This forum is really big and I am new. I apologize if I am asking this in the wrong place. I have been reading a lot about how android working, and serving Google for answers.
I always thought that the only way to hard brick a device was to erase or corrupted the bootloader. Since even if the ROM and recovery had problems, you could use fastboot mode to fix things.
Now I am reading that Roms ussualy include a kernal, and flashing a kernal can lead to a hard brick. Does this apply to the Nexus 7 2012, or just devices that use download mode/ODIN instead of fastboot?
I always thought of a boot loader like an i intersection where you normally keep driving strait (into the main rom), or turn left (into recovery), or stay at the intersection (fastboot). How does a kernal tie into this? Do all Roms include their own kernal, or are different kernals and Roms usually flashed sepretly?
Thank you for helping me to understand this better.
Anyone?
If I posted this in the wrong place or something, please let me know.
Thank you
flyoffacliff said:
This forum is really big and I am new. I apologize if I am asking this in the wrong place. I have been reading a lot about how android working, and serving Google for answers.
I always thought that the only way to hard brick a device was to erase or corrupted the bootloader. Since even if the ROM and recovery had problems, you could use fastboot mode to fix things.
Now I am reading that Roms ussualy include a kernal, and flashing a kernal can lead to a hard brick. Does this apply to the Nexus 7 2012, or just devices that use download mode/ODIN instead of fastboot?
I always thought of a boot loader like an i intersection where you normally keep driving strait (into the main rom), or turn left (into recovery), or stay at the intersection (fastboot). How does a kernal tie into this? Do all Roms include their own kernal, or are different kernals and Roms usually flashed sepretly?
Thank you for helping me to understand this better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Waouh...a lot of questions for one post.
You have several things to do.
Before if you don't know all functionalities of Android go to read these pages => xda Wiki
After, all you need for your N7 wifi (2012) it's here => Google Nexus 7
You need a lot of time for reading and learning and finally you will be happy for using your device with pleasure
Good luck
Related
Hello,
I currently do not own a SGS4g, but I know a friend who does.
My friend previously had an iPhone and liked it. Now he wants to explore the customization of Android (due to me flashing so many different ROMs in front of him). He is currently too scared to root and custom rom his phone in case he bricks it.
I know there is the One-Click unbrick, but I was curious if it would work on the SGS4g. According to this it said it works on all Odin3(?) Samsungs and only on "softbricks".
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1153310
So I guess my questions are:
How can I tell if the phone is "hardbricked" and "softbricked?"
Once you flash a custom rom + kernel will you be able to go back to stock i.e. stock radio/kernel/bootloader?
I also found this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1117554&highlight=bible
It provided awesome information but I couldn't find out if there was a stock radio and others backed up online.
I know that these types of questions are asked a lot on these forums. So please bear with me.
Again, I am not familiar with this phone so stuff about Odin and Heimdall are flying over my head. I flashed my custom ROMs on my Motorola Milestone and we didn't have Odin and Heimdall.
Please help, I'm doing this to make a fellow Android User love his phone just a little bit more.
Thank you,
lilhugo
There are odin files that will return you to stock within 10 min, so don't worry about that. Soft bricks are when you don't mount the system properly (among other things) or don't follow the dev's instructions and your rom doesn't load. You will basically stuck at the galaxy s startup screen and can't get past it. This usually happens to everyone at least once and not really considered a big deal. To fix, you need to use odin to flash a rom with the computer. A hard brick usually happens when people mess up with flashing roms that change the boot loaders. There can be other causes but this is the most common reason. You can tell it is hard bricked if the phone wont even power on. This is much more serious than a soft brick. Soft bricks are always recoverable. Hard bricks are not always recoverable, but still possible.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA Premium App
I bootloader on my moto g XT1031 BOOST MOBILE
i accidently deleted something wrong obviously when trying to delete bloatware
i have been trying to access a link for the STOCK settings... Unfortunately my backups were erased/never saved/non existent.
I am completely frustrated and would really appreciate someones help.
I am currently able to use the mobile device but with no wifi, no data connection, no apps on the phone. I am unable to do anything data/wireless on my handset.
Here is My situation as is....
I have windows computer, i have power cord for phone ( USB?) i can not access the ever popular link that says is currently unavailable, and thats it. PLEASE take me through every step assuming that i know absolutely nothing because i DO NOT. I cant afford a new phone. I need all WORKING links and to be taken through every single little step. I am on day two of trying to do this myself and have given up. Please help me before i lose my mind.
p.s I do have internet acces via my Windows computer.
Assuming you have a custom recovery already installed, simply download a custom ROM via PC, drag and drop it on to the SDcard of your phone where you can easily find it via recovery.. Boot to custom recovery, do a wipe and flash the ROM./Gapps. There are several basically stock ROMs with slight tweaks in the Dev section. There also may be stock flashables. This will at least get your phone back operational until you can do the research in to recovering stock firmware.
There are many helpful people here, but for the most part you are encouraged to do your research and know how to recover from situations such as this without asking questions. All the info can be found on these forums with a few mins of research. I don't mean to come off as rude... But if you're dabbling into the world of BL unlock, rooting,flashing, modding, things happen and you will need to know your way around your device.
mbj731 said:
Assuming you have a custom recovery already installed, simply download a custom ROM via PC, drag and drop it on to the SDcard of your phone where you can easily find it via recovery.. Boot to custom recovery, do a wipe and flash the ROM./Gapps. There are several basically stock ROMs with slight tweaks in the Dev section. There also may be stock flashables. This will at least get your phone back operational until you can do the research in to recovering stock firmware.
There are many helpful people here, but for the most part you are encouraged to do your research and know how to recover from situations such as this without asking questions. All the info can be found on these forums with a few mins of research. I don't mean to come off as rude... But if you're dabbling into the world of BL unlock, rooting,flashing, modding, things happen and you will need to know your way around your device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like i said i have been trying to accomplish this for two days now. I really feel like there is nothing i can do. I just simply dont understand what im doing given my current level of knowledge pertaining to the aforementioned query. I do not think you are coming off as rude and i appreciate you taking the time to share you imput with me. Its just that when you say "flashables" and "Boot to custom recovery" i become confused as to what that means. sigh
as i have previously mention my level of patience has grown thin which in turn has raised my level of frustration. If you wouldnt mind taking the time to point me in the right direction it would very much be appreciated.
thank you very much
-DR
1.) Follow this guide to unlock bootloader/flash a custom recovery via PC: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2684234
2.) Here is a link to obtain a STOCK flashable zip for the Boost Mobile XT1031, along with a "optimized" version which has already been debloated. Whichever you choose. Download the ROM and move it to your phones SD. Boot into the custom recovery (above guide tells how). Once in recovery, do a wipe or factory reset. Install/flash the .zip you put on your SD:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/moto-g/development/rom-stock-motorola-rom-collection-t2854688
Hopefully this helps and you can also learn along the way. All of the information you need is on this forum. It can all be confusing and frustrating at first, but once you get the hang of it there's really not much to it.
There may be a better way of going about this, but these steps will get you back to stock in the easiest way I can think of with little to no knowledge of customizations. Once you get more familiar with everything and do your research on whatever result you're trying to obtain, it will get easier and easier to understand and do.
First a few disclaimers to explain why I'm here.
- My secondary intention with this question is finding some answer as generic as possible to also help other people. Of course my primary intention is fixing my own issue, but the biggest part of it from what I can tell in the past 8 hours have been finding ROM files. All links are broken, except for 4.1.2 and none of those worked for me. In fact, they bricked my phone pretty hard.
- I'm on a mac. It's a nightmare finding tools for the mac, but I doubt any of them would really be any use for my case, one reason why I didn't even bother going for a windows vm. Another one is I'm traumatised by installing and running VMs. Finally this is for the challenge and learning a bit more.
- I've being trying to fix this through lots of research in the past 8 hours and I do know a few bits about going around and doing things (so sad this guide had no repercussion so far). But clearly, I'm dumb enough to brick my phone twice with no backups. At least could figure it out the first time (I had more time in hands as well). Please consider this. This means I've tried a lot of stuff you may wanted to advise, but it also mean I may have missed something obvious in the middle.
Okay...
By "bricked" I mean:
1. I can't go through the same process I did before to flash any CM image. CWM won't flash CM11 and CM12 recovery complains my bootloader isn't 4.4.
2. Both CWM and twrp recoveries should allow touch. None work, so I an't use twrp.
3. Battery keeps getting low and I've got no clue how to charge it to full again or even see how much it is at without installing twrp, which keeps getting uninstalled randomly at reboots, despite all of this topic about a solution. `fastboot getvar battery-voltage` doesn't show it. The mac script (which I was about to write myself based on op) also doesn't seem to help. In my case, I've removed the `./fastboot` because I've got it on my shell path.
I believe (1) happened, as I said on the disclaimer, right after I've flashed one of those 4.1.2 ROMs. By "flashed" I mean running the BAT file which mostly works on mac. ECHO of course wouldn't show the messages of progress there, but all fastboot commands do run.
And I also believe if only I could find 4.4 stock ROM files they might work or, at least, bring bootloader back to where it was so I could install CM12 again. And as far as I could notice without having Windows to try, no windows tool would really help here. That RSD Lite for instance, looks like it's just a GUI to run fastboot commands.
Above ALL
I just wanted to find a ROM stock file which I could fastboot flash into xt925 to reset it as hard as possible from zero and that the link will probably not break in the future for whoever may need it.
I figured THIS shouldn't be too hard to find, even for mac only, but it has been.
PS: Being able to fix the battery thing is also very important and quite a relevant follow up on the question! Right now I'm stuck with a ROM file that might work, but got no battery to try! ( 10 hours debugging now... )
only one stock kitkat rom for XT925 ! i'll upload this for you !
You know, if this works I'll have to, at least, go through some of your 187 posts and find a dozen or so to thank you way more than once!
I've now downloaded [this one](http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=63163078&postcount=6), which [he also posted again later on](http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=63272842&postcount=2), hoping it will do it! If it does, I'll try to upload in this post, as it looks like XDA hosted files last for much longer than anything else.
Only problem for flashing anything now is I can't seem to get enough battery!
Hi all,
I've been ROM'ing since 2013 on multiple devices so I am somewhat familiar with adb/fastboot flashing and commands, what to do, what not to do, etc.... I just picked up a used pixel and first thing I did was unlock the bootloader - no problem. Next I go to root, so I began following this tutorial https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/root-your-google-pixel-pixel-xl-0174670/ , as instructed I DL the required drivers, image files, patch file etc...and follow this tutorial for installing TWRP https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/install-twrp-custom-recovery-your-pixel-pixel-xl-0175163/ , I get to step 8 and instruct via the command window to fastboot boot twrp.img, just as instructed. Everything appeared to be going the way it should as it started to boot to TWRP but almost as quickly the phone just died. I mean dead as a door nail. It won't do a thing. It won't even charge now. I have never had a phone just die like this. I fear I have met my first true full on brick.
I mean, yeah, I have soft bricked phones many a times but always had a backup to restore or was able to dig my way out one way or another but that was explainable by messing with questionable ROM's or something similar. Here I was just booting to the phone specific most recent version of TWRP by a solid well known tutorial with solid links, no indication that these could be the wrong images or zip's at all....but I'll be damned if this phone is dead as hell. I'm hoping someone can shed some light as to what happened or even miraculously tell me that it can be fixed.
Guys, is this a worst case scenario full on brick with no hope or getting it back to life? If so, why? Where did I go wrong? If this is going to be what I fear it is I hope to at least understand how it happened so I can avoid it in the future. This was a very expensive F-up on my part. I am beside myself with grief and disbelief that I could have done this with as many times as I have unlocked bootloaders, rooted, installed TWRP, flashed ROM's, etc.. I mean I 'm not the best but I am not a noob by any means. I feel like such a dumb ass right now!
Appreciate any help or explanation anyone can offer. Thanks.
We don't flash avb or any other patches anymore and haven't for like an android version and a half. For future reference look for more current information when modding a phone and for simple things like root guides go to xda don't just ask Google.
@kerryh420,
Those are some pretty old tutorials!
After plugging in the charger and wait for say 10seconds, can you boot into bootloader with button combo?
(Power + volume down or power + volume up for recovery as alternative)
Cheers
Sent from my Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 using XDA Labs
No offense, if you've been ROM'ing since 2013 you'd know not to go to other websites for tutorials! XDA is your best friend to follow instructions on Rooting, Flashing a recovery, and etc! Sorry that happened to ya. If it's literally dead you're probably out of luck and I know that's not what you want to hear. My best advice is to not follow tutorials on other websites. Good luck on your next device!
I spent half yesterday, into the wee hours of the morning trying to get my pixel back to life. Figured I'd post my goof as it may help someone later.
I flashed the aosp build using the android flash tool just out of curiosity. Realizing dual sim did not work on asop without gapps of some sort, I decided to go back to the public builds. That's where things went crashing down, fast and hard. Literally 6 hours trying everything I knew and everything I could find. Tried 3 different computers, multiple different cables, made sure adb and fastboot were updated like 5 times, tried using the flash tool, tried downloading and using flash all, tried erasing everything and starting over, tried lineage, tried side loading via adb, tried fastboot flashing individual images... All failed, flash tool complaining about not enough space, local installs complaining about missing partitions, not valid files, just everything that could go wrong did. The only thing I could successfully get installed was aosp.
The solution? What was preventing it? I use ublock and privacy badger. Disabling those, off to the races, everything went smoothly and I'm back up and running. What puzzled me, how could I used the flash tool to go to aosp but not back? Why, or how was it interfering with a local flash? Maybe things got screwed up somehow and that was messing with the local flash...idk but if you're in my position try disabling those and give it a whirl.
Which flash tool are you talking about? Everything you're doing sounds overly complicated.
I recommend sticking with cmd for windows, and terminals in linux .
noidea24 said:
Which flash tool are you talking about? Everything you're doing sounds overly complicated.
I recommend sticking with cmd for windows, and terminals in linux .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried that, I tried using the flash all bat for windows and then I tried flashing individual images via adb. Nothing worked. I have no clue why the local installations kept failing unless, as I said something got messed up using the android flash tool via chrome.
Here's the flash tool which I used to load aosp.
I can't understand what problem you were facing:
use newest platform tools
use newest Google USB drivers
use firmware image of google developers page
reboot into fastboot (by volDown + Power or via adb)
flash-all
working smooth like butter if you can read
hanni2301 said:
I can't understand what problem you were facing:
use newest platform tools
use newest Google USB drivers
use firmware image of google developers page
reboot into fastboot (by volDown + Power or via adb)
flash-all
working smooth like butter if you can read
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm guessing you can't read, I did all that. I'm simply posting this in case someone else runs into the same issue I did. As I said, I'm not sure if trying the aosp build changed anything or any of my numerous attempts fouled something. The only way back was disabling ublock and privacy badger and using the flash tool. For clarification, I've been doing this since the very first android, the T-Mobile G1 and am not new to this game.
You were right, I didn't read carefully enough, or to call it by it's name, I misunderstood your posts. The title of your thread lets believe that you have trouble returning to stock and you need help on that.
That something goofy kicked you out of routine I didn't read (was reading from newest to oldest post, so tbh, that was not clever)
I'm also not new to this, so let us stay calm. Nice that you share your experiences.
I would suggest to change the title in: 'try this if you have trouble with returning to stock' I r something similar.
Have a good time!
hanni2301 said:
You were right, I didn't read carefully enough, or to call it by it's name, I misunderstood your posts. The title of your thread lets believe that you have trouble returning to stock and you need help on that.
That something goofy kicked you out of routine I didn't read (was reading from newest to oldest post, so tbh, that was not clever)
I'm also not new to this, so let us stay calm. Nice that you share your experiences.
I would suggest to change the title in: 'try this if you have trouble with returning to stock' I r something similar.
Have a good time!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem. I'm still at a loss as to what went wrong but needless to say, for myself, I won't be trying AOSP via the flash tool again.
Little late on this, but I was in a rut as well then realized I had adblockers on which caused issue with the flash tool.
Easiest way to get back to stock is by using Android Flash Tool https://flash.android.com/back-to-public