Soft brick - stuck at boot logo; need suggestions - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey all,
I've got a N7105 (Galaxy Note II LTE) running CM12.1 and TWRP which I was planning to change shortly as it's old and the USB port has issues (charges but doesn't pass data; luckily it has a microsd slot). As it happens, the other day I left it discharge fully and turning it back on left it stuck at Samsung logo (not boot animation, the splash screen before it) forever.
I am: not a noob, I've rooted and flashed plenty of devices before.
I tried: removing battery for a while, charging fully, removing microsd and sim, clearing Cache and Dalvik. Nothing works.
I can: get into ODIN mode (but it's useless as USB data is not working); get into TWRP recovery; explore the Data partition in TWRP
I cannot: mount the System partition in TWRP, not even manually. It just does not let me select it, and gives an error whenever it needs to access it (e.g. if I try to backup it is says Error: unable to mount System)
I want: if possible to solve the issue without formatting Data. I had a TB backup but kinda old, so I got a Nandroid of Data and Boot out from TWRP and I suppose I could then recover stuff extracting from Nandroid through TB, but I've never done it and would rather be able to get a fresh TB backup and move on from there.
A few questions I have: any idea on why I am not able to mount System in TWRP? Could it help to reflash Boot or System, and if so how do I go to do that considering what I have is the whole CM rom package? (I remember being able to fastboot flash single partitions on Nexus devices but that's because the stock rom comes packaged in separate images).
Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Lazer Bear said:
Hey all,
I've got a N7105 (Galaxy Note II LTE) running CM12.1 and TWRP which I was planning to change shortly as it's old and the USB port has issues (charges but doesn't pass data; luckily it has a microsd slot). As it happens, the other day I left it discharge fully and turning it back on left it stuck at Samsung logo (not boot animation, the splash screen before it) forever.
I am: not a noob, I've rooted and flashed plenty of devices before.
I tried: removing battery for a while, charging fully, removing microsd and sim, clearing Cache and Dalvik. Nothing works.
I can: get into ODIN mode (but it's useless as USB data is not working); get into TWRP recovery; explore the Data partition in TWRP
I cannot: mount the System partition in TWRP, not even manually. It just does not let me select it, and gives an error whenever it needs to access it (e.g. if I try to backup it is says Error: unable to mount System)
I want: if possible to solve the issue without formatting Data. I had a TB backup but kinda old, so I got a Nandroid of Data and Boot out from TWRP and I suppose I could then recover stuff extracting from Nandroid through TB, but I've never done it and would rather be able to get a fresh TB backup and move on from there.
A few questions I have: any idea on why I am not able to mount System in TWRP? Could it help to reflash Boot or System, and if so how do I go to do that considering what I have is the whole CM rom package? (I remember being able to fastboot flash single partitions on Nexus devices but that's because the stock rom comes packaged in separate images).
Any input would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The note 2 has this issue that makes it unable to be recognized by PC, so this isn't your phone problem, the only way to solve it is replacing the usb socket in your phone, anyway i can recommend dirty flashing your rom first, just flash the rom in recovery and wipe cache and Dalvik cache only then reboot.
If that didn't work, I'm afraid you might have to...... clear data ?

MigoMujahid said:
The note 2 has this issue that makes it unable to be recognized by PC, so this isn't your phone problem, the only way to solve it is replacing the usb socket in your phone, anyway i can recommend dirty flashing your rom first, just flash the rom in recovery and wipe cache and Dalvik cache only then reboot.
If that didn't work, I'm afraid you might have to...... clear data
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the input, I was thinking something along those lines but I wasn't totally sure, I always avoided dirty flashing as I heard of people having issues. Happily, it worked! Weirdest think I saw in a while, it gave me a bunch of errors with System partition (unable to mount, unmount, find), then it gave a "proceeding to patch system partition unconditionally", then it completed. The whole thing took less than 20secs so I do not think it even actually flashed the ROM. Now I am just getting some Play Services error, likely need to reinstall gapps, but phone boots just fine!

Related

[Q] Cant seem to factory/data reset -remove encryption

I am a noob looking to try out the touchwiz rom,
My 10.1 is encrypted and trying to remove the encryption using the menu option in settings- factory data reset - it just reboots like nothing happened and asks for the password (I wanted to turn off/get rid of the encryption). I get a box open and android icon for a brief moment at reboot.
Using ClockworkMod Recovery v4.0.0.4 the wipe/factory reset option selected and it errors on the mounting /data. Can't mount or format /data too.
This 10.1 retail has a locked bootloader and is rooted.
Anybody? So far not bricked, ,
got it
I used odin and followed instructions here- http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1119492
I lost clockworkmod and it did not recognize my password on reboot, but it did let me wipe everything.
You might have to wipe user data to get rid of the encryption. But you will loose all ur data
<bump>
I'm having the same trouble - and no amount of flashing various stock or CWM recovery gets me to a point where I can actually format / remove the encrypted partition.
The device had been rooted - and then encrypted - and it wasn't until I attempted to reboot into recovery with CWM (hoping to perform a factory reset) that I got into a boot loop.
Days, and countless flashing later - I'm no closer. The one thing I find interesting: when I flash particular (CWM) recovery / images, and reboot - I actually get the 'pre-boot authentication' page, which still accepts my encryption passphrase. It's after this point - that I'm just staring at a black screen.
Perhaps nvflash might be the right tool for the job - so off to learn about THAT. Every day, a new adventure - and another twist down the rabbit hole.
Thanks in advance to anyone with some insight / links / tips to share.
encryption owns me
SnoWake4Me said:
<bump>
I'm having the same trouble - and no amount of flashing various stock or CWM recovery gets me to a point where I can actually format / remove the encrypted partition.
The device had been rooted - and then encrypted - and it wasn't until I attempted to reboot into recovery with CWM (hoping to perform a factory reset) that I got into a boot loop.
Days, and countless flashing later - I'm no closer. The one thing I find interesting: when I flash particular (CWM) recovery / images, and reboot - I actually get the 'pre-boot authentication' page, which still accepts my encryption passphrase. It's after this point - that I'm just staring at a black screen.
Perhaps nvflash might be the right tool for the job - so off to learn about THAT. Every day, a new adventure - and another twist down the rabbit hole.
Thanks in advance to anyone with some insight / links / tips to share.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm facing what I think is a similar problem on an AT&T Galaxy s3 i747 with Paranoid Android. I had to encrypt for work email, and ever since then it regularly reboots whenever I try to do something (~25 second effort)... when I do the factory reset, or try reflashing a ROM, it seems to reboot before the action completes... Can you advise how I might solve this?
I've already tried CWM to redo everything... Factory reset does not complete as it always asks for the encryption password once started again... I just want to get back to unencrypted please. Any ideas? Maybe ODIN CWM then try a new install? formatting my SD card? Thanks in advance...
Hi, I had the same problem as above.
I was unable to factory reset with CWM recovery as it couldn't flash the data partition or sd card and couldn't mount them.
However, using the stock recovery, the factory reset and formatting worked fine returning back to an unencrypted device.

[Q] Backup internal memory while device doesn't boot

Hi all
Dad's I9300 (international) started making problems booting up a week ago (sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't for a few hours). Begged him to bring it in for me to backup. Of course he didn't and today the device refused to boot permanently. It simply gets stuck on the logo screen.
When boot into recovery I got lots of E: failed to mount /cache. After wiping the cache and rebooting into recovery I now get only E: failed to mount /system (see attached image).
Download mode also seems to be working.
Device is 4.1.2 with stock ROM and stock recovery.
The main concern here is to recover all personal data. After that, I don't care if the device gets bricked. I searched the web and came up with two possible solutions:
1) Reflashing the same stock ROM I flashed a while ago (hoping that what I have stored on my PC is what is actually flashed on the device.....), and not wiping the data. As I understand, flashing a stock ROM without wiping data shouldn't cause the device not to boot.
2) Flash PhilZ Touch 6 Recovery using Odin and use Aroma file browsing to copy internal memory files (pics, mp3, WhatsApp data, etc.) to an external SD and then start messing around with the phone. (as described here)
What's my best option here? It sounds to me that the second one is better, but I'm not familiar with flashing a recovery and possible consequences.
Can someone kindly advise? I'll greatly appreciate any word of wisdom...
Solved.

Softbrick galaxy s2

A friend of mine soft-bricked his old galaxy s2.
The phone is running a custom android 5.1 or 6.0 (I don't remember) that i flashed for him a few months ago.
He said he just disabled the google app (not sure why he did that) and the phone crashed and is now stuck in a bootloop.
Anyway I'm trying to enable the app back and hopefully fix the phone without having to wipe everything and flash back the system.
Does anyone know how/if it's possible from an adb shell in recovery mode ?
I tried the pm command but it just crash in recovery, probably because android is not running.
Maybe i could make it work with a chroot or something. No idea how to do that on android though.
Thanks for the help.
Hi,
In this situation, it would be best to wipe your phone. Avoiding wipes is not what you want to do as this could cause more problems instead.
You could try wiping system partition and cache partition. Reflash the ROM and gapps and see if that helps. You should still keep all of your apps this way and no personal data is affected.
Otherwise full wipe is the only option left.
gsstudios
Thanks for your help, i tried to wipe only system partition and cache but unfortunately the phone was still stuck in a bootloop. Tried then to manually remove all google apps and their data before reinstalling them but it didn't work either. I gave up and formated the data partition which fixed it as expected.

Zenofne 5 frezzing and rebooting

I'm working on it for about 2 days and do not know what to do anymore.
My phone worked perfectly, except it's rooted the rest is original.
On saturday I tried to convert an user app to system app and brick the operation system. So... sideloaded a stock room downloaded from ASUS suport page and "vuala", the phone was back to normal, them i think, if i install TWRP next time i brick my phone ll be easier ro restore if i had a backup.
Then i perform the procedures in this topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/zenfone-5/general/recovery-twrp-2-8-6-0-asus-zenfone-5-t3136263
In TWRP i did a backup of my system and it ask me to install root on the device, what i did . After that the system start to freeze and rebbot randomly even without user interaction.
-My first step was factory reset, not work.
-Removed root, and factory reset again. not work
Wipe system and data partition, re-flash by ADB sideload the stock room, steel freezing and rebooting
I've downloaded the original stock rom V3.23.40.60, replaced the fastboot and recovery to original V3.23.40.60, re-flash dnx_fwr_ctp_a500cg.bin and ifwi_ctp_a500cg.bin from original image V3.23.40.60.
-Removed SD card, microSD and reflashed everithig again. still not work.
After all the probelm persists. Someone have any idea what's going on? My knowledge about mobiles is't enough to deal with this probelma alone.
I start thinking about hardware inssue but it's rly weird.
Some questions:
-There are another partitions on the device that can be restored to factory or reseted?
-Change bootloader or recovery can directly influence the operation system?
-Is there a program I can test internal storage of my device and RAM?

Serious issue with the TWRP/Nandroid backup - twrp backup failed to mount system root structure needs cleaning - keeps looping back into TWRP

So, I can't restore my backup due to the error above. When I restore my backup, I get that error and a reboot loops me straight back into TWRP. You can read all that stuff below if you need the backstory.
(I had Lineage OS 18.1 installed and wanted to restore a backup from two weeks ago. So, I booted into TWRP, did a normal factory reset and restored the Backup of Lineage. However, it put out an error regarding something in root (structure needs cleaning). I tried rebooting into system, but it ended in fastboot mode. So I googled it and one thread said you can solve that by formatting system. "System" is backed up anyway, so I thought there was no harm, wiped it and restored the same backup once again. No error this time.
However, when I rebooted into system, the unlock pattern didn't work any more, even though I never changed it and always use the same one. I had to reboot into recovery, and now the TWRP unlock pattern didn't work either. Had to skip it and did another reset.
Now, every time I restore a backup (and those backups contain basically every partition available) it works, but when I reboot into system it just stops at the boot logo, then reboots into recovery. Basically a boot loop plus. Tried a fresh flash, same loop.
Also, all of my pictures and downloaded files are gone, because it's encrypted. I had to wipe data, which led to the whole encryption issue going away, however, I'm still stuck in that loop.
Does anyone know how to solve this cluster****? How do I get it to boot into system?
Edit: Managed to flash LIneage new after wiping data and system and it actually boots, hallelujah, but when I flash the back up I'm still at square one with the same fail and it fails to boot. )

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