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Help Uncommon bootloop (video)

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vwdetour

Lurker
G'day, My gnex has started into a bootloop and I can't seem to fix it, any suggestions would be great. Stock (as far as I know) and it started doing this after I tried to install a youtube downloader.


Any help someone can give is super helpful... I have already lost a year and a half's worth of pictures and contacts (Yea my own idiot fault for not backing up, ever)... but having to go and buy a new phone is a kick in the nuts I'm not quite prepared for yet.

Thanks!
 
You were able to boot to recovery? And a factory reset from recovery didn't fix it? If it was me, I'd be looking for a warranty replacement since its less than a year old.
 
I watched the entire vid.... unfortunately I think you'll need to return that phone and get a new one. :(
 
I think you're going to be in good shape. Your phone is rooted and has Clockwork recovery installed. I couldn't see exactly what you did while in recovery but I'm assuming it was a factory reset and perhaps a cache wipe? So you have options. First thing I would try is in addition to the wipes you are doing already, go into the advanced menu and wipe dalvik cache also and see if that helps upon reboot. If that fails, there are more down and dirty options. You can try fastboot flashing the stock system image to go back to full stock if you want to go that route. You will then be unrooted but on fresh stock. You need the sdk installed to perform this action and instructs can be found here:
http://androidforums.com/3736597-post7.html

Although the files for Jellybean are now available so you can substitute them if you wish in place of the 4.0.4 mentioned in the above thread. Get the newest image here ("toro" 4.1.1 if verizon or "maguro" 4.1.2 if international Gnexus):
https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images

The other option is to adb push a rom (once again need the sdk) to the phone's sdcard partition while in recovery. The instructs for that can be found here:
http://androidforums.com/verizon-galaxy-nexus-all-things-root/602128-how-adb-push-rom-sdcard.html

Also, If you let us know what version of Gnex you have, vzw, international or other, we can move this thread to the proper root forum since I do believe this is turning into a root issue now.
 
Are you sure? In the vid when he's at the fastboot mode screen, the bottom line isn't red, meaning it's not unlocked. The bottom line will be in red if the device is unlocked.

Unless I'm missing something?
 
Hmm, well maybe it got relocked idk. But if you look at 1:53, I'm seeing the clockwork tophat. And then when making a selection at 2:00, he's having to scroll down through a bunch of no's to get to the confirmation to go ahead with the wipe. Again, a function of clockwork.
 
Aren't all those No's with the confirmation in the middle part of the stock recovery? It's been awhile, but I could swear the first time I saw it I remember thinking what a great idea it was for CWM to take the idea from stock.

I could be wrong and way off base, but it's nice to have someone else to kick this around with!

Edit: I missed the bit about the Tophat.. you are right!!
 
I purchased this phone used and have done nothing with it since... it must have been unlocked by the previous owner, but I had not toyed around with the phone because I was pleased with how it worked.

Yes that is a clockwork tophat. In the video I deleted cache, dalvik cache and then factory reset in that order.
 
vwdetour said:
I purchased this phone used and have done nothing with it since... it must have been unlocked by the previous owner, but I had not toyed around with the phone because I was pleased with how it worked.

Yes that is a clockwork tophat. In the video I deleted cache, dalvik cache and then factory reset in that order.
Click to expand...

Any chance there is either a nandroid backup you could return to OR a rom on the sdcard partition that you could flash? Goes without saying you wouldn't want to use a nandroid from a previous user if they inadvertantly left one there but you could reflash a rom if you or they left one there.

If not, I believe you will need the SDK to fix this. If you find yourself at this point, and if you are a windows user, you can download this:
http://db.tt/l8MdTUV9

...and extract the contents to the root of your C drive. We would then need to also get you the usb drivers for the PC which can be found in the root forum all things root sticky. I would recommend trying the naked driver listed there as your first option.
 
Oh! If he factory reset from recovery, he wiped the current rom. There's no OS for the phone to boot into. Wouldn't he just need to flash another rom?

Could he not simply use the Galaxy Nexus Root Toolkit to unlock and flash another rom?
 
Well, there is still an OS because the rom is still there. Wiping data in clockwork wipes user data. So it sets it back to day 1 of when the rom was originally installed, or if it was still stock, it should theoretically set things back to stock minus apps and their data.

But something is still not working so I'm hoping either things aren't getting wiped altogether or there's some sort of unknown glitch that's standing in the way and that flashing a different rom or fastboot flashing stock might take care of it.

The final and ever dreaded possibility is that there's a hardware issue causing the contant reboots and it won't matter what OS/Rom he's on, it's unfixable. I'm hoping that's not the case but even if it is, we really can't rule it out without trying. OP, if you want to try any of these things, we need to know if you're running windows and we also need to know if you own a GSM/International nexus or a Verizon nexus.
 
I am running Linux Ubuntu and I have no idea what the phone is, I'm from Canada and it was running on Koodo (unlocked)

Is there any way to find out exactly what it is?
 
When I get to this step:

Now a few more commands:
cd
sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-android.rules

It opens up text editor to a blank page and tells me that the file does not exist, and I can't save the file with the next step in it.
 
vwdetour said:
When I get to this step:

Now a few more commands:
cd
sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-android.rules

It opens up text editor to a blank page and tells me that the file does not exist, and I can't save the file with the next step in it.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Well maybe just browse etc/udev/rules.d and see if there is any file there that pertains to android.rules. Perhaps yours named slightly different for whatever reason so it's not recognizing the command.

Or in terminal:

cd /etc/udev/rules.d/
ls -l

...to get a list of subs
 
Hey sorry for the lack of update... I got discouraged and gave up; took another stab tonight and got the ultility up and running, went to flash stock google image and it gives me this error in under 5 seconds:

ERROR: Google Factory Image is Corrupted. Erasing...
Erased. Please try again later.

Still bootlooping.
 
iowabowtech said:
Interesting. Well maybe just browse etc/udev/rules.d and see if there is any file there that pertains to android.rules. Perhaps yours named slightly different for whatever reason so it's not recognizing the command.

Or in terminal:

cd /etc/udev/rules.d/
ls -l

...to get a list of subs
Click to expand...

Did you try the above when you ran into the problem with the sdk install? Or just search for rules.d in general. Maybe it's in a different location depending on your build. I don't know enough about that xda utility to offer advice there, I was just hoping it might be an easy out option. Since it's not working, I would prefer that you get the sdk set up on your linux box so we can use fastboot to install a factory image.

I'm also going to phone a friend who is very astute in the ways of both linux and android for a second opinion.
 
vwdetour,

First off, your YouTube video was VERY helpful! :) [OMG, I wish everyone could do that!--you saved us about a thousand questions and hours of time ;)].

Secondly (no real order to my thoughts here), I'm hoping that your error here:

ERROR: Google Factory Image is Corrupted. Erasing...
Erased. Please try again later.
Click to expand...

is simply a matter of having and using a partially downloaded (i.e., corrupted factory image). You need to be sure to double-check the MD5 sum (or SHA1 sum) that's listed on the factory downloads page with what you actually download to your PC (I think the proper command is openssl md5 <filename> or openssl sha1 <filename> depending on which you are comparing).

If the checksums validate, then I'm afraid/guessing that you might indeed have a hardware issue (probably with your internal memory).

Thirdly, the fact that you are past the boot animation (several times) and actually see an interaction/setup screen tells me that you are at or nearing the point where the various hardware devices are being initialized and checked (i.e., the "bump" you feel and hear is the haptic feedback hardware being triggered (probably two-fold: as a test and an indicator). I wonder if you're getting a true hardware issue/failure that makes the kernel panic, etc.

Fourth, I'm also guessing that the "rules.d" stuff you guys are talking about have to do with setting-up the USB access from/for Linux? I never had to mess with any of that on my 10.04 setup...just invoked the adb and fastboot commands via sudo first and all worked fine.

~ ~ ~

If this were me, I'd start with a fresh factory install (from the factory images)--but bounce it off of us first before you start (try to get a clean/verified factory image downloaded first).

Failing that, since seem like a pretty savvy user (:)), we should be able to install and use the kernel and/or logcat tracing boot animation from another thread we worked on (gotta go dig that out). That might allow us to see what's going on with your device deep in it's bowels.

I'll let you guys digest that while I dig-up some other things...

Cheers!
 
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