Stuck in boot loop even after flashing stock ROM

dasmanul · Sep 19, 2017

Last Wednesday, my Nexus 4 (running a rooted but otherwise stock 4.4) got stuck on "Android is starting – starting apps" during a regular boot. Since then I've been through numerous iterations of

- trying to reboot into recovery and safe mode
- wiping cache and Dalvik cache
- trying to reflash the latest stock image while preserving my user data
- trying to reflash the latest stock image while wiping everything
- relocking and re-unlocking the boot loader

in every imaginable order, both via fastboot and the Nexus root toolkit, without success. The phone gets stuck either on the boot animation or, of I'm lucky, on "Android is starting – starting apps". I also tried flashing a 4.2 image with the same result.

I've seen two threads describing the same problem (https://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=3374611 and https://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=3355216) and tried the suggestion given there of erasing/formatting and subsequently flashing all partitions by hand, then – immediately after flashing userdata – rebooting into stock recovery and doing a factory reset from there. This was my last try and the phone is right now sitting next to me and has been stuck on the boot animation for a solid four hours. Something, somehow, seems to have survived all my attempts at starting from scratch.

Is there anything else I could try? Any total nuke solution as a last resort? I'm currently at my wit's end in this matter. I'd hate to give up the phone since the hardware seems to be working fine and before going back to stock I could still adb in and see that the system was up and running in principle. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a bunch in advance!

orangek3nny · Sep 19, 2017

Run 'adb logcat' during boot, record the output and post it here / try to find the cause of the boot loop.

dasmanul · Sep 19, 2017

Wouldn't this require that adb debugging was enabled? That's of course not the case with the factory images and since they don't boot there's no way for me to reenable it. Can you recommend an image to try that has adb debugging enabled from the start? Or is there any other way to enable it?

orangek3nny · Sep 19, 2017

You're right of course, didn't think about that. I don't know any ROMs with pre-enabled debugging but in theory it should be possible to boot into TWRP and activate it by editing some file via ADB since it works there. Afterwards you should be able to run logcat.

This seems to be a good guide but I can't confirm if it really works: https://gist.github.com/varhub/7b9555cdd1e5ad785ffde2300fcfd0bd

dasmanul · Sep 19, 2017

Thanks a lot, this does actually work!

Seems the phone is stuck in a loop of

Code:

W/AudioSystem(  552): AudioPolicyService not published, waiting...
I/ServiceManager(  552): Waiting for service media.audio_policy...
I/ServiceManager(  552): Waiting for service media.audio_policy...
I/ServiceManager(  552): Waiting for service media.audio_policy...
I/ServiceManager(  552): Waiting for service media.audio_policy...
I/ServiceManager(  552): Waiting for service media.audio_policy...
W/AudioSystem(  552): AudioPolicyService not published, waiting...
I/ServiceManager(  552): Waiting for service media.audio_policy...
I/ServiceManager(  552): Waiting for service media.audio_policy...
I/ServiceManager(  552): Waiting for service media.audio_policy...

I googled for this but so far didn't find anything helpful. Any advice?

orangek3nny · Sep 19, 2017

You should upload the full log just in case. Those are info and warning messages but no errors.

dasmanul · Sep 19, 2017

Fair enough. Full log is attached and can also be found at https://pastebin.com/apL0SWa5.

orangek3nny · Sep 19, 2017

At line 294 Zygote crashes but seems to start up fine afterwards. Does it crash again after a while or is the log endlessly spammed with the audio policy messages?
According to [1] the system might wait for the mediaserver to start. Try to force stop it if it's running and watch the log, see [2]. Maybe you get some more info this way.

Sorry to ask but are you sure you made a full wipe? The official image contains scripts for Windows and Linux that erase everything if I remember correctly.

This is all I can do, I hope this helps.

EDIT:
You can also try [3] and [4].

1: https://books.google.de/books?id=KE...iting for service media.audio_policy"&f=false
2: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8132273
3: http://araceliaraceli1.blogspot.de/2012/09/waiting-for-service-mediaaudiopolicy-on.html
4: http://android.wekeepcoding.com/art...or+service+media.audio_policy+on+android+boot

nitin.chobhe · Sep 20, 2017

dasmanul said:
Last Wednesday, my Nexus 4 (running a rooted but otherwise stock 4.4) got stuck on "Android is starting – starting apps" during a regular boot. Since then I've been through numerous iterations of

- trying to reboot into recovery and safe mode
- wiping cache and Dalvik cache
- trying to reflash the latest stock image while preserving my user data
- trying to reflash the latest stock image while wiping everything
- relocking and re-unlocking the boot loader

in every imaginable order, both via fastboot and the Nexus root toolkit, without success. The phone gets stuck either on the boot animation or, of I'm lucky, on "Android is starting – starting apps". I also tried flashing a 4.2 image with the same result.

I've seen two threads describing the same problem (https://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=3374611 and https://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=3355216) and tried the suggestion given there of erasing/formatting and subsequently flashing all partitions by hand, then – immediately after flashing userdata – rebooting into stock recovery and doing a factory reset from there. This was my last try and the phone is right now sitting next to me and has been stuck on the boot animation for a solid four hours. Something, somehow, seems to have survived all my attempts at starting from scratch.

Is there anything else I could try? Any total nuke solution as a last resort? I'm currently at my wit's end in this matter. I'd hate to give up the phone since the hardware seems to be working fine and before going back to stock I could still adb in and see that the system was up and running in principle. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a bunch in advance!

If you have only this issue: "Android is starting – starting apps", then you could have just flashed the launcher zip as mentioned in this thread.

How are you wiping everything on the phone while flashing the stock images?

Nitin

dasmanul · Sep 20, 2017

First of all, thank you again for your continued support! I really feel like I'm banging my head against a wall here, it's good to have some help.

orangek3nny said:
At line 294 Zygote crashes but seems to start up fine afterwards. Does it crash again after a while or is the log endlessly spammed with the audio policy messages?

As long as I watched up to now, the log is just endlessly spammed with the same messages.

orangek3nny said:
According to [1] the system might wait for the mediaserver to start. Try to force stop it if it's running and watch the log, see [2]. Maybe you get some more info this way.

Did that. Couple of messages about (if I interpret correctly) restarting the mediaserver and then back to the loop. Log is at https://gist.github.com/c67342f304b6a7399084d603e186e834. The messages at the end are probably from rebooting into the bootloader via adb.

orangek3nny said:
Sorry to ask but are you sure you made a full wipe? The official image contains scripts for Windows and Linux that erase everything if I remember correctly.

Well, I *do* suspect that something from the old install somehow survived despite all my attempts to nuke the phone. However, I wouldn't know how to do a fuller wipe than I've already done. I've done a factory reset via the Nexus root toolkit, I've run the flash-base.sh and flash-all.sh scripts included in the official image, and I've manually, via fastboot, erased/formated and subsequently flashed the bootloader, radio, boot, system, recovery, cache, and userdata partitions. Most of these steps have been performed multiple times.

If there's anything I've missed, I'd be grateful for suggestions. /proc/partitions suggests there's a total of 25 partitions on /dev/mmcblk0, but I don't know whether any of these are not included in the image files mentioned and, if that is the case, how to wipe them back to factory state.

orangek3nny said:
3: http://araceliaraceli1.blogspot.de/2012/09/waiting-for-service-mediaaudiopolicy-on.html

I don't seem to have a libsecnativefeature.so anywhere on my system:

Code:

130|root@mako:/ # ls -lR / 2>/dev/null |grep secnative
1|root@mako:/ #

orangek3nny said:
4: http://android.wekeepcoding.com/art...or+service+media.audio_policy+on+android+boot

Permissions for /system/lib/libaudioflinger.so already seem to be 755 on my system:

Code:

1|root@mako:/ # ls -l /system/lib/libaudioflinger.so
-rwxr-xr-x root     root       267544 2015-09-08 20:51 libaudioflinger.so

dasmanul · Sep 20, 2017

nitin.chobhe said:
If you have only this issue: "Android is starting – starting apps", then you could have just flashed the launcher zip as mentioned in this thread.

Thanks for the suggestion! Are you the developer of this? I'm a bit sceptical that installing a different launcher could indeed solve my problems. Could you explain a bit more what the launcher does and how that is supposed to help me?

nitin.chobhe said:
How are you wiping everything on the phone while flashing the stock images?

See my previous post which overlapped with yours. As stated there, I'd be very grateful if somebody could provide me with a "wipier" way of wiping the phone.

orangek3nny · Sep 20, 2017

@dasmanul:
Sounds like it can't get any wipier than that. At this point I would say this is a hardware issue.

If nothing else helps, you can try to disassemble the device and clean all contacts. It's not very hard and I did it myself recently to fix bad reception and unresponsive buttons.

nitin.chobhe · Sep 20, 2017

dasmanul said:
Thanks for the suggestion! Are you the developer of this? I'm a bit sceptical that installing a different launcher could indeed solve my problems. Could you explain a bit more what the launcher does and how that is supposed to help me?

See my previous post which overlapped with yours. As stated there, I'd be very grateful if somebody could provide me with a "wipier" way of wiping the phone.

No, that is not my zip; but I've used it. Again, it is useful in case you are stuck with "Android is starting..." Generally it is shown while it prepares the app drawer to be shown, after restarting the phone/ clearing the cache. But if the launcher is missing, it is not able to show the app drawer and this message is shown continuously.

If you have used flash-all.bat then it would have cleaned up everything on your phone (assuming that you have not modified that batch file).

Nitin

dasmanul · Sep 20, 2017

@orangek3nny: Thanks! Not exactly what I hoped to hear, but I'll give disassembling the device a try. I installed a new battery about half a year ago, so I guess I'll get it open again. I'll also try disconnecting the battery for some time. Not much hope anymore, though. Real pity, since otherwise the phone seems to work fine. I mean, Android is apparently able to boot, just not to a point where there's a usable UI.

@nitin.chobhe: Thank you! I gave the zip a try, but as I feared, it didn't change the behaviour.

Looks like I might be in the market for a new phone...

nitin.chobhe · Sep 20, 2017

dasmanul said:
@orangek3nny: Thanks! Not exactly what I hoped to hear, but I'll give disassembling the device a try. I installed a new battery about half a year ago, so I guess I'll get it open again. I'll also try disconnecting the battery for some time. Not much hope anymore, though. Real pity, since otherwise the phone seems to work fine. I mean, Android is apparently able to boot, just not to a point where there's a usable UI.

@nitin.chobhe: Thank you! I gave the zip a try, but as I feared, it didn't change the behaviour.

Looks like I might be in the market for a new phone...

I doubt that it is a hardware issue... May be try downloading the stock images from Google once again and flash using fastboot instead of any toolkit. I always refer this nice video from youtube to flash factory images

Nitin

dasmanul · Sep 20, 2017

As stated earlier, I did flash with fastboot several times with no different result. Thanks anyway for the suggestion!

dasmanul · Sep 20, 2017

Update: I just tried flashing the oldest available factory image (4.2.2) and the phone booted successfully with that. I'll try an update now.

dasmanul · Sep 20, 2017

'Nother update: While booting in 4.2.2 the phone doesn't recognise its IMEI. My research suggests that might be due to a corrupted EFS partition. mmcblk0p10 is indeed full of zeros. I doubt that's correct.

I'm now restoring a Nandroid backup and hoping I did actually backup the EFS partition with that. I guess I'm screwed otherwise, right?

orangek3nny · Sep 22, 2017

Any updates yet?

mmcblk0p10 (m9kefs3) is empty here too after dumping it with dd. This should be fine.

dasmanul · Sep 24, 2017

Unfortunately, still no success. EFS was apparently not in the Nandroid backup. I cloned the whole mmcblk0 from my wife's Nexus 4 which is still on 4.2, hoping that would restore the phone to life. However, situation is still the same: Phone boots but reports its IMEI as unknown and doesn't connect to cellular. I'm close to giving up at this point.

Stuck in boot loop even after flashing stock ROM

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Attachments

Member

Recognized Contributor

Senior Member

Senior Member

Member

Recognized Contributor

Senior Member

Recognized Contributor

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Similar threads

Top Liked Posts