[Q] Lenovo S5000 -- reinstall system? Bricked after rooting.

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gstaniak

Member
Oct 13, 2012
5
1
Hi,

I used the Framaroot app (v. 1.9.0) to root my Lenovo S5000 -- the Barahir exploit worked fine, I got root, was able to install Titanium Backup at long last, but then I made a mistake: since I also installed SuperSU and configured it for the "survival mode", I thought it would be probably OK to accept an OTA update. After the update, the tablet sort of starts, but all apps (including the launcher, keyboard etc. etc.) force stop and all I get is an endless sequence of "OK" buttons to click while the system tries to run them over and over again. Is there a way to "unbrick" the tablet? I have googled for help, but it seems this particular vendor does not publish any resources that could be of use in this situation. I'm able to get to a kind of diagnostic mode by pressing Vol Up during boot, but it's in Chinese, and I couldn't locate any option that would give an output resembling a "flash a zip file" option. And of course, I don't even have the zip file. All suggestions welcome (perhaps exept for "you shouldn't have bought a Lenovo" -- the tablet was a gift). Thanks.
 
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Trozzul

Senior Member
Jun 21, 2012
1,607
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26
Seattle
Hi,

I used the Framaroot app (v. 1.9.0) to root my Lenovo S5000 -- the Barahir exploit worked fine, I got root, was able to install Titanium Backup at long last, but then I made a mistake: since I also installed SuperSU and configured it for the "survival mode", I thought it would be probably OK to accept an OTA update. After the update, the tablet sort of starts, but all apps (including the launcher, keyboard etc. etc.) force stop and all I get is an endless sequence of "OK" buttons to click while the system tries to run them over and over again. Is there a way to "unbrick" the tablet? I have googled for help, but it seems this particular vendor does not publish any resources that could be of use in this situation. I'm able to get to a kind of diagnostic mode by pressing Vol Up during boot, but it's in Chinese, and I couldn't locate any option that would give an output resembling a "flash a zip file" option. And of course, I don't even have the zip file. All suggestions welcome (perhaps exept for "you shouldn't have bought a Lenovo" -- the tablet was a gift). Thanks.

well if the chinese version of the recovery is similar looking to stock recovery on another device (compare it) you should try to navigate to factory reset.
 

gstaniak

Member
Oct 13, 2012
5
1
well if the chinese version of the recovery is similar looking to stock recovery on another device (compare it) you should try to navigate to factory reset.

Thanks for the advice. The menu looks more like factory hardware diagnostics than a recovery menu. It's rather simple, and I've traversed it a number of times already -- shows some hardware test dumps, a testing suite that beeps the speaker, flashes the screen, gives a camera dump, tries WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS etc. and presents a green/red list of successful/failed items, but not much more. However, while playing with it I discovered that pressing Vol+ and Vol- while booting gives me the choice between a normal boot, "fastboot", and the 3e recovery mode. On "fastboot" the booting process hangs, and in the 3e recovery I executed the factory reset/data wipe and cleared the cache partition, but the situation didn't change. I guess the problem might be the su binary failing to grant access to system processes or something like this. Now that I have the recovery mode available the easiest way to solve the problem would be to flash a new/original system image, but I can't locate any Lenovo system file to use. Thanks anyway.
 

Bingley

Senior Member
Jan 6, 2011
1,071
186
Netherfield
Thanks for the advice. The menu looks more like factory hardware diagnostics than a recovery menu. It's rather simple, and I've traversed it a number of times already -- shows some hardware test dumps, a testing suite that beeps the speaker, flashes the screen, gives a camera dump, tries WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS etc. and presents a green/red list of successful/failed items, but not much more. However, while playing with it I discovered that pressing Vol+ and Vol- while booting gives me the choice between a normal boot, "fastboot", and the 3e recovery mode. On "fastboot" the booting process hangs, and in the 3e recovery I executed the factory reset/data wipe and cleared the cache partition, but the situation didn't change. I guess the problem might be the su binary failing to grant access to system processes or something like this. Now that I have the recovery mode available the easiest way to solve the problem would be to flash a new/original system image, but I can't locate any Lenovo system file to use. Thanks anyway.

Just flash the system image of the original firmware via sptools then update one and then update again-New firmware update dated 24th March 2014 installed for me-and run framaroot again, the barahir exploit as usual works just find :)
 

gstaniak

Member
Oct 13, 2012
5
1
Just flash the system image of the original firmware via sptools then update one and then update again-New firmware update dated 24th March 2014 installed for me-and run framaroot again, the barahir exploit as usual works just find :)

Thanks, I've been trying to do exactly that, but I have problems either running the flashtool (I downloaded it from androidxda.com again now, maybe a newer version will run better), or, even if flashtool runs without problems, with installing drivers. I've found a Russian Lenovo forum page with links to S5000 firmware, can (sometimes) run the flashtool, but I just can't communicate with the tablet.
 

Bingley

Senior Member
Jan 6, 2011
1,071
186
Netherfield
Thanks, I've been trying to do exactly that, but I have problems either running the flashtool (I downloaded it from androidxda.com again now, maybe a newer version will run better), or, even if flashtool runs without problems, with installing drivers. I've found a Russian Lenovo forum page with links to S5000 firmware, can (sometimes) run the flashtool, but I just can't communicate with the tablet.

Did you get this working?

Can anyone else get OTG working on the S5000 with an external hard drive? USB sticks work fine, but I can't get my backup driver to work.
 

gstaniak

Member
Oct 13, 2012
5
1
Did you get this working?

Can anyone else get OTG working on the S5000 with an external hard drive? USB sticks work fine, but I can't get my backup driver to work.

No luck yet. I just can't make the Windows machines see the tablet. I'm not giving up, but I haven't got much hope either, it seems Lenovo is generally not a good target for tweaking, rooting etc.
 

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    Hi,

    I used the Framaroot app (v. 1.9.0) to root my Lenovo S5000 -- the Barahir exploit worked fine, I got root, was able to install Titanium Backup at long last, but then I made a mistake: since I also installed SuperSU and configured it for the "survival mode", I thought it would be probably OK to accept an OTA update. After the update, the tablet sort of starts, but all apps (including the launcher, keyboard etc. etc.) force stop and all I get is an endless sequence of "OK" buttons to click while the system tries to run them over and over again. Is there a way to "unbrick" the tablet? I have googled for help, but it seems this particular vendor does not publish any resources that could be of use in this situation. I'm able to get to a kind of diagnostic mode by pressing Vol Up during boot, but it's in Chinese, and I couldn't locate any option that would give an output resembling a "flash a zip file" option. And of course, I don't even have the zip file. All suggestions welcome (perhaps exept for "you shouldn't have bought a Lenovo" -- the tablet was a gift). Thanks.