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Help HTC Incredible Boot Loop - trying to help friend

T

thesePretzels

Lurker
I understand this topic has been covered in depth on these boards, and I have done quite a bit of reading and tinkering.

Last night my friend gave me his Droid Incredible. It was never messed with, S-on, etc. When his kid was born a few months ago he just put the phone on the back burner and I'd like to get the phone back up and running for him. If this exact problem has been covered please provide links to those instances, but I have read many of the threads on this site and others, and the solutions have yet to yield results.

He said the problem started when he installed words with friends. It went into the boot loop where it shows 'HTC Incredible' and restarts, over and over again.

When he pulled the phone out of the drawer and showed me, it somehow had battery left, and booted into the OS for about 5 minutes before reverting to the Boot Loop. At that point I took it off of his hands and started trying things. Once I got home, I charged the phone and was able to get back into the OS for about 5 second intervals. This stopped after about 5 cycles and went back to the Boot Loop.

In the HBOOT menu

'INCREDIBLEC XC SHIP S-ON
HBOOT-0.92.0000
MICROP-0417
TOUCH PANEL-ATMEL224_16ab
Jul 23, 2010, 18:06:51'

I've tried to install several of the OS images from an SD card but after each flash, it will return to the boot loop. This afternoon I left the battery out for about an hour and when I just turned it on, the phone got to the red eye of the droid startup, made the annoying 'droid' sound and then froze. This happened 3 times, and then reverted back to the boot loop.

Please, if you have any suggestions or links for me, send them my way. I'd really like to get my friend's phone up and running again.

Thanks in advance, Josh
 
thesePretzels said:
I understand this topic has been covered in depth on these boards, and I have done quite a bit of reading and tinkering.

Last night my friend gave me his Droid Incredible. It was never messed with, S-on, etc. When his kid was born a few months ago he just put the phone on the back burner and I'd like to get the phone back up and running for him. If this exact problem has been covered please provide links to those instances, but I have read many of the threads on this site and others, and the solutions have yet to yield results.

He said the problem started when he installed words with friends. It went into the boot loop where it shows 'HTC Incredible' and restarts, over and over again.

When he pulled the phone out of the drawer and showed me, it somehow had battery left, and booted into the OS for about 5 minutes before reverting to the Boot Loop. At that point I took it off of his hands and started trying things. Once I got home, I charged the phone and was able to get back into the OS for about 5 second intervals. This stopped after about 5 cycles and went back to the Boot Loop.

In the HBOOT menu

'INCREDIBLEC XC SHIP S-ON
HBOOT-0.92.0000
MICROP-0417
TOUCH PANEL-ATMEL224_16ab
Jul 23, 2010, 18:06:51'

I've tried to install several of the OS images from an SD card but after each flash, it will return to the boot loop. This afternoon I left the battery out for about an hour and when I just turned it on, the phone got to the red eye of the droid startup, made the annoying 'droid' sound and then froze. This happened 3 times, and then reverted back to the boot loop.

Please, if you have any suggestions or links for me, send them my way. I'd really like to get my friend's phone up and running again.

Thanks in advance, Josh
Click to expand...


Sounds like a hardware issue, you could try rooting it and try out some roms and see if they function better, but it would be a long shot.

Although some people with the reboot have claimed its caused by loose battery terminals and sticking things on top/around the battery (small pieces of paper) to tighten the connection up has helped some people.
 
sdrawkcab25 said:
Sounds like a hardware issue, you could try rooting it and try out some roms and see if they function better, but it would be a long shot.

Although some people with the reboot have claimed its caused by loose battery terminals and sticking things on top/around the battery (small pieces of paper) to tighten the connection up has helped some people.
Click to expand...


Alrighty, thanks. In terms of the battery, it seems to be very snug. I did just try to hold the battery even more snug, but nothing changed. My friend said when he installed a game, the phone got really hot and then started to boot loop. Perhaps this melted a little connection somewhere...

In terms of rooting a phone that won't boot into the OS, what's the best way to do this? I don't really have too much time to read through tons of posts (it appears that Androids strength and its ultimate weakness is fragmentation and a million solutions to a millions problems). Is there a good post or site that spells out rooting a phone that is in this phone's state?

Thanks again
 
thesePretzels said:
Alrighty, thanks. In terms of the battery, it seems to be very snug. I did just try to hold the battery even more snug, but nothing changed. My friend said when he installed a game, the phone got really hot and then started to boot loop. Perhaps this melted a little connection somewhere...

In terms of rooting a phone that won't boot into the OS, what's the best way to do this? I don't really have too much time to read through tons of posts (it appears that Androids strength and its ultimate weakness is fragmentation and a million solutions to a millions problems). Is there a good post or site that spells out rooting a phone that is in this phone's state?

Thanks again
Click to expand...


You can root without being able to boot, but I forget the steps off the top of my head, I'll have to look them up. I'll get back to you later.
 
New to the forum here, but I've been lurking for some time now, lol anyways, I've been having the same problem.

Started when Verizon pushed that last update about 2 days ago (4.08.605.15 710RD). Now every morning at exactly 2:00am is starts in a reboot loop. It woke me up when it says "droid". I found out that if i remove the battery totally, and let it sit until morning (for me about 7:30am when i wake up). Once i plug the battery back in, its fine for the whole day until 2am again.

Maybe this offers some insight to the problem. I just need to get my phone to behave until i get my galaxy s3 from VZW - its pre-ordered lol =)

I didn't want to root, but maybe thats the best option at this point...
Are more than us 2 having this problem?
 
It is happening to me also. Just like you, it starts at 2am (2:05 to be exact) and lasts about an hour. Started when I installed the Verizon update. I also installed Flipboard App the same day so I just removed it to see if that was the culprit. Wonder who else is having this same "2am wake-up call"?
 
decided to do some testing... I booted into recovery and cleared the cache. then I manually set the time to 2:03am on Monday the 25th and waited 2 minutes...

Guess what? It rebooted at 2:05am. Then again at 2:08am. Then again at 2:12. Then again at 2:15. Then again at 2:19. Then again at 2:22. Then again at 2:26. Then again at 2:29. Then right away again still 2:29. Then again at 2:32 and it didn't say "DROID". Then again at 2:35. Then again at 2:38. Then again at 2:41. Then again at 2:44. Then again at 2:47. Then again at 2:51. Then again at 2:54. Then again at 2:57. Then again at 3:01. Then again at 3:04. Then again at 3:07. Then again at 3:10. Then again right away at 3:10. Then again at 3:14. Then again at 3:17. It just seems to keep going every 3 minutes. At this point I'm going to pull the battery and reset the time to auto. This is really strange...
 
I was woken 2 nights in a row with my phone cycling. the service rep contacted HTC. They are pushing a large software push which takes up to 3 hours. They have it scheduled to occur starting at 0200 hours in the morning to 0500 AM. I kept interrupting the cycle because it was waking me. Verizon says the cycling is part of the software upgrade and that I should turn the sound off and let it completely finish this time. It seems logical based upon my issues since Friday. Thaought others need to know about this. I asked Verizon why they did not send all of us a text link to a website explaining the process so we did not interrupt the update, they stated that would probably have been a good thing and did not understand why they did not do it.
 
Haven't heard of this in awhile but the 2am reboot has been around since the early days of this phones existence. Seems to be a problem mainly seen around software update time. Is the update failing to load or did it go through?
 
On Friday morning it failed - not enough memory. So I did a reboot into RECOVERY, wiped the cache, deleted some apps, set the date forward one day, went to settings-phone-check for updates. It came down again and installed completely. Everything seemed to be fine until 2am on Saturday morning. It continued to reboot until about 3am or so. Not sure cause I turned it down and fell asleep. On Saturday morning after using it a little it locked up. I pulled the battery. Everyting worked fine until 2am Sunday morning. I let it go for about an hour. Then started using it to see what software was running and so forth. I used it from about 2:50am until about 3:20 am and set it back down. It didn't reboot anymore. got up Sunday morning and used it a little and it locked up. Pulled the battery. Everything worked fine. Then I started my test this afternoon by setting the date/time ahead as noted above. So now, I charged it up, booted to recovery, wiped cache, set date/time forward to 2:02am. It starting rebooting again at 2:05am. So now I'm just letting it go to see how long it continues to reboot. Any ideas?
 
A further development. As I said above, it started rebooting again. So I left it and went to take a shower. I came back and I heard it reboot at about 4:05pm as I was typing the message above. Two reboots one after another. Then about 10 minutes went by and nothing. so I swiped it to unlock and it was back on current time though auto time was still off. So i just manually reset the time to Wednesday the 26th at 2:02am to see if it starts rebooting again.
 
No more reboots... If it locks up or starts again at 2am Monday morning I'll come back and post. Else maybe that post on Verizon board was right, just let it run it's 3 hour course and it will be fine... we will see...
 
I'm experiencing the same 2 am reboot thing on my HTC Incredible (Verizon) and it started after the 4.08.605.15 710RD update. I can't remember what night it was pushed to me...I'm thinking maybe Thursday night, 6/22, somewhere around midnight. It did the update and then around 2 am, it went into the reboot loop and woke me up with the "Droid" thing. I eventually pulled the battery. Over the next few days, I had a lot of freezing issues, but the reboot thing would only happen around 2 am. I've pulled the battery a lot over the past few days. I haven't kept track of all the problems and everything I did, but yesterday, Sunday, I finally had a trouble-free day until 2 am. From what I've been reading, it sounds like perhaps I just need to let this process work itself out. I'll report back after I see what happens tonight.

By the way, am I the only one having my battery drained by this process? I went to bed with it around 90 percent, woke up and it was at 50 or so. This is a brand new battery.
 
My battery is draining also. Went to bed at 11:30 with 100% and was at 48% by 7am with 3 1/2 hours of "Awake time". If it was rebooting this morning at 2am, it had no sound because it didn't wake me up, but with that kind of battery drain it was obviously doing something... I've also been pulling the battery after lock-ups the last few days.
 
NewPepper said:
My battery is draining also. Went to bed at 11:30 with 100% and was at 48% by 7am with 3 1/2 hours of "Awake time". If it was rebooting this morning at 2am, it had no sound because it didn't wake me up, but with that kind of battery drain it was obviously doing something... I've also been pulling the battery after lock-ups the last few days.
Click to expand...

So it sounds like yours must still be doing the 2 am reboot. How many times, if any, have you let it go through the process without pulling the battery? Last night was either the first or second time I've let it go. I'm hoping that will be it, but we'll see tonight. The phone has be working perfectly otherwise.
 
Well, this is still happening at 2am. I let it run the course 2 nights now. Through careful tracking of awake time and battery usage I can see that it ran for an hour this morning and it used 50% battery juice. WiFi (32%), Cell Stand-by (26%), and Phone Idle (24%) were the biggest uses followed by Display (13%). Also, if I turn the phone off now and turn it back on, then I'm pretty certain it will restart fine but once I let it sleep it will lock up and I will have to pull the battery again. This has been the same experience since last Saturday morning after I applied the update on Friday. I wish I had never installed it, the improvements it contained as listed on the Verizon support site were not anything I needed.
 
NewPepper said:
Well, this is still happening at 2am. I let it run the course 2 nights now. Through careful tracking of awake time and battery usage I can see that it ran for an hour this morning and it used 50% battery juice. WiFi (32%), Cell Stand-by (26%), and Phone Idle (24%) were the biggest uses followed by Display (13%). Also, if I turn the phone off now and turn it back on, then I'm pretty certain it will restart fine but once I let it sleep it will lock up and I will have to pull the battery again. This has been the same experience since last Saturday morning after I applied the update on Friday. I wish I had never installed it, the improvements it contained as listed on the Verizon support site were not anything I needed.
Click to expand...

Same deal here. God how I wish I would have denied that update! What a waste.

I've thought that perhaps plugging in my phone to charge was causing a problem (over the weekend I had it lock up on me as soon as I plugged it in), so I started swapping externally-charged batteries rather than plugging it in. My phone worked fine all day yesterday, but I got off work and put in a new battery around 5 pm, and upon restart, my phone locked up maybe the worst it ever has. I pulled the battery several times trying to get it to work. After a few hours, it finally resumed normal operation. This morning, looking at battery usage, it was clear it had done the 2 am reboot again. Display, wi-fi and cell standby usage numbers were similarly high.

I'm now back to charging via plugging it in and I think my next experiment will be to avoid restarting the phone at all. It seems to work fine when I leave it on. I will do that for a few days and track the 2 am reboots. I haven't called Verizon yet, as I want to gather more information, but I will probably do that near the end of the week if this is still occurring.

Thanks for your updates NewPepper. I will continue to check in and I hope you will as well. Anyone else experiencing this problem or who has solved it, please chime in!
 
I've also determined that I can trick the phone by manually setting the date 1 or 2 days ahead and setting the time for 2:00am. Then at 2:03am it starts the reboot loop, every 3 minutes. The only thing I haven't tried is a factory reset. I was hoping to aviod this but I'm left with few other options to try. I've booted to recovery and wiped cache, i've let it run it's course for 2 days, I've tricked it by setting the date/time and nothing seems to work. It definitely isn't something that "just has to run". It is a software problem. If i copy off photos and videos and do a FR, all market apps (Play Store and Amazon) will come back is that correct? Actually most all of them are on the SD card. I've got some text messages locked that I guess I need to save also. Anything else?
 
I actually did a factory reset on Sunday and that didn't help. If it's a problem with the software, it seems like there is no way to avoid it since the newest version is forced upon us on a factory reset.

But, yeah, if you do a factory reset, the apps that came with the phone will be there, including those you name. If I were you, I'd use SMS Backup+ to back up your text messages and the like. That's saved me a number of times. Aside from that, saving photos, videos, any other files you might have downloaded that you want to keep, I think you're all set.

I will probably try another factory reset if this goes on for another week or so, especially since I haven't fully restored everything since the last reset. But it seems like others have seen the problem go away on its own, so I think I will give it a little bit.

If calling Verizon and another factory reset doesn't work, I think my last resort will be to root the phone. I've never gotten into that stuff and have no idea what effect it would have, honestly, but if the phone is unusable (which mine isn't at this point), I guess it's worth a try. I'm not due for an upgrade until September so I need to coax another 3 months out of this thing. I don't think I will ever get another HTC phone.
 
Rooting and flashing a custom rom would almost certainly take care of it. I'm going to guess there's not much that can be done as a stock user. I think it's doing an update check or something similar every night and there appears to be something borked in the new update that confuses it during the process and causes the bootloop. In order to rectify this (if it can be done), I think you'd need to modify a system file which can only be done with root.

If you guys want to try and pin this down however, try this app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jtb.alogrec

It will make an ongoing log and save it to the sd card. Since your phones are rebooting, you'll need a special log app like this so the log doesn't get cleared when it reboots. Once you get the phone back under control, you can bring up the log since it's saved and see what was going on right at the time of the problem. This may give us the answer at least. Never know, maybe there is something that could be done if we know more.
 
Looks like we missed this one. I rooted both of our Incredible's before GB came out and we stayed with FroYo because it seemed the easiest corse of action at the time.

I'll probably upgrade to a *4G phone in the near future and the wife
 
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