[SOLVED] Atrix will not power on, green light flashes, plugged in and.... nothing!

KryptosXLayer2 · Feb 23, 2011

Went to sleep last night with my Atrix plugged in as I normally have had all my phones, was playing with it right before I went to sleep and everything worked just fine, woke up this morning and the phone will not power on!

First tried to power it on unplugged and the green light flashed for 2 seconds, and nothing happened. Okay, weird, but I'll go with it. Plugged it in, and the green light stays on now until I press the power button! Once pressed, it flashes off, flashes on for 2 seconds and stays off. Nice. I thought the green light meant it was fully charged - when I woke up this morning, it had no green light on, but it was plugged in just fine all night - grabbed my Jawbone ERA and plugged it in to the charger I had the Atrix connected to and it started charging right away, so I know it works....

Pulled the battery, tried plugging it in and power it on without the battery. Nothing. Tried putting in the battery and plugging it in again to "jump start it" as I had done yesterday when I first got it - apparently you can't just charge the thing when connected to a laptop if the phone is off, it will power on even if you power it off again! Nothing.

What the hell happened in it's sleep? I KNOW rooting it didn't cause sleep death.... This thing doesn't have a custom ROM or any undervoltage adjustments, so why the hell is it acting up??? Damnit, right when I got EVERYTHING set up the way I wanted it too.... can't bring it in to the store and give it up with all my personal stuff on there now, I need this thing to power on to wipe it first!!! I'm leaving it connected to the laptop with the green light on for a while and will see what happens in an hour or so....

EDIT - just searched for and tried to hard reset the phone from this thread, the phone still won't even power on to get to the recovery screen!!!

UPDATE - see below and use the SUPPLIED Moto AC charger or at least one with over 5.0V - NOT a PC and NOT a USB hub!

cegna09 · Feb 23, 2011

use the charger that came with the phone. My old HTC ones won't charge the phone for some reason. I bet your battery is just dead.

dew.man · Feb 23, 2011

Did you use the provided charger? I tried plugging my Atrix in to the charger I used for my N1, and found that it did not provide enough current. With the old charger, after the phone died, I had similar symptoms where the green light would flash but phone would not come on. Plugged it in with the Moto provided charger, and 5 minutes later all was good...

Dimeezy · Feb 23, 2011

I had the same problem. Thought I was gonna have to take it back to the store. I don't know what the problem was but I took the battery out for 5 minutes. Then I plugged it into the wall charger(wouldn't work with PC). I didn't turn it on for 30 min, just left it on the charger. Then I hit the volume rocker and it showed the battery charging symbol which it didn't do before. And then I was able to power it on

nsaia · Feb 23, 2011

Same thing here. I purposely drained my battery on the first use. Plugged the usb cable into the PC and nothing. Same blinking green light with no response. I also thought I'd have to return the phone. Then for S & Gs I plugged it into the wall charger and it came to life. Once I got the battery charged a little bit I plugged it into the PC and it started to charge again. Don't know why, but it worked.

KryptosXLayer2 · Feb 23, 2011

Have been running around the house trying to find valid outlets, and that does indeed appear to be the problem. I found it out the hard way though, should have kept an eye on the thread - used a power outlet instead of a PC USB connection and the screen fired right up! Yes, the phone showed the battery with 0% in it, but at least the screen finally came on!

How I have my phone set up normally is connected to my charging valet on my dresser, connected with a 15 foot USB cable that plugs directly into my desktop. Since the extension is good for just one USB connection, I have that connected to a USB hub and then a MicroUSB cable connects my phone from there. The Captivate, and all the other phones I've ever used, not to mention my Zune and Jawbone ERA, all eat that up and have no issues since the USB hub is powered not by the computer (seven USB cables is just too many for a single PC connection) but by the power outlet in the charging valet. I wonder if the hub is distributing the power requirement for each device and the Atrix needs more than others.

I also figured out that the Moto charger has a 5.1V output on it, as does my Jawbone AC charger. Now I need to start making sure that my each one of my chargers in the cars I own has that same type amount of juice too! You go up 29% in battery capacity and so do the requirements to charge it, huh?

Thanks for all the help, marking this SOLVED....

waltah! · Feb 23, 2011

I used the charger in my bedroom that I've used for the Captivate and others before it and it didn't provide enough juice to charge the Atrix. It quickly switched between charging and not charging. I still had 40% battery showing when I woke up though which was nice. It had been off of charge since 10am yesterday.
Plugged it into an HTC charger and it's fine. The one that didn't work is not a modular charger so the power cord is hard wired to the plug.

KryptosXLayer2 · Feb 23, 2011

Alright, a quick update.... Got the phone charged to 100% while it was off and plugged into the AC outlet with the Moto charger. Put my SIM card back in it - couldn't be without a phone all day! - and fired up the Atrix. Went to Battery Info to see what the status is and while plugged into my USB hub, it says

Battery Status: Discharging
Power plug: USB
....
Battery Voltage: 4124 mV (or 4.124V)

What the hell? Then I went right after that and plugged it into the Moto AC charger, it says:

Battery Status: Full
Power plug: AC
....
Battery Voltage: 4207 mV (or 4.207V)

Why are POWERED USB hubs and PCs not strong enough to charge the phone? I tried ALL my outlets in my vehicles just now and they ALL show full battery status and plugged into AC! Who screwed this up????

Battleship · Feb 23, 2011

GarciaM25 said:
Why are POWERED USB hubs and PCs not strong enough to charge the phone? I tried ALL my outlets in my vehicles just now and they ALL show full battery status and plugged into AC! Who screwed this up????

Did you download the PC Charging Drivers that Motorola requires you to have in order to charge via PC and USB cable? If not, look here.

KryptosXLayer2 · Feb 23, 2011

Battleship said:
Did you download the PC Charging Drivers that Motorola requires you to have in order to charge via PC and USB cable? If not, look here.

Wait, you have to have specific drivers on the PC so that the phone will allow a power cable (let's not even worry about it being a USB cable for a second) to charge the phone properly? I have the Motorola Media Link software installed, and that has a ton of drivers on it, that wasn't enough? MORE drivers are required to charge a cell phone? This is madness!

Stewge · Jul 20, 2011

Sorry about the necromancy, but had this problem myself but it is NOT due to a lack of voltage. Thought I'd actually solve this, the problem is CURRENT.

USB2 ports will only ever supply 500ma which simply isn't enough to charge the atrix when it's dead. USB2 powered hubs won't supply any more than this either to meet the USB2 spec. The fact that the AC adapter works is because they tend to have a higher output current in the region of 1-2 amps (you may notice the phone, or any other device for that matter, charges faster with AC adapters for this reason).

On a similar note, cheap car chargers only output 500ma. I know with my desire I can have it plugged in and it charges, but if I use GPS it actually draws more current than it can charge at resulting in the battery draining (albeit, slowly).

So, make sure you have a higher current AC/Car charger, or alternatively, plug it into a USB3 port to charge as USB3 spec allows 900ma (some mobos output up to 1A) which is enough to charge the Atrix.

KryptosXLayer2 · Jul 20, 2011

Stewge said:
Sorry about the necromancy, but had this problem myself but it is NOT due to a lack of voltage. Thought I'd actually solve this, the problem is CURRENT.

Hey, no problem, if there's something I misstated, then please, correct it!

Stewge said:
So, make sure you have a higher current AC/Car charger, or alternatively, plug it into a USB3 port to charge as USB3 spec allows 900ma (some mobos output up to 1A) which is enough to charge the Atrix.

Not sure about this..... It's been about a year since I got all my USB3.0 gear, and I was super excited about it because I thought that my phone would charge ridiculously fast because of the added output, but I remember reading that 3.0 uses extra pins and those pins account for the added voltage and bandwidth of the cable - we don't have those extra pins when you step down from 3.0 to 2.0, so we lose the ability to charge devices faster as a result. I don't know if I actually proved that theory, but after I read up enough on it, I thought I just didn't have to with that knowledge..... again, correct me if I'm wrong, I've got a lot of 3.0 gear here!!!

Stewge · Jul 21, 2011

GarciaM25 said:
Not sure about this..... It's been about a year since I got all my USB3.0 gear, and I was super excited about it because I thought that my phone would charge ridiculously fast because of the added output, but I remember reading that 3.0 uses extra pins and those pins account for the added voltage and bandwidth of the cable - we don't have those extra pins when you step down from 3.0 to 2.0, so we lose the ability to charge devices faster as a result. I don't know if I actually proved that theory, but after I read up enough on it, I thought I just didn't have to with that knowledge..... again, correct me if I'm wrong, I've got a lot of 3.0 gear here!!!

There are indeed extra pins in the USB3 standard but these are to transmit data only. The original USB2 data pins are only there for legacy support and USB3 transmissions use the extra lines. There's still only the 1 VBUS pin which supplies the +5V power. There's also no harm in offering higher current on the connection as a device will only ever draw as much current as it needs until it tops out the supplier, not the other way round

EDIT: Another solution could be to use a splitter cable (common with 2.5" drives)so you can draw from 2 ports, but with a micro connector. I've never actually seen one with USB micro but a quick look on ebay says they do exist

cscmf99 · Aug 30, 2012

nsaia said:
Same thing here. I purposely drained my battery on the first use. Plugged the usb cable into the PC and nothing. Same blinking green light with no response. I also thought I'd have to return the phone. Then for S & Gs I plugged it into the wall charger and it came to life. Once I got the battery charged a little bit I plugged it into the PC and it started to charge again. Don't know why, but it worked.

Hi, can I know that when you plug it into the wall charger, is there any light on? Mine has no light on when plug to wall charger. But I can get the light green when plug into PC USB. Can you share that?

maheshjagadeesan · Dec 12, 2012

cscmf99 said:
Hi, can I know that when you plug it into the wall charger, is there any light on? Mine has no light on when plug to wall charger. But I can get the light green when plug into PC USB. Can you share that?

This is the exact same issue that I am facing now. Did you ever manage to find a solution for this problem?

digisylk · Aug 23, 2013

atrix 4g not coming on

Is there any real fix to this issue i have search high and low and all i am seeing people talking about the battery id dead ... i have two battery that is fully charger and the phone still not coming up.

ehmad · Jan 27, 2014

Hi all, sorry that im posting after two years ago but i am facing exactly the same problem, but i plugged it in my USB port, wich i think its a usb2, and i got the screen on but the cellphone did not say charging instead of that was connect your charger, and it was lower than 3% then it turned off. What can it be a solution??

andresrivas · Jan 30, 2014

None of the avobe solutions worked?

Which rom/kernel are you using?

fastvan67 · Dec 14, 2014

I too have this same issue. My Atrix won't come on. I have 2 of the same phone. I tried the charger and cable from both phones. Neither work. When I first plug it it, the green light comes on for a few seconds then it goes out. I even opened the phone and removed the battery. Used a voltage tested and found my battery has 3.7 volts. Thats almost 100% charge. So it not a problem of power. I plugged the phone to my computer and same green light for a few seconds then gone. Won't do anything. No battery display or anything. I even did the simulated battery removal procedure. Didn't work. Is there anything else I can try? Can't get to recovery mode without display unless someone has a fix for that?

[SOLVED] Atrix will not power on, green light flashes, plugged in and.... nothing!

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