root toolkit

 

[kawika]

Hi Zarquon!

I'll try to describe the process as best as I can from the info I got from that friend of mine:

1. Install TWRP (twrp.me/devices/lgnexus5.html) to see which partition is faulty
2. Use
   
   adb shell
   ls -al /dev/block/platform/dw_mmc/by-name
   
   to see which partitions are mapped to which blocks. Output could be smth like this:
   /cache -> /dev/block/mmcblk0p10
   (NOTE: the path /dev/block/platform/… depends on the device, so scroll using [TAB]
   until you find the right folder – the right folder has the /by-name subfolder)
3. Soon as you know which partition needs to be fixed, repair it in adb shell using mk2fs
   (which usually comes with adb shell – just google "android mk2fs repair partition")

Hey man, I hope this helps. Like I said, I don't really have a clue about what's going on here,
I just translated the instructions and posted em here Good luck, man!