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Tried to unroot, now I have this. Been trying to flash through Odin (PDA md5 file only), gets to 'system', goes about 10 minutes then fails. Nothing on sd card. Im hoping I can save this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
This is a retail Wifi.
I have the correct USB drivers and can see it in device manager but not in explorer. I do not have the correct ADB SDK, cant seem to find it.
Been reading several threads and watching vids on youtube, nothing seems to do the trick. Im stuck but hopefully not bumming.
This may or may not work for most but this worked heavily for my 2 units that had the same issue. One with a broken nvflash, the other that faced a bootloop and never booted up again. Took almost a week and I felt almost all hope was gone because the bloody service centre's refused to accept the unit's as they were not purchased from the region, rather online. Scumbag Samsung .
[!] This is usually a 90% fix for both broken nvflashes/deep sleep of death, considering you haven't drowned your Tab by now with no hope . I ask that you kindly attempt this once if you haven't before you QQ to the nearest Samsung center like I did.
- Drain your tablet
And by all mean's do so, The quickest way to get this done in less than 2 days or so (Depending on the battery percent charged) is to get a clear tape and tape around the power button pressed.
- Testing if you have drained it completely/Taped it right.
Connect the tablet via USB to your PC, make sure you have the NV Driver files [http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...php?t=1130574]
Just install the driver and proceed to the step where it asks about holding down the [Power button] +[ Volume+] and wait for the constant USB connect/disconnect sounds. It also helps to look at Device Manager to see if it still pops up.
When the battery is completely drained it will stop popping up in the device manager, and your ready to go.
MOST IMPORTANT STEP
You have only 1 and only 1 chance per drain to get this done right. Plug it into the socket charger and see if the charging icon should come up, after being fully drained you should see the charge icon should pop up [100% tested and works, this step is annoying but it's the tablet version of taking out the battery and popping it back in] and what ever you do, DON'T BOOT IT UP NORMALLY, instead press [Power Button] + [Volume -] keys and let go when you see the logo to get into fastboot mode.
Select the android buddy with the [Volume +] key and it will boot into Download Mode.
From here on out everything is easy sailing. Get the right firmware and Odin and flash the firmware you require. It doesn't matter what region you are from, the tablet is made to accept any regional firmware BUT the model number should be the same. Which mean's 7500 for 7500 ONLY.
Edit: Since you have only one chance per drain, I suggest you flash a stock firmware rather than flashing CWM to save it, Because CWM would only fix the recovery, It wouldn't fix the damaged bln. The fastest way to get a stock firmware is grabbing the stock firmware from the Overcome thread
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Source:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1478361
Ok, killed it that long....actually, just havent had time to get into this or deal with the frustration.
Anyway, it did what it was supposed to, meaning the battery icon came on. then I booted to download mode, plugged it in to the PC and it hooked up to Odin. It ported and I started to load the md5 file. I get stuck at the bootloader.bin. Been sitting there for 40 minutes. Has not failed yet. What now??
Never mind, I am an idiot who needs to read more. Please ignore me.
Sent from my GT-P7510 using XDA Premium HD app
Any and all help is appreciated, nobody is an idiot, except me for bricking this thing.
By the way, about 20 minutes after I posted the screenshot, it failed.
My friend is having some problems charging his Atrix. Basically, the phone will not charge or recognize a charger at all except for under certain circumstances.
Some background info: I helped him unlock his bootloader and install 4.5.91 way back when it came out. No problems there, it went well. All was fine until the 4.5.141 OTA update came around. He got the OTA notification and clicked update because he didn't know anything bad would happen. Luckily it didn't brick him like it did a lot of people, but he said it gave him an error message during the install and it would not boot after that, stuck at the Motorola dual core screen. I took a look at it and managed to get into recovery and flash back to 4.5.91. All was fine until it was time to charge the phone. It wouldn't recognize any charger. I tried flashing to tons of different roms, wiping everything, even restored a full nandroid recovery from my working Atrix on it. His phone will charge and will be recognized by a computer immediately after we flash a new rom, and will continue to charge for as long as we leave it plugged in, but if we unplug it then after a short time (like under 30 mins) it will not recognize a charger if we plug it in again. Wiping data alone will not make it start charging again, only actually installing a new rom will. Deleting battery stats does nothing. The closest we have gotten to fixing it was when I made a nandroid on my Atrix and then restored it on his (my backup was from Joker's CM9); after the restore, it would charge for a while, and we unplugged it and waited to see if it would do the same thing as it always did and stop recognizing a charger after a few minutes. About 30 minutes later it stopped recognizing the charger as usual. We played with the USB debugging setting (enable, plug in, see if it recognized the charger, disable, plug in, see if it recognized it, etc) and after messing with that setting a lot it recognized the charger once, but then when we unplugged it the phone wouldn't recognize the charger again. We could not reproduce this again.
To summarize what we have tried and found to work:
-flashing a rom will let the phone charge/let a computer recognize it for as long as we leave it plugged in after the first boot (we have tried every rom under the sun, they all do the same thing)
-restoring from a nandroid backup will have the same effect as flashing a rom
What we have tried that didn't work:
-different cords; have tried them all, both OEM cord and third party, this is not the problem
-wiping all data/factory reset doesn't do anything
-cache wipe doesn't do anything
-wiping battery stats doesn't do anything
I have also tried fastboot flashing back to 4.5.91, CWMing back to 4.5.91, using the unbrick scripts and stock restore scripts people have made, nothing will fix it.
If anyone has any suggestions or can refer me to anywhere with more info on this I would appreciate it, I have searched high and low and can't find anyone with a problem quite like this one. I don't even know if it's a hardware or software problem, if you guys know a way to determine this it would be helpful.
Have you tried a wall charger?
Yeah, both the stock one and a different one I have, neither work.
No one has any advice or ideas on this? Does anyone know if Moto does repairs in this type of situation with a voided warranty because of an unlocked bootloader, or does anyone know who may be able to fix this if I can't get any help from the forums or figure it out on my own?
Guys i really need your feedback and advice on this situation. Okay I was trying to install the Rom CNA. 3.5.0 (JB). But my battery was low (stupid me) and i install the ROM with no problem, but when the phone rebooted it went to the Motorola logo and i was stuck. I tried the volume down button which is the NV recovery but my phone turned off due the low battery i guess. And it seems my option could be fast boot but i don't know how to operate it. My question is that can i get out of this situation with a pre-charged battery, or a software from the internet. I really need your advice on this one?
swaggerdagger said:
Guys i really need your feedback and advice on this situation. Okay I was trying to install the Rom CNA. 3.5.0 (JB). But my battery was low (stupid me) and i install the ROM with no problem, but when the phone rebooted it went to the Motorola logo and i was stuck. I tried the volume down button which is the NV recovery but my phone turned off due the low battery i guess. And it seems my option could be fast boot but i don't know how to operate it. My question is that can i get out of this situation with a pre-charged battery, or a software from the internet. I really need your advice on this one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you'll need a charged battery.
After you get one, enter the recovery and do all the necessary wipes (cache, dalvik, data, etc.) and reboot your phone
If it doesn't work, you may reapply the rom via recovery, avoid applying SBFs, as they may brick your phone.
Can't you just charge the battery while the phone is off?
I know I can on mine, but I'm not sure what's needed for that (like, do you need a bootable system?).
ravilov said:
Can't you just charge the battery while the phone is off?
I know I can on mine, but I'm not sure what's needed for that (like, do you need a bootable system?).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or charge the battery by using EBC...
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium HD app
bimasakti85 said:
Or charge the battery by using EBC...
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is EBC? and how do i use it ?
just hook up the phone in fastboot and issue this command "fastboot -w" then reboot and you should be good
swaggerdagger said:
What is EBC? and how do i use it ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
External Battery Charger.
android-DEP said:
just hook up the phone in fastboot and issue this command "fastboot -w" then reboot and you should be good
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any steps or guidelines you can give me to get fastboot to reboot my phone to normal ?
which rom did you flash last on your phone? Was it gingerbread or CM7 based or CM9 based?
Depending on your answer to that question, you can try a few things to restore your phone using fastboot.
If it was let's say some CM7 based rom, you can locate a stock CM7 kernel and download it. Extract the zip file to pull out the "boot.img" file and put it inside the same folder you're running fastboot.exe from.
Once that's done, reboot your phone into fastboot mode, and connect it to your PC via usb cable and real quick just type "fastboot devices", that command just shows you which devices it's currently connected to via the fastboot interface and you should see your phone listed with it's serial number showing which tells you that you can continue the procedure..
then do a wipe of any data which might interfere with the new kernel by typing "fastboot -w", don't worry, you won't lose any personal files like pictures or contacts..
after thats done then type out "fastboot flash boot boot.img" which will flash the new kernel onto your phone.. phone's not booting past the initial Dual-Core screen can sometimes be attributed to a bad flash of a rom, kernel not properly being written to the device in cases where the updater script couldn't mount a partition to extract the boot.img to before writing the raw data to your device. The updater-script which is just like a batch file, it just goes down line by line running commands and does not halt on errors to let the user know that something failed. So if something failed during the flash process and you didn't successfully flash some parts of the rom normally, it could still finish the installation and all you'll get it Installation Completed type message where you think it's all good but in reality some parts of the installation didn't complete.
Perhaps the rom didn't properly perform the necessary prep work of wiping cache and dalvik cache. Not exactly always an issue as it depends on the circumstances of what you're installing and what you had installed prior.
I've had a few roms here and there that put me in your shoes, the solutions I've always found to work was to first try something basic like wiping the cache of the device and reboot. If that didn't work, then this is where you could try flashing a new kernel.
Since you did the proper wipe of data, you can make sure the kernel gets installed properly as you isolate the installation from the entire process.
It takes 3-5 seconds anyway for fastboot to flash files anyway so theres no harm done anyway so long as you get the proper compatible files for your setup. Reboot the phone afterwards and give that a shot.
Unless you tried to flash a PDroid patch on your phone, which requires you to have a working rom installation to begin with from which you pull files to patch so you can flash them over the current installation, you should be able to boot.
If you still cannot boot, then reboot into recovery and open up the ADB interface in command prompt and run this command
Code:
adb logcat > "c:\logcat_dump.txt"
and just kick back for a few minutes while it dumps the entire log into the root of your drive in a text file named logcat_dump.txt... press the Windows symbal key(its between the CTRL & ALT buttons on the left side of the keyboard), while holding that press the letter R to bring up a run window box where you type in "%SystemDrive%\logcat_dump.txt" and hit enter... post the log here and you can get more feedback on where the issue is
android-DEP said:
which rom did you flash last on your phone? Was it gingerbread or CM7 based or CM9 based?
Depending on your answer to that question, you can try a few things to restore your phone using fastboot.
If it was let's say some CM7 based rom, you can locate a stock CM7 kernel and download it. Extract the zip file to pull out the "boot.img" file and put it inside the same folder you're running fastboot.exe from.
Once that's done, reboot your phone into fastboot mode, and connect it to your PC via usb cable and real quick just type "fastboot devices", that command just shows you which devices it's currently connected to via the fastboot interface and you should see your phone listed with it's serial number showing which tells you that you can continue the procedure..
then do a wipe of any data which might interfere with the new kernel by typing "fastboot -w", don't worry, you won't lose any personal files like pictures or contacts..
after thats done then type out "fastboot flash boot boot.img" which will flash the new kernel onto your phone.. phone's not booting past the initial Dual-Core screen can sometimes be attributed to a bad flash of a rom, kernel not properly being written to the device in cases where the updater script couldn't mount a partition to extract the boot.img to before writing the raw data to your device. The updater-script which is just like a batch file, it just goes down line by line running commands and does not halt on errors to let the user know that something failed. So if something failed during the flash process and you didn't successfully flash some parts of the rom normally, it could still finish the installation and all you'll get it Installation Completed type message where you think it's all good but in reality some parts of the installation didn't complete.
Perhaps the rom didn't properly perform the necessary prep work of wiping cache and dalvik cache. Not exactly always an issue as it depends on the circumstances of what you're installing and what you had installed prior.
I've had a few roms here and there that put me in your shoes, the solutions I've always found to work was to first try something basic like wiping the cache of the device and reboot. If that didn't work, then this is where you could try flashing a new kernel.
Since you did the proper wipe of data, you can make sure the kernel gets installed properly as you isolate the installation from the entire process.
It takes 3-5 seconds anyway for fastboot to flash files anyway so theres no harm done anyway so long as you get the proper compatible files for your setup. Reboot the phone afterwards and give that a shot.
Unless you tried to flash a PDroid patch on your phone, which requires you to have a working rom installation to begin with from which you pull files to patch so you can flash them over the current installation, you should be able to boot.
If you still cannot boot, then reboot into recovery and open up the ADB interface in command prompt and run this command
Code:
adb logcat > "c:\logcat_dump.txt"
and just kick back for a few minutes while it dumps the entire log into the root of your drive in a text file named logcat_dump.txt... press the Windows symbal key(its between the CTRL & ALT buttons on the left side of the keyboard), while holding that press the letter R to bring up a run window box where you type in "%SystemDrive%\logcat_dump.txt" and hit enter... post the log here and you can get more feedback on where the issue is
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone keeps turning off, it doesn't even reach the logo and it wouldn't even hold a charge...... .Its best i order a extended battery with an external charger?
No, no need to order a battery, there's nothing wrong with your current battery.
This was exactly the same way I first soft-bricked my first atrix long long ago. The battery would not charge no matter what I did and I could not flash anything onto the phone because the charge was too low and kept getting lower. It eventually fell to the point where it was like less than 5% charge left on the phone.
For some stupid reason, the Atrix does not recharge the battery when you do not have a proper working installation currently on the phone, like a corrupt install where something didn't do what it was supposed to do.
The catch is that once this happens and you have a corrupt install of whatever rom half-ass installed that doesn't boot, perhaps maybe even if the rom improperly wiped out the recovery so you can't boot into recovery, the phone will not recharge itself anymore. This is one MAJOR reason why you should always flash your phone with a FULL battery charge, not because it's cool to have a full battery icon on the statusbar, but when the fit hits the shan and things go wrong, you have some spare life left to be able to to try flashing something else to recovery your phone with before it drains too low.
You have 2 options at this point, you basically have to find a full charged up battery to use for about 10 minutes. Reason I say you have to find a battery and not just say find someone with an Atrix is because you can also use the battery from the Motorola Droid.
This was what I did once I finally found someone near by with a Droid, I borrowed their battery for 10 minutes to restore my phone and it worked like a charm.
Atrix battery model is BH6X and the Droid battery is BH5X which is the same size but has a weaker mAh. Long term I dont know how safe it is to continually use that battery but for something like restoring your phone, using that battery is perfectly ok unless you have a friend who has an Atrix also. Have him charge his battery up to full and then swap batteries with him so he can continue charging while being able to use his phone and you will have a full charge which buys you enough time to recover your phone before you drain the battery from flashing.
This was the exact reason I purchased this charger & battery just in case of just in case
Only thing is that this generic battery is 1800mAh 6.7Wh and the factory battery is 1880mAh 7.0/7.1 Wh but I never had any issues with the generic battery.
You can optionally get this nice Dual Dock Cradle + 3 batteries
Here's another option, 2000mAh battery with external charger
The way I solved my issue was to download a fresh copy of a 2.3.4 SBF file and a good copy of RSD Lite. Once I popped in the battery into my phone, I hooked it up to RSD Lite and just let it do it's job to restore everything back to square 1. Locked bootloader, not rooted, deodexed or zipaligned. But back then these things didn't matter as long as I was able to recover my phone and not have to pay $125 to send it to AT&T insurance dept. just to get a refurbished one in exchange.
I truly believe this is one situation which does earn the necessary required use of an SBF file to be flashed with RSD Lite. There's risks involved with flashing SBF files and so it's best to avoid them altogether but there are only a handful of certain situations which do call for their use such as recovering\restoring your device from an unusable state.
Definitely do some more reading about the matter and what your options are here. You're going to have to keep an eye out for the pros vs. the cons of using certain methods to recover a soft bricked phone. I'm sure last thing you want your phone to be is a hat weight right? lol, but do yourself a favor and read up more about this before you decide your course of action. Don't just start flashing anything that pops up that seems like it will work
android-DEP said:
You have 2 options at this point, you basically have to find a full charged up battery to use for about 10 minutes. Reason I say you have to find a battery and not just say find someone with an Atrix is because you can also use the battery from the Motorola Droid.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You mean Droid X, right? The Motorola Droid use the BP6X, as the Motorola Milestone / Milestone 2, and it's really small when compared to the BH6X.
Yea thats what i meant, can't keep up with these incredible nexus droid htc photons prophilactic splendifures flux-capacitator names they went overboard with on naming android phones in the last 2 years. It's ridiculous when you have to think back to which model some phone was last year that you might've had but not sure because it looks like 10 other phones and the model names all sound like comic book super heros or something.
Specially a few years ago when I used to repair the hardware internally on iphones, blackberry & android smart phones. Sometimes I'd be so sure without a doubt in my mind about getting the right parts for phones and then later realize it's in the same family but a diff model #. Good thing with Android they atleast make parts to fit exactly or not fit at all. Like a safety net coupled with common sense, if it looks identical and does fit, then it'll work, otherwise its not compatible. Just like these 2 batteries, so regardless if it's Droid X or Droid DeathShovel Excalibur Pluto Carbide Titanium XIII Deluxe, the model number of the parts is the most important thing to look for
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The spare charger and battery I bought actually never needed to be used for a situation like that again as after the first time it happens to you, you learn a lot of info on how to not land in the same spot again in the future. It is how ever useful if you like to flash roms a lot and sample different ones frequently. it's nice to have a battery in the phone you can use while having another one on charger to swap over once your current battery drains. This way you never need to be plugged into a charger via usb to recharge anymore.
---------- Post added at 09:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:37 PM ----------
I just stumbled upon this online, this is a must have for anybody with an atrix and it's only $20 free shipping HD motorola dock with remote control
Hi, I unfortunately don't know a lot about what I am doing here (the root of all my trouble), I'll try to get the info straight:
Motorola Droid Razr (XT910), bought in Dubai, using it in UK, so I didn't receive OTA updates. I decided to try update to ICS using RSD Lite, but the flashing got stuck at system_signed. I gave it a lot of time (hours) before I switched off the phone and tried again, which is when things started going haywire:
During my following attempts, the battery ran low, so I couldn't go on trying (soft brick). I made a patched "factory cable" as per instructions in this forum somewhere, the cable works and powers the phone for flashing.
Now all it does is coming up with the fastboot screen, which reads:
AP Fastboot Flash Mode (S) (Flash Failure)
0A.6C
[...]
Device is LOCKED. Status code: 0
Battery OK
OK to Program
Transfer Mode:
USB Connected
...which suggests to me it would be ok to be flashed, if only I could get it to accept the files. Being a big numpty, I am unfortunately not quite sure what was the exact version that was on there before (big mistake, I know that now), it was 2.3.6 and I suspect it must have been a MEA version, since it was bought there(? - also, when I first switched it on, all was in arabic).
What I have tried so far was:
* using several different fastboot firmware files with RSD Lite 5.7, all of which do not get over the step '1/xx flash cdt.bin "cdt.bin_signed"' - it just hangs supposedly "In process..." forever. I noticed all of these have an "ota" folder (although they vary considerably in size between <1 and 2.5 GB) - maybe all the ones I downloaded are only updates? Is there an actual, base operating system image somewhere?
After many failed attempts, I got desperate and tried files for different regions at random. The ones I tried so far:
SPDREM_U_01.6.5.1-73_SPU-11-M1-2_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRRTGB_HWp2b_Service1FF_fastboot.xml
SPDREM_U_01.6.5.1-73_SPU-11-M1-2-ULB_1C.85P_0A.6B_DATDE_CFC_HWp2b_SIGNED.xml
SPDREM_U_01.6.5.1-167_SPU-15-M2-3_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRRTGB_HWp2b_Service1FF_fastboot
SPDREM_U_01.6.7.2-180_SPU-19-TA-11.6_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRICSRTCEE_HWp2b_Service1FF_fastboot.xml
SPDREM_U_01.6.7.2-180_SPU-19-TA-11.6_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRICSRTGB_HWp2b_Service1FF_fastboot.xml
SPYDERIRD_U.01.26.0_SPD-IRD-21_SIGN_ASIA_RETAIL_HKTW.xml
SPYDERIRD_U.01.26.0_SPD-IRD-21_SIGN_MEA_RETAIL.xml
The only thing I am quite sure about is that it is not LATAM.
* I tried manually flashing the various image files with moto-fastboot, fastboot, and eprj-mfastboot, both the Windows and the Linux versions, with pretty much always the same result: it would flash some files (e.g. ebr, mbr, devtree), but not what I think are the crucial ones: boot, system, also logo.bin. As there are so many possible combinations, I have not tried every file from every firmware I downloaded with every possible program, but as far as I can tell, the results were the same. I did get some error messages about signing (indicating wrong region) sometimes, but most of the time it just hangs forever while supposedly transferring the files.
* I also tried the DroidRAZRUtility, both 1.51 and 1.6, which both invariably fail at the first step of flashing the "allow-mbmloader-flashing-mbm.bin" file on there.
So, I am out of ideas now. Please, someone tell me I have overlooked something obvious. Also, please tell me I haven't bricked the thing for good.
Is there not a way to write something new into it's memory on an even more basic level (I am thinking Linux' dd here), or to read out which region it is currently locked to? I repeat, all I get is the Fastboot screen, I can get into the Fastboot menu, but none of the options gets me anywhere else, (stock) recovery does not work... My last idea is that it might still be a power issue despite the "factory cable", and to try and crack it open and power it at the battery contacts for flashing - but the fact that some flashing works, and the other files don't fail because it goes dead, but because it rejects them, suggests to me it is not a power problem.
Any suggestions appreciated, thanks!
Try flashing SPDREM_U_01.6.7.2-180_SPU-19-TA-11.2_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRICSRTGB_HWp2b_Service1FF_fastboot
with rsd lite.
Those failures are because of two things:
1. You are trying wrong sbf for another region
2 and/or you are trying to flash an older firmware.
Please note that now your only bet is to flash ICS firmware, and try various regions untill you find your right one.
Also if you manually flash use eprj-mfastboot , others fail to flash corectly.
Again for the power issue, when RSD throws an error , look at the phone, if it says "Low battery, cannot program" then the factory cable is bad, if not there is no power problem.
Don't worry your phone is not dead, you only need to find the correct sbf file, try more variants with rsd lite, it must work.
Mine had problems flashing correct sbf's, it was my system. Even with correct drivers and lastest RSD it would not work, nor with my other laptop, but working fine on my old xp install on a macbook. I could however install stuff individually using fastboot flash command. Sorry that I dont have a solution but I just wanted to let you know that sometimes it can be your computer/os install.
still trying
@Killer2k8: Thanks for the encouragement, I will try with the file you suggested with eprj-mfastboot.
As per power: I seem to have tried so many times that the battery is way deeply uncharged (I hope it isn't permanently damaged once I get the phone to charge at all again), so anyway, I crack'd'er open and tried powering directly at the battery contacts (battery disconnected, of course). As you would guess from what you wrote, that did not make any difference to my problems... But also, it proves my factory cable is good, as I can even flash the few files that work if no power is connected at the battery contacts, powering through the cable only. Some files will transfer correctly, and when it says "writing", the phone will just reboot, causing an error - that's why I thought of power issue, e.g. the actual flashing process requiring more power than just the transfer... Anyway, that issue did not go away even with direct power. - Will see what happens once I find the right files for me...
I'm good with flashing ICS, that's what I wanted to do in the first place. And thanks for the encouragement!
@drolgnir: Thanks, I had the same idea, as initially I had tried everything from Win7 running in VirtualBox (at first, I only found all the tools for Win, should've really researched better before starting this), I thought maybe it doesn't have the proper low-level access to the USB ports. Anyway, since trouble hit me, I tried also on three different Linux machines (2 different dirtros), and also again on the virtual Win, and on many, many different USB ports on these (just in case it was a USB power issue), all to no avail. I guess Killer2k8's suggestion sounds most promising at the moment... Cheers anyway.
no luck - situation deteriorating..?
Sorry for the many posts, I hope someone is still reading this...
So, I tried the file you suggested. I flashed manually, not RSD, with "fastboot" from eternity project, which is the Linux equivalent to "eprj-mfastboot.exe", as far as I can tell (download from the same post as the Win version).
I could flash cdt.bin, ebr, mbr. Note that these are all just 16kB.
When trying logo.bin, it sent it ok, but during 'writing logo.bin...', the phone just switched off. After restart, same again. Same also with boot_signed.
Since then, things got worse: whenever I try to switch on now, it flashes ~1/4 of the red "M" logo, then flashes the AP fastboot screen, and repeats that a few times before staying off (sometimes not, just switches off right away). I can still get into the Boot Mode Selection menu by holding all three buttons, but selecting AP fastboot there has the same effect. Starting with power&Vol- button shows the fastboot screen immediately, but again only for a flash...
The only thing that will stay on is the SBF Flash screen, but I don't know what to do with that..?
So, I still smell a power problem, but neither applying external power, nor using the factory cable alone made a difference. The cable is ok, I re-checked. The fact that the SBF Flash screen stays on suggests that it is not a stuck power button (someone had that problem, apparently), am I right?
So, any suggestions from here? Thanks..
Although this doesn't help, I have pretty much the exact same issue. However, I do know what/where my phone is from, it requires the central Europe update. But apart from that the issues are identical; it only boots into the flash failed fastboot menu, and any RSD attempts have failed at cdt.bin, while using the fastboot tool does not work either as I get preinfovalidation flash errors. The utilities don't work either.
Now, as you did, I also tried quite a few different versions of the firmware, and none of them worked. So what I was wondering is, is there a way for us to find out exactly what version the phone 'thinks' it is on, so we can find the same/a newer version of the firmware to update it to? Because I am quite certain I am using the files from the right region, so it must be the version that is too old.
update: still struggling, but giant leap further! Please read my tale...
...just in case anyone might find this useful, I'd like to give an update on my "patient":
I actually managed to flash ICS on there! Kind of.. What I did, was:
With the battery unplugged, I supplied external power to the phone, additional to the factory cable. The issue was that it would often flash small files, but for larger files would successfully "send" them, but in the "writing" phase the phone would just switch off. So, I supplied carefully monitored 3.7V to the contacts, which seemed to make a difference, but in the "writing" phase, Voltage dropped to below 3V where it would again switch off. Ok, you can charge a LiIon battery with max. 4.2V, and you should normally charge the battery before flashing, so I tried again while providing 4.2V. And - Success!! Voltage would drop to ~4V during "writing", but it stayed on, and allowed me to further test which Firmware the device would actually accept.
I do not believe that applying 5V from an USB cable directly to the (plugged-in) battery contacts, as mentioned in the forums somewhere, is very healthy for the battery. I reconnected the battery and tried charging it directly from the contacts, but I made sure the Voltage would always stay below 4.2V. Occasionally in my exploits, the charging circuitry would actually spring into action (confirmed by a drop and fluctuations in Voltage, and the faintest of noises from the phone itself), and I used that of course to squeeze some life back in, but most of the time it would not charge at all. I can not say what combination of flashing attempts, rebooting, un- and replugging the cable, switching and changing the charging current,... actually triggered the charging process occasionally, sorry. I could not reliably reproduce it.
In the process, I also tried the DroidRazrUtility 1.8, which interestingly flashed the AP fastboot to v 0A.74, but of course failed further on...
With the new AP fastboot, I thought maybe something more might now work, and at last I found it would now miraculously accept:
SPDREM_U_01.6.7.2-180_SPU-19-TA-11.6_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRICSRTGB_HWp2b_Service1FF_fastboot.xml and
SPDREM_U_01.6.7.2-180_SPU-19-TA-11.6_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRICSRTCEE_HWp2b_Service1FF_fastboot.xml
Fantastic!
First thing, before any actual booting, was to try if I could finally charge my battery again, and at last - yes!
At about 70%, I got adventurous, and unplugged the charger to put it in another power outlet. This made the phone actually boot up, but I thought that's not too bad now... But:
Now I have the following issue: After being freshly flashed (I tried several times now), it will charge as long as I don't actually switch it on, ONCE, but when it boots, after asking the setup questions and a little while on, it will switch off on its own, and then it's stuck in some variation of the bootloop (M dual core logo, pulsing M forever, OR rebooting ever and ever again at the pulsing M, OR just stuck at the M dual core). At least I now have a recovery menu. Erasing cache and data DON'T solve the issue (as proposed many times in the forums). I read a hint that it might be a kernel issue, or that it might be caused by a wrong radio.img (CDMA on a GSM phone). I checked and tested the latter by deactivating the radio in the extended settings, but it would still switch off after a short while (and it had defaulted to GSM, as it should).
So...am I stuck to wait for some new Firmware to come out, that might fix the issue? Or what should I try? Thanks in advance...
Resolved!
Long read, but I finally managed to do it. Basically, I am not 100% sure what happened, but I have a hunch:
After I thought I had solved the power issues by at least being able to charge the battery once after each re-flashing, I tried to fix the issue about the phone randomly switching off (and on - it wouldn't stay off!). I read that it might have to do with flashing failures (no error message??), or incorrect kernel or radio images...
Not long, and I ran into familiar problems again: It would flash the smaller files, but not system and cdrom; it would successfully "send" the files, but never stop "writing" them (I waited for somewhere between 10 min and an hour at each attempt), only way to stop the process was to switch off the phone, which certainly is not healthy during flashing...
...so battery started to go down again and I started to more and more clearly face a power issue again (I had disconnected the external power and didn't want to risk that McGyver approach again). As it happened, I also 'got some new USB 3.0 external hard drives at this time. I found that one would readily power up on all my USB ports, the other one could not get enough power even from some supposed 3.0 ports..
...which made me try flashing the very same firmware I was just trying (with the factory cable, of course), all the smaller files of which worked on the one computer but not the large ones (indicating I had the right firmware, at least):
SPDREM_U_01.6.7.2-180_SPU-19-TA-11.6_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRICSRTGB_HWp2b_ Service1FF_fastboot.xml
, on another computer, on the one USB 3.0 port that had proven to supply the most power - and taa-daa! It wrote it, very quickly, without complaining!
And it booted alright (after charging it first, just in case). And it stayed on (and off, when I eventually rebooted it). I am running that ever since, and it seems ok...
Originally, I had aimed for:
SPDREM_U_01.6.7.2-180_SPU-19-TA-11.6_SIGNEuropeAustraliaEMEA_USASPDRICSRTCEE_HWp2b _Service1FF_fastboot.xml
, but I think the differences are minimal and I don't want to risk anything going wrong again, right now.
In conclusion, to me the main issues were
- finding the right firmware, stupidly not having paid attention to the original version number, and
- all sorts of different power issues!
The factory cable did not solve all of my problems.
Recharging the battery (eventually) did not solve my problems.
ADDITIONALLY, it needs to be flashed from a USB port supplying sufficient power!
This might point into the direction drolgnir suggested, but for me, it was not an OS/driver problem, but definitely power (same, fresh install of Fedora Linux on the two machines that did, and didn't work, one of them alternatively running Win 8; the Linux Mint computer I also tried doesn't have USB 3.0, the USB 2.0 ports - including an externally powered USB hub - did not work). @drolgnir: maybe it was power for you too, but you didn't notice because it was a different OS too?
...I hope this overly detailed report might help someone else too...
Hi,
I downloaded a kitkat kernel from the internet (a kernel that was advised here) and put it on my internal SD from my galaxy s2. I already had a kernel from Siyah. I put the phone into recovery and installed the zip. After installation I rebooted the phone as advised. But then I got a black screen. After 5 minutes I tried to turn on the phone with just the power button, but that didn't change any thing. It is now more than 2,5 hours ago, and my phone was warm, especially in the right upper corner, so it still was working on something. But now I am afraid that it runs out of battery, because I it's battery life wasn't very long (although it was at 90% when I started)
So I put it to my laptop to charge it, but I don't know/think if it charges.
If it runs out of battery while installing a kernel, is that catastrophic? And does it charge while connected to the powergrid or laptop/is it allowed to connect it?
If not, can I try to reboot another time?
Note: there were barely any apps of data on the phone.
Joheee said:
Hi,
I downloaded a kitkat kernel from the internet (a kernel that was advised here) and put it on my internal SD from my galaxy s2. I already had a kernel from Siyah. I put the phone into recovery and installed the zip. After installation I rebooted the phone as advised. But then I got a black screen. After 5 minutes I tried to turn on the phone with just the power button, but that didn't change any thing. It is now more than 2,5 hours ago, and my phone was warm, especially in the right upper corner, so it still was working on something. But now I am afraid that it runs out of battery, because I it's battery life wasn't very long (although it was at 90% when I started)
So I put it to my laptop to charge it, but I don't know/think if it charges.
If it runs out of battery while installing a kernel, is that catastrophic? And does it charge while connected to the powergrid or laptop/is it allowed to connect it?
If not, can I try to reboot another time?
Note: there were barely any apps of data on the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does not take long to install a kernel. You should be able to boot to recovery and install another or restore the last one (if you made a backup like you're supposed to...) The phone should charge while in recovery just fine.
es0tericcha0s said:
It does not take long to install a kernel. You should be able to boot to recovery and install another or restore the last one (if you made a backup like you're supposed to...) The phone should charge while in recovery just fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you, this thread can be closed.