Got a Nook Color, decided it wasn't for me even after hacking and custom romming it up and decided to restore to stock and sell. Here's a brief run down:
Followed a guide to flash stock image with custom recovery. When I was rooting I had a micro sd with CR and I had also installed a version to the NC's internal memory. From the guide I read it looked like flashing the stock image would restore it back to stock for everything. Did this and I got the standard boot screens and the setup screen with the girl and the video. Powered it off, cleaned it up, reboxed and put it up for sale. After I sold it I got a call back from the buyer saying it was hanging on the startup screen for nearly ten minutes. That later devevolved into boot loops. I would have originally held by "all sales final" mentality with craigslist buyers but then he mentioned it would flash a screen for a moment that would say "android" before boot looping again. Figured at this point I should be a guy and take it back, mainly because I HAD told him I did not root it. I got it back and it was boot looping, going through the "touch the future of reading" page and the N logo. Forced 8 failed starts and got an error message saying install could not complete. I fiddled some more (this is all while with friends at a Best buy mind you) and managed to get it to boot to screen, register my b&n account, and do a factory reset. After this it operated and ran perfectly fine, and after multiple factory resets, resetup runs, and trouble testing to force issues, it yielded perfect functionality. I even tested to make sure it would accept a credit card and that worked fine.
I'm gearing up to sell it to another buyer but I want to make sure I have my ducks in a row. I haven't fiddled with it beyond what I did the night I took it back but all testing I've done today has been fine. With B&N rolling out a froyo update though I want to be sure the unit is fine and won't give the other guy any trouble. There is no super user login or anything else that would suggest it's rooted or running anything other than stock firmware. I'm thinking that not letting it factory reset after flashing a stock rom may have contributed to my first bout of issues. Is there anything else I can check or look at to make sure the NC is good to go though?
EDIT:
Just performed a successful factory reset with deliberate 8 failed boots. Worked like a charm. Think I'm golden less otherwise advised.
Sent you a PM.
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I have been running my a7 with dexter's mod 1.4 for about 1 1/2 weeks...everything has gone well. This afternoon I turned on the device and it failed to complete boot. The word Android would come up and then nothing. I tried to reboot, reset, but device would do neither...nor would it turn off completely. I kept trying to take it into recovery mode and then after several tries was able to wipe, do update again, and get everything back as before. What would cause this and should I look for this to happen again? deepmagic
My a7 was running well for about a week since it quit...but today when I booted up device, it failed to recognize sd card...same card used for updating to mod 1.4...same card I've been using to listen to my music, etc...but now won't recognize...I've tried two different micro sdhc cards..formatted, reformatted, but device continues to display mount sd card...all else works fine! Does anyone have any new ideas? I can't even reinstall mod since a7 can't read my cards. Thanks for any input that would be helpful. I understand these issues are ongoing for many out there...what to do?
deepmagic said:
I have been running my a7 with dexter's mod 1.4 for about 1 1/2 weeks...everything has gone well. This afternoon I turned on the device and it failed to complete boot. The word Android would come up and then nothing. I tried to reboot, reset, but device would do neither...nor would it turn off completely. I kept trying to take it into recovery mode and then after several tries was able to wipe, do update again, and get everything back as before. What would cause this and should I look for this to happen again? deepmagic
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Click to collapse
Mine has hung on a black screen on me. Seemed that it didn't fully come out of sleep mode.
I was able to recover by holding the power button for 15 seconds to hard power down. No data loss.
deepmagic said:
I have been running my a7 with dexter's mod 1.4 for about 1 1/2 weeks...everything has gone well. This afternoon I turned on the device and it failed to complete boot. The word Android would come up and then nothing. I tried to reboot, reset, but device would do neither...nor would it turn off completely. I kept trying to take it into recovery mode and then after several tries was able to wipe, do update again, and get everything back as before. What would cause this and should I look for this to happen again? deepmagic
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exact same thing happened to me this morning. Tried to reset - not happening. Hard powered down. Don't have time to try anything else right now. I'm new to the forums and new to android. Wish me luck! I've been loving my A7, and much appreciation to Dexter and all the other knowledgeable hackers/modders/posters.
hey the same thing happened 2 me twice. Once the first day after i got it, since i had only had it for 1 day i wiped it reinstalled dexter's mod 1.41 and it worked. First app i installed was backup root. Now, a week later the exact same thing is happening. This time i dont want to wipe it because of all of the apps i have installed, games ive played etc. Any ideas? Could we just try reinstalling dexter's md without wiping? Or wiping reinstalling and recover from a backup?
Also have you installed busybox? I had just installed it both times before it failed to turn on. Maybe its just coincidence but you never know..
-D
Thanks to anyone who can help! and also thanks Dexter for all your hard work as well as everyone else that has contributed to the elocity, im lovin it! (when it works )
success!!!!
I got it to work! I don't have a permanent fix but if it happens again just boot into recovery and reinstall the dexter's mod update 1.41 and it works again! No wiping required. This isn't a permanent fix but it will work until we find one
-Dylan
Hasn't happened to me (yet) but I didn't upgrade to the newest ROM. I'm still using 1.3and it has been very stable. Only issue I've had was when I tried to use Killswitch to go to sleep mode when the cover is shut (great idea) but it didn't work and froze all except the live wallpaper. Weird.
Good luck, guys.
in the event it does happen to you, you might want to check out my apx thread for reflashing the factory firmware if you can't get your tablet unstuck. theres alternatives if you don't want to get stuck again.
The method you outline seems so complex...way above my abilities, but makes me wish I had followed though on some early programming training opportunities. That was the road not travelled.
okantomi; while i wouldn't encourage others to follow thru with procedures they fear would cause more harm, i would mention that if you google up my nick you'll find i've been able to do much w/ android software and devices while not knowing anything about programming. if i can do it, anyone can. i just wanted some themes for my phone.
i'm just an android hobbyist by night (and when i get a chance during the day), and a computer tech by day. no programming expertise, but i can reasonably reverse engineer and port software and components using simple file managers like ztreewin(trialware).
don't be mistaken that the folks out there providing you solutions necessarily know anything about programming or software development. just how to chef up files at different levels. i understand this doesn't go for everybody.
Thanks for the encouragement. I'm impressed with what you've been able to do. It is also nice to read upbeat comments about the A7. There is something sort of special about a device that you really almost have to build yourself... putting so much into it... biting your fingernails to nubs with each ROM flashing. You don't get as attached to any device that is 100 percent complete right out of the box, though of course there would be a lot less aggravation.
My wonderful wife gave me an Acer a500 for Christmas. Awesome gift. I had rooted it immediately with no problems, since all of my phones and families phone are rooted, it just seemed to be the natural thing to do.
As someone that "plays" with their android a lot I did all of the backups. Well, the time came to have my tablet "approved" for use at my company and also have the appropriate "encryption" software and keys added. Just as a precaution I decided to restore the original backup and unroot the tab.
All was going well until I received the update message. I went ahead and downloaded the update and ran it. During the install process it froze. I thought it was just busy so I left it for a good 20 minutes and finally realized it was frozen. I rebooted and it went through a couple of reboots and finally settled on the lock screen. But now I find the touch screen unresponsive.
I plugged in a mouse and keyboard in hopes that I could get back into it and start over, but, although, the mouse shows up, it is jumpy sluggish and will not grab the lock to slide open and eventually freezes.
I have tried all of the "update.zip" files I could find and they all fail at one point or another.
ADB allows me to explore in shell but since I unrooted, I cannot get su privileges.
Acer is of course, useless and the vendor it was purchased from is worthless.
I have been through every thread I could find and tried every trick I could come up with. Now I'm just stuck.
Any help is appreciated
I've had this a couple of times already. Usually just turning the screen off and on a couple of times does the job (the issue seems to be with the driver, also on various custom roms). Just try it after each off-on cycle, most of the time it takes no more than two or three tries, though there are exceptions.
Thanks, but it has been rebooted many many times since it's demise.
Decided to skip sleep tonight and keep plugging away.
I found an update.zip recovery file for an a501. Figured I can't do much worse so I went ahead and ran it.
It froze at about 95% but.........
Good News:
The tablet is responsive and touch panel works again.
Bad News:
It boots straight into system settings and although you can open the settings menu, nothing actually launches.
Decided to try all of the old update.zips and still everything fails.
No more ADB response.
When you originally unrooted your device did you revert back to the stock recovery or did you leave cwm on your device?? If you left cwm on your device that may be the problem with the update.zips and OTAs.
You are sooo right. I've never gone back to a stock rom before and I completely forgot about reverting to the stock recovery.
As a matter of fact, I was on Civato's Flexstriker 3.2.1 rom with the new CWM before I reverted back to the stock rom.
Well, at least we've determined my stupid mistake, but now the question lies: "How do I get back to any working rom?"
Here's an update. I did find an update.zip file that also begins to load but does not finish. It stops at 95% still.
I will attach the photos in case someone notices something otherwise I am at a loss. In addition to all of the above, I tried everything I could to get into APX mode but nothing. I am willing to try almost anything at this point, so all suggestions are appreciated.
Something I noticed was the recovery for the a501 was android with gears spinning in the body. The recovery I have now is a package with an arrow. The recoveries are different. The current update file is Acer_A500_1.145.05_COM_GEN1
So this brings me to a question: Can I put Thor's 1.6 CWM back on the a500 and at least work from there? I do have my original backups and thought I might be able to get somewhere that way.
OK first, I will say that I have been reading for days and days and am getting nowhere at all. I am running out of time as I am leaving Monday backpacking from OKC to Portland to meet a friend, then proceeding immediately to about 35 national parks. I HAVE to get this thing functional so that I can depend on it on the road for communication. Its current state makes me nervous. I got this tablet already rooted, custom stock rom, and with an unlocked ICS boot loader version 0.3.11. The only problems with it were the common charger/screen response issue. For $100, I can deal with that.
I flashed the Lightspeed from from the main list, everything went well... Until it rebooted the first time. Since then, directly after the bootloader screen, it briefly shows what looks like semi-colorful TV static, then shows boot animation and boots into the OS. It has never frozen on either screen.
I decided Lightspeed was not at all what I wanted, so I flashed CM10. I have yet to find anywhere in the Aroma installer where I can choose the apps installed, ONLY THEME CUSTOMIZATION. After the flash, it kept the boot animation from CM, and loaded right back into what looked like Lightspeed, and shows Lightspeed in the about menu also. I reflashed it, choosing a different boot animation to test, and did the same thing again, except it loaded ZERO extra apps at all, not even the stock bloatware. Nothing from any of the 3 roms. I reflashed Lightspeed, same thing again. No extra apps and just bare basic stuff. EXCEPT SUPERUSER. THAT DID LOAD ONTO IT EACH TIME. I haven't lost root access, the recovery works fine.
I flashed the V8 bootloader, and tried the above again. Same issues still. All of them. I have read until I'm blue in the face. If there is a way to fix this without using a PC, that would be grand. I have very limited PC access.
Anyone have any ideas? I have followed every single step 100%, I'm positive. I'm not new to rooting, flashing, and jailbreaking (doesn't apply here I know),"so lay it on me.
EDIT- I downloaded the 4.0.4 FLEX-Reaper rom and going to try that now and then I give up for the night. Tomorrow is the last day I have to mess with this before I leave. I tried to upload screenshots of the problems, but it won't let me attach them. Maybe that is another problem. Ugh who knows. Help
EDIT- That rom bricked my tablet. Through that brick, I found a working solution for the SoD, found a way to recover without files on external SD, *THIS FIXES THE BRICKS CAUSED BY CM10 AND REFLEX!!!* and I didn't lose anything. This thing is back in pristine order. I can finally sleep! Will post later on how I did it. I need sleep now.
Sometime last night, my AT&T G2 (D800) decided to go from being powered on and idling, to going into TWRP recovery mode. All by itself. I saw this, unplugged it from USB, and tried to reboot into system mode. But it simply won't do anything except boot into recovery. Powering off, trying to get to the bootloader, none of that works.
This is not a custom ROM, it's 4.2.2 stock from LG. I only rooted the phone, which was several weeks ago, and haven't had any problems, aside from TWRP not wanting to back up anything. I've been using Android since the original TMO G1 with JesusFreke's ROM, so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing, hopefully.
The only recent changes I've made are:
I updated busybox about 3 days ago (but have rebooted fine since)
I grabbed several legit apps from the market last night
Last night I also DL'ed, but did not apply, a ~50MB OTA update that has been pending. I don't think that would install without explicit permission anyway, which I didn't give it?
This phone was encrypted from the start. Maybe that;'s what prevents TWRP backups,, but right now I'm seeing TWRP errors/logs saying something like "Unable to mount \data". And yet I can browse to other folders, and see filenames in \etc for example. However, I don't see any files at all in \boot.
Since this phone has no external memory, and it's customized and has numerous configured apps, I really really don't want to have to wipe it. Although at this point, that may not even fix the problem? Even if it did, since I haven't been able to make backup images, it would be a Bad Thing™ either way. (Yes, I do have a secondary plan with Titanium, with backups going to cloud storage, but these are tedious and now a few weeks old. And wouldn't restore the ROM & system en masse.)
Please help.
Solved?
I'm not sure what caused this to occur, but I found somewhat of a solution after digging deep into my Google-fu.
I followed the instructions in this XDA thread and it actually worked. I didn't have adb access, but I was able to use dd successfully. It allowed me to boot into the device, unencrypt it, then arrive at the lock screen.
However, when I put in the lock code, it went apesh!t and played multiple notification sounds, with a blue circular wait symbol. It also flashed the LED from green to blue, as it normally only does during boot. Once I pressed the power button, I was back back into TWRP.
So then I followed Step 2 again, and once in the phone, I used terminal to run the dd command from inside the OS. This might be what it ultimately needs, because the prior attempt in TWRP had an error to the effect of "no space left on device".
I can't call it Solved yet, but it looks good to at least be able to get in and use the phone. I'm backing up with Titanium before I do anything else and will reboot and test its permanency later.
I'm gonna close this thread now that I think I have a handle on what is going on. The fix does survive a reboot, so I believe it's possible to repair the issue permanently per the instructions above. I also ran the phone for 3 hours with heavy app usage and no problems.
I believe what may have happened is my OTA decided to override my choice to NOT update the ROM, as some have reported in this Reddit thread. There's a lot of good info in that one, including how to stop getting nagged by turning the OTA notifications off, or to freeze it entirely with Titanium Backup if rooted.
Anyway, what apparently happens is that when the OTA/upgrade goes to reboot, and encounters a custom recovery, it gets confused... when you try to power cycle or reboot again, it sees the stock recovery still hasn't run whatever it wanted, so it starts recovery again Lather, rinse, repeat.
Fun times.
This is somewhat urgent because I am leaving the country for two weeks on Friday, and need a working phone. I am not sure what happened today, but my Sprint Galaxy S4 (SPHL720TBK) wouldn't connect to WIFI at my house. My tablet would, so I know it was a phone issue. I rebooted then was going through settings, and just checking things. The phone rebooted itself, and when it came back up, it went through a couple of screens, one of which asked about activation. It seemed like it was installing an update from Sprint, which it had been trying to do for a week or so. But it kept failing, saying it didn't have enough space for the download, despite there being several GB free internally and on the SD card. (I figured it must be because it was rooted). After a couple of additional screens on which I could only answer OK, the phone rebooted again, and that was it. It would not boot again. I decided to power off the phone and deal with it tonight. I can boot into recovery, and connect with Odin. I can boot to recovery and connect with ADB (in sideload mode). I know I could just do a factory reset, but unfortunately, I do not have a full backup since the end of January, and I would rather not lose everything. The phone was running v 4.4.2. I had rooted the phone several months ago with CF Auto Root using CF-Auto-Root-jfltespr-jfltespr-sphl720.tar.md5, so it was essentially stock, but rooted. Is there anything I can do to get the phone back on its feet that will not lose everything? Or anyway to copy data from the phone with it in this state? Any assistance will be VERY much appreciated! Thanks!
Fixed it myself
andrewt2323 said:
This is somewhat urgent because I am leaving the country for two weeks on Friday, and need a working phone. I am not sure what happened today, but my Sprint Galaxy S4 (SPHL720TBK) wouldn't connect to WIFI at my house. My tablet would, so I know it was a phone issue. I rebooted then was going through settings, and just checking things. The phone rebooted itself, and when it came back up, it went through a couple of screens, one of which asked about activation. It seemed like it was installing an update from Sprint, which it had been trying to do for a week or so. But it kept failing, saying it didn't have enough space for the download, despite there being several GB free internally and on the SD card. (I figured it must be because it was rooted). After a couple of additional screens on which I could only answer OK, the phone rebooted again, and that was it. It would not boot again. I decided to power off the phone and deal with it tonight. I can boot into recovery, and connect with Odin. I can boot to recovery and connect with ADB (in sideload mode). I know I could just do a factory reset, but unfortunately, I do not have a full backup since the end of January, and I would rather not lose everything. The phone was running v 4.4.2. I had rooted the phone several months ago with CF Auto Root using CF-Auto-Root-jfltespr-jfltespr-sphl720.tar.md5, so it was essentially stock, but rooted. Is there anything I can do to get the phone back on its feet that will not lose everything? Or anyway to copy data from the phone with it in this state? Any assistance will be VERY much appreciated! Thanks!
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Click to collapse
Since I didn't spark enough interest for anyone to offer advice, had to spend most of the afternoon/evening fixing these problems myself. Everything seems to be working, so I thought I would pass along key parts of this hard-learned lesson in case anyone else finds himself in such a situation.
First I booted into adb sideload mode, which is all I could do anyway. I installed philz_touch_6.23.9-jflte.zip and the aromafm.zip. I was then able to boot into a "normal" recovery mode. Aromafm was troublesome, and I eventually had to manually put the zip into place for it to work consistently. These are both WONDERFUL , and I highly recommend them both. Thanks very much to the creators! I used the file manager to find the files that I didn't want to lose, and used ADB to pull the files over to my PC. (ADB pull <source> <target>) Then I did a full wipe and factory reset. That did little other than delete all my data, which I had already copied anyway. The phone still would not boot past recovery.
I tried to use ADB to install a new ROM, but got a variety of errors. My phone being an L720T, there are not many ROM's available, at least not for which I could find functioning links. I finally found a TAR, L720TVPUBNG5_L720TSPTBNG5_L720TVPUBNG5_HOME.tar.md5, and used ODIN v3.09 to install that.
I still need to go back and re-root the phone, and install lots of APPS and restore data, but at least I have a functioning phone, and I can do the rest on my plane ride tomorrow.
I found the information I needed in a variety of posts here on xda developers, and would not have been able to get through this without all the helpful advice posted to other threads. So thanks to all of you for the wealth of information available here!