Help Fastboot can't erase!

[LozHensel]

Me again, continuing problems from this thread. I still have an iNew L4. I have now downloaded this rom, and flashed everything I can find to flash (boot, cache, recovery, system, userdata). Despite that the adware (apparently called Android.Waps.a) is still there. it's certainly persistent, I'll give it that!

I have got adb working, and fastboot seems to work too apart from one thing:. It tells me that erase commands fail. I get the following error:

$ fastboot flash system system.img
target reported max download size of 134217728 bytes
erasing 'system'...
FAILED (remote: unknown command)
finished. total time: 0.003s

Doing it as root doesn't seem to help, nor does starting the adb daemon as root.

I can flash things only so long as I pass the -u command, which means don't wipe it first, otherwise I get the above error message (barring the partition being erased - that seems to make no difference either). fastboot erase and fastboot format produce pretty much the same response too.

Interestingly adb remount also doesn't work (citing permissions), and if I open a shell on the phone (via adb shell) I don't have permission to mount anything readwrite even if I am root before opening the shell, and su is apparently an unknown command (sudo likewise...)

So why can't fastboot erase anything? Is there a hidden option I need to enable like oem bootloader unlocking? If fastboot can't do it is there another way?

 

[electricpete]

Is there a hidden option I need to enable like oem bootloader unlocking? If fastboot can't do it is there another way?

In my device (nexus 6), under developer options, there is setting to "enable oem unlocking".
Once we check that, we can unlock the bootloader in fastboot. (wipes the device!)
After that we can flash any partition in fastboot.

I don't know about your device

 

[LozHensel]

I've enabled that, and unlocked the bootloader. But that caused a regular factory reset, which doesn't format the all important system and cache partitions. Just in case I'd forgotten, I tried it again. No dice.

 

[electricpete]

On your phone's screen while in fastboot mode, does it say "unlocked" ?

(Mine shows it in yellow, attached)

 

[LozHensel]

No, but it shows nothing other than just

=> FASTBOOT mode...

in very small text right at the bottom unless it is doing something specific. However I had done fastboot oem unlock, and fastboot getvar unlocked returns yes

 

[LozHensel]

Problem solved! I installed a new launcher and deleted the default one entirely. It seems to be gone. Let's hope it stays that way!

Huge thanks to everyone - you've all be a huge help!