[DISASTER RECOVERY][v3.6] Getting your Z1/ZU/Z/ZL back to life!

[[NUT]]

Eeyup...Although I didn't wanted to...it's too complicated to send my phone to a service center since there aren't any in my town and the closest one would have to be sent by mail. And also, it will take tooo muuuuuuuuch time :silly:

Well... walk in to any shop carrying the ZL and request them to test your phone with a fresh battery from a new one... If it's your battery, you will know soon enough

 

[[NUT]]

Eeyup...Although I didn't wanted to...it's too complicated to send my phone to a service center since there aren't any in my town and the closest one would have to be sent by mail. And also, it will take tooo muuuuuuuuch time :silly:

Well... walk in to any shop carrying the ZL and request them to test your phone with a fresh battery from a new one... If it's your battery, you will know soon enough

Derp :silly:

I just realized something important: the ZL also has no exchangable battery, so you will need a shop with an in-house repair or service department...

I'm afraid you will be required to send it in anyway...

 

[rm83855]

Dead Xperia Z

My Xperia Z is completely unresponsive and cant enter fastboot! I was running the latest PAC nightly and decided to try and flash the MEOW kernel for improved battery life. This created a bootloop, where the PAC rom boot screen kept playing over and over. I thought i would be ok as i had a backup with CWM recovery however the MEOW kernel had replaced this with TWRP. I then tried to reflash CWM recovery and ever since my phone is completely dead and wont turn on. It is unresponsive to any resets and there is no LED lights, apart from occasionally every hour or so a red LED will appear when plugged in. I have tried using Sony update agent, PC Companion however i cannot enter fastboot. I have also spent days with Flashtool and installed the correct drivers however i can only enter Flashmode and when trying to flash a stock firmware after the 'Reading Device Information' stage I'm given an error along the lines of "The attached device is not functioning' or 'The device did not recognise the command'. :crying:

Someone PLEASE help get my Xperia Z back to life!!!!!

 

[[NUT]]

My Xperia Z is completely unresponsive and cant enter fastboot! I was running the latest PAC nightly and decided to try and flash the MEOW kernel for improved battery life. This created a bootloop, where the PAC rom boot screen kept playing over and over. I thought i would be ok as i had a backup with CWM recovery however the MEOW kernel had replaced this with TWRP. I then tried to reflash CWM recovery and ever since my phone is completely dead and wont turn on. It is unresponsive to any resets and there is no LED lights, apart from occasionally every hour or so a red LED will appear when plugged in. I have tried using Sony update agent, PC Companion however i cannot enter fastboot. I have also spent days with Flashtool and installed the correct drivers however i can only enter Flashmode and when trying to flash a stock firmware after the 'Reading Device Information' stage I'm given an error along the lines of "The attached device is not functioning' or 'The device did not recognise the command'. :crying:

Someone PLEASE help get my Xperia Z back to life!!!!!

Lets start with the beginning... from what i understand from the above... it could very well be that your battery just died... USB charging only kicks in once the boot sequence is at least partially started... but there is a way around that: Do you have a charge dock or someone who has one?

Put it in there and leave it charging for an hour or so and then try again.

 

[rm83855]

Dead Xperia Z

Thanks for your reply.

How does the dock make any difference i have tried charging from the wall and nothing happens? Do you know if rooting your phone can remove the ability of the device being able to enter fastboot and flashmode or is this not possible?

Thanks

 

[[NUT]]

Thanks for your reply.

How does the dock make any difference i have tried charging from the wall and nothing happens? Do you know if rooting your phone can remove the ability of the device being able to enter fastboot and flashmode or is this not possible?

Thanks

The dock port has a connection straight to the battery which the phone hardware can monitor, the USB connector has some hardware which needs to be initialized before charging can commence ... This is why charging through an USB cable will not work if your battery runs out of juice under the safe 'li-ion threshold' after which it is no longer able to boot to that point..

Rooting has NO effect on the ability to enter fastboot or flashmode.

As you where running PAC, I can safely assume your bootloader is unlocked?

 

[rm83855]

Dead Xperia Z

So the only likely reason is that the phones ran out of battery? Do you think just leaving it plugged into the wall will eventually give it enough kick to turn on, as the red light does eventually come on? Yes the bootloader is unlocked.

Thanks

 

[[NUT]]

So the only likely reason is that the phones ran out of battery? Do you think just leaving it plugged into the wall will eventually give it enough kick to turn on, as the red light does eventually come on? Yes the bootloader is unlocked.

Thanks

The chance is extremely slim, it might be better to invest in the DK26 Charging Dock, it's not expensive and if you look around for it you might even find it for half the price Sony wants for it

I'd even go as far to say you can better NOT leave the USB+charger connected, as it tries to boot every time you see the red led turn on, each time it does that it fails to get to the point the USB charging can start and it will deplete the battery even more with every retry...

 

[FateNozomi]

Thanks!

saves me every time! :good:

 

[rm83855]

Dead Sony Xperia Z

Thank you so much! I was getting ready to send it to Sony and play stupid... it would have been very awkward when they switch the battery and see the PAC boot screen come on! I'll get my hands on a charging dock and let you know how i get on.

Thanks for everything

 

[Hossam.Abdelsalam]

The chance is extremely slim, it might be better to invest in the DK26 Charging Dock, it's not expensive and if you look around for it you might even find it for half the price Sony wants for it

I'd even go as far to say you can better NOT leave the USB+charger connected, as it tries to boot every time you see the red led turn on, each time it does that it fails to get to the point the USB charging can start and it will deplete the battery even more with every retry...

i've exactly the same problem, battery is dead, please look at th description here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=46092677#post46092677 the 3 replies are mine as no one could help.

anyway i'm from Egypt, and its pretty hard to get such dock charger, it has to be shipped and this might take like weeks, what if i tried somehow to connect the cable manually to the dock halls (i can check which wires inside the cable that handles the charge, then i can connect them manually - i have some technical experiences) but the question is will this help? i mean what if i got the battery 100% charged and according to my post above, will it work?

appreciate your reply

 

[[NUT]]

i've exactly the same problem, battery is dead, please look at th description here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=46092677#post46092677 the 3 replies are mine as no one could help.

anyway i'm from Egypt, and its pretty hard to get such dock charger, it has to be shipped and this might take like weeks, what if i tried somehow to connect the cable manually to the dock halls (i can check which wires inside the cable that handles the charge, then i can connect them manually - i have some technical experiences) but the question is will this help? i mean what if i got the battery 100% charged and according to my post above, will it work?

appreciate your reply

I can't find my volt meter to check which of the 2 is the positive terminal... Maybe you can find it somewhere on the Internet.

The chance is that by modifying an USB cable to use for this Mac Guyver solution will do the trick...

Anyone else with a dock and a volt meter to check positive and negative terminals?

Sent from my C6603 using xda app-developers app

 

[Hossam.Abdelsalam]

I can't find my volt meter to check which of the 2 is the positive terminal... Maybe you can find it somewhere on the Internet.

The chance is that by modifying an USB cable to use for this Mac Guyver solution will do the trick...

Anyone else with a dock and a volt meter to check positive and negative terminals?

Sent from my C6603 using xda app-developers app

Mate, it worked it worked :victory:
i think even the battery is dead the flashtool could detect your XZ, i think it reads the main ship with no power needed, i just didn't lose hope (I've tried to enter the flash mood like 20 times) and finally it worked, flashed my stock .67 tft then i got all physical indicators back (Lids, Vibrations, buttons are functioning) and it couldn't start as there were no battery at all, it gave me the battery icon and after like 5 minutes of charging it woke up

 

[[NUT]]

Mate, it worked it worked :victory:
i think even the battery is dead the flashtool could detect your XZ, i think it reads the main ship with no power needed, i just didn't lose hope (I've tried to enter the flash mood like 20 times) and finally it worked, flashed my stock .67 tft then i got all physical indicators back (Lids, Vibrations, buttons are functioning) and it couldn't start as there were no battery at all, it gave me the battery icon and after like 5 minutes of charging it woke up

Congrats on resurrecting your device

The phone can not use it's USB hardware until it's initialized by the kernel though, and to do that, it needs to boot at least 3-4 seconds after powering up... I guess you still had some charge left in the battery, just enough to get it to power up the charger function

 

[Hossam.Abdelsalam]

Congrats on resurrecting your device

The phone can not use it's USB hardware until it's initialized by the kernel though, and to do that, it needs to boot at least 3-4 seconds after powering up... I guess you still had some charge left in the battery, just enough to get it to power up the charger function

thanks again man your awesome guide saved my lovely XZ
but let me tell you how i reached this deadly point:
after rooting and installing some tweaks i stucked at the repair triangle icon for more than a hour and half, seems this what consumed all battery juice.
BTW, I've looked around to solve the repair icon issue but there were no accurate guide as yours, your advice is highly appreciated here, how to solve this? or how to get around it and make the device work again? I've experienced this like 10 times before, all i could do is to wait till it starts itself back, and this what caused the battery to die last time

 

[[NUT]]

thanks again man your awesome guide saved my lovely XZ
but let me tell you how i reached this deadly point:
after rooting and installing some tweaks i stucked at the repair triangle icon for more than a hour and half, seems this what consumed all battery juice.
BTW, I've looked around to solve the repair icon issue but there were no accurate guide as yours, your advice is highly appreciated here, how to solve this? or how to get around it and make the device work again? I've experienced this like 10 times before, all i could do is to wait till it starts itself back, and this what caused the battery to die last time

Well... there is no 'solution' to the triangle/repair/recovery screen: it seems to be a maintenance screen put up by the bootloader(s) to either check the internal memory after a flashing operation or to flash low level firmware where the OS can't reach.

The ONLY precaution you can take is to make sure you charge the battery to 100% before flashing a new ROM, but that's generally a good idea anyway, you never know what might go wrong

If you have an bootloader unlocked device you can even use recovery in the kernel (if you have at least advanced stock kernel installed) to charge without any working ROM on your phone, but that would also require it to have enough juice in the battery to last at least 30 seconds for the recovery charging service to kick in.

 

[shoey63]

I think the triangle signifies some sort of corruption. And the only way to properly fix that is to format the affected partion. I would immediately force a reboot and enter CWM (or TWRP) recovery. Then I would format EVERYTHING. If error messages occur - do it again, and then restore a backup.

Sent from my C6603 using xda app-developers app

 

[[NUT]]

I think the triangle signifies some sort of corruption. And the only way to properly fix that is to format the affected partion. I would immediately force a reboot and enter CWM (or TWRP) recovery. Then I would format EVERYTHING. If error messages occur - do it again, and then restore a backup.

Sent from my C6603 using xda app-developers app

If that would be the case, the device would simply refuse to boot: you can't boot something which is broken and can't be fixed.

I suspect it might be repairing or tagging broken cells on the internal flash memory... but it takes as long as it needs to fix or do whatever it found or has to do... Mine with the .244 update took 30 minutes to continue the boot, while for 2.67 it took only 30 seconds... for @Tamirwig it took 30 seconds on .244 and it refused to boot on 2.67 (needed a battery reset and another triangle screen to get it to boot)...

The weird thing is: Sony never communicated what it does or means... at least not that i know... it would be handy if they would.

 

[shoey63]

Yeah - forgot. No dedicated recovery partition

Sent from my C6603 using xda app-developers app

 

[rm83855]

Dead Xperia Z

Sony Dock Charger arrived today and its been on charge for roughly 4 hours and still nothing. Its really frustrating i can't actually think what else it can be? Do you think i should just constantly leave it on charge in the hope it turns on?

Thanks