[Q] The Curse of the Eternal Bootloop

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lvl99

New member
May 18, 2014
2
0
Dear esteemed community members of the XDA developers community website. I have a long and sad story, of which I am hoping you may be able to provide some extra insight into the troubles I have met with my Nexus 4.

I purchased my Nexus 4 (sans rubber feet) last year in August, bought from a Mediamarkt in Berlin during my first travels into Europe, when my Samsung SII met a cruel and drunken fate. When I first got the shining glittering Nexus 4, it notified me of an OTA system update, and doing as instructed I glibly pressed "Update". After the digital progress bar's needle finished injecting its panacea into the phone, it restarted and was then caught in a boot-loop. Frantic, repeated, turning off and on procedures followed, like I was trying to perform CPR at a crash scene. It was out like a light, except its light was still on in the shape of a glowing "X". After trying all the system/cache/data wipes the system tools would allow me, nothing made it budge. I resorted to flash everything to stock with fastboot to successfully get it up and running again, but it was a bad start to a troubled relationship.

A flight back to my home in Australia and some months later (about March this year) I decided to try the OTA update again. I figured after some time, surely they'd have fixed the OTA issues, no? Alas, soft-bricked again -- the glowing "X" taunting me once more. I tried and I tried with all my might to flash all number of versions of Android -- 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 -- using all manners of manual and automated (toolkit) methods, all to no avail. I put the phone in my drawer and borrowed a house mate's iPhone 4, replete with cracked screen.

Fast-forward to a few days ago: my house mate's own Nexus 4 kissed gravity and it was more an expression of a troubled break-up than any affection. She needed her iPhone back and I went back to no phone. There was some kind of bliss in being disconnected, however being a freelance designer and developer, my life-line is work and work is often received and completed via phone duties. Wondering if I could successfully defibrillate life back into this still-new and handsome looking Nexus 4, then the better I would be than without phone. I plugged it all in again, performed a manual flash of KOT49H to finally see past the rotating dots to view the android fellow lying on his back getting some much-needed TLC from some futuristic blue polyhedron tumbleweed. I was "in with a grin" -- the phone and I were back in business.

Lazing about one hung-over Saturday morning with my phone plugged into the charger, me checking out my family and friends' inane burblings on Facebook, the phone winked a red eye at me and went black. I was confused. What happened? Was it something I said? Posted? I tried to turn it on again, and yet silence persisted. It was plugged into the wall, power was on -- there should be juice present within this ripe fruit.

Holding it in my questioning hands, I shakily brought it over to my computer and plugged it into the USB. I tried turning it on again, and the eyes fluttered open, its stare fixated and blank, a rotating vision of 4 dots tumbling in an endless mocking loop. I sighed, "Not again." I tried more methods of flashing and restoring the phone's version of Android, both manual and automated. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Ziltch. Zero.

Here I am, again at the precipice of uncertainty with this phone's status and fate. No activity beyond those dots locked in an eternal dance of emptiness. The drapes of its consciousness are pulled, no vision of what's on stage or who's singing. Silence. Empty space. Lingering thoughts of my involvement bounding like playful lion cubs through the savannah: "if only I...", "if only it...", etc.

So here, dear reader of an esteemed Android developer community website, I petition you in great need and distress: if perchance you may be able to offer some insight into my troubled 'droid; if maybe there's some way to read some console output of what and where the errors are occuring; if perhaps there's something more physical that could be the cause of such pain and strife. I wish to understand my companion's feelings and thoughts more, to know why it feels such despondency in living and working, and how I may be able to coax it back to consciousness. Perhaps all it needs is to have some other sort of love and kindness, the type I'm potentially not adept at speaking in a language for it to understand. Either way, I would love any information someone may be able to proffer.

Please help me XDA developers -- you're my only hope.
 

fahadsul3man

Senior Member
Oct 11, 2012
361
64
Dear esteemed community members of the XDA developers community website. I have a long and sad story, of which I am hoping you may be able to provide some extra insight into the troubles I have met with my Nexus 4.

I purchased my Nexus 4 (sans rubber feet) last year in August, bought from a Mediamarkt in Berlin during my first travels into Europe, when my Samsung SII met a cruel and drunken fate. When I first got the shining glittering Nexus 4, it notified me of an OTA system update, and doing as instructed I glibly pressed "Update". After the digital progress bar's needle finished injecting its panacea into the phone, it restarted and was then caught in a boot-loop. Frantic, repeated, turning off and on procedures followed, like I was trying to perform CPR at a crash scene. It was out like a light, except its light was still on in the shape of a glowing "X". After trying all the system/cache/data wipes the system tools would allow me, nothing made it budge. I resorted to flash everything to stock with fastboot to successfully get it up and running again, but it was a bad start to a troubled relationship.

A flight back to my home in Australia and some months later (about March this year) I decided to try the OTA update again. I figured after some time, surely they'd have fixed the OTA issues, no? Alas, soft-bricked again -- the glowing "X" taunting me once more. I tried and I tried with all my might to flash all number of versions of Android -- 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 -- using all manners of manual and automated (toolkit) methods, all to no avail. I put the phone in my drawer and borrowed a house mate's iPhone 4, replete with cracked screen.

Fast-forward to a few days ago: my house mate's own Nexus 4 kissed gravity and it was more an expression of a troubled break-up than any affection. She needed her iPhone back and I went back to no phone. There was some kind of bliss in being disconnected, however being a freelance designer and developer, my life-line is work and work is often received and completed via phone duties. Wondering if I could successfully defibrillate life back into this still-new and handsome looking Nexus 4, then the better I would be than without phone. I plugged it all in again, performed a manual flash of KOT49H to finally see past the rotating dots to view the android fellow lying on his back getting some much-needed TLC from some futuristic blue polyhedron tumbleweed. I was "in with a grin" -- the phone and I were back in business.

Lazing about one hung-over Saturday morning with my phone plugged into the charger, me checking out my family and friends' inane burblings on Facebook, the phone winked a red eye at me and went black. I was confused. What happened? Was it something I said? Posted? I tried to turn it on again, and yet silence persisted. It was plugged into the wall, power was on -- there should be juice present within this ripe fruit.

Holding it in my questioning hands, I shakily brought it over to my computer and plugged it into the USB. I tried turning it on again, and the eyes fluttered open, its stare fixated and blank, a rotating vision of 4 dots tumbling in an endless mocking loop. I sighed, "Not again." I tried more methods of flashing and restoring the phone's version of Android, both manual and automated. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Ziltch. Zero.

Here I am, again at the precipice of uncertainty with this phone's status and fate. No activity beyond those dots locked in an eternal dance of emptiness. The drapes of its consciousness are pulled, no vision of what's on stage or who's singing. Silence. Empty space. Lingering thoughts of my involvement bounding like playful lion cubs through the savannah: "if only I...", "if only it...", etc.

So here, dear reader of an esteemed Android developer community website, I petition you in great need and distress: if perchance you may be able to offer some insight into my troubled 'droid; if maybe there's some way to read some console output of what and where the errors are occuring; if perhaps there's something more physical that could be the cause of such pain and strife. I wish to understand my companion's feelings and thoughts more, to know why it feels such despondency in living and working, and how I may be able to coax it back to consciousness. Perhaps all it needs is to have some other sort of love and kindness, the type I'm potentially not adept at speaking in a language for it to understand. Either way, I would love any information someone may be able to proffer.

Please help me XDA developers -- you're my only hope.

tl;dr is the phone rooted ?
 

fahadsul3man

Senior Member
Oct 11, 2012
361
64
So after skimming through your jibber jabber the problem is the phone gets stuck in the boot loop no matter what method you used ? Try using different ROM instead of the KOT49H I am assuming you are out of warranty by now right ?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk