[UnBrick]TOTAL WIPE and reflash back to 1.4.0 via Ubuntu Recovery --Now Easier!!!!

CelticWebSolutions · Feb 11, 2012

AdamOutler said:
your image may be corrupt. Try redownloading it.

The power button will work to turn on and off the screen, but the screen wont go black while the recovery is running. It will only go blank. Also, there are no provisions encoroerated for moving the mouse. Something went wrong with the image.

Well I managed to get it to boot again and now it boots but locks on the box screen, so I fired up a CWM SD (couldn’t get there from standard system) and tried to restore a backup, when it tries to format system or loadds something from cache is said the disk / file does not exist.

Does this recovery rebuild the Partitions? They seem to have been killed off. I appear to be getting closer and closer to thinking I have a totally bricked tablet. It will boot form SD and run OS from SD so not total loss but I'd much prefer to get internal back of course.

Any hints or tips Adam?

---------- Post added at 10:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:41 PM ----------

By the way I'm trying it again and this time it's sat for ages saying writing zeros to MLO.

It's been about 10 mins already so if it's suppose ot only take 15 in total I think I have a big problem!

****edit****

After about 30 mins of it writing to MLO I came to the conclusion it wasn't going to work.

Rebooted into a cwm sd, ran parted binary and discovered a damaged partition table. It must have been damaged when my tablet crashes first time around. So i fixed it with parted then tried again.

I'm happy to report that it made it all the way through and my NT is back totally to stock.

Thanks for the image Adam, it's another saved NT you can add to your list. Ubuntu looks good if we can just rotate the access, had same issue running it on an older device, we did fix it but I can't remember how. I'll look when I get time, be great to have a dual boot Ubuntu / cm7

AdamOutler · Feb 12, 2012

It's functioning perfectly for this. volume and power work, standby does not. The N button is recognized by X, but is unassigned. We don't have touchscreen working properly... it's 90degrees off. ALSA is non-functional... a bunch of things dont work.. We need a 3.0+ kernel.

AdamOutler · Feb 13, 2012

Bump.

This fixes your nook! Just shove the sdcard in your nook and turn it on. Some devices require you to connect the USB cable while the device is off(thereby turning it on via USB). This works and is effective at fixing problems.

It will fix any non-hardware related booting problem and your device will be totally clean.

AdamOutler · Feb 21, 2012

Ok, it's official. Some Nook Tablets require USB connection to boot SDCard. I fixed a nook this weekend which would not boot from SDCard normally. It would boot the installed stock firmware.

All I did was make an SDCard like in the first post, put it in the Nook Tablet, then inserted the USB cable.

howcansheslap · Feb 21, 2012

CelticWebSolutions said:
After about 30 mins of it writing to MLO I came to the conclusion it wasn't going to work.

Rebooted into a cwm sd, ran parted binary and discovered a damaged partition table. It must have been damaged when my tablet crashes first time around. So i fixed it with parted then tried again.

I'm having the exact same problem! Stalls on "writing all zeros to MLO". I suspect I have a damaged partition table as well. Where would I get the parted binary you speak of?

Edit: Ahh...I just read your other post. THanks for the info!

---------- Post added at 10:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:56 AM ----------

Trying to follow Celtic's suggestion, I did an 'adb push parted /'. When I try to run it in adb shell with ./parted, I get device not found. Do I need to a specific partition for parted to work?

lavero.burgos · Feb 21, 2012

howcansheslap said:
I'm having the exact same problem! Stalls on "writing all zeros to MLO". I suspect I have a damaged partition table as well. Where would I get the parted binary you speak of?

Edit: Ahh...I just read your other post. THanks for the info!

---------- Post added at 10:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:56 AM ----------

Trying to follow Celtic's suggestion, I did an 'adb push parted /'. When I try to run it in adb shell with ./parted, I get device not found. Do I need to a specific partition for parted to work?

Have you use adb before? Do you have installed the proper drivers for it?

Sent from XDA premium using my Nook Tablet

howcansheslap · Feb 21, 2012

Yes, I have the correct drivers and ABD works fine. I'm not really clear about what steps I should take for parted to work. The only partitions which are mounted are:

rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,mode=600)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/block/mmcblk1p1 on /sdcard type vfat

CWM won't let me mount any other partitions. ADB won't either (command I used is mount -t vfat /cache /mnt, is that the correct type?).

Land Master · Feb 21, 2012

AdamOutler said:
Ok, it's official. Some Nook Tablets require USB connection to boot SDCard. I fixed a nook this weekend which would not boot from SDCard normally. It would boot the installed stock firmware.

All I did was make an SDCard like in the first post, put it in the Nook Tablet, then inserted the USB cable.

Yup... I got me one of those. I was 90% sure it wasn't anything I was doing but your post gets me the other 10%. Good to know as it really is a simple "fix".

Any idea or speculation as to what is "different" about this batch?

AdamOutler · Feb 21, 2012

Land Master said:
Yup... I got me one of those. I was 90% sure it wasn't anything I was doing but your post gets me the other 10%. Good to know as it really is a simple "fix".

Any idea or speculation as to what is "different" about this batch?

It would have to be a different IROM (Internal Read-Only Memory) on the OMAP4460. It's odd that a change would be made this early into production. I mean, what, did they order 500,000 units, then a second larger batch? Either way it's going to make things more difficult. Booting from SDCard instructions from here out should include turn off the device, plug in USB cable, do not hit power button.

howcansheslap · Feb 22, 2012

Adam, your tool is total greatness. It successfully unbricked my NT yesterday. One of the causes of my brick, however, was a corrupted partition table, which I had to fix before I could get your tool to work. Maybe you could integrate that into the script?

The command I used is 'parted /dev/block/mmcblk0 print' (props to Celtic for pointing this out).

The only problem is that it prompts for a few questions so I don't know if it's even suited for the Ubunto wipe/restore script. It does appear that the input can be scripted as well.

http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/parted.html#Invoking-Parted

AdamOutler · Feb 22, 2012

howcansheslap said:
Adam, your tool is total greatness. It successfully unbricked my NT yesterday. One of the causes of my brick, however, was a corrupted partition table, which I had to fix before I could get your tool to work. Maybe you could integrate that into the script?

The command I used is 'parted /dev/block/mmcblk0 print' (props to Celtic for pointing this out).

The only problem is that it prompts for a few questions so I don't know if it's even suited for the Ubunto wipe/restore script. It does appear that the input can be scripted as well.

http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/parted.html#Invoking-Parted

If you can tell me the options, then I can use the --script command line option in order to script the parted action. can you get a copy of the output somehow?

I'd like to recreate this... how did you manage to mess it up in the first place?

howcansheslap · Feb 22, 2012

I have no idea how I managed this. I used the format sdcard option in CM7 and rebooted, but that may or may not be the cause.

I know Celtic and bariskeskin have both also run into this, they may be able to provide clues.

Here's the complete command line i/o. The only responses I actually typed to the questions were 'yes', 'fix', 'fix'...everything else you see below is an echo.

Code:

~ # parted /dev/block/mmcblk0 print
parted /dev/block/mmcblk0 print
Warning: /dev/block/mmcblk0 contains GPT signatures, indicating that it has a
GPT table.  However, it does not have a valid fake msdos partition table, as it
should.  Perhaps it was corrupted -- possibly by a program that doesn't
understand GPT partition tables.  Or perhaps you deleted the GPT table, and are
now using an msdos partition table.  Is this a GPT partition table?
Yes/No? yes
yes
yes
Error: The backup GPT table is not at the end of the disk, as it should be.
This might mean that another operating system believes the disk is smaller.
Fix, by moving the backup to the end (and removing the old backup)?
Fix/Ignore/Cancel? fix
fix
fix
Warning: Not all of the space available to /dev/block/mmcblk0 appears to be
used, you can fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra 569312 blocks) or
continue with the current setting?
Fix/Ignore? fix
fix
fix
Model: MMC SEM16G (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 15.9GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name        Flags
 1      131kB   262kB   131kB                xloader
 2      262kB   524kB   262kB                bootloader
 3      524kB   16.3MB  15.7MB               recovery
 4      16.8MB  33.6MB  16.8MB               boot
 5      33.6MB  83.9MB  50.3MB               rom
 6      83.9MB  134MB   50.3MB               bootdata
 7      134MB   522MB   388MB                factory
 8      522MB   1164MB  642MB                system
 9      1164MB  1611MB  447MB                cache
10      1611MB  2684MB  1074MB               media
11      2684MB  15.6GB  12.9GB               userdata

cyberma007 · Feb 23, 2012

Just wanted to everyone know that I was able to use windows to create the SD card for the restore, I extraxted the file winrar, added extention .img to the end of the file and used "win32 Disk Image" to burn it to SD.

AdamOutler · Feb 23, 2012

cyberma007 said:
Just wanted to everyone know that I was able to use windows to create the SD card for the restore, I extraxted the file winrar, added extention .img to the end of the file and used "win32 Disk Image" to burn it to SD.

Please do me a favor and repeat that on your already made card... that disk imager makes you pick a drive and i was hesitant because i did not want to risk putting up instructions that could fail. If you would, put up some detailed instructions and i will add it with credit to the first post.

Changing the extension should probly be done on my end rather than make the user do it. I wasnt concerned because we were dealing in native linux and mac before.

cyberma007 · Feb 23, 2012

I have done it 2 times now and both times worked perfect.
it does let me choose a drive.
So here it goes
Download the file to your PC
Extract it with Winrar
Add extension .img in the end of the extracted file name
Download "win32 Disk Image" and open
Put in your SD Card and choose the drive letter of your SD Card from "win32 Disk Image"
click write.
just remember the size of the SD card needs to be bigger then 2GB, my 2GB was to small, I think 4GB should do it.
Turn of your nook and put in the SD Card and turn it back on.
it will take about 20 minutes or so, My SD card was class 10.
in the End my screen went black and i plugged in my USB Cable in and took it out, which made the screen show power off now.

Thank again for a great tool.

GabrialDestruir · Feb 23, 2012

This could brick all 8GB devices, just fair warning.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1513355

GabrialDestruir said:
Well assuming by this thread that Adam's 1.4.0 Booted and trashed your system.... you'll either have to try taking it back in and playing real real stupid, like too stupid to program the vcr stupid, or you'll just have to wait until someone makes recovery for the 8GB nooks.

Let me explain, the Boot Loader files for 1.4.0 are designed to run for the 16GB devices only, it wasn't until 1.4.2 (which is available for both devices) that B&N modified the Boot Loader files to run on both 16GB and 8GB. Therefore when MLO tries to initiate memory it's trying to initiate for the 16GBs 1GB memory as opposed to the 512MB of the 8GB device, this will cause the device not to boot.

AdamOutler · Feb 23, 2012

GabrialDestruir said:
This could brick all 8GB devices, just fair warning.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1513355

He's not bricked. It just failed to boot. Holding the power button will turn it off, then he can turn it back on.

CelticWebSolutions · Feb 23, 2012

AdamOutler said:
He's not bricked. It just failed to boot. Holding the power button will turn it off, then he can turn it back on.

Yup that's what I think it is too, I've posted on his thread telling him to try. The exact same thing happedne dot my 8gb when I tried booting SD by connecting usb cable earlier, the device just locks out and does nothing.

This does however suggest it's attempting to boot form SD when being powered on by usb cable with SD in slot

GabrialDestruir · Feb 23, 2012

AdamOutler said:
He's not bricked. It just failed to boot. Holding the power button will turn it off, then he can turn it back on.

He's not, but it's still a possibility if someone tries to "fix" this to run on 8GB devices, it's something to take in consideration.

AdamOutler · Feb 24, 2012

GabrialDestruir said:
He's not, but it's still a possibility if someone tries to "fix" this to run on 8GB devices, it's something to take in consideration.

I'm entirely not worried about it until it happens. The worst thing that could happen is it breaks and they ask me for help, then I can release a 8gig version.

I'm absolutely sure the worst thing that could happen is a total loss of all data on the device.... which is the point of using this in the first place. So, until there's an actual problem, no need for a red flag. Problems stimulate development. If I put up a warning then noone will put any effort into it. In fact, it's likely the only thing that needs to change is the internal storage partition and the bootloader.

If someone would like to lend me a 8gig device, I might be able to make it work.

[UnBrick]TOTAL WIPE and reflash back to 1.4.0 via Ubuntu Recovery --Now Easier!!!!

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