Root Stuck in a boot loop, any way to get my data back?

[Kalnor]

Hi.

I was using my Desire as usual last night and my battery died. As soon as I realised it was dead I switched the battery with a fully charged one (always carry 2 spares in my wallet.) Turned it on and it started fine until it got to the boot screen (HTC Quietly Brilliant.) The boot screen appeared, animated, froze and looped infinitely (kept it on for 90 minutes to see if it would eventually load up.)

I tried getting into the safe mode by turning off the phone, holding menu and turning it back on while still holding the menu button. Result same as above (even though the phone vibrated after a short while of holding the keys down.)

The phone has S-Off and runs on Reflex S (can't mind which version, it has Sense 3.0 if that helps) as I rooted it about a year ago. Also running Revolutionary for Recovery mode.

Worked fine until that moment.

My question is, before I clear the storage and re-flash the ROM is there anyway I can get my messages and contacts back of my phone (don't care about the rest.)

Thank you very much for your help and hope for a quick answer (stuck with a Nokia 1800 at the minute!!!)

 

[Hadron]

It depends why it's doing this. Just in case it's the ROM I'd try reflashing without wiping before trying a wipe. Also do you sync contacts with Google? If so that's one thing you don't have to worry about.

When did you last back up (Ti or nandroid)? I'm assuming that you can still get into recovery.

You might be able to grap copies of the databases using adb (with the phone in recovery mode, for example). So something like

adb pull /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/contacts2.db contacts2.db

would copy the contacts database (which on my phone is at that address) to your computer. Please note that I've not tried this, beyond using root explorer to find the address of the contacts db on my phone, but there's a chance. Then if you had the same ROM installed you might be able to just copy it back. No promises, but if it comes to a wipe then you've nothing to lose by trying this first.

messages and call logs seem to be stored in /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db and telephony.db

So with any luck if you copied those to your computer, did a wipe, then copied them back, you would still have the contacts and messages. But don't change ROMs, as there is no guarantee that they would be compatible with a different ROM.

If you can't get Android running without a wipe and don't have a recent backup that's my best guess at how to do it.

 

[Kalnor]

Yeah I can still get into the recovery mode but I never set up adb before. Do you have any good articles which explain what I need to get it up and running.

I haven't really synced my contacts in a while and haven't done backups either (had TitaniumBackup but never used it.)

Thanks

 

[Hadron]

Hang on, I'm going to move the thread to the root forum. Then if you look in the sticky post "All Things Root Guide" there is a "adb and fastboot faq", which includes instructions for setting up adb on your computer (Windows). Once that's set up it should be a matter of connecting the phone (in recovery mode) via usb then running the commands above via the command line. You may have to mount the /data partition first, in which case I think the command is

adb shell mount /data

If your contacts were stored as google contacts they would sync to your gmail account automatically. To check, log in to GMail via a browser, and where there is the word "GMail" in the corner (red, on the left, for me) with a little down arrow next to it, click on that, select "Contacts", then see whether your phone contacts are visible (I can see mine under "Other Contacts").

 

[Kalnor]

Okay that was simple enough. Got the three databases copied. I take it that if I want them copied back I use the same command but use push instead of pull and specify the file name before the directory on the phone yeah?

Something like adb push contacts2.db /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/

Thanks a lot!!! You really saved my life here! :]

 

[Hadron]

Well I hope it works!

But yeah, you could adb push them back (to exactly the folders you copied them from), or just copy them to your sd card and then use ES or Root Explorer to copy them into place - the beauty of being S-Off is that you can do that type of thing

 

[Kalnor]

Used SQLiteman to check if the databases hold correct data and they do!!! Will reflash the ROM and push the databack and BACKUP lol

Thanks a lot!!!