[GUIDE] [UNBRICK] Unbrick Oneplus One

[Mikey]

Update....used a friends win xp computer and fixed my problem...darn winblows

 

[ezeuba]

This worked like a charm on the first Oneplus One I unbricked, but on this second one I'm attempting to unbrick I'm having strange issues. First, the drivers are installed well and I've not tampered with the driver installation from the previous successful attempt so it should still be ok. However, when I try to run the unbrick software it sees the phone and gives a com port alright but on attempting to flash I see a red coloring of the status and it just changes the status and stays like that forever, no change again. I guess the red coloring means the flash failed. In device manager the device is recognised as Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008 and it has a port number so this means the drivers are ok, right?
Any hints about what I'm doing wrong here? I would appreciate any help. Thanks.

NB The only thing I can make out after seeing the red coloring is 'Sahara' among other gibberish-like lettering. Is this good or bad?

 

[ttgvolt]

I really need to unbrick my OPO. I went through all of the steps and ran Msm8974 Tool, but it failed and gave me red text. I went back to try it again, but now it just fails instantly each time, even if I uninstall the phone drivers, reinstall, etc. Let me know if there's any way I can still get my phone back. Also, whenever I try to uninstall the 9006 drivers, whenever I plug my phone back in it just reverts back to that. It no longer shows the USB_MOCK then or whatever it did in the past, and it also doesn't show the oneplus logo when I plug it in like it did before. I'm afraid this method just bricked my phone even more. :'(

EDIT: Nevermind, I just needed to run the tool as Admin.

 

[MOKA12]

When I start writing to the com line, a progress bar appears and quickly loads up. Just after it finishes loading, my phone immediately disconnects from the computer ant no green successful mark appears. I repeat the same procedure, but I get the same bad results... Please help

 

[laxlucky]

Hello,

First some background and credits:

There are a few ways to brick a phone. Sometimes it's lack of experience, sometimes it's an accidental thing, sometimes there just isn't an explanation for what went wrong... (share your experience here, if you wish). For me, I owned my OPO for about 4 hours before things went wrong. First thing I did was I rooted it and installed TWRP. After creating a nandroid backup of the stock image I installed my favorite custom ROM and restored all my apps with TiBu. Everything was great and configured just the way I wanted it. I then wiped my old phone (Nexus 4), installed a new ROM and got it all ready for my wife. She was so excited to get rid of her GNex and move up to the N4. But then, for whatever reason, I opened an app on my OPO that I used to manage, download, and install kernels with. It came up with "there is a new kernel update!" and I instinctively clicked on "Install". 10 seconds later my phone was bricked. Nothing came on the screen, no fastboot, no recovery, nothing to boot to, no way to send data to and from it. The second the screen went black and the phone became lifeless I got that wretched feeling in my gut as I realized I just flashed a N4 kernel on my new OPO. Restoring the kernel management app with TiBu made it act like it's still running on my old phone, and in my excitement I didn't take a second to think things through...
I received a bit of consolation when a quick XDA search revealed that I am not the only dumbass to brick his phone this very way. I joined forces with some pretty smart and desperate people and tried different things, all described in the following thread: http://xdaforums.com/oneplus-one/help/wrong-kernel-black-screen-fastboot-adb-t2835696. Unfortunately it took us what seemed like many long weeks to figure it all out. Well, in the end a solution was found and I documented it in the the following post: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=55024864&postcount=136.

This was a few months ago, but I recently noticed many people continue to search for these directions and have problems finding them hidden among many pages and other threads, so I've decided to put this stand alone thread with these, now updated, directions.

Let me get one more thing straight, for the record. I did not find the way to unbrick the OPO. In fact I wasn't even the very first one to do it. It was a collective effort of few people who tried many different approaches and ideas, and I eventually documented these steps for others to follow. Being said, the following people deserve credit as well: @os_man, @rezor92, @Mnt-XDA. If I am forgetting other significant names and efforts, I apologize.

***CAUTION***
The following instructions are for hardware bricked devices ONLY and will not work on soft bricked devices. To determine whether your device is soft or hard bricked, click the button below:

Hardware brick
A hardware bricked OPO has nothing but a black screen (nothing ever comes on the screen, not even a boot logo), it might vibrate when a power button is pressed and held for 20 seconds, has no Recovery partition, no adb mode, and no fastboot partition. The device might be detected in Linux and you might be able to even send commands to it. In Windows, the bricked OPO should be detected as QHSUSB_BULK USB. You might have a bricked OPO as a result of flashing a kernel meant for a different device (or a ROM meant for another device that included a kernel), tinkering with the boot logo or bootloader, or your attempt of unlocking the bootloader resulted in corrupting the boot partition.

Software brick
Please do not attempt to use these directions if your phone is soft bricked. A software bricked OPO is one that might be stuck in a bootloop, but has a working bootloader, recovery partition, fastboot, or adb. If you press the power button and images appear on the screen and you are able to enter fastboot mode (Power + VolUP) or recovery (Power + VolDOWN) then your device is soft bricked. This thread does not encompass soft brick recovery, the instructions below do not apply and will not work on these phones. Consult other threads for help on soft bricked devices.

If based on the above explanation of differences between soft and hard bricks you determined your device is hard bricked, here's what you will need to do...


1:
Download Color.zip from https://goo.gl/iDby26
After downloading, unzip the archive on your computer.

2:
Next, you need proper Windows drivers. There are architectural differences between Windows XP and Windows 7/8, so follow the directions below that pertain to you. One quick note about the drivers: the installation and process is very simple and straightforward on Windows XP (I also tested successfully on Windows 2003), but proves to be quite a challenge when running on Windows 7 or 8. Over and over people report issues when attempting the unbrick procedure on Windows 7/8, some have more luck than others. Being said, if you have access to a Windows XP computer, I highly recommend that you use that. If you have no choice but to use a Windows 7 or 8 computer and have problems, please share them here and read others' experiences.

So first, by now you probably tried a few different things to fix your phone and you've already installed some drivers, including Qualcomm USB drivers for 9006 and 9008. My best advice is to uninstall the drivers you tried so far and use the ones listed below. Go to Device Manager, right click on the bricked USB device (QHSUSB_BULK or Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008) and go to Properties, click on Driver, then select Uninstall. Check the box to remove driver files, if prompted. Then:

2a:
Windows XP users:

You are in luck, driver installation is straightforward. Go to the extracted Color.zip folder and find Driver.iso. Extract Driver.iso. Inside the extracted folder find Setup.exe. Run Setup.exe to install the drivers. The installer is Chinese, but all you need to do is click through the prompts.

2b:
Windows 7 and Windows 8:

These operating systems block unsigned driver installations by default. Follow these steps (thanks @nag4pl for testing these):
Download and extract these Qualcomm 2012 drivers: https://goo.gl/cIKnFZ. Connect your bricked phone and let Windows do its thing.
Now something very essential you need to do here is to execute two commands to allow you to install unsigned drivers for QHUSB_BULK. Click on Start Menu > Type cmd.exe > Right Click and Run as Administrator.
In the CMD window type in the following commands (hit enter after each):

bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON

After both the commands should run successfully, restart your computer.
You can now proceed to install unsigned drivers from the file you downloaded. Open Device Manager, you should be seeing ugly yellow warning under other devices for QHUSB_BULK. Right click on the name and select Update Driver Software > Browse my Computer for driver software. For driver software location provide the path where you have extracted Qualcomm 2012 drivers you downloaded and make sure 'Include Subfolders' is checked. Proceed through all the installation prompts ignoring any warnings.

3:
Once you have the drivers straightened out, connect your bricked phone to the computer and start it up by holding VolUp + Power to about 10 seconds, and let the computer do its thing. Don't install drivers if they are not installed by itself. Instead launch Msm8974DownloadTool.exe as Administrator (right click on Msm8974DownloadTool.exe and select "Run as administrator") from the extracted Color.zip archive. It will scan all the COM ports and find the phone. That's the one line that looks different in the list. The list is just a list of your com ports and devices. If you unplug the phone and move it to another port, it will show your bricked phone on a different line.

Clicking on "Enum" just rescans the busses. Clicking the big square button in upper right corner scans the phone and reports what's good and what's not. It takes a minute for the scan to finish.

If you don't see your phone in the list of com devices, try unplugging/plugging in your phone a couple times, and rebooting it with VolUP + Power (hold 10 seconds). You will see it in Device Manager as well.

Once you see the phone in the list, click Start. You should see the programs start writing different files to the phone. Each time it writes a file you'll see a progress bar. Once you see this process happening, smile, you know you will be good to go... After all files are written, the com line with your device will turn green. You're good, unplug and reboot your phone. It will boot to ColorOS, the Chinese OS that comes on OPO.



4:
Optional Steps:

Your phone is no longer bricked. You now have a few options to get back to stock. The easiest way is to use a toolkit from http://xdaforums.com/oneplus-one/development/oneplus-one-toolkit-manudroid19-gui-t2807418, or you can flash an image manually by following directions from: http://xdaforums.com/oneplus-one/general/guide-return-opo-to-100-stock-t2826541. Download the proper image zip and after extracting it, run the following commands in fastboot mode:

fastboot flash boot boot.img 
fastboot flash userdata userdata.img 
fastboot flash system system.img 
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img 
fastboot flash cache cache.img 
fastboot flash modem NON-HLOS.bin 
fastboot flash sbl1 sbl1.mbn 
fastboot flash dbi sdi.mbn 
fastboot flash aboot emmc_appsboot.mbn 
fastboot flash rpm rpm.mbn 
fastboot flash tz tz.mbn 
fastboot flash LOGO logo.bin

Make sure you have the proper image. I accidentally installed the 16GB version on my 64GB OPO first time and obviously didn't get 64GB of space.

That's about it. I think if people are still having problems then it's likely due to drivers, or Windows 7/8 issue.


Good luck! Share your experience here and let me know if I can improve this thread.
Please click the Thanks button if you found the above guide useful.

@netbuzz,

Am stuck at "SaharaD" step my system details "Win XP". installed drivers from drivers.iso folder.

 

[jakespleen]

Seemingly Tool Worked but still nothing to display

Hi guys,

wonder if someone has had the same experience as me?

I've been able to run the download tool (and the oneplusone recovery tool) successfully on windows 7 but after rebooting nothing has changed.

Once or twice I have lucked my way into fastboot mode (with no on screen display) and manage dot flash a rom via fastboot. Again though after rebooting, still no display and then back to square one.

At this point I'm totally lost and have given up hope.

 

[Zeoth]

Same as u jakespleen! After i ran Msm8974DownloadTool. it showed it as green (meaning it went off without a hitch right?) i then closed the program. I attempted to hold the volume up button and the power button on the phone after disconnecting it from the computer. However, nothing changed. it just vibrates every 10 seconds if i hold the button but no screen light up no nothing. Despite going thru the Msm8974DownloadTool succesfully. what in the world do i do?

 

[jakespleen]

Same as u jakespleen! After i ran Msm8974DownloadTool. it showed it as green (meaning it went off without a hitch right?) i then closed the program. I attempted to hold the volume up button and the power button on the phone after disconnecting it from the computer. However, nothing changed. it just vibrates every 10 seconds if i hold the button but no screen light up no nothing. Despite going thru the Msm8974DownloadTool succesfully. what in the world do i do?

Hey @Zeoth I just fixed it! Here's how:

Run the flash tool and then stop or close the program. Unplug your phone and plug it back in.

Windows will recognise 4 drives, DO NOT FORMAT THE DRIVES. instead just unplug yoir phone and wait a few seconds then plug it in again, windows will recognise the phone as drives again. Unplug again.

So now we know the device is powered on and will remain in that state just leave the device for a few hours, when you come back plug it into the PC again. If the PC recognises the phone then unplug and return later. Repeat this until phone is no longer recognised.

Once phone is no longer recognised that means the battery has run out, which is what we wanted.

Turn your phone on and with any luck you'll be created with a working display.

Let me know how you get on

 

[Zeoth]

Hey @Zeoth I just fixed it! Here's how:

Run the flash tool and then stop or close the program. Unplug your phone and plug it back in.

Windows will recognise 4 drives, DO NOT FORMAT THE DRIVES. instead just unplug yoir phone and wait a few seconds then plug it in again, windows will recognise the phone as drives again. Unplug again.

So now we know the device is powered on and will remain in that state just leave the device for a few hours, when you come back plug it into the PC again. If the PC recognises the phone then unplug and return later. Repeat this until phone is no longer recognised.

Once phone is no longer recognised that means the battery has run out, which is what we wanted.

Turn your phone on and with any luck you'll be created with a working display.

Let me know how you get on

Thank you!! It worked! The screen turned on when i plugged it into the computer and it says low battery. What are the next steps?Thank you so much btw

 

[jakespleen]

Thank you!! It worked! The screen turned on when i plugged it into the computer and it says low battery. What are the next steps?Thank you so much btw

Totally welcome! Next steps as you probably know by now is to charge it normally and boot into the OS you flashed or flash another one via fastboot.

Hey @netbuzz can we edit the OP please to include instructions on how to discharge the battery in cases where the tool completes but the phone still doesn't turn on?

Method is run tool to completion. Close tool. Unplug and replug phone to PC. PC will recognise the phone as 4 drives. Once in this state the phone will stay on so just unplug the phone and periodically plug it back in to check the status, once it stops being recognised the battery has been discharged and you can turn the phone on and be greeted by the display!

 

[Pandad129]

I was not able to install drivers for the device. I even ran a VM machine with Windows xp but no luck.

 

[jakespleen]

I was not able to install drivers for the device. I even ran a VM machine with Windows xp but no luck.

What error do you get?

 

[Pandad129]

What error do you get?

no error just the device cannot be detected in the Msm8974DownloadTool.exe

It still shows the device as QHUSB_BULK and no drivers found.

 

[jakespleen]

You downloaded the drivers from the first post yeah?

Assuming yes, follow this method.

Right click the BULK device, update drivers.

Choose - Don't search I will .....

At the next screen choose the device type as PORT

then choose 'have disk' and navigate to the location your drivers are stored.

Choose a driver file, I can't remember which one sorry and I'm not at a PC.

If phone isn't recognised as Qualcomm device repeat the steps but choose a different driver until it is.

 

[Pandad129]

I only have color.zip. these instructions you are providing are for windows xp correct?

 

[saiamrock]

battery

How about if the battery runs out during proccess?? Does Bacon still can be charge even dead??
just for my caution

sorry, i'm new in OPO forum coming from i9500 and this is my first post, don't know much stuff about OPO

 

[Pandad129]

You downloaded the drivers from the first post yeah?

Assuming yes, follow this method.

Right click the BULK device, update drivers.

Choose - Don't search I will .....

At the next screen choose the device type as PORT

then choose 'have disk' and navigate to the location your drivers are stored.

Choose a driver file, I can't remember which one sorry and I'm not at a PC.

If phone isn't recognised as Qualcomm device repeat the steps but choose a different driver until it is.

I figured it out. i found an old laptop running windows 7 and was able to fix the hard brick. Thanks for your help :good:

 

[jakespleen]

I only have color.zip. these instructions you are providing are for windows xp correct?

Well there's your problem, you need to download the drivers in the first post and follow the instructions. If for some reason the drivers don't install you can use my method on windows XP or windows 7.

 

[Ljflevy]

Proximity, Gyroscope, Accelerometer sensors don't work now. Good recovery otherwise!

I used this guide to recover a hardbricked OPO. My hardbrick was due to me stupidly flashing compass firmware meant for an old Samsung phone, thinking this would fix the compass problem in CM12.1.
I don't remember/believe my OPO's auto-rotate was working during the ColorOS part of the recovery from hardbrick.

Now my OPO runs CM12.1 nightly, and since recovery, has no user interaction with proximity sensor, gyroscope, or accelerometer. I ran some testing apps, and the data seems to show my OPO gyroscope and accelerometer are still alive.
Is it possible for me to restore interaction with sensors?
Also, I'm frequently getting WiFi connection failure in CM12.1 now....

Update: restored auto rotate, accelerometer, and compass by following part 9 of this guide (http://xdaforums.com/oneplus-one/general/guides-bacon-timmaaas-how-to-guides-t2839471)
Still need to correct compass problem with OPO's CM12.1. Can someone link me to a guide for this?

 

[arthas_sp]

I love you :good::good::good::good: