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!
- 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!