Help Nexus 7 (2012) not booting after failed factory image installation

[Erg Raider]

Hi all,
at some point my Nexus 7 (2012) tablet crashed and after that started boot looping (not restarting, just dancing dots for 10h++). So I booted into recovery mode, did cache wipe and factory reset, but nothing changed, boot looping for hours was the only thing it did. So I followed a guide to flash a factory image from the PC which failed presumably because of a wrong factory image (yes I did research before, but finally picked the wrong one).

Now after that it stays completely dead and does not boot into recovery mode or anything. So my question:
Is there a chance to reactivate it with any trick?
I would appreciate any tip!

To make things clear:
- It is NOT a battery problem, the battery is fine and has always been until the failed flash.
- All buttons are dead, neither power, power + volume down, power for 50sec, nor anything like that brings back a glimpse of life.
- The PC / Android Development Tools / etc. do not recognize it any more.
- Windows 7 _sometimes_ reacts to plugging in the USB by searching for drivers but then fails. (Before the problem, the Android drivers were working perfectly fine)


The applied installation logs:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C:\Android-adk\platform-tools>fastboot -w update image-nakasig-jdq39.zip
archive does not contain 'boot.sig'
archive does not contain 'recovery.sig'
archive does not contain 'system.sig'
archive does not contain 'vendor.img'
Creating filesystem with parameters:
Size: 30063722496
Block size: 4096
Blocks per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 8192
Inode size: 256
Journal blocks: 32768
Label:
Blocks: 7339776
Block groups: 224
Reserved block group size: 1024
Created filesystem with 11/1835008 inodes and 159204/7339776 blocks
Creating filesystem with parameters:
Size: 464519168
Block size: 4096
Blocks per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 7088
Inode size: 256
Journal blocks: 1772
Label:
Blocks: 113408
Block groups: 4
Reserved block group size: 31
Created filesystem with 11/28352 inodes and 3654/113408 blocks
--------------------------------------------
Bootloader Version...: 4.18
Baseband Version.....: 1231_0.18.0_0409
Serial Number........: 015d3b65fc2fee12
--------------------------------------------
checking product...
OKAY [ 0.030s]
checking version-bootloader...
OKAY [ 0.017s]
checking version-baseband...
FAILED

Device version-baseband is '1231_0.18.0_0409'.
Update requires '1231_0.17.0_1205'.

finished. total time: 0.179s
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[jhawkkw]

I assume since based on the log that nothing was actually flashed since it appears to fail on the initial check. It looks like you were flashing the 4.2.2 image file for the mobile data nexus 7 (2012). Is that the version you have (just want to confirm because you mentioned using the wrong image).

 

[Erg Raider]

I'm not completely sure. On the Google page (https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images) I couldn't find one that worked (tried 2 before that which did nothing), since none of them was labeled "tilapia". The package is

nakasig-jdq39-factory-0798439d.tgz

which I found on another website mentioning the "tilapia". The only info file in that package says:

require board=tilapia
require version-bootloader=4.18
require version-baseband=1231_0.17.0_1205

I'm assuming a "wrong image", because of the FAILED message and the wrong "version-baseband". Before that, I thought I had the correct one for Nexus 7 Wifi

 

[jhawkkw]

Nexus devices tend to have 2 codenames. Tilapia/nakasig is the mobile data Nexus 7, while Grouper/nakasi is the Wifi Model. Since the log output includes your current baseband version, I would assume it's the mobile data version that you have. It also appears that the baseband version you had was newer than the one in the image, and it failed because it didn't know how to handle it. To check the battery, does vol up+power to get into apx mode still work?

 

[Erg Raider]

It also appears that the baseband version you had was newer than the one in the image, and it failed because it didn't know how to handle it.

Yes, that's what one reads from the command line output.

To check the battery, does vol up+power to get into apx mode still work?

No, as I have written, buttons do nothing, it is completely black, no response at all. But we can be quite sure that its not a battery problem. Battery was full before, it was connected to the PC USB and right after the failed flash it didnt react anymore.

 

[jhawkkw]

No, as I have written, buttons do nothing, it is completely black, no response at all. But we can be quite sure that its not a battery problem. Battery was full before, it was connected to the PC USB and right after the failed flash it didnt react anymore.

You didn't mentioned vol up + power in your combinations that you tried, which is why I had to ask. apx mode is for nvflash and can be accessed even if the bootloader/fastboot cannot be reached. If apx mode can't be reached, then the only possibility is hardware failure of some sort.

 

[Erg Raider]

Sorry, I'm not familiar with apx mode, but I can say for sure that also vol up + power doesn't do anything. The point is, that it is very strange that my failed flash attempt created a hardware failure exactly 3 seconds after it was applied. However, it is possible, that a hardware failure caused the initial boot loop and together with the failed installation the hardware stops working at all.

Anyway, thank you for thinking about my problem! I created this thread with the (little) hope that there is some uncommon trick like opening the device and pressing some hardware-reset-button - anything which I couldn't find by searching the web.