[Q] Stuck in a boot loop after nandroid backup

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Here's my sad story. New to Android. I have a US YP-G1, which had been rooted using SuperOneClick. I installed Steve's Kernel (US version) to get the Voodoo sound. I used Odin3 v1.85. That worked fine. I installed Voodoo control, rebooted; everything still works, sounds great.

Then I decide to explore Clockworkmod recovery. I booted into recovery, ran the the CWM backup option (which I guess is Nandroid backup). It backs up boot/cache/data/datadata/system to what I think is /sdcard. I then reboot out of CWM.

That's it. I'm stuck in a infinite boot loop where I see the swirling pattern and the glowing Samsung logo for a few seconds before it reboots and repeats it again.

I tried CWM USB "mount USB storage". PC can see the sdcard. But the only thing there is the CWM backup directory with all the backup contents and two other folders: .android_secure and external_sd, both of which are empty. That seems kind of unexpected since I thought I should see the internal SD card contents and expected more directories when mounted to PC. Also expected external_sd directory to show the contents of my 32GB SD card, but nothing shows when mounted like that. PC showed about 5.5GB free on the mount.

I also tried CWM recovery restore from the backup I made. This seemingly restored all files from the backup, but after reboot I'm still in the boot loop.

After searching on the web and finding some guides, I've also tried cleaning out the Dalvik cache, and the "wipe data/factory reset" CWM options. Still have the boot loop.

Does anyone have another suggestion for how to get out of the boot loop?

TIA.

Originally Posted by logo20heli

Here's my sad story. New to Android. I have a US YP-G1, which had been rooted using SuperOneClick. I installed Steve's Kernel (US version) to get the Voodoo sound. I used Odin3 v1.85. That worked fine. I installed Voodoo control, rebooted; everything still works, sounds great.

Then I decide to explore Clockworkmod recovery. I booted into recovery, ran the the CWM backup option (which I guess is Nandroid backup). It backs up boot/cache/data/datadata/system to what I think is /sdcard. I then reboot out of CWM.

That's it. I'm stuck in a infinite boot loop where I see the swirling pattern and the glowing Samsung logo for a few seconds before it reboots and repeats it again.

I tried CWM USB "mount USB storage". PC can see the sdcard. But the only thing there is the CWM backup directory with all the backup contents and two other folders: .android_secure and external_sd, both of which are empty. That seems kind of unexpected since I thought I should see the internal SD card contents and expected more directories when mounted to PC. Also expected external_sd directory to show the contents of my 32GB SD card, but nothing shows when mounted like that. PC showed about 5.5GB free on the mount.

I also tried CWM recovery restore from the backup I made. This seemingly restored all files from the backup, but after reboot I'm still in the boot loop.

After searching on the web and finding some guides, I've also tried cleaning out the Dalvik cache, and the "wipe data/factory reset" CWM options. Still have the boot loop.

Does anyone have another suggestion for how to get out of the boot loop?

TIA.

I had a similar problem of getting stuck in a boot loop, but I thought it was because I had cleared the dalvik cache. Nandroid backups work flawlessly for me, btw. Anyway, I got my device fixed by reflashing with this stock ROM with ODIN: http://www.filefactory.com/file/c0dd...s2.3.5.tar.md5
After you flash it, it will still be boot loop so go into stock recovery (with 3 button combo) and choose "wipe data/factory reset" and then "wipe cache". Then I rebooted, and I was no longer in boot loop!
You can reflash SteveS kernel after if you want.
Hope this works for you!

Hi Klin,

Thanks for the help. I'm having trouble D/L the ROM from the link you provided. FileFactory says its a bad requst. Can you check that please?

I also tried the sequence you suggested but using the ROM I found from another thread:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1412875

I also did the steps you provided using the standard recovery and this got me out of the boot loop. Thanks a bunch for your help!!!

I'll now load SteveS kernel again and see if the backup I made is of any use. If not, then at least I know how to get back to a complete factory reset as you've shown.

Originally Posted by logo20heli

Hi Klin,

Thanks for the help. I'm having trouble D/L the ROM from the link you provided. FileFactory says its a bad requst. Can you check that please?

I also tried the sequence you suggested but using the ROM I found from another thread:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1412875

I also did the steps you provided using the standard recovery and this got me out of the boot loop. Thanks a bunch for your help!!!

I'll now load SteveS kernel again and see if the backup I made is of any use. If not, then at least I know how to get back to a complete factory reset as you've shown.

No problem. Glad you got it working again.

And of course, no need to click the thanks button, I really don't care much about my thanks meter...

Thanks button clicked!

I tried restoring from the CWM Nandroid restore. After restore, it booted fine, but my apps are missing, including Google Market. Actually, the icons are there, but clicking on them tells me that the "application is not installed on the system". Also, other settings are missing as well like my email accounts and wifi connections/passwords. But app icon layout is correct, and clearly it remembered some of my settings. I got the impression this was supposed to do a "full restore".

I tried "reset permissions", but this didn't fix it. Any clues?

Originally Posted by logo20heli

Thanks button clicked!

I tried restoring from the CWM Nandroid restore. After restore, it booted fine, but my apps are missing, including Google Market. Actually, the icons are there, but clicking on them tells me that the "application is not installed on the system". Also, other settings are missing as well like my email accounts and wifi connections/passwords. But app icon layout is correct, and clearly it remembered some of my settings. I got the impression this was supposed to do a "full restore".

I tried "reset permissions", but this didn't fix it. Any clues?

Maybe your nandroid backup wasn't created correctly? Because for me my nandroid backup restored all my settings and apps. Did you have any apps installed on the SD card instead of device? Maybe that might be the problem, but I'm not sure.

I've had exactly the same experience, but with UK version. I had Steves rom and kernel flashed, all looking nice so did a nandroid backup with cwm. No bootloops but everything was gone. Icons were on screen but applications not installed. In the end I did factory reset and reflashed Steves rom. All good but am avoiding cwm!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App

Originally Posted by logo20heli

Thanks button clicked!

I tried restoring from the CWM Nandroid restore. After restore, it booted fine, but my apps are missing, including Google Market. Actually, the icons are there, but clicking on them tells me that the "application is not installed on the system". Also, other settings are missing as well like my email accounts and wifi connections/passwords. But app icon layout is correct, and clearly it remembered some of my settings. I got the impression this was supposed to do a "full restore".

I tried "reset permissions", but this didn't fix it. Any clues?

My guess: Steve's CWM implementation is broken and is not backing up/restoring /dbdata (Looking at his recovery.fstab, this SHOULD be working, but maybe his fstab is broken.)

I've seen the same sort of behavior when trying to get CWM working on the 5.0 - I fixed it on mine by fixing /dbdata backup/restore (which is treated as /datadata by CWM)

Can you post a list of files in your backup including sizes?

Hi Entropy,

Thanks for your help. Here is the list of files from my backup:

01/12/2012  12:00 AM        48,375,360 .android_secure.img
01/11/2012  11:57 PM         7,864,320 boot.img
01/12/2012  12:00 AM         6,633,792 cache.img
01/11/2012  11:59 PM             2,112 data.img
01/11/2012  11:59 PM        13,742,784 datadata.img
01/12/2012  12:00 AM               222 nandroid.md5
01/11/2012  11:59 PM       294,997,824 system.img

Perhaps dbdata is missing as you suspect. But there is a datadata.

CWM treats dbdata as datadata (just a different naming convention) - so it is getting backed up.

Maybe it didn't get restored properly? dunno...

Wait... data.img is only 2112 bytes? Something is WRONG there... That should be the largest image after /system