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Help Nexus 4 Stuck in Boot Animation

Is your Nexus 4 stuck in Boot?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 81.8%

  • No

    Votes: 2 18.2%
  • Total voters
    11
C

CJWilliams20

Newbie
Hi,

Yesterday I saw the notification for the 5.0 update, but I didn't click Update and Restart. A few minutes late I noticed that I wasn't getting any service, so I tried to restart my phone. When I turned it back on, it got stuck in the boot animation. I cancelled the boot, and tried to boot it from the BootLauncher and in Recovery mode. Nothing worked. I tried booting it up last night and its been doing so since. Over 10 hours! What do I do? What is happening?

Please can somone help me out? And in relatively simple terms? I'm not that great with the nuts and bolts of Android...

Thanks!
 
It sounds like you may have interrupted the update when you forced a reboot.

First, is you phone rooted? Did you have a custom recovery installed?
 
How long did you wait for your phone to boot? I've seen some people say it took upwards of twenty minutes for the update to install and the first boot to complete.
 
Out of curiosity, what does the boot animation look like?

Is it four colored balls bouncing around, or four circles rotating about and merging into the center?
 
That's the KitKat boot animation, so I don't think it even tried to install the Lollipop update.

You may want to try clearing your cache. You can do that from the stock recovery.

1) Power-on the phone while holding the Volume Down button, which should take you into the Bootloader.
2) Use your volume keys to scroll through the options until you see one which says Recovery. Press the Power button to make your selection.
3) You'll see a screen which will be blank except for a sick Android (lying on his back). Hold Volume Up and tap the Power button.
4) You should see a menu. Once again, use the volume keys to scroll down until you see the "Wipe cache partition" option. Press Power button to confirm.
5) Select the option to "Reboot system now" - again, using the power button to confirm.

Hopefully clearing your cache will be sufficient to get you rolling again. Let us know how it goes. :)
 
codesplice said:
That's the KitKat boot animation, so I don't think it even tried to install the Lollipop update.

You may want to try clearing your cache. You can do that from the stock recovery.

1) Power-on the phone while holding the Volume Down button, which should take you into the Bootloader.
2) Use your volume keys to scroll through the options until you see one which says Recovery. Press the Power button to make your selection.
3) You'll see a screen which will be blank except for a sick Android (lying on his back). Hold Volume Up and tap the Power button.
4) You should see a menu. Once again, use the volume keys to scroll down until you see the "Wipe cache partition" option. Press Power button to confirm.
5) Select the option to "Reboot system now" - again, using the power button to confirm.

Hopefully clearing your cache will be sufficient to get you rolling again. Let us know how it goes. :)
Click to expand...

Step 5) isn't working for me. When I go to Recovery, the sick Android has a thing on him saying No Command and a Red Warning Sign. It then doesn't respond when I press the Volume Up and tap the power button.

What do I do?
 
Hmm... Maybe it's Volume_Down + Power?

Sorry, don't have my phone on me at the moment to confirm :p
 
I don't remember what exactly causes the No Command message.

I did, however, grab my phone to verify how to get the recovery menu to show... Hold the power button and then press and release the Volume Up button. That *should* get the menu to appear.
 
codesplice said:
I don't remember what exactly causes the No Command message.

I did, however, grab my phone to verify how to get the recovery menu to show... Hold the power button and then press and release the Volume Up button. That *should* get the menu to appear.
Click to expand...

I did that and wiped the cache and rebooted, but its still in the booting animation. It's been over an hour, so obviously it hasn't done anything.
 
It kind of sounds like you may be running low on options. The best bet to get you up and operational would be to flash a factory image - either 4.4 or 5.0, your choice (just remember that if you don't flash 5.0 you'll start to get OTA update prompts again).

There are some useful instructions on that here and you can find the latest factory images here. Let us know if you need assistance with any of the steps in that process. :)
 
codesplice said:
It kind of sounds like you may be running low on options. The best bet to get you up and operational would be to flash a factory image - either 4.4 or 5.0, your choice (just remember that if you don't flash 5.0 you'll start to get OTA update prompts again).

There are some useful instructions on that here and you can find the latest factory images here. Let us know if you need assistance with any of the steps in that process. :)
Click to expand...

Ok thanks. Though if I flash a new image, will I lose all my data (i.e. contacts, media, apps, etc)?
 
CJWilliams20 said:
Ok thanks. Though if I flash a new image, will I lose all my data (i.e. contacts, media, apps, etc)?
Click to expand...

You'll lose anything that's not backed-up with Google. Contacts should be synced with Google (most likely) so they won't be an issue. Locally-stored media will be lost. Apps will be lost, but should be automatically re-installed when you set up your Google account after the flash...
 
I know it's lintel comfort now, if you didn't have those settings checked or files backed-up prior to the update, but that's one reason I keep apps data and media sync'ed to the cloud.
 
CJWilliams20 said:
If I factory reset (from the System Recovery thing), will that fix it?
Click to expand...

It's hard to say for sure, but it could be worth a shot. At the least, it won't put you any worse off than you are now.

The Factory Reset really only clears off the /data and /cache partitions (where your application data, files, and (surprisingly enough) cache reside). As long as the problem preventing you from booting exists on one of those file systems, the factory reset should get things working for you again.

If not, flashing the factory image rewrites every partition. It's pretty much 100% guaranteed to work.
 
CJWilliams20 said:
If I factory reset (from the System Recovery thing), will that fix it?
Click to expand...

Here's the thing, A factory reset removes the user account and restores system apps to default states. It doesn't reflash the system partition with a clean copy of the OS like a factory image would. If the OTA had mucked about with system files, which i would guess it did, a factory reset will get stuck at the boot animation as well. However, it's only a minute or two to try, so it's worth a shot. ;)

EDIT: My first ninja on XF :D
 
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