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Root Bricked Nexus 7

M

matfry

Newbie
This must have happened to many others' and I'm sorry if I'm starting another thread rather than poking through the forum!

I rooted my Nexus 7 tablet yesterday using Wugfresh Nexus root toolkit without any problems. I then (possibly stupidly) went on to upgrade the tablet to the new Android ver. 4.3, because it was pointing out the version was available
 
Although I can get into fastboot and can even try and flash the device, it always fails on the "sending system" line of the command prompt. Hope that helps.
 
This is as far as my device gets...

< waiting for device >
...
(bootloader) Bootloader is already unlocked
OKAY [ 0.021s]
finished. total time: 0.021s
erasing 'boot'...
OKAY [ 1.164s]
finished. total time: 1.164s
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'cache'...
OKAY [ 1.037s]
finished. total time: 1.037s
erasing 'recovery'...
OKAY [ 0.818s]
finished. total time: 0.819s
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'system'...
OKAY [ 0.786s]
finished. total time: 0.786s
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'userdata'...
OKAY [ 4.481s]
finished. total time: 4.481s
sending 'bootloader' (2096 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.647s]
writing 'bootloader'...
OKAY [ 9.851s]
finished. total time: 10.498s
rebooting into bootloader...
OKAY [ 0.020s]
finished. total time: 0.021s
archive does not contain 'boot.sig'
archive does not contain 'recovery.sig'
archive does not contain 'system.sig'
--------------------------------------------
Bootloader Version...: 4.18
Baseband Version.....: N/A
Serial Number........: 015d3f1936501c05
--------------------------------------------
checking product...
OKAY [ 0.030s]
checking version-bootloader...
OKAY [ 0.019s]
sending 'boot' (4944 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.766s]
writing 'boot'...
OKAY [ 0.986s]
sending 'recovery' (5446 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.890s]
writing 'recovery'...
OKAY [ 1.107s]
erasing 'system'...
OKAY [ 0.910s]
sending 'system' (471804 KB)...
 
How long are you waiting for it to send the system? It is significantly larger than the rest of the files and since the rest of them get sent it seems that the connection is working?
 
Thanks for your patience jhawkkw!

I seem to have got one step further. I'm now looking at the 4-coloured X shape that occurs during boot-up. The thing is though, that it's been displayed for about 25 minutes now with no further progress.
 
25 minutes is much too long for it to boot properly. I recall some people on the Nexus 4 having issues with it bootlooping once the flash finished, but they never got back on whether it got resolved or not. My first piece of advice would be to boot back into the bootloader, manually flash twrp or cwm, and then perform a factory reset + cache & dalvik cache wipe. Then reboot and see if that works. If not, try flashing the 4.3 factory image again.
 
Tried the above and still having problems. Whatever I do, I can never get beyond the X on boot-up.

Had a bit of a day of it, so giving up until tomorrow!
 
I'm sorry it's been such a pain. My only other advice would be to try and downgrade it back to 4.2.2 or earlier to at least get it up and running.
 
Thought I'd give it one more try... bingo - sorted!

The one thing I changed was to put a really short USB cable in-line. I find it hard to believe that made the difference, but who knows. I'm not going to try it again to find out!

Mighty pleased to have nailed it anyway. Many thanks for your help jhawkkw.

Matt
 
matfry said:
Thought I'd give it one more try... bingo - sorted!

The one thing I changed was to put a really short USB cable in-line. I find it hard to believe that made the difference, but who knows. I'm not going to try it again to find out!

Mighty pleased to have nailed it anyway. Many thanks for your help jhawkkw.

Matt
Click to expand...
Congrats, I'm glad it all worked out. :) It's amazing how picky these things can be sometime.
 
Good result. I've had the occasional odd behaviour with some USB port and cable mixes that I put down to the port being on the edge of its spec, so using a longer and/or thinner cable can push it over the edge causing comms problems - especially if the device is also drawing heavy charging current as the Nexus 7 does.

I have a very short, heavy gauge well-shielded USB cable (I got it years ago with a wireless dongle) that works where other cables give up; it's very awkward to use (6" isn't a lot of cable!) but I keep it for use when all else fails :-)
 
Hi everyone,

I too have bricked my nexus 7. Let me see if i can describe everything i did.


Bought it refurbished (now out of warranty). Was going to root it but could only get as far as unlocking bootloader (computer couldnt recognize the adb device). The other day out of no where it rebooted and went into a boot loop on the google screen. Could get into bootloader but not recovery. Finally got in (push power then volume up quickly and release). Factory reset and wipe cache. No luck. Tried Wug's toolkit but couldnt get computer to see adb device. Tried all manner of drivers and was finnaly able to get the original driver on and use Wug's "soft brick" fix. Got the Tablet running for a bit but then same bootloop happened. Tried everything i tried before and got it running for a few minutes but the keyboard wouldnt work. Tried all kinds of wiping and flashing stock img but nothing was working. Everytime i seemed to try something the tablet seemed to dig itself deeper in the brick. I tried the other nexus 7 toolkit too but it's not updated to 4.3 yet. Soooooo today i tried one more time to bring it back to life and i couldnt even get into the bootloader (power+vol down, three finger salute) but nothing worked. Now with it's final breaths it shows the google screen then turns black and the screen flashes a little bit. Saw a video about the battery getting loose and making it flicker...nope, not with mine.

Furthermore, i'm at my last straw. I loved the tablet but I can't keep this up. Is there anything i didnt try?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
If successfully flashing a factory image works, and it keeps going into a bootloop, then there's one of two things that could be causing the problem.

1st possibility is that once you get it up and running again, your start downloading your apps and what not again and something isn't playing nice with the tablet. Have you tried going a prolonged period after a factory image flash without downloading any apps to it?

2nd possibility is if it's not caused by some rouge app, then there's likely some piece of hardware that is malfunctioning or is broken. If that's the case, you might be able to contact Asus and/or Google and perform an out of warranty repair for a fee.
 
daddyhawk said:
Hi everyone,

I too have bricked my nexus 7. Let me see if i can describe everything i did...
Click to expand...

Sorry I can't offer any practical advice on this - only my sympathy!

I'm sure you'll eventually get it sorted. I thought I'd never get my Nexus working again, but after a day's messing around, everything worked out okay.

Good luck!
 
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