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Root Help! Something really borked, tough time recovering

L

Lord Vader

Android Enthusiast
Help! For some reason my phone is bricked. I downloaded 1.71 and flashed it. I got the message, "Installation Failed." My phone then went black. I couldn't get the screen to come back on. I tried for several minutes to do a hard reboot, but all I now have is a white screen with the green "htc" name on the front. It's stuck in that condition. I'm totally unable to reboot it or even get to recovery. I made a backup as always, but I can't even GET to that point.

What can I do to get this phone back to life? I'm puzzled to why this happened in the first place, too, especially since I didn't do anything differently from when I flashed Viper ROMs in the past.
 
Hold volume up and power.

I hit that condition one day last week in the car for no reason. The up/power trick cured it.

You're likely not really bricked but you will have to sort out how much went south with the install.

Suggest that you begin by checking the md5 checksum of the install zip, after you clear that stuck screen.
 
OK, I was FINALLY able to get to the bootloader screen. Now, before I do anything else and possibly f--k something up, should I go to recovery and flash my latest backup, the one I just did this morning, in order to go back to where I was?
 
Lord Vader said:
Let me try that. However, to make sure I do THAT correctly, what are the proper steps?
Click to expand...

Just open a command window to where you have adb. I imagine that you might have installed it during rooting or to install recovery, it pretty much comes with fastboot, but if I'm mistaken, here's your easy way to get it -

http://androidforums.com/faqs/443072-adb-guide-updated-2013-05-21-a.html#post5389081

Procedure is pretty easy -

Be sure that you're connected to a USB 2 port and not USB 3.

If you have ever run HTC Sync once, just the auto install and you killed it is OK, that got you your drivers - or if you used fastboot on that pc to install TWRP, you have the drivers. You want HTC drivers, not what MS wants to search for.

Then enter in the command window from where adb is -

adb reboot bootloader

If you need to get to that folder and you followed my Mini-SDK install tips you can get there by -

cd c:\sdk-tools

And if it's somewhere else, open up a file browser next to the command window, type cd and a space in the command window and then drag the folder containing adb from the explorer to the command window and it will complete the command for you, then just press return.

If this doesn't work, try this -

Volume up + power

The instant it responds, move your finger and hold the volume down button during the reboot. That's a long shot, depends on timing and luck so let's go for the adb trick first.
 
Please remind me, you're s-off or s-on and which carrier for sure?

The fact that you got it to cycle even partway is pretty encouraging and I want to start looking up your next steps.
 
EarlyMon said:
Just open a command window to where you have adb. I imagine that you might have installed it during rooting or to install recovery, it pretty much comes with fastboot, but if I'm mistaken, here's your easy way to get it -

http://androidforums.com/faqs/443072-adb-guide-updated-2013-05-21-a.html#post5389081

Procedure is pretty easy -

Be sure that you're connected to a USB 2 port and not USB 3.

If you have ever run HTC Sync once, just the auto install and you killed it is OK, that got you your drivers - or if you used fastboot on that pc to install TWRP, you have the drivers. You want HTC drivers, not what MS wants to search for.

Then enter in the command window from where adb is -

adb reboot bootloader

If you need to get to that folder and you followed my Mini-SDK install tips you can get there by -

cd c:\sdk-tools

And if it's somewhere else, open up a file browser next to the command window, type cd and a space in the command window and then drag the folder containing adb from the explorer to the command window and it will complete the command for you, then just press return.

If this doesn't work, try this -

Volume up + power

The instant it responds, move your finger and hold the volume down button during the reboot. That's a long shot, depends on timing and luck so let's go for the adb trick first.
Click to expand...

I hope you don't mind that I actually tried the second method first. You're right--timing was the issue. I rebooted to recovery, restored my nandroid backup that I made just prior to this happening, and rebooted. After a somewhat successful reboot, I keep getting all kinds of these messages:


  • Unfortunately the process com.android.settings has stopped
  • Unfortunately the process com.htc.bgp has stopped
  • Unfortunately Cloud has stopped
  • Unfortunately Google Play Store has stopped
  • Unfortunately K9 Mail has stopped
And at least a dozen more such error messages! It renders the phone unusable, because those nags keep popping up, even after I hit "OK" on the bottom of them.
 
Lord Vader said:
OK, I was FINALLY able to get to the bootloader screen. Now, before I do anything else and possibly f--k something up, should I go to recovery and flash my latest backup, the one I just did this morning, in order to go back to where I was?
Click to expand...

OK, excellent.

Rather than a glitch like I had, I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the boot.img part of flash was what got borked.

So - let's start with - are you s-off?

Because if you are, we know that the boot.img will get restored from a backup or flashed properly on the next try.

Nothing wrong with restoring the backup and then checking that zip file's md5 from the phone before re-installing.

For the record, to help others in the future, which way got you to the bootloader? Adb, button dance I mentioned or other?
 
Lord Vader said:
I hope you don't mind that I actually tried the second method first. You're right--timing was the issue. I rebooted to recovery, restored my nandroid backup that I made just prior to this happening, and rebooted. After a somewhat successful reboot, I keep getting all kinds of these messages:


  • Unfortunately the process com.android.settings has stopped
  • Unfortunately the process com.htc.bgp has stopped
  • Unfortunately Cloud has stopped
  • Unfortunately Google Play Store has stopped
  • Unfortunately K9 Mail has stopped
And at least a dozen more such error messages! It renders the phone unusable, because those nags keep popping up, even after I hit "OK" on the bottom of them.
Click to expand...

OK, cool, so we're way past brick and into very annoyed and useless.

It's good progress!

Please go to recovery, wipe, advanced, cache and Dalvik, back out to main TWRP screen, advanced, fix permissions, reboot system.
 
I keep not waiting, sorry for the confusion here, just wanted to check -

Was the backup and the install zip on your internal storage or your SD card?
 
EarlyMon said:
OK, cool, so we're way past brick and into very annoyed and useless.

It's good progress!

Please go to recovery, wipe, advanced, cache and Dalvik, back out to main TWRP screen, advanced, fix permissions, reboot system.
Click to expand...

OK, will do. For the record, I did do the wipe cache and Dalvik, but I didn't do the fix permissions part. Does that play a part? Just curious.
 
EarlyMon said:
I keep not waiting, sorry for the confusion here, just wanted to check -

Was the backup and the install zip on your internal storage or your SD card?
Click to expand...

You're not the only one who keeps not waiting. :p

The backup and install zips I always store on my external SD card, which, IIRC, is what is/was recommended on the Viper ROM instructions.

I'm presently waiting for one app to finish backing something up. As soon as that finishes, I'll reboot with the fix permissions recommendation.

-----------------------

OK, fixed permissions and am now rebooting. Please stand by... LOL
 
Dang it! No luck, EM. Same problem--incessant " the process NNNNN has stopped" error messages.

I'm going to go into recovery, wipe everything (except storage), then re-install my latest backup from this morning and see if THAT works.
 
Lord Vader said:
OK, will do. For the record, I did do the wipe cache and Dalvik, but I didn't do the fix permissions part. Does that play a part? Just curious.
Click to expand...

Absolutely.

The thing is that we don't know what causes a bad flash but we know that they can happen.

Even rarer, but it's definitely happened to me, is the bad restore - with a good nandroid backup and everything.

So, fix permissions gets in and straightens out ownership of the system files - a thing that you can't really see with conventional apps that are telling that permissions are ok.

Ownership/permissions is one of those things that can go wrong and it's out there on the rare scale - but the tool is there for a reason.

My experience, use it when your phone has been flaky.

All of this could have been caused by a stuck ram bit for all we know.

That error will persist across reboots and power cycles.

Let's assume that you have that going on and fix it.

While your phone is up, even if running like dirt, hold down the power button for a good 10 seconds. Wait to see the message and do what it says - continue holding power, or switch to power and volume - whatever.

That does a board-level reset and forces the silicon - all of it - to the right state.

And if all this doesn't help, then I would -

First, reinstall the restore again and still wipe cache, Dalvik and then do permissions.

On trouble, do the same with a previous backup.

If trouble or success, go and try the new install again, check the md5 value first.
 
Well, I tried to restore after wiping cache, Dalvik, system, and data. During the restore process, it restores the system, but when it comes to the data, it says, "Failed." If I try to continue past that, it warns me that I'm attempting to reboot without an OS. Of course, I went back and am now trying not today's nandroid backup but one of a few days ago.

Update: The restore of that backup was successful, but now it gets stuck in an endless reboot loop! Ugh!

EM, when I tried your above power button reset, it went to the bootloader screen.
 
OK.

If that fails,

Wipe, advanced, cache, Dalvik, system, boot and data (not media).

Then you'll have nothing at all installed.

Then try a restore.

If that wipe fails, go to TWRP advanced and set the option to "rm -f" instead of formatting.

Lather, rinse, repeat on the wiping and restore / install.
 
7-15-14 nandroid successfully restored, but it keeps looping to the white screen with green htc. It goes to that screen, stays there for a bit, goes black, goes back to white screen, etc. etc.

This is truly frustrating, to say the least.
 
Lord Vader said:
7-15-14 nandroid successfully restored, but it keeps looping to the white screen with green htc. It goes to that screen, stays there for a bit, goes black, goes back to white screen, etc. etc.

This is truly frustrating, to say the least.
Click to expand...

Hold volume down during a few of those cycles, see if that gets it.

Your nandroid isn't restoring the boot image properly.

Are they on your SD card?

It could be getting wonky.

Try an install zip from internal storage.

You can mount it and copy it in from TWRP advanced menu.

Now I really gotta split for a little while.

Keep it on the charger, don't let the frustration get you so you start doing things faster - that'll bite you every time, trust me, I've been there. ;)

So long as you can get to the bootloader, you can do whatever it takes to fix this -

RUU, reflash TWRP, etc etc, there's a lot to try yet.
 
Thanks. After a few of your tips, I was able to successfully reflash 1.70 and am now in the process of having to redo all my data and settings. Now THAT is truly annoying!

This is what I get for messing with this shiit (all I did was to go to 1.71--oh well). :p
 
Lord Vader said:
I was able to successfully reflash 1.70 and am now in the process of having to redo all my data and settings. Now THAT is truly annoying!

This is what I get for messing with this shiit (all I did was to go to 1.71--oh well). :p
Click to expand...

Well, look at the bright side -

First, thanks to s-off and using the tools you have, you didn't brick your phone.

It's all about Murphys Law and I'm sorry it was your turn today.

I've taken that turn quite a few times myself so I know how it feels.

Just don't let it turn you off to rooting, the phone or your rom.

Go ahead and do the updates again.
 
It doesn't turn me off. Admittedly, though not a newbie or novice to this, I don't do it as often as many of you--mainly due to time issues with my schedule.

I did re-download 1.71 full, along with 1.71 OTA and 1.80 OTA. I'm wondering if I should even bother with those, however, in light of today's events.
 
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