[Q] Hard Brick or Soft Brick That is the question?

[madmaverickmatt]

Hey all. I have reached a defect in my research and I could use some help.

I have a Wifi Xoom that I fried the mother board on. Not sure how, just woke up one morn and it wouldn't turn on anymore.
So I replaced that MOBO with another that was listed as soft bricked (It was cheep so I figured why not try).

Anyway with the new board installed I can boot to the Motorola Logo, I can load fastboot, recovery and RSD. The device appears as it should on my pc and I can fastboot flash.

I replaced the system image, the recovery image, The userdata image and the boot image. using fastboot. I also cleared cache, from fastboot and recovery as well as deleting all user data from recovery (Factory Reset).

I also re-installed the whole system using an RSD Image which went successfully as well.

Now I know its actual flashing because I flashed a different recovery to test and that worked, but for some reason im stuck in a boot loop at the Motorola Logo. I can still access all features (fastboot, recovery and RSD) but it will not boot past the Moto Logo.

I have tried installing the 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 updates through recovery which both installed their updated boot loaders and for a moment I thought I had success when I saw the xoom boot image with the flashing squares, but then that froze and it rebooted never to be seen again.

So my question is, is this a hard brick and I should just stop trying or does anyone have any other suggestions?

Also I am not using a Moto cable, but it tells me that I am successfully flashing, and as I stated I am seeing the recovery flash correctly, Does this make a difference being that I have successful flashes for other partitions? Is the Boot partition special? It tells me I'm flashing, but is it lying to me?

Everything I read thus far indicates that if you can access fastboot and recovery that its not hard bricked, but what exactly does a hard brick look like?

Thanks All any insight is appreciated.

 

[madmaverickmatt]

Hey all, i made my own Motorola usb cable and tried to reflash again with no success. I'm still boot looping.


Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

 

[madmaverickmatt]

I have and tried with an official Motorola cable now as well without success. ideas?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

 

[XxLordxX]

Try reflashing the official imgs (provided from motodev site) with fastboot and after locking your bootloader. Try booting up, if nothing changes, sorry but I doesn't know how to fix then. Hope it works...

Sent from my MZ601 using XDA HD Premium using 1/8of my brain, the other 7/8 is thinking in my love Isadora

 

[madmaverickmatt]

Yea I tried that, no worries, but do you know what does a hard brick look like? I have searched and found no real description, all anyone says is if you can get to fast boot is more than likely not.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

 

[madmaverickmatt]

OK , I know its been a while but I just started playing with this again.

OK so I got the idea that it might be a permissions issue. so I wiped everything again and re-installed again. Following this I tried to fix permissions in TWRP which failed. I installed CWM and ran fix permission which was successful. after that I was able to boot the tablet to android and install an account.

However now it is rebooting with some frequency and periodically it will get stuck at the moto screen again.

At this point if I perform a data wipe and clear cache I can get the tablet to boot again but I still have this issue.

Also If I fix permissions again from either recovery or rom manager it sends me back to the being stuck at the moto screen and I have to start again.


Thoughts?