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Root Think I'm bricked... please help!!

T

tbone1234

Lurker
Hi guys,

I think I'm screwed... So here's the story. I originally had froyo installed with ROM manager, clockwork, etc. (a friend did it for me, I don't understand any of it). My droid kept telling me to upgrade to Froyo 2.0.something, so I did it and like a dummy I cleared all data before I backed it up. Oh well.

So yesterday I tried installing gingerbread, which seems to work. Unforutnately, I'm not able to mount my droid at all to my computer. It doesn't recognize it. I've been through a few threads but I'm wondering if this has anything to do with gingerbread? Is there a way I can revert back to froyo? The cord is fine since it always mounted it before i screwed up the phone.

Can anyone help please??
 
You haven't bricked your phone. A bricked phone doesn't turn on, and won't do anything.

You need to run a stock RUU to go back to stock. Then you can again root and install another rom. And FYI, if you don't know what you are doing, DON'T DO IT. If you need help doing something, spend a few hours on here reading, especially in the subforum for your phone. THEN, if you have questions, ask. But don't just do things without knowing how to properly do them, or you really could brick your phone.
 
I suggest you put this in your phone's section rather than the Android Lounge.
was it a CyanogenMod you installed for Gingerbread? I should note that most of these are really unstable. What you have is called a USB brick I think, might be to do with Gingerbread, don't know. Anyway do a search on XDA for USB brick in your phone's section, you're bound to find something
 
tbone1234 - Welcome to the forums, you've come to the right place.

Tell me your phone model (Droid - Droid X - Droid Incredible - you know, whatever), we'll get you hitched over to the right device forum automagically.
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

Yeah I don't plan on rooting my phone anytime soon (my friend did it for me). I plan to read a lot on these forums though, as suggested.

I have the original droid. I read that gingerbread could be installed on it, so that's what I did. I don't have any of the google apps or the market... and I guess my USB is bricked as Adi pointed out (fortunately not my phone!).

Question... if I run RUU (not sure what that is, but I'll look it up), can I reinstall froyo or gingerbread again without it being rooted?

As you can tell, I'm going to avoid rooting stuff until later, haha. I just want to get my phone back to normal before school starts (monday!)
 
Quick follow up question. If I'm aiming to get back to stock (2.0.1), would RSD lite still work even if I'm not able to mount my phone?

I found a good tutorial link on how to downgrade from 2.1 to 2.0.1 using RSD lite, but I'm not sure if my above issue with 2.3 of my droid not being able to recognize the USB will be an issue. Is this a wise thing to do?
 
Your phone is still rooted. There is no way you could have installed Gingerbread otherwise. The only Gingerbread releases for the A855 are custom roms.

For us to be able to help you, please read carefully the questions that have been asked in this thread and answer them in as much detail as you can. Example, "I read that gingerbread could be installed on it, so that's what I did" does not tell us EXACTLY what version of Gingerbread nor EXACTLY how you did it; what was the name of the file, through rom manager or not, etc. I'm not trying to be a snoot, but this stuff can be all in the details and if you leave them out, we can't be of any help. It _sounds_ like you installed a Cyanogenmod Gingerbread somehow without the gapps portion, that is why you have no market, but we NEED to know for sure.

Failing all that, there is a newer .sbf file that you can use with RSD Lite 4.6 to return your phone to an absolute unrooted stock state. I call it the last resort, though, guide at my site.
 
Thanks for the reply Teddy,

My apologies for not being more specific. I'm not familiar with the technical terms, so bare with me.

It started when I saw a golden star looking icon at the top of my droid which signified a Froyo 2.0.0 update (which is weird since I was running froyo 2.1 I believe). In a stupid effort to make it go away, I went ahead and selected the update. It asked if I wanted to clear cache, and I said yes. It asked if I wanted to install google apps, and I selected "no".

It then restarted, went to the black install screen, and installed.. then restarted again. Once it got to the main screen, I noticed all my files were wiped and I had no market/google apps (which was a mistake in selecting not to install it). I was frustrated, so in an attempt to make a negative into a "positive experience", I downloaded Gingerbread (called gingerbread_sholes-ota-eng.nickeubanks.zip) and loaded it onto my SD card. I then restarted using the power button + 'x' button, went to wipe data/factory reset, then installed the gingerbread .zip file by going to "install zip from sdcard".

I hope this helps diagnose my issue. Thanks so much for everyones help.
 
I guess it's a safe bet that you DIDN'T make a nandroid backup before doing this, so you have nothing to fall back on.

If I woke up in YOUR shoes, I would take the SDcard out of the Droid, put it in the PC using an adapter, and move another ROM to it (either Froyo or another Gingerbread ROM in which USB works, like UD3). Then reinsert the SD card, go into recovery using x+power, wipe data/cache and install the new ROM.

UD2.5 is a great Froyo ROM and everything works. UD3 is a great Gingerbread Beta. Not EVERYTHING works... yet. But you won't be close to an unusable device.

ALWAYS make a backup of your phone's known good state before doing anything fancy to it. :)
 
Listen to The_Chief.
That would be the easiest thing to try at this point.
Once you get a working phone, everyone can point you into the right direction from there.
 
Thanks Chief!

Hm.. would you happen to have a reliable link to the UD3 gingerbread? And does this also have google apps?

Would ya'll happen to know anything about this gingerbread ROM? Here's the site: Gingerbread Roms and Addons by Jeffv2, hosted by DesiTech Electronics

If not, I'll definitely go with the UD3.

****UPDATE: I downloaded the UD3 gingerbread at this site: http://www.theultimatedroid.com/forum/index.php?/files/file/69-the-ultimate-droid-300-beta/

I went into recovery (power+x), wiped cache/data, then tried to install the ROM from the SD card. It came up with this error:

assert failed: getprop("ro.product.device

is it because this ROM isn't support by droid 1?
 
Update again... I think I downloaded the gingerbread version for HTC... I'm going to try again with the correct droid model. Lol.
 
OK, I'm working up a good reply. Give me some time as I will edit this as I go. Whatever you do tbone, just wait for a bit as I would NOT suggest you continue with a Gingerbread rom. . . .

I am not a fan of taking the sdcard in and out of the phone, so with that said I think you should be able to boot manually into recovery (and you have CWRecovery, btw) and then mount the sdcard for storage that way. CWRecovery has green writing on a black background. Once you are booted into CWRecovery, using the volume down button go to the partitions menu then select it by using the camera button. Then from there, go to the "mount /sdcard" and you _might_ find that you can now access your sdcard.

And now I am seeing everything else you are doing. You said that your friend rooted your phone for you, that tells me that you should NOT try to proceed on your own without asking questions first.

What happened at the outset was a rom manager prompt telling you to update, however you didn't know to select the "install google apps" and from there you have gone downhill by installing the Gingerbread rom you did as it plainly said that usb storage wasn't working in the thread where you _might_ have found it, and everything you do from now on you really are shooting into the dark.

So at the end of this day, JUST STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE! DO NOT PROCEED ON YOUR OWN!
 
Good news everyone! I managed to get the gingerbread beta version successfully installed, and I must say it's really exciting!! I hope to not run into any problems, but if I do I know there's great help at these forums!

And I gotta say... I'm kinda glad all this mess happened because I've learned so much about the droid. I can't thank ya'll enough for your help!!

:)

Update: Teddy I just saw your reply. I hope I don't catch you too late to stop working so hard on helping me anymore. I don't want you to waist your time!!! But thank you for all your help man, really appreciate it. Oh, and your site is amazing. I'm gonna spend some time reading up on it. :D
 
Well, we're all glad that you seem to have gotten your phone back into a working state. And since your friend rooted your phone for you, it's all the better that you're learning more and more about your phone. Unfortunately I fear that you _might_ have problems making a Gingerbread rom into a daily driver for your A855 phone at this time, but we'll see.

Back to your friend rooting your phone for you; I've been there where your 'friend' says "I rooted a phone for my friend and now it's . . . ." to which I reply, "Friends don't let friends root their friend's phones", lol.

And thanks for the kudos about my site, but at this time it has nothing to do with gingerbread. I usually wait a bit until I(/we) can find firm solutions to ALL problems afterwards.

That said , this ole man is goin' to bed; pick 'er up in the morrow.

good luck
 
Hmm... why would you say Gingerbread would be a problem? From what I can tell thus far, the only issue is the backlighting and a couple programs are force closing. I guess this is a problem... lol. But for the most part it runs pretty well.

I'm just happy I've learned some good stuff from here. I'm just gonna read your site to learn stuff; you seem to break things down well.

I'll let ya'll know if I stumble upon anything.

Thanks again!
 
I think what teddyearp is getting at is UD3 Gingerbread is still in beta and there are bound to be multiple issues (some large and some small) that are going to pop up. Remember, beta basically means a work in progress. Use it at your own risk. It might work today and crater next week.

The most prudent course of action, at this point, for someone just learning, might be to go with a stable ROM for now and wait a bit for the devs to iron out all of the issues with UD3 or some other gingerbread ROM.

But it's your phone...
 
Now that your phone is usable again, I HIGHLY recommend you make a backup. This can be done in ROM Manager (select Back Up Current ROM) or in Recovery under Nandroid. It'll take about 5 minutes, and it's time well invested: if you get hung up again, you can always restore to your last known good state and keep rockin' as if nothing ever happened.

Always wipe data/cache when switching ROMs, unless you're upgrading an existing ROM. Even then, it's a good idea to backup and wipe under some circumstances (like going from Froyo to Gingerbread).

Glad you got it working again. :)
 
The_Chief said:
Now that your phone is usable again, I HIGHLY recommend you make a backup. This can be done in ROM Manager (select Back Up Current ROM) or in Recovery under Nandroid. It'll take about 5 minutes, and it's time well invested: if you get hung up again, you can always restore to your last known good state and keep rockin' as if nothing ever happened.

Always wipe data/cache when switching ROMs, unless you're upgrading an existing ROM. Even then, it's a good idea to backup and wipe under some circumstances (like going from Froyo to Gingerbread).

Glad you got it working again. :)
Click to expand...
+1 ^^^ this.
 
ok so yes my phone is bricked! i went to download the cynaogen and it starts up but it just says android and keeps blinking nothing else! wth do i do!!
 
Can you access recovery through x+power? Pull the battery, wait 10 seconds and put the battery back in, hold down the "x" key and power it up. Should be able to access recovery that way.
 
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