Any way to read phone data via pc in bootloader mode? - Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi, I have a HTC 7 Pro that I believe has partially corrupted data on the SD card causing it to fail to boot.
If you try and start the phone it just hangs on the HTC splash screen but if you remove the SD card or replace it with another it will boot windows to the point of getting the corrupted, changed or missing SD card message and won't let me access the o.s, just emergency calls.
This leads me to believe that the data has some kind of corruption on the SD card that is loaded as windows boots and rather than giving the error message its actually crashing the boot.
The physical SD card is not important to me but the data that is on the phone or SD card (I know its spread a cross the two and encrypted to that device) is important and desperately want to get anything I can from the phone if its possible.
The data I want is photos and videos, there loads I could loose without really caring but I had the only photos and videos of our daughters 3rd birthday on it and due to my pc suffering Mainboard failure, I had not been backing up to one of my drives. I don't use auto upload on SkyDrive as it does it automatically regardless of weather your on WiFi or your mobile data and I don't want it hammering the mobile connection!
like it was done just to wind you up, Windows phone SkyDrive app also makes you upload files one by one rather than being able to select groups of files and upload at same time so I did not back up via SkyDrive manually when on wifi cos it was insanely long winded, agghhhh!
So what I would like to know is of any method at all that I could read the content of the phone without booting it?
With the card out, the phone will boot to the point where it has loaded the bulk of the o.s and things like the battery meter, WiFi icon, locks screen ECT are all working but just won't let me past the error screen.
I also fear the main of what I want is on the SD card which is preventing it booting at all if installed so reading the phone in b loader seems like the only option if its even possible.
Any help on this would be massively appreciated.
Thanks, Steve.

Related

[Q] Please help data recovery on HD7 - desperate!

2 days ago my son was born and I used my HTC HD7 to take all pictures and videos of him and my wife, these were the most amazing and precious moments of my life and I captured them all on my phone.
My wife and I both have identical HD7 phones, last night I took my phone home and charged a spare battery for her, today I took this to hospital and we both turned our phones off and waited until the "goodbye" sreen had vanished, and then swapped the batterys over in the phones so she had the fully charged battery and I had the low/quarter full battery. When she switched on her phone, everything was fine, but when I switched on mine I saw some screen flash up saying something about "pressing the volume buttons to erase your phone" I paniced at this point and did a stupid thing and took out the battery again. After I put it back in it booted up and gave me the "seup windows phone" screen. At this point I switched my phone off and havent swiched it back on since.
Is there any hope of recoverying the pictures and videos? Apps, contactacts etc I dont care about, but these are the most important moments of my life I want to recover. I have no idea what happened, but at the moment I am very upset.
I am an IT technician myself, and in the past it has been all stored on the memory card, but there is no way to remove the memory card on this phone. I am willing to destroy the phone to preserve this data if needed, Is there any way I could remove the memory card? I could try some data recovery software if this is the case.
Please help, the might be a simple way to sort this I haven't been able to find. I have now been up 36 hours as my wife has had a lot of complications and lost a lot of blood last night and ended up having a transfusion. Sorry to be so personal, but I am really desperate to save these photos.
you might have accidentally held the volume button when you turned on the device, and that triggered that factory reset feature.
I have done this accidentally with my trophy as well when i was running late for work, but instead of removing the battery, i held down the power button and tried again, but when it turned on it didnt show me a setup one where you type in your windows live id, instead my one was an image of a windows phone suggesting to connect to a laptop via USB cable, again i didnt panic and turned off the screen and held down the volume button and the power button and i did trigger the factory reset in purpose, once i was at the factory reset screen, pressing any other button (camera key, and sleep/wake/power key) apart from the volume keys disables the reset feature and will continue to boot to wp7.
I dont know if Im helping, but thats how I resolved my situation.
How to remove memory card
Hi Herr_ando,
Firstly Congratulations on becoming a father
Secondly do not worry all is not lost, if you cannot get the handset to boot normally you can remove the memory card (without voiding the warranty too) A lot of people figured this out when they had fist purchased the HD7 and have since used the following video clip to help them upgrade the memory card size:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EcGUX3NwnQ
I have done this myself but had trouble when reading the memory card via a dongle (this is due to the differing format used by WP7) the way i got round this was either by putting the memory card into an old N97 nokia phone and using the pc software to remove the pictures from it or to use a flash drive recovery app found via google.
Hope this helps,
Creamy
It doesn't sound like you actually performed a factory reset so it's probably fine... but if you want to be safe, pull out the SD card like the previous post says. It might make you factory reset after putting it back in, but if you already save your pics and videos, who cares, right?
thesecondsfade said:
It doesn't sound like you actually performed a factory reset so it's probably fine... but if you want to be safe, pull out the SD card like the previous post says. It might make you factory reset after putting it back in, but if you already save your pics and videos, who cares, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's okay to take out the SD card and put it back as long as the phone isn't turned on in the meantime and nothing is written to the SD card.
So it's okay if you use the SD card to recover photos and put it back in, as long as the phone stays off in this time.
@herr_ando: Congratulations on becoming a father!
Hi guys, thanks for the congratulations.
I tried removing the memory card and plugged it into a card reader, no joy reading this card, in fact it wouldnt even detect. I also tried putting it into my Toshiba Camileo, which I know deffo supports SDHC cards of this size, was unable to see it at all.
Also tried it in a new laptop, with a micro > full size adaptor, no joy, and a blackberry 8520 with mass storage enabled still cant read this card, when I choose disable mass storage it tells me the memory card isn't formatted.
I know Windowsphone7 files on the memory card isn't supposed to be accessable outside the OS but this makes data recovery impossible for me.
If this was a PC HDD or standard SD card I could run some data recovery software, and try to recover these files even if the card has been formatted. but I have no idea how to do this for this card... any ideas?
herr_ando said:
Hi guys, thanks for the congratulations.
I tried removing the memory card and plugged it into a card reader, no joy reading this card, in fact it wouldnt even detect. I also tried putting it into my Toshiba Camileo, which I know deffo supports SDHC cards of this size, was unable to see it at all.
Also tried it in a new laptop, with a micro > full size adaptor, no joy, and a blackberry 8520 with mass storage enabled still cant read this card, when I choose disable mass storage it tells me the memory card isn't formatted.
I know Windowsphone7 files on the memory card isn't supposed to be accessable outside the OS but this makes data recovery impossible for me.
If this was a PC HDD or standard SD card I could run some data recovery software, and try to recover these files even if the card has been formatted. but I have no idea how to do this for this card... any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sadly, you need a Nokia cell as stated above, to read the card. Their OS is the only one that supports the partition format & password protection. I have 2 SD Cards that won't work on anything other than a Nokia cell because of this. They came out of a Nokia MusicXpress & Nuron my room mate had.
Hi mate
So you reckon if I buy a Nokia 5230 or similar I should be able to read this card? I should be able to pick one of these up for £35 or so, well worth it to get these photos back.
I have no experiance of nokia phones since the old days of my 3310. Do i need to use nokia software or does this present itself as a removable hdd in windows?
Many thanks.
herr_ando said:
Hi mate
So you reckon if I buy a Nokia 5230 or similar I should be able to read this card? I should be able to pick one of these up for £35 or so, well worth it to get these photos back.
I have no experiance of nokia phones since the old days of my 3310. Do i need to use nokia software or does this present itself as a removable hdd in windows?
Many thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Creamy stated the n97. I'm not family with all this as I never done it, but there's a lot of threads regarding this. People using Nokia phones to unlock & reformat SD card so they'll work for other devices. As to what devices this work on, I'm not sure, but as long as the card hasn't been erased yet, it's possible that a Nokia phone will be able to read the card & transfer files to your pc. You can look through the forum for more information from people with experience. My experience only deals with trying to get these 2 SD cards working with other devices & will result in for formatting the cards.
NOTE: Also, I do believe you need the nokia desktop software install to transfer file, but am not sure. Another thing, if you do find the sd card is empty, maybe reformatting it in the nokia phone, you'll be able to directly put the sd card in your pc & use your partition recovery tools on it.
Best Digital Media Recovery Software
Hi,
Congratulations on becoming a father!
If the memory card is not recognized in the PC or it is impossible to access the data on it, the controller on the card is damaged. There is only one way to get the data back, digital media recovery and directly access their raw data with a programable digital media recovery tool. Have a look at: RecoverDataTools DigitalMediaRecoveryTool

(Problem) Phone dose not start! Restoring error!!!

I have HTC HD7
It was full updated to all update from microsoft and htc
Past Events:
I got some hang in using device at running apps or using wifi.
There was problem on marketplace and HTC HUB was not updated ...
After many hard restarting device (open the cover and eject the battery)
And after many restarting,
- the device couldnt run any application
- the call logs, dosent saved
- the message, dosent saved
- ...
I decide to restore the phone to the older version by zune
On 99% zune got error with code: 800700AA, (i try this step 5 times)
I search the xda, microsoft any other websites, but i couldnot found any description
then
I think so, its great time to rest factory and replace sd card!
I bought Transcend 32Gb (compatible) and replace the sd card
But the error on restoring backup changed to 80180090
I decide to downgrade the SPL to install the original rom
Download the ansar rom
"RUU_Schubert_HTC_Europe_1.54.401.01_Radio_5.51.09.29_22.32.50.10U_by_ansar"
Run the ROMUpdateUtility and after 1%, recive error "Flash Write Error"
Now: (Problems)
The phone dose not start. after turning on, its show the connect to pc screen
Device Info:
HTC HD7
SPL: 5.11.2250.0
Mid: PD29100
Os: Mango full update
Whats your opinion or any other advise for me, to correct the phone?
OK, first of all, you almost certainly had a hardware problem in the first place, where calls and messages weren't being saved. It could be due to any number of things, but one simple possibilitiy is that the SD card was bad. The usual solution it to warranty exchange teh phone, not replace the (officially not-user-servicable) SD card yourself, but whatever.
You can only restore a backup to the exact device it was made from. By changing the SD card you modified the device, and the backup is no longer compatible. Focus owners discovered this over a year ago. You might have been able to use another SD card of exactly the same size, but certainly not one with a different size.
I don't know about your problem with the radio update, though I can think of several things that it could have been. If you boot your phone into SPL mode now, can it still connect via USB? If so, you might just try flashing a stock ROM. If not, that image of ansar's was not compatible with your phone's current state and has damaged your bootloader, which typically requires at least a GoldCard to fix (I'm not an expert on custom ROMs, so at this point you'd just have to read about it on the Dev&Hacking forum).
Alternatively, if the phone is booting into the black&white update/restore screen, there are two things you could try. The first is to just pull the battery, leave it out for a while, and then see if the phone boots up normally when you put it back in. For some reason, sometimes just power-cycling using the power button doesn't revert the phone to normal boot mode. The second is try putting the original (possibly faulty) SD card back into the phone, then boot it up connected to your PC with Zune running. This should automatically trigger Zune to restore the backup you have on your computer, which (due to the original hardware being restored), will hopefully work. After that, you can try messing with the new SD card again instead.
As a final note, unless the SD card specifically says "compatible with Windows Phone", do *not* assume it will work just because other people have bought the same brand of card and had it work. The performance spec that WP7 requires in its SD cards is *not* the same as the specs that commercially sold SD cards are tested to (random access vs. maximum throughput, if you're curious), and even two cards out of the same batch aren't guaranteed to have the same performance characteristics.

Mozart not recognised by windows so can't backup please help!!

I was recently given a Htc mozart by a friend who had cracked the screen and bought a new phone, they said I could have it but would like their photos and vids off it so if I could back it up (easy as pie I thought!!!)
The phone charges and functions fine (I changed the digitzer) but when plugged into a pc it displays usb unrecognized error code 43 (malfunction?). I have tried multiple cables, laptops and even os (xp, 7 32bit/64bit and osx), I have searched the internet and have seen some suggestions on wiping the phone (but I don't want to do this until the data is backed up) also looked at reading the micro sd but found you can't by conventional methods.
I have also tried multiple apps - boxfiles, sendstuffnow,sharefile (they seem to allow one photo at a time but not videos), I also tried emailing them but again I can't email vids and the phone has over 500 pics! tried bluetooth and also yivosoft but it doesn't seem to be able to view the files (root access required??), tried a few other programs such as ftp and they just state the phone needs to be updated via zune (currently running 7.0.7004.0).
I was thinking of sticking another microsd card in and formatting it etc just to see if it is then recognised in windows and poss update the firmware then put the old micro sd back in? would this work or is the firmware stored on the micro sd card and also if not when I update would it then state the old micro sd needs formatting or something? If anyone has any suggestions on how I can get the pics and vids off it would be greatly appreciated! I am an android user and this is my first experience with a windows phone so if I am way off my apologies. Thanks again
For sure don't mess with the uSD cards. They're locked to the device (the "S" in SD stands for "Secure" and refers to a rarely-used ability to lock an SD card). Even if you managed to make the card usable again, the data on it would be gone. Also, yes, the OS is at least partially stored on the SD card, and your switch-update suggestion would not work.
WiFi sync would work, but if that's not already set up you'd need to connect the phone to Zune via the USB to set it up. There are some homebrew apps that would be able to lift the files easily enough, but unless you have something lile TouchXplorer or Advanced Explorer installed already, that's not an option (you need USB connection to install more homebrew).
Sorry, man. This is one of the reasons why I plug in my phone to my PC every day or two and sync it; the tiny amount of time it takes is worth the reassurance. I realize that doesn't help now, though...
GoodDayToDie said:
For sure don't mess with the uSD cards. They're locked to the device (the "S" in SD stands for "Secure" and refers to a rarely-used ability to lock an SD card). Even if you managed to make the card usable again, the data on it would be gone. Also, yes, the OS is at least partially stored on the SD card, and your switch-update suggestion would not work.
WiFi sync would work, but if that's not already set up you'd need to connect the phone to Zune via the USB to set it up. There are some homebrew apps that would be able to lift the files easily enough, but unless you have something lile TouchXplorer or Advanced Explorer installed already, that's not an option (you need USB connection to install more homebrew).
Sorry, man. This is one of the reasons why I plug in my phone to my PC every day or two and sync it; the tiny amount of time it takes is worth the reassurance. I realize that doesn't help now, though...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply, know what you mean I back up regular also but my friend didn't. I can't believe its so difficult to transfer the files without the usb connection :S also can't believe the updates are no ota :S was hoping there might be a method of unlocking the phone for homebrew like there was with the iphone at one stage. Ah well back to the drawing board unless someone can come up with any other ideas!

[Q] Help with SD card

I was wondering if anyone has any ideas or can point me in the right direction to solve this. Yesterday I started getting messages that the apps that were installed on my sd card stopped working...........then the gallery was gone (all my pics) now there's a message in the corner that says Blank SD card......(card is bland or has unsupported filesystem) do you want to format...........I've tried taking the card out and plugging into a PC however it says its a read-only. I don't want to format, is there any way to get all my pics and data back
any help is appreciated
anesh01 said:
I was wondering if anyone has any ideas or can point me in the right direction to solve this. Yesterday I started getting messages that the apps that were installed on my sd card stopped working...........then the gallery was gone (all my pics) now there's a message in the corner that says Blank SD card......(card is bland or has unsupported filesystem) do you want to format...........I've tried taking the card out and plugging into a PC however it says its a read-only. I don't want to format, is there any way to get all my pics and data back
any help is appreciated
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately this is mostly a lost cause. This is a known issue on the Galaxy S3, and I've heard a couple of other phones as well, including the Note 2. I've had this happen THREE times on my phone, to the point that I just don't even use an SD card anymore.
From what I've read the brand and size of the SD card doesn't make a difference.
You may be able to recover some of your pics and other files by using file recovery software on your computer. I used a program called Pandora Recovery, and while it spit out the files using different random names, at least I got a majority of my pics back (I had over 1000 on the card).
Beyond that there is no way to recover the data on the card. Once you try recovery software, you'll have to let your phone format the card if you want to use it again. Even Windows won't read the data from the card in it's current state.
Thank you for your help........im going to give Pandora a try and see what happens. I did hear about a program called DiskDigger Pro........so wish me luck..........I wish I was more pro active in reconizing the signs but it just happened out of no where
anesh01 said:
Thank you for your help........im going to give Pandora a try and see what happens. I did hear about a program called DiskDigger Pro........so wish me luck..........I wish I was more pro active in reconizing the signs but it just happened out of no where
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe you should able to cause it happened to me a few times and I able to recover all my stuff (videos, photos). The trick is find a good SDcard recovery software.
This may or may not help, but it's worth a shot.......http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=367912&page=2
This problem is why I will not be buying Samsung phones again. It is BS that I can't even use my 32GB SD card because it will eventually fail I will lose everything on it. It has happened twice in 7 months with the phone already.
Sent from my SCH-I535
disk digger worked great for me except for the occasional corrupt. You have to format first.
Thanks a lot for sharing information about other products. However, while scanning the corrupt SD card encountering error messages and unable to recover entire data. In order to overcome such problems, use Remo Recover tool to restore data from corrupt or formatted SD card.
Just wanted to let you guys know that my old SD cards got corrupted because I tried to configure the metadata of my songs through such apps like player pro and etc. I have a 64gb right now and its been working fine for over a year because I just manually configure everything when I connect it to my computer.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app

Samsung Galaxy S7 Boot loop

Well, this is rather vexing.
I've been hard at work trying to backup / transfer data from my extremely old Samsung Galaxy S5 that seems to be coming to the end of it's useful lifespan. The S7 was next, but aside from running out of internal storage, I thought I still had time on that one (I wasn't experiencing a lot of slowdown or any crashes).
I went out for a couple hours (taking my newer phone), and when I came back, I saw my S7 on the insert the pin code screen. When I put the correct pin code in, the "unlocked padlock" stays on the screen for ages, before the phone restarts and I am shown the pin screen again (if I insert the wrong pin, it says so, so I am sure that I am not inserting the wrong pin).
So for the first time in my life, I am dealing with a spontaneous boot loop. This device has never been rooted, had a custom recovery installed or even the bootloader unlocked (it's the Exynos version, so presumably it would have been possible, but I decided that I wanted *one* unrooted device just in case, and given Knox, I decided that this was the device that will remain unmodded).
Anyway, that's for the story, but the question is, is there anything that I can try before the nuclear option (factory reset etc.).
Fortunately most of the photos are on the MicroSD. There are perhaps two or three apps that I would have liked to backup (they did not have a convenient built-in backup system) but I am just wondering if there is anything I might be able to do at this point? For instance, would wiping the cache be an option? Or is there anything I might be able to do with adb?
(Note: The device is running on Android 7)
Thanks.
Don't set security passwords for device access as you are the one most likely to be locked out.
If the boot loop wasn't caused by a hardware failure it's likely a app you loaded. Launchers and power management apps are prime candidates. Leave at least a couple gb of headroom on internal storage.
A factory reset is the easiest solution. Be careful what you load next time... take out the trash.
Use the SD card as a data drive, all critical data and everything you need for a reload goes here. No apps. Only apps, and the temporary download folder go on the internal memory.
The DCIM folder can be set to the SD card as well, but there can only be one DCIM folder and don't change its name. If a second backup folder is used on the SD card instead do not name it DCIM.
ApkExport can be used to make installable copies of apps for transfering them and added the data drive as well, no Playstore needed.
Do not use Kies or SmartSwitch when going between different type devices or OS versions. It can cause issues.
Cut/paste critical data, verify the data is readable and all there. Don't trust Kies or SmartSwitch with critical data.
Never clone data drives.
Never encrypt data drives.
Regularly redundantly backup the SD card data drive to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
Thanks for the reply.
1. No app was recently installed (past couple of weeks)
2. Hardware failure? Maybe, but it is rather out of the blue. Phone has not displayed any unusual behaviour, it hasn't been taken out of the house for a week or so (it is really in the process of getting retired). And I would like to ascertain it.
3. I am aware I can just nuke the whole thing with a factory reset, but before taking that easy option and effectively lose some data I'd like to retrieve if possible, I would like to other options.
And rather than tips on what I should've done or can do next time (much of which I am already doing), I am looking for advice on anything I might be able to try -before- nuking the whole thing.
For instance, could the log-files (there are quite a few of them) provide hint in what went wrong? Any option of re-installing the OS without wiping the data partition? Since I am on a fairly old version of Android I may also have the option of doing a minor update. That kind of things. I am thinking that there might also be the possibility that the system files somehow got corrupted and perhaps a re-install or system update might be worth trying.
I am basically looking for options that will not, for the time being erase the data partition. If it comes down to it in the end, then fine, but that is the last option not the first.
It sounds like it got spontaneously corrupted. Perhaps a flash memory cell failure. If so it may or may not be "self healing" with a factory reset or a reflash.
If you have ADB access you may be able to fix it.
Otherwise your options are limited to what's on the boot menu.
Try doing a hard reboot (simulates pulling battery).
If you try booting it a bunch of times it may go into go safe mode. I've seen that behavior in Android 9.
That's extent of my skills, sorry.
The reason why I posted how to prevent data lose is because sometimes that's all you can do.
Internal memory data I consider expendable, the SD card data... potentially expendable.

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