[Q] Phone hangs during use - sometimes fails to mount /system or /data

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This has been ongoing for a few weeks now. Desire S is currently running Endymion 2.2, but the same thing happened on Cyanogen and Stock roms. Phone will work fine for up to a day, then will completely freeze up during use (has happened in Browser, while entering text, and once just on the lockscreen). During the hang the touchscreen won't respond, connecting USB has no effect (no LED and ADB Devices lists nothing), the 4 buttons give haptic feedback for about 5 seconds after the hang, then nothing. Holding volume+power has no effect, but usually after about 10-20 tries or 15 minutes of doing nothing the phone will return to HTC boot screen, and sit there until I power it off and then remove the battery.

When using clockworkmod, half the time either /system or /data is not mountable (this only happoccasionally get "error mounting /cache/recovery/log"). When this is the case, formatting/factoryreset sometimes gives the "can't mount /data" error, and sometimes works.
Since switching to 4EXT the partitions are always mountable from recovery, but rebooting causes the phone to hang immediately after booting.

Current setup (which at the moment is hanging at the lockscreen)
HBOOT-6.98.2000 (PG88100000)
4EXT Recovery v2.2.7 RC5 (/system /cache and /data all ext4)
Endymion 2.2

tldr: is it possible for /system or /data to break during normal use and sometimes be unmountable? If yes, then can this be prevented? If no, any other suggestions as to what could be going on?

Reads the posts in the eMMC section at the bottom of the index thread, see end if my Sig for link

Swyped from my Desire S using XDA Premium

If you want my opinion, be drastic about your approach to this. Start from the ground up, that way you will be able to more or less narrow down the problem you are experiencing.

1. Change your HBOOT to 0.98.2000 (As you are using the revolutionary HBOOT, you will need to change this using a different method).

1a. Download HBOOT 0.98.2000 from this thread.

1b. Taken from this thread, use this method to change your HBOOT using adb. If you don't know how to use adb .. >_<.

Copy the hboot.img to your SDCARD.

In adb type:
adb devices
adb shell
su (doesn't matter if it says /system/sbin/su not found)
dd if=/sdcard/hboot.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p18

2. Format all your partitions again using your recovery.

3. Re-install a FRESH ROM, try to avoid backups.

Don't care if anyone thinks differently, this is just what I would do if I was having this problem.

Totally agree with the above post.
But I would suggest even more drastic approach. Restore to complete Stock and S-ON. There are Guides here how to do this. Then do a testing for a couple of days, maybe a week. At the moment when (if) this problem appears again run to your provider and insist a replacement.
IMO this way you will spare yourself a lot of nerves and troubles in future.

Originally Posted by ben_pyett

Reads the posts in the eMMC section at the bottom of the index thread

sorry, didn't mention this in op - checked for eMMC issues when it first started happening and everything seemed okay, so I'm confident it's not a hardware fault. Not sure if there is a different problem that can result in similar, but sporadic, results.

Going to S-ON and try stock rom again and see how it goes.

Thanks guys

I checked mine and was also confident i had an ok emmc but alas, if you have the bad chip, you have a bad chip.

It may manifest it's self in different ways but eventually it's more than likely to fail. You would be wise to proceed with that caveat.

Sent from my HTC Desire

psimyn, how did it go? Also is it a telstra branded handset?

Sorry for the slow reply, finally got a response from the seller.

Handset was unbranded, bought from HK. The seller requested $40 for shipping both ways, which was apparently going to be refunded if the phone was covered by warranty.

Instead, I got an email yesterday claiming that the phone suffered a "software corruption" and that I had to pay an additional $45 for Labour and Administration. When I asked why the response was "I am just explaining to you that the labour cost and all administration are $45".

For now I just want the damn thing back, so it's been paid and they will hopefully send it today.