Can't get custom recovery working

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Hi!

I'm having serious problems with my A510. It was rooted but not flashed with any custom images. I hadn't used it for a few months so when I charged and booted it up a few days ago, I got an update alert and tried to do an OTA update. It got stuck at about 80% so I tried to restart it and the it wouldn't get past the "ICONIA TAB" logo (after the olympic animation).

I tried updating the device using all update.zip files I could find, but it would always show me the lying down android with a red exclamation triangle after a fraction of a second.

The next thing I tried was to flash the CWM recovery (as well as a few other ones) onto the recovery partition, but it wouldn't start and the original recovery was restored automatically every time.

This made me think that something on the other partitions had become corrupt and prevented the CWM recovery from starting, so I tried (perhaps desperatly and foolishly) to erase flexrom and system partitions as well as reflashing them with .img files I found online, but still no luck and at this point the boot sequence started hanging at the "acer"-logo.

I don't get any error messages when flashing using fastboot, but it seems than nothing I flash is written correctly.

When I try to start the recovery it displays the following text together with the acer logo:

Bootloader Version 0.04.04-ICS-MDRR (Unlock Mode)
Erasing Cache before SD Update...

SD update cmd: recovery
--update_package=SDCARD:update.zip

The only thing I haven't tried is to flash the bootloader, but I'm afraid I'll mess up the last possibility I have to recover the device by doing so...

Do any of you have any idea of what else I can try to get CWM working so I can completely reflash using some official update.zip...

Originally Posted by chipzter

Do any of you have any idea of what else I can try to get CWM working so I can completely reflash using some official update.zip...

OK, let try.
The bootloader is still open and CWM is available..
That's good news.

>> t this point the boot sequence started hanging at the "acer"-logo.<<
At this point it would help to go into CWM and select "Factory Reset" and delete all User Data. This was the same, as I have re-flashed the older img via SD card. The TAB stopped at the same time.

OK, but in this moment, I don't know exactly, where your Tablett "stay" in this moment. You can reached the CWM- thats good news.

Please try to flash first of all
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1870641

because the bootloader matched this version..

If it's running, we'll continous....

Originally Posted by Wesie

OK, let try.
The bootloader is still open and CWM is available..
That's good news.

>> t this point the boot sequence started hanging at the "acer"-logo.<<
At this point it would help to go into CWM and select "Factory Reset" and delete all User Data. This was the same, as I have re-flashed the older img via SD card. The TAB stopped at the same time.

OK, but in this moment, I don't know exactly, where your Tablett "stay" in this moment. You can reached the CWM- thats good news.

Please try to flash first of all
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1870641

because the bootloader matched this version..

If it's running, we'll continous....

Thank you for replying! Any help is most appreciated!

The bootloader is open and I can flash .img-files using the fastboot utility. Unfortunately, I do not have CWM recovery and flashing recover_nothrills.img to the recovery partition doesn't work. Fastboot says it was successfully written, but it won't boot into CWM when I hold the two-dots-button.

I downloaded the optimized stock rom you recommended. Unfortunately it didn't work . I tried flashing the boot.img file contained in that zip file to the boot partition. Maybe I made things worse, because now it stops at:

Bootloader Version 0.04.04-ICS-MDRR (Unlock Mode)

regardless of holding down the two-dots-button or not. I can still enter the bootloader though, and should (I hope) be able to use the "fastboot flash" command to put a working OS back on the device. But it can only flash .img files and not update.zip files.

Is there any way to create .img files out of the the system and flexrom folders in that optimized stock rom you mentioned?

[EDIT]
I found this tool and will try to create .img files using it: http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1081239

[EDIT 2]
That didn't seem to make any difference. It still gets stuck in the same place.

Where does you life? In Germany?
If yes send me a small PM; Maybe let talk us by phone, maybe you send me - if you trust me , by post ....


Fastboot has nothing to do with CWM.

1st Question: Could you really reach the CWM ?
If you've the original Recovery-Bootmanager (not the CWM), you must modify a little bit the original Rom ( a small comment [#] the language-check, that's all.

here a small instruction :
download the firmware from acer (give attention for your region).
After that :

1-rename the file to update.zip

2- Take the update.zip file and unzip it to a folder.

3- Go to folder "\META-INF\com\google\android"

4- Edit the updater-script and put a # as first character of first line. This will avoid this line to execute: #assert(getprop("ro.product.name") == "a510_...");

5- Zip all files again and name it update.zip.

* Put the the update.zip on the ext. SD-Card ( in root)
Reboot the Tab - that the Tab flash autom. the update.zip from the ext.SD
Maybe you read this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=2046832

Originally Posted by Wesie

Where does you life? In Germany?
If yes send me a small PM; Maybe let talk us by phone, maybe you send me - if you trust me , by post ....


Fastboot has nothing to do with CWM.

1st Question: Could you really reach the CWM ?
If you've the original Recovery-Bootmanager (not the CWM), you must modify a little bit the original Rom ( a small comment [#] the language-check, that's all.

here a small instruction :
download the firmware from acer (give attention for your region).
After that :


* Put the the update.zip on the ext. SD-Card ( in root)
Reboot the Tab - that the Tab flash autom. the update.zip from the ext.SD
Maybe you read this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=2046832

Thank you again for taking the time to answer me.
Unfortunately, I don't live in Germany, and my German is more than a little bit rusty

To answer your question: No, I've never been able to reach CWM. I never needed it until now. The reason I tried to install it was so that I could try the update.zip method when the original recovery-bootmanager refused to work. But now, after trying to flash CWM and custom rom files using fastboot, the original recovery-bootmanager will not even start anymore.

The first thing I need to get working again is any kind of recovery-bootmanager. I've tried flashing the CWM recovery and the original one, but no matter what I do, the situation only seems to get worse.

Originally Posted by chipzter

To answer your question: No, I've never been able to reach CWM. I never needed it until now. The reason I tried to install it was so that I could try the update.zip method when the original recovery-bootmanager refused to work. But now, after trying to flash CWM and custom rom files using fastboot, the original recovery-bootmanager will not even start anymore.

The first thing I need to get working again is any kind of recovery-bootmanager. I've tried flashing the CWM recovery and the original one, but no matter what I do, the situation only seems to get worse.

? I didn't understood. In your first statement, you wrote:

It was rooted but not flashed with any custom images

For root, you need at minimum 1 time CWM to install "root"

please don't try to flash anything via flashboot in this moment - not that you brick more as it it; maybe we talk about this issue in an own thread, maybe we go step by step via PM or if you're a member in Google+, we can make a chat-session...

Only one question in front:
If you start the Tab - what's happen? Does the Tab start, till it's freeze? Or it is more or less totaly dead? What does you see on the screen?

Originally Posted by Wesie

? I didn't understood. In your first statement, you wrote:

For root, you need at minimum 1 time CWM to install "root"

I used the mempodroid exploit so I didn't need to install a custom recovery to root it.

Originally Posted by Wesie

please don't try to flash anything via flashboot in this moment - not that you brick more as it it; maybe we talk about this issue in an own thread, maybe we go step by step via PM or if you're a member in Google+, we can make a chat-session...

Only one question in front:
If you start the Tab - what's happen? Does the Tab start, till it's freeze? Or it is more or less totaly dead? What does you see on the screen?

It freezes and shows the acer-logotype and it shows the following text in the upper left corner:
Bootloader Version 0.04.04-ICS-MDRR (Unlock Mode)

So not totally dead. But definitely not completely alive either....

Do you think it would be OK to make a new thread with my problem? It would be nice to keep the discussion public so that it can help other people if they get the same problem...

Originally Posted by chipzter

Do you think it would be OK to make a new thread with my problem? It would be nice to keep the discussion public so that it can help other people if they get the same problem...

Lets continuous here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...6#post38465236

because your problem has nothing to do, with the current CWM

Where to write these commands?

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I don't understand where to write the commands like "adb reboot-bootloader" etc. I've downloaded Bundle Android SDK tools (with eclipse and emulator), then I start cmd command line and try to write commands there, but they don't work. What am I doing wrong? Please help!

If you added SDK path to system paths (it is described in manual) commands should work "everywhere".
If you didn't- open CMD in the SDK\platform-tools folder (or cd there)