[HOW-TO] Fix 5 vibrate and black screen

Scotte.dont · Jan 1, 2012

5 vibs of death with out root

I have a droid incredible that used to have this problem. I flashed back to stock, rooted,followed the guide and everything seems to be back in order. There is one thing that seems to be off. The phone is fully functional but it sometimes will randomly go into the 5 vibs of death. A battery pull usually fixes this. Sometimes it takes days before this happens.

I have found one commonality to this and I think it is the phone's battery. Shortly after this problem occurred, I installed cm7.1.0 and turned down the processor speed to 614MHz and put the governer on ONDEMAND. This almost seemed to fix the 5 vibs. Now it only 5 vibs if I'm using an app that causes the phone to heat up a little (like a game)

I then went to my friend who I purchased this from (she had never rooted the device). She told me that the phone had occasionally rebooted on her before while using google navigation. She said it just rebooted not 5 vibs.

I was thinking a new battery would possibly fix it? I really wish I new what the 5 vibs actually meant.

goblue13579 · Jan 3, 2012

Scotte.dont said:
I have a droid incredible that used to have this problem. I flashed back to stock, rooted,followed the guide and everything seems to be back in order. There is one thing that seems to be off. The phone is fully functional but it sometimes will randomly go into the 5 vibs of death. A battery pull usually fixes this. Sometimes it takes days before this happens.

I have found one commonality to this and I think it is the phone's battery. Shortly after this problem occurred, I installed cm7.1.0 and turned down the processor speed to 614MHz and put the governer on ONDEMAND. This almost seemed to fix the 5 vibs. Now it only 5 vibs if I'm using an app that causes the phone to heat up a little (like a game)

I then went to my friend who I purchased this from (she had never rooted the device). She told me that the phone had occasionally rebooted on her before while using google navigation. She said it just rebooted not 5 vibs.

I was thinking a new battery would possibly fix it? I really wish I new what the 5 vibs actually meant.

This sounds like a hardware issue to do with overheating, as google nav heats up the device a lot too. The 5 vibrate mode is (as best I can tell) a hardware management interface, because it shows up as a Qualcomm device in windows when connected in this mode. There are no openly available tools to use it to my knowledge though. This would lead me to believe that a new battery would make no difference, but it's a much cheaper fix than anything else so I might try it after the below idea.

One thing you could try is get a phone monitoring app to keep track of what happens when it reboots, I know there are apps like this marketed as battery monitors. You could use this to see if there is a voltage or temperature association with it.

Hope this helps!

Okkx · Jan 4, 2012

Thanks for this

theguitarhero94 · Jan 6, 2012

i had a problem with my mom's phone(Desire HD) where the screen would just fade away after a failed root... fortunately got it back to stock by flashing PD38IMG but it's interesting to see this. what caused it?

goblue13579 · Jan 7, 2012

theguitarhero94 said:
i had a problem with my mom's phone(Desire HD) where the screen would just fade away after a failed root... fortunately got it back to stock by flashing PD38IMG but it's interesting to see this. what caused it?

My problem was caused by trying to set up a quad rom system on my internal storage, but others have said it was just on a rom flash or nandroid restore. It must just be a few misplaced bits here and there that bork the system.

Re: Desire HD, I'm afraid I have absolutely no experience with that device as I'm in the US. Since it's from the generation after the incredible, I can't make any promises about the usefulness of the methods in this guide. Did you try to root it after restoring it to stock?

Scotte.dont · Jan 10, 2012

goblue13579 said:
This sounds like a hardware issue to do with overheating, as google nav heats up the device a lot too. The 5 vibrate mode is (as best I can tell) a hardware management interface, because it shows up as a Qualcomm device in windows when connected in this mode. There are no openly available tools to use it to my knowledge though. This would lead me to believe that a new battery would make no difference, but it's a much cheaper fix than anything else so I might try it after the below idea.

One thing you could try is get a phone monitoring app to keep track of what happens when it reboots, I know there are apps like this marketed as battery monitors. You could use this to see if there is a voltage or temperature association with it.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the input.

I did buy a new (OEM) htc battery and it did NOT fix the problem.

What program should I use to monitor the phone? I would like one that will preferable make a log I can post after this problem happens again.

zimlokks · Jan 31, 2012

saved mi fone thxx!

hEaTLoE · Feb 8, 2012

Hey all, ran into this issue for the 2nd time, but now cannot run the terminal commands. Phone is now S-ON (prev had S-OFF) and I get a [1] Segmentation Error when running the final command. Any ideas?

Just posted a thread here not to de-rail this one:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1486373

jtdogblue · Feb 26, 2012

Unfortunately, I didn't see this thread when it happened to me. I had a broken screen, so I couldn't get a replacement until I fixed it. So I finally fixed the screen, but my void stickers got thrown out, so I had to wait another month (2 months total now) to get some more shipped. Finally got it and had it successfully replaced. I was super paranoid about Verizons new policy for returns, but all went well and I have a refurb right now...

jschill31 · Mar 4, 2012

Best write-up ever...in two years I never bricked a phone this bad. You saved my tail considering it is happened to my work phone!

Thank you!

newmachine · Apr 26, 2012

Here's my story with the 5 vibes of death :

- Rooted & S-off
- SDcard (FAT32) is accessible
- USB still works
- downloaded the "deathfix" (flash_image & mtd-eng.img), ran the command from Terminal Emulator
- upon rebooting, it's always getting the 5 vibes
- it's also always getting the 5 vibes everytime I go to recovery menu from Hboot/Clockwork

any ideas??

Deleted member 2776902 · Apr 26, 2012

I experienced this a few weeks ago after flashing CM9 alpha. I did the terminal commands and they weren't working, but then I flashed back to CM7 and ran them there, and upon reboot it worked fine and was back to S-OFF. I did have to unlock my boot loader again, but I already had the key and did that right after fixing it anyway.

The guide I used is HERE.

@newmachine, when you go into hboot is it still S-OFF? And what ROM are you using to run the terminal commands in?

newmachine · Apr 26, 2012

BrettApple said:
@newmachine, when you go into hboot is it still S-OFF? And what ROM are you using to run the terminal commands in?

Yes, it's still S-off, I'm on stock Gingerbread.
I was using the same guide from that link you posted.

clambert11 · Apr 26, 2012

newmachine said:
Yes, it's still S-off, I'm on stock Gingerbread.
I was using the same guide from that link you posted.

I'm sure this is what you did but I've fixed this problem a few times. After the second time I just threw my steps into Evernote. This is what I have (taken from here so it's probably what you did).

1) Enter HBOOT and go into FASTBOOT
2) With the phone connected to a PC that runs adb, type in fastboot oem enableqxdm 0
3) That should give you access to the SD Card, so boot into Recovery and restore a backup before the problem occurred
4) Unplug the PC and reboot. When the splash screen comes up, quickly plug the phone into the PC
5) Open Connectbot and type in the following commands after the phone boots:

su
cat /sdcard/flash_image > /data/flash_image
cat /sdcard/mtd-eng.img > /data/mtd-eng.img
chmod 755 /data/flash_image
/data/flash_image misc /data/mtd-eng.img
reboot

6) If the phone still is vibrating, remove & install the battery one last time

Hand76 · Apr 26, 2012

So what cause this? I think this happened to me once and I think doing a battery pull let me get back into recovery and reload another rom which fixed it.

BlindDude · Apr 28, 2012

I have tried and tried this and it doesn't work for me
I have access to the sd card but I did the adb thing anyway.
I typed all that stuff into terminal emulator and rebooted. Still 5 vibrates.
I have installed 3 different roms, and did the terminal thing but still 5 vibrates.
The only thing consistent is, when the phone has the battery removed long enough for everything to cool down a little, the phone works. But as soon as I get it booted and browse/install apps and mess around with it, it gets a little warm(not hot at all) and shuts off and vibrates 5 times.
I am glad this method worked for alot of people but it does NOT work for me.
I am about to throw this phone down on the concrete as hard as I can.

Oh, and I flashed another radio too(saw that somewhere), nothing fixes this phone

newmachine · Apr 29, 2012

BlindDude said:
I have tried and tried this and it doesn't work for me
I have access to the sd card but I did the adb thing anyway.
I typed all that stuff into terminal emulator and rebooted. Still 5 vibrates.
I have installed 3 different roms, and did the terminal thing but still 5 vibrates.
The only thing consistent is, when the phone has the battery removed long enough for everything to cool down a little, the phone works. But as soon as I get it booted and browse/install apps and mess around with it, it gets a little warm(not hot at all) and shuts off and vibrates 5 times.
Oh, and I flashed another radio too(saw that somewhere), nothing fixes this phone

That's exactly the same as mine.

BlindDude said:
I am glad this method worked for alot of people but it does NOT work for me.
I am about to throw this phone down on the concrete as hard as I can.

And that's exactly how I feel.....

tylerwagler · May 11, 2012

I may need some assistance with this.

I can get to HBOOT and FASTBOOT but enabling the SDCARD commands results in <Waiting for device> .

Regularly booting the phone just results in a bootloop. Selecting recovery immediatly reboots.

Putting the PB31IMG on the SDCARD and booting into HBOOT results in the phone not recognizing the zip.

I'm stuck.

The latest RUU went through all steps and completed, but i'm still in a boot loop.

aceajoy · Jul 8, 2012

evo 4g

so i've looked EVERYWHERE for a solution like this, here is my problem,
my phone is also doing the 5 vibrate and black screen thing,
i can actually get it to reboot if i wait a while after it does it tho, i can also get into recovery, usb works fine, and sd card reads perfectly,
here's where it gets tricky,
I'm on an evo 4g, but same exact problem, i wanted to try the terminal emulator part with the death fix zip to see if that would fix my problem, but i wanted to ask first if i could use the same zip since it's a different phone, if not, is there any way you could make one for the evo 4g? since this is the ONE and ONLY solution i've found for this problem, everyone else has just given up on it, and unfortunately i'm way out of my warranty, i even called htc and played the douche bag character to see if i could get them to replace it, but they said i'm too far off my warranty already. thanks in advance

(oh and in case it matters, i've flashed stock ruu's, changed roms, and now i'm back to stock rom) and it does it rooted and unrooted

raybox595 · Aug 1, 2012

Thinks, helpful

[HOW-TO] Fix 5 vibrate and black screen

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