Help with stock Google Pixel stuck in a boot loop - Google Pixel Questions & Answers

First off, my google pixel is 100% stock. Last night when I went to bed, I had no issues with my phone. I woke up in the middle of the night because the screen was on and very bright. It was the white google boot screen, but with a bunch of corrupted text sporadically over it, and it was stuck there. I held down the power button to reboot, but when it did it would get to my unlock screen, but be frozen there. After about 5 seconds on that screen, it would reboot itself, and just continue that over and over. I tried holding down the volume down button to get into the bootloader, but when I go into recover mode, it just gives me the logo of the green android guy with a red triangle exclamation point on it and it says "no command" below it. So I reboot, and the only way to stop the boot cycle is to to back into the boot loader and select shutdown, so that way it will stay off.
Any words of wisdom? I was really not looking to get a new phone at this point...

I'll add that I used the instructions here to try to apply a rescue OTA using ADB according to these instructions: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz6x7k-VkpUJMlZ1aEliVnhMOHM/view. It completed successfully, but didn't make any improvement on the situation.

Update #2: I ended up trying to do a factory reset from recovery mode and that also doesn't seem to have helped.

Did you try installing a more recent OTA than what you originally had?

I already had the most recent OTA so I can't get a more recent one.

Try again in a few days when the February update is released. If it still doesn't work, it's possible a memory chip got fried.
If you're in the US, look up your nearest uBreakiFix location. They handle all Pixel warranties in the US. There are a number of reports in various threads of people getting their phone repaired for free, even outside of warranty.

I am in the US, but the nearest location for me is about 1.5 hours away. I guess I could give them a call to find out if it's worth the drive.
Why do you think a new OTA update would help where an old one wouldn't?
Is there any way I can flash the full image without having previously unlocked the bootloader?

Well i am experiencing the same problem on temporary basis since 2-3 days and the problem seems to be with the power button. I get it fix when i take it out of the body cover and try to clear the dust around power button and seems to fix it but it still happens in the morning or at night at home.

Related

Dead photon?

Hello, my Photon started acting up really weird. First of all, it was really slow. I thought it's because I had like 150MB left and it was nearly full data-wise. However, I erased most of the data, and left it with 3GB left. Didn't work and it got worse.
I have these stripes around the display (just at sides, not at middle), while phone is turned on. Doesn't matter if in system, or at boot logo. Doesn't matter, because whenever I get to system, I can be in system for like 1 minute, then every application starts crashing (Apex launcher, Google play, whatever you pick) and I basically can't get anywhere. Also if I go to sleep mode, phone is basically dead and it's pure luck when I will turn on phone again. I am trying every few minutes and it's worthless, because any time I get to system anyway, I crash after few seconds.
What to do? I was planing to install custom ROM yesterday, but never got to that, because this all started to act up. So what should I do? Reset system? Any other ideas? Is phone dead?
Sorry for bad english, no bully please.
Thanks in advance
Update - now when I am trying to start up my phone, I have just black screen with white lines in the middle. Then phone shuts down. I will give more info when I will be at home and can get phone on charger
Well definitely try to charge the device up. You might try re-flashing the stock ROM using RSD Lite... Although from your description I fear your issue may be hardware related.
Could turn device on. Apparently that black screen with white lines was just discharged phone. When I put it on charger, I could again boot into system and it was working until I pressed power button to go to sleep mode and phone is again dead. Will try to flash RSD Lite later today and will post what happened
kanek06 said:
Could turn device on. Apparently that black screen with white lines was just discharged phone. When I put it on charger, I could again boot into system and it was working until I pressed power button to go to sleep mode and phone is again dead. Will try to flash RSD Lite later today and will post what happened
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Charge the device as much as you possibly can before doing anything with RSD. Ideally you should have at least 50% battery in the device when flashing anything.
This is really miserable. I can't really get into bootloader. Because phone after that 'crash' or whatever you want to call it is dead and I can't even see if it's turned on or not. Basically I am randomly waiting when it's gonna restart and then I just get into system. Even if I fully discharge it, it will have black screen with white lines first, it flashes quite couple times and then it will finally boot into system. Also I remember it was ***** in past to get into recovery. Can I do anything from system? Because as soon as I don't turn off my screen by power button, phone is working, though it has those lines on side of LCD (I will try to borrow camera from someone and post it here today).
I set automatic turning screen off for 10 minutes and I am really careful about pressing power button. Sucks there is only option for just 10 minutes, so I have to tap on screen at least for once every 10 minutes or I will not have working phone. **** my life, really.
kanek06 said:
This is really miserable. I can't really get into bootloader. Because phone after that 'crash' or whatever you want to call it is dead and I can't even see if it's turned on or not. Basically I am randomly waiting when it's gonna restart and then I just get into system. Even if I fully discharge it, it will have black screen with white lines first, it flashes quite couple times and then it will finally boot into system. Also I remember it was ***** in past to get into recovery. Can I do anything from system? Because as soon as I don't turn off my screen by power button, phone is working, though it has those lines on side of LCD (I will try to borrow camera from someone and post it here today).
I set automatic turning screen off for 10 minutes and I am really careful about pressing power button. Sucks there is only option for just 10 minutes, so I have to tap on screen at least for once every 10 minutes or I will not have working phone. **** my life, really.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why can't you turn the phone off and charge it while off, or boot to recovery and charge the phone in recovery?
arrrghhh said:
Why can't you turn the phone off and charge it while off, or boot to recovery and charge the phone in recovery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
About charging it while turned off - Can't because when I try to turn it on again, it's roulette when I get finally bootloader logo and not black screen with white stripes.
And boot to recovery. Is it possible to like download some command prompt application and boot to bootloader from there? I know when I had my G1 (and when I actually understood android ) you could boot to recovery or bootloader via console. I have astro installed on phone, so downloading some console application and installing it shouldn't be problem.
Btw as we are speaking, I tried to call someone and I basically get same thing like when I am going to sleep mode, I get black screen and now I am just waiting, when phone will eventually want to restart itself.
kanek06 said:
About charging it while turned off - Can't because when I try to turn it on again, it's roulette when I get finally bootloader logo and not black screen with white stripes.
And boot to recovery. Is it possible to like download some command prompt application and boot to bootloader from there? I know when I had my G1 (and when I actually understood android ) you could boot to recovery or bootloader via console. I have astro installed on phone, so downloading some console application and installing it shouldn't be problem.
Btw as we are speaking, I tried to call someone and I basically get same thing like when I am going to sleep mode, I get black screen and now I am just waiting, when phone will eventually want to restart itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still sounds like some sort of a hardware issue, is the phone new to you?
You can certainly force bootloader mode, in several ways. When it's off you can hold power + camera and it will give you a choice of what to boot. When it's in Android you can do "adb reboot recovery" or "adb reboot bootloader" depending on where you want to end up. There are various apps which can also do this for you, if you are on the stock ROM but rooted.
arrrghhh said:
Still sounds like some sort of a hardware issue, is the phone new to you?
You can certainly force bootloader mode, in several ways. When it's off you can hold power + camera and it will give you a choice of what to boot. When it's in Android you can do "adb reboot recovery" or "adb reboot bootloader" depending on where you want to end up. There are various apps which can also do this for you, if you are on the stock ROM but rooted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Phone is not new. I bought it used about one year ago.
I am not entirely new to android, but I didn't have android phone for 2 years and then I got this one. So I am really pretty **** with android atm
I will try reboot to bootloader from some console application.
I am rooted, opened bootloader, stock rom
Finally got into recovery, what now?
Also, when I once booted to system, I downloaded some root checking app, and root apparently isn't here. Well cornholio told me it is rooted back when I gave him my phone to perform sim card mod, but whatever. However, I am in recovery, but device is not detected by RSD Lite.
kanek06 said:
Finally got into recovery, what now?
Also, when I once booted to system, I downloaded some root checking app, and root apparently isn't here. Well cornholio told me it is rooted back when I gave him my phone to perform sim card mod, but whatever. However, I am in recovery, but device is not detected by RSD Lite.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well reading back thru this thread, I was suggesting RSD Lite back to stock. I'm not really sure what you want to achieve tho, what your "final" goal is here.
I'm not even sure what kind of recovery you are booted into - stock recovery? CWM?
Either way, if you want to RSD the phone back to stock, you need to boot into fastboot/bootloader mode - not recovery. Just make sure the phone is charged up as much as possible before flashing in RSD.
Oh, sorry - misunderstanding from my side, thought I can switch to fastboot from recovery, oh well.
Also yeah, stock recovery.
To spread more facts - in case somebody would have similiar problems, when I try to just turn phone on, I have zero success what so ever. There's just this blank black page flashing every few seconds. However, when I remove back cover, I somehow force phone to load to bootloader logo, then I finally get chance to force phone to get to recovery. I will try to get to fastboot
kanek06 said:
Oh, sorry - misunderstanding from my side, thought I can switch to fastboot from recovery, oh well.
Also yeah, stock recovery.
To spread more facts - in case somebody would have similiar problems, when I try to just turn phone on, I have zero success what so ever. There's just this blank black page flashing every few seconds. However, when I remove back cover, I somehow force phone to load to bootloader logo, then I finally get chance to force phone to get to recovery. I will try to get to fastboot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure if stock recovery has adb enabled, but if you have adb you can 'adb reboot bootloader'.
Otherwise do the power+cam trick I mentioned earlier.
http://i.imgur.com/3XYLngJ.png
kanek06 said:
http://i.imgur.com/3XYLngJ.png
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you remove the getvar lines from the xml file...?
Yes
Weird. I only recall seeing that when people were trying to downgrade... but you are flashing 4.1.2.
The phone is in fastboot mode? What happens when you click "show device"? The "Device Properties" section is eerily empty.
I know it sounds shady, when I am coming back here again in few weeks, just been a bit busy lately, sorry about that.
However, somehow I got phone to flash it. The white graphical lines on sides dissapeared, however I got some new bug - I can't use phone in portrait mode, just in landscape - aka I need to swipe keyboard to have phone working. Also, that thing when phone completely stops working now occurs only when I am in that portrait mode, but I can restart phone this time.
When I finished this, it was midnight so I went to bad, so I tried to set up alarm, if it's gonna randomly shutdown like before and unfortunately, yes it did. I was waken up with this classical white line graphical bug black screen and had to reboot the phone. Oh well, managed to boot to system and it takes 5 minutes to fetch sim card (I have sim card mod from cornholio) and as I said, those white lines on side aka mysterious graphical bug is back.
Unfortunately for me, starts looking like real hardware issue now

Unsuccessful Root of HTC One M7 Need Advice

I have a Tmobile HTC One M7 that I paid $300 for. It was awesome! However, I wanted to root it. So I successfully unlocked the bootloader, installed TWRP and then proceeded to attempt to root. Something went wrong and now this thing is useless! I cannot tell you where it went wrong because when the first sign of trouble appeared I started doing all kinds of **** to try and fix it, none of which worked and I have lost track of what I did in the process of trying to root and then subsequently trying to fix. I know there were some wipe cache, wipe dalvik cache, install zip from SD, I may have even tried to flash a custom ROM without the thing being rooted. I have been reading for days, trying this, trying that to no avail. The phone is brand new, without a scratch. It will power up like normal, but when it gets to the lock screen where you swipe the little lock in the bottom tray to use the phone it will not respond at all! It recognizes the network because it is displayed in the notifications bar up top, it can see the signal strength, it knows what time it is, it knows what the date is, but it will not get past the damn lock screen. ADB sideload works. I was able to push a zip and flashed it, even said android is upgrading when I rebooted, but it did not solve my problem. It will not power off, but when I hold the power button down, to turn it off the back arrow < and home symbol flash and after about 10 seconds a dialog box pops up that says to restart your phone continue to press and hold the power button and starts a countdown. Once the countdown gets to zero it restarts. If I hold the volume down button while doing this it will go into the boatloader and I can get into recovery. Apparently there is no backup to restore because when I try a restore I get the same exact same thing. I thought I had done one, I must have erased it somehow. I have been trying to resolve this for weeks now and am at my wits end. Any suggestions please !?!? Will anyone on this forum take it if I ship to them and fix for a fee? Otherwise this things going in the trash.

So my Nexus 5 died after hard-reseting after OTA update to 5.0

Hey there.
So today, after waiting what seemed like forever for the OTA update to reach my phone, it finally did!
I got some lollipop on my Nexus phone finally.
It installed no sweat, although it took a while since I have so many apps installed.
So, I had planned to reset the phone after I updated it. I made backups of all relevant data and proceeded to hard-reset it through settings menu.
It started the process, took a while longer than I expected, and then out of nowhere... it crashes, or at least I think it did. The "working" android animation with the "Erasing..." message changed into one with a Red exclamation mark on top of it.
I waited for a while... nothing.
So I powered it down.
Power back on and it goes into the Erasing operation again... except now I don't think it's actually doing anything since it's taking forever.
I've went into the "hard reset" menu that you get into by pressing volume + & - and the power button while turning it on, tried the recovery... nothing. It restarts the phone and shows the "erasing" animation again.
Did I manage to brick my phone while using just stock "tools" ?!
Any advice?
Phone was all stock, no root, no unlocked bootloader, nothing.
Why did you reset it during
Because it apparently crashed mid-way.
The "working" animation changed into one where's a droid with a open stomach with a red exclamation mark over it.
I waited for a long time and it didn't move along so I restarted it.
Anyway, it took forever but it completed it now.
Guess I "just" had to be patient. Didn't expect this to take 40minutes or so with a simple reset =|

Can't boot, restarts constantly

Bought a Nexus 5 about 6 months ago USED. It has been amazing. I got the latest OTA a week ago or so, not sure if that has anything to do with current issues.
About 2 days ago started randomly restarting. Today, it shut down and has been in continuous loop restarting. I see "Google" and maybe even the boot dots loading, then it is off. Three seconds later, starts again and repeats. Never makes it all the way into Android system. I let it sit for a while and when I pick it up, without touching any buttons, it repeats all of this. I suppose it is probably dead in general, but I don't know. Do you guys have any ideas? Again, I bought it used and from a ma/pap store who said they buy 100 in bulk, which made me skeptical, but they also had a 60 day guarantee and it was amazing the first 60 days and even after. It has been error free for 6 months, so I don't know if this is just a random issue or if the previous owner dropped it in a lake and I got lucky, or what. FWIW the damn thing has been in a case and never dropped, so it isn't anything that I have done I don't think. Thanks for any help.
edit: never rooted, never messed with, always been stock
Another user reported some instability since the last OTA update.
Flashing the full factory images did the trick.
a friend of mine gave me his nexus 5 to repair and its doing something similar. He had ir rooted and on latest 5.1.1 (i think). Either way, he said it was randomly locking up and rebooting. When i got it it had the red blinking light when plugged so i got a new battery. That got fixed but then the constant bootloop showed itself. I flashed TWRP (many versions, 2.6.3.1; 2.7.1.1; 2.8.7.1; the one that worked best was 2.7.1.1). So, once in twrp wiped, pushed cm 12 snapshot, flashed it, pushed gapps, falshed, pushe supersu flashed. Started the system. That precise order of things (ie: pushing flashing, then pushing something new and flashing it) was what gave me best results to actually boot up at least once. Once booted up and logging in and everything to cm i had some sort of stability (even rebooting and powering off) but i think that everything went wrong when i plugged the phone to the computer and it was back to bootloops and not even getting to the recovery. Flashed everything again. Didnt work. Had to leave the phone sit for a while (without the back casing) before trying again, in order, before getting any success. Im starting to think of ovrheating but it doesnt even get that hot...
Dunno if you guys have any ideas on this. Or if i can give you mor details to help us out.
Regards!
Looks like I'm having a similar problem to what is described here, as well as http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/help/bootlooped-dont-how-to-enable-debugging-t3215951
I've had one of my Nexus 5 phones running OmniROM 5.1.1 for some time now, very stably. After trying out the Marshmallow preview and going back to that ROM, I started having spontaneous hard reboots and hard crashes. The phone would often boot loop before even getting to the OmniROM boot animation. It was also very recalcitrant about entering and staying in the boot loader, rebooting spontaneously shortly after rendering the boot loader screen. I was occasionally able to "grab" control long enough to get it to boot into TWRP, from which a boot to Android seemed to usually get it out of the loop and into running Android.
I've flashed back the boot loader and baseband from factory-stock 5.1.1 LMY48M (HHZ12h and 2.0.50.2.26) using the flash-base.sh script from a freshly downloaded and extracted hammerhead-lmy48m. Things appeared to be OK last evening and this morning, but things got worse today.
Now the phone is in a state where it is not responsive to the power button when unplugged. I can hold it down for 30 seconds with no response.
If I plug in USB, it spontaneously starts rebooting, not showing more than about two seconds of the Google boot loader screen. If I hold the down-volume button, I can get the boot-loader screen, but no matter how fast I try to be, I can't select anything more than "Restart bootloader" (or "Power off") option before it spontaneously reboots (to boot loader).
As far as I know, the battery had a significant charge before this started happening.
I see the same behavior if the phone is connected to a USB charging source, rather than a USB port.
I've tried pulling the SIM, but that doesn't change the behavior.
adb wait-for-device never returns, so poking it over adb doesn't seem to be an option.
fastboot devices also doesn't see the phone, for the brief time the boot loader is running.
Any suggestions on how to get this into the boot loader so I can at least re-flash it?
Nexus 5 D820(E) 32 GB
Edit:
WaxLarry said:
In my opinion your problems seems power button's related.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Trying to see how I can "clean" or "clear" the power button now.
Edit:
Paul22000 said:
This morning my Nexus 5 was turned off all of a sudden after not having used it for 20-30 minutes. I held the power button and nothing. I plugged it into power and the "Google" screen appeared. It then went into a reboot loop on and off, on and off, on and off. I held the Volume Buttons and it went into fastboot, but then boot looped out again and again. Searching on Google yielded that this was indeed a common problem. [...]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Edit: Repeatedly pressing the power button seems to have temporarily allowed a boot to Android.
In retrospect, I had noticed over the last few days that the phone didn't seem to respond properly to the power button, either "ignoring" it, or when a second press got things started, it would unexpectedly come up with the long-press-volume menu.
One link on how to replace the power switch yourself is http://protyposis.net/blog/replacing-the-nexus-5-power-button/
Ok @jeffsf keep going on this thread. I had the same damn experience, that ended with RMA. LG said that the problem is related to some tension change in the power button. After the RMA I used the phone totally stock and never had a problem. Two months ago I switched to blu_spark kernel and some weeks after i noticed some problem. When I pressed the button to lock the screen, phone locked itself and then screen turned on, sometimes showing the shutdown option. So i understood that something was happening to the power button. I tried to overvolt with a +5mV on general offset and since then i never had problem. If you can enter recovery or bootloader i suggest you to flash some kernel with volt change support and then overvolt the general offset... and keep finger crossed
jeffsf said:
Looks like I'm having a similar problem to what is described here, as well as http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/help/bootlooped-dont-how-to-enable-debugging-t3215951
I've had one of my Nexus 5 phones running OmniROM 5.1.1 for some time now, very stably. After trying out the Marshmallow preview and going back to that ROM, I started having spontaneous hard reboots and hard crashes. The phone would often boot loop before even getting to the OmniROM boot animation. It was also very recalcitrant about entering and staying in the boot loader, rebooting spontaneously shortly after rendering the boot loader screen. I was occasionally able to "grab" control long enough to get it to boot into TWRP, from which a boot to Android seemed to usually get it out of the loop and into running Android.
I've flashed back the boot loader and baseband from factory-stock 5.1.1 LMY48M (HHZ12h and 2.0.50.2.26) using the flash-base.sh script from a freshly downloaded and extracted hammerhead-lmy48m. Things appeared to be OK last evening and this morning, but things got worse today.
Now the phone is in a state where it is not responsive to the power button when unplugged. I can hold it down for 30 seconds with no response.
If I plug in USB, it spontaneously starts rebooting, not showing more than about two seconds of the Google boot loader screen. If I hold the down-volume button, I can get the boot-loader screen, but no matter how fast I try to be, I can't select anything more than "Restart bootloader" (or "Power off") option before it spontaneously reboots (to boot loader).
As far as I know, the battery had a significant charge before this started happening.
I see the same behavior if the phone is connected to a USB charging source, rather than a USB port.
I've tried pulling the SIM, but that doesn't change the behavior.
adb wait-for-device never returns, so poking it over adb doesn't seem to be an option.
fastboot devices also doesn't see the phone, for the brief time the boot loader is running.
Any suggestions on how to get this into the boot loader so I can at least re-flash it?
Nexus 5 D820(E) 32 GB
Edit:
Trying to see how I can "clean" or "clear" the power button now.
Edit:
Edit: Repeatedly pressing the power button seems to have temporarily allowed a boot to Android.
In retrospect, I had noticed over the last few days that the phone didn't seem to respond properly to the power button, either "ignoring" it, or when a second press got things started, it would unexpectedly come up with the long-press-volume menu.
One link on how to replace the power switch yourself is http://protyposis.net/blog/replacing-the-nexus-5-power-button/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got a notification for this post since you quoted me. I'm not sure if you're having the same problem but I'll tell you what happened to me, just in case. I called T-Mobile and they referred me to the nearest 3rd party phone repair shop. I went there and after an evaluation, the repairman told me the power button on my phone was indeed broken. They replaced it for $55.
The story doesn't end there though. I took my phone home and a few hours later I tried to use bluetooth and it didn't work. I took it back and found out that unfortunately, when the guy replaced the power button, he inadvertently broke the bluetooth. There's no way to fix bluetooth without replacing the motherboard entirely, which would cost $200. I'd rather buy a new phone at that point since my Nexus 5 was getting old. He refunded me, which was nice. At least the power button worked so I could use my phone. Bluetooth isn't as valuable as being able to you know, turn on the phone, so at least it was a net gain.
After that, I purchased a Nexus 6 and rooted it so I could use double-tap-to-wake (along with the automatic screen on when you pick up the Nexus 6). I also use the following app in order to turn off the screen by swiping up from the home button (I don't care about losing the shortcut to Google Now): Screen Off and Lock
I can now literally go weeks without using the power button on my Nexus 6. (I literally only use it when tap to wake sometimes becomes unresponsive which is rare.)
Bottom line: I will never buy another phone without tap to wake functionality! :good:
A local repair shop here indicated that one sometimes does changing the power switch resolve the issue. They have seen situations where the issue appears to be one of the power-management ICs. Just something to be aware of when examining the potential cost of a repair and who you would have do the work.

Google Pixel at 9.0 stuck in endless bootloop (bootloader is unlocked) Any help?

Ever since yesterday my Google Pixel has been stuck in a seemingly endless bootloop. It all started when I was using the phone as normal, then it suddenly froze. I tried turning it back on, but that's when it started happening. Every time it resets there is always either a blue line in a random location or a blue smear on the bottom of the screen. I can't access recovery, but fortunately the bootloader is unlocked (as it says in the title). But even that doesn't seem to help as every time I flash a factory image, it does the same thing.
I have searched for any situations similar to mine, but I either encounter vague/unhelpful solutions from Google on the Google forums, or threads that aren't specific enough. I am making sure to be as specific as I possibly can so I don't try the wrong solution and mess my phone up even further.
I was successful at one point a little while ago. Throughout the day I let it do its thing to drain the battery, until it finally died. I noticed that when I turned it on, it had the "No command" message with the dead Android robot instead. I reflashed the stock image one more time, and it was successful. However, I was an idiot and took my phone off the charger, and with what minuscule battery life was left, it quickly died, strangely setting me back to the bootlooping I had originally.
I'm new to this website (and pretty much forums in general), and I had just signed up for this specific reason, so apologies if I come off as a bit clueless.
(Edit: It still seems like a chance-based thing, but the no command message may pop up after letting the phone die and turning it on.)
I'm having this same issue as of today. Have you had any luck resolving it?
Same here. I updated the most recent "security update" (~44MB) and the phone started to repetitively reboot cycle. First, it last for 3-4 hours of normal use, then quickly down to 10 min. And then it couldn't even pass the animation to complete the reboot. Called/emailed Google service. Tried to wipe/factory reset in recovery mode. No help. Or even worse. It's now stuck at the"Google" screen for a minute, and reboot. Any thought?

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