Changed active slot to fix upgrade failure and now get "you device is corrupt" - Pressing start gives white screen "Google"

[secondhand2]

Hi,

I just got a new "used" phone and was in the process of installing updates when ...

But I had an issue with an update. It seems my phone lost my wifi signal and switched over to a neighbour's wireless ssid that had no password but a strong signal. Seems there is an option to use public wifi's on my phone which I didn't realise. I didn't have a sim card in the phone yet. I tried switching back to my wifi manually when the connection to the neighbour's wifi was lost - but I couldn't reattach to any wireless ssid - mine or the passwordless wifi my phone had hopped over to. At that point I wasn't able to do anything since it would not reconnect to ANY wireless signals - even when I tried to manually connect.

So I rebooted the phone and tried starting over. I was able to get to the setup until I was asked for my wifi password and it would not connect. The wireless "slider" to turn it off and on would go back to off when I put it on. Putting a sim card in the phone didn't work either. Something was definitely borked. Restarting the phone did not help even after doing a factory reset the symptoms remained. I didn't want to unlock the phone originally but I thought I might be able to switch slots to see if that would help.

The device was using slot B so I switch it to slot a with fastboot without any issues (I had enabled developer mode, usb debugging and oem unlock) and restarted the phone.

Now it says that the software is corrupt and if I start it anyway it says at the google screen (white background). I can't seem to get back to fastboot mode with the power button and volume down pressed.
It just boots back to the white google screen and stays there and is warm to the touch.

Is there a way to get out of this pickle?

Thanks

 

[hammered58]

Hi,

I just got a new "used" phone and was in the process of installing updates when ...

But I had an issue with an update. It seems my phone lost my wifi signal and switched over to a neighbour's wireless ssid that had no password but a strong signal. Seems there is an option to use public wifi's on my phone which I didn't realise. I didn't have a sim card in the phone yet. I tried switching back to my wifi manually when the connection to the neighbour's wifi was lost - but I couldn't reattach to any wireless ssid - mine or the passwordless wifi my phone had hopped over to. At that point I wasn't able to do anything since it would not reconnect to ANY wireless signals - even when I tried to manually connect.

So I rebooted the phone and tried starting over. I was able to get to the setup until I was asked for my wifi password and it would not connect. The wireless "slider" to turn it off and on would go back to off when I put it on. Putting a sim card in the phone didn't work either. Something was definitely borked. Restarting the phone did not help even after doing a factory reset the symptoms remained. I didn't want to unlock the phone originally but I thought I might be able to switch slots to see if that would help.

The device was using slot B so I switch it to slot a with fastboot without any issues (I had enabled developer mode, usb debugging and oem unlock) and restarted the phone.

Now it says that the software is corrupt and if I start it anyway it says at the google screen (white background). I can't seem to get back to fastboot mode with the power button and volume down pressed.
It just boots back to the white google screen and stays there and is warm to the touch.

Is there a way to get out of this pickle?

Thanks

Iam new to this phone so I don't know all the answers but the first thing I would try is going to the website android flash tool and see if that can help in any way

Flash with Android Flash Tool | Android Open Source Project

source.android.com

 

[secondhand2]

Thanks hammered58,

I was looking at that but wanted to ask first to see if anyone else has used that. I'll check this forum and elsewhere to read up first.

 

[hammered58]

I used it last night myself, its almost fool proof as it detects your make, model and shows the updates or upgrades that are available, but yes checking and double checking helps

 

[secondhand2]

Hi hammered58

Just to follow up. I was able to reinstall android using the flash tool but for some reason "wifi" functionality is still not working. A sim card will connect though. When I try to enable the wifi button/slider to turn wifi on and go back to that page I will see that it is off. There is no icon in network settings to look for wifi networks.

It appears that everything else is working. So I can only conclude that there is a hardware or firmware issue that can not be fixed using the android flash tool. It is a fairly simple tool to use.

Does anyone know if this is known issue with the 4a?

Thanks

 

[secondhand2]

If there are suggestions as to what to do next, I'm "all ears".

Thanks

 

[hammered58]

If there are suggestions as to what to do next, I'm "all ears".

Thanks

I had this same issue on my htcU11 after flashing a rom, what fixed it for me was a adb command erasing the persist, and rebooting, I in no way am suggesting you do the same without doing some further checking on the matter, hth

 

[amphi66]

Hi hammered58

Just to follow up. I was able to reinstall android using the flash tool but for some reason "wifi" functionality is still not working. A sim card will connect though. When I try to enable the wifi button/slider to turn wifi on and go back to that page I will see that it is off. There is no icon in network settings to look for wifi networks.

It appears that everything else is working. So I can only conclude that there is a hardware or firmware issue that can not be fixed using the android flash tool. It is a fairly simple tool to use.

Does anyone know if this is known issue with the 4a?

Now that you are 'functional' can you reboot to ADB and reflash the factory image (which includes radio firmware)?

 

[secondhand2]

HI @amphi66,

In the "About Phone" section there is "Wifi Mac Address" and "Device Wi-Fi Mac address". These would appear to be the source of my issues when trying to connect to "wifi" Note that I can connect to my mobile carrier if I put the sim card in the device. However, "wifi" isn't working at all. I can not even scan for wireless networks because the options to do that are not there.

There are 2 wifi related bits in Settings -> About Phone.

1. "Device Wifi Mac Address" has "unavailable" as a value .

2. "Wi-Fi Mac Address" has "To view choose saved network" but there are no "saved networks" when I chose that option.

From what I have understood, the mac address of the phone should be in the persist partition. I thought that using the Android Flash tool would reinstall this "persist" partition but I am not sure.

I installed SP2A.220505.002 with the web based android flash tool but the issue with wifi isn't resolved.

There are full ota images and factory images at:

https://developers.google.com/android/images

I'm assuming they both contain the same "content" but just install it a different way. Whether flashall is better than "sideloading" or the Android flash tool I don't know either.

I'd need to read more to find out what exactly the steps would be to "re-activate'" the "mac-address" and "wifi" network functionality.

The radio seems like a dangerous thing to start tampering with. From what I have read after @hammered58 mentioned persist, the mac address "stuff" seems to live in there. Is there any conclusive doc about where that lives?

Thanks

 

[hammered58]

HI @amphi66,

In the "About Phone" section there is "Wifi Mac Address" and "Device Wi-Fi Mac address". These would appear to be the source of my issues when trying to connect to "wifi" Note that I can connect to my mobile carrier if I put the sim card in the device. However, "wifi" isn't working at all. I can not even scan for wireless networks because the options to do that are not there.

There are 2 wifi related bits in Settings -> About Phone.

1. "Device Wifi Mac Address" has "unavailable" as a value .

2. "Wi-Fi Mac Address" has "To view choose saved network" but there are no "saved networks" when I chose that option.

From what I have understood, the mac address of the phone should be in the persist partition. I thought that using the Android Flash tool would reinstall this "persist" partition but I am not sure.

I installed SP2A.220505.002 with the web based android flash tool but the issue with wifi isn't resolved.

There are full ota images and factory images at:

https://developers.google.com/android/images

I'm assuming they both contain the same "content" but just install it a different way. Whether flashall is better than "sideloading" or the Android flash tool I don't know either.

I'd need to read more to find out what exactly the steps would be to "re-activate'" the "mac-address" and "wifi" network functionality.

The radio seems like a dangerous thing to start tampering with. From what I have read after @hammered58 mentioned persist, the mac address "stuff" seems to live in there. Is there any conclusive doc about where that lives?

Thanks

At this point I would try what amphi66 suggested but from what I understand the persist has its own seperat partition and idk if flashing the factory image replaces the persist partition, it would make sense that it would, I used a tool off play store called "partition backup and restore" to make a backup of my persist.img when I got it, but you have to be rooted to use the program, if you get to a certain point where nothing else works I could send you my persist copy to try,

 

[secondhand2]

Hi again,

Thanks @hammered58 and @amphi66 for your help.

I wanted to know if the issue was a hardware or software one so I thought I would try looking around with adb and fastboot. I'm not an expert in using these tools but I did wonder about some of the output I got when using them.

When I ran adb shell and looked at the partitions using "df -h" I noticed a bunch of question marks for the persist (partition?). What is strange is that init also has these question marks. It appears that there is an issue

with the persist partition although I was hoping someone could confirm that.

I also ran fastboot getvar to see if there was anything suspicious looking there.

I read that the bootloader and any zip in the flash-all.sh script should be the same so I checked that with getvar =

(bootloader) version-bootloader:s5-0.4-8048734.

flash-all.sh has this:

Below is from the flash-all.sh
------------------------------------------------
fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-sunfish-s5-0.4-8048734.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader
sleep 5
fastboot flash radio radio-sunfish-g7150-00088-220106-b-8048734.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader
sleep 5
fastboot -w update image-sunfish-sp2a.220505.002.zip


My non-expert guess is that the cause for my wifi issues are with the persist partition - but maybe there is more than one issue or ...


Thanks

 

[secondhand2]

Crap...forgot the adb output ... one sec

ok, here it is

4 drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 .
4 drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 ..
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 acct
0 drwxr-xr-x 54 root root 1140 2022-05-29 08:42 apex
0 lrw-r--r-- 1 root root 11 2008-12-31 19:00 bin -> /system/bin
0 lrw-r--r-- 1 root root 50 2008-12-31 19:00 bugreports -> /data/user_de/0/com.android.shell/files/bugreports
? l????????? ? ? ? ? ? cache -> ?
0 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 0 1969-12-31 19:00 config
0 lrw-r--r-- 1 root root 17 2008-12-31 19:00 d -> /sys/kernel/debug
8 drwxrwx--x 49 system system 4096 2022-05-29 08:42 data
? d????????? ? ? ? ? ? data_mirror
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 debug_ramdisk
0 drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4300 2022-05-29 08:42 dev
0 lrw-r--r-- 1 root root 11 2008-12-31 19:00 dsp -> /vendor/dsp
0 lrw-r--r-- 1 root root 11 2008-12-31 19:00 etc -> /system/etc
? l????????? ? ? ? ? ? init -> ?
? -????????? ? ? ? ? ? init.environ.rc
? d????????? ? ? ? ? ? linkerconfig
16 drwx------ 2 root root 16384 2008-12-31 19:00 lost+found
? d????????? ? ? ? ? ? metadata
0 drwxr-xr-x 15 root system 320 1971-04-09 14:48 mnt
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 odm
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 odm_dlkm
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 oem
? l????????? ? ? ? ? ? persist -> ?
? d????????? ? ? ? ? ? postinstall
0 dr-xr-xr-x 715 root root 0 1969-12-31 19:00 proc
4 drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 product
0 lrw-r--r-- 1 root root 21 2008-12-31 19:00 sdcard -> /storage/self/primary
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 second_stage_resources
0 drwx--x--- 4 shell everybody 80 1971-04-09 14:48 storage
0 dr-xr-xr-x 12 root root 0 1971-04-09 14:48 sys
4 drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 system
4 drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 system_ext
4 drwxr-xr-x 21 root shell 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 vendor
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-12-31 19:00 vendor_dlkm


----------------

df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/dm-5 838M 835M 0 100% /
tmpfs 2.7G 1.3M 2.7G 1% /dev
tmpfs 2.7G 0 2.7G 0% /mnt
/dev/block/dm-6 268M 268M 0 100% /system_ext
/dev/block/dm-7 583M 581M 0 100% /vendor
/dev/block/dm-8 2.2G 2.2G 0 100% /product
tmpfs 2.7G 28K 2.7G 1% /apex
/dev/block/dm-35 110G 2.6G 107G 3% /data
/dev/block/loop4 7.5M 7.5M 0 100% /apex/com.android.runtime@1
/dev/block/loop5 1.6M 1.6M 0 100% /apex/com.google.mainline.primary.libs@311323000
/dev/block/loop6 3.7M 3.6M 0 100% /apex/com.android.resolv@311313010
/dev/block/loop7 35M 35M 0 100% /apex/com.android.i18n@1
/dev/block/loop8 2.0M 2.0M 0 100% /apex/com.android.appsearch@300000000
/dev/block/loop9 11M 11M 0 100% /apex/com.android.cellbroadcast@311312020
/dev/block/loop10 7.7M 7.7M 0 100% /apex/com.android.neuralnetworks@311310000
/dev/block/loop11 1.8M 1.7M 0 100% /apex/com.android.os.statsd@311210000
/dev/block/loop12 6.3M 6.2M 0 100% /apex/com.android.media@311311000
/dev/block/loop14 232K 88K 140K 39% /apex/com.android.apex.cts.shim@1
/dev/block/loop13 4.2M 4.2M 0 100% /apex/com.android.mediaprovider@311313020
/dev/block/loop15 6.7M 6.7M 0 100% /apex/com.android.adbd@311310002
/dev/block/loop16 516K 488K 20K 97% /apex/com.android.vibrator.sunfish@1
/dev/block/loop17 18M 18M 0 100% /apex/com.android.media.swcodec@311311000
/dev/block/loop18 232K 24K 204K 11% /apex/com.android.telephony@1
/dev/block/loop19 232K 152K 76K 67% /apex/com.android.scheduling@310733000
/dev/block/loop20 832K 804K 12K 99% /apex/com.android.tzdata@311311000
/dev/block/loop22 12M 12M 0 100% /apex/com.android.permission@311311000
/dev/block/loop21 4.8M 4.7M 0 100% /apex/com.android.conscrypt@310911000
/dev/block/loop24 5.9M 5.9M 0 100% /apex/com.android.extservices@311313000
/dev/block/loop23 62M 62M 0 100% /apex/com.android.art@311310000
/dev/block/loop25 692K 664K 16K 98% /apex/com.android.sdkext@310912000
/dev/block/loop26 5.5M 5.5M 0 100% /apex/com.android.wifi@311313030
/dev/block/loop28 704K 676K 16K 98% /apex/com.android.ipsec@311310000
/dev/block/loop27 2.6M 2.6M 0 100% /apex/com.android.tethering@311314000
/dev/block/loop29 40M 40M 0 100% /apex/com.android.vndk.v32@1
/dev/fuse 110G 2.6G 107G 3% /storage/emulated

 

[hammered58]

Just to give you and idea these are all the files in my pixel4a stock persist.img once I extracted them

 

[secondhand2]

Just to give you an update. When I used the Android Flash tool in Chrome it updated everything to the latest version. In doing that the version of adb and fastboot from the ubuntu repositories no longer worked (I don't usually run unbuntu but in this case it was easier). So I downloaded the platform-tools_r33.0.2-linux.zip and ran that instead.

The flash-all.sh listed a bunch of "archive does not contain *.img" or *.sig but there was no ERROR or WARNING associated with those lines so not sure if that was normal. Evrything to the right hand side showed "OKAY"

But it didn't help. I'm in the same boat as before. I might rund adb again to compare with what you sent me (Thanks for your help btw).

I'm not sure what else to try since most of what I did wasn't too risky. But I am starting to feel this is a lemon. When I got it a couple of days ago it wasn't set up properly so I have a feeling there were issues with it then.

I am going to chalk it up to hardware failure. Not sure if there is a definitive way to test that though.

Thanks for your help!

 

[hammered58]

heres a copy of my persist if you ever want to try it and see what happens

 

[secondhand2]

I'm not sure how I would install it. Is there a guide about installing partitions like this in Android?
Did you use "dd" or something else?

oh ... maybe adb or fastboot?

Thanks

 

[hammered58]

Most likely adb commands but like I said in my first post I used a play store app called partition backup and restore to get my backup and I can also use it to restore one, but I have to be rooted to use it to backup and restore