[Q] Nexus 4 Bootloop, locked, stock rom, no dev, backup data?

[RFZ]

Hi,
today a friend of mine woke up with his phone (Nexus 4, 8GB, Android 4.4.4 stock) being off. When powered on, it gets stuck in the boot animation (4 coloured dots moving).
Bootloader is LOCKED on this device. Developer-Options are OFF.
Is there ANY way to recover this device without losing the data on its virtual sdcard OR backup this data?

What I've tried:
- Boot into stock recovery (PWR+DOWN - Recovery - PWR+UP) and wipe cache. Cache wiped, no effect.
- Boot maintenance mode (whatever it is called) by holding down DOWN a moment before the boot animation and a moment after boot animation... tried all, device never exits the boot animation
- use NRT to boot temporary custom recovery... A message shows up on the device in fastboot mode for <1s... I can't read it, but I guess it says it wont boot that with device locked... nothing boots
- use NRT to boot modified boot img... same as above
- Boot into stock recovery (PWR+DOWN - Recovery - PWR+UP) and select "apply update from adb". Device says I should apply updates with adb sideload. "adb devices" does not list any device. "adb sideload update.zip" says "device not found" (I generated an update.zip from stock image without userdata.img)
- "fastboot update update.zip" says "FAILED (remote: not supported in locked device)"

I've read that stock recovery with "apply update from adb" can be used to backup data, but it is not working... is this because developer options are not enabled on this device?

What options do I have now? If I use the stock image and flash it as is (including userdata.img) with "flash-all.bat", the data will be lost, right? If I use "fastboot update stock-update.zip" (didn't try it so far), which is almost the same but without "-w" option on fastboot, will the data survive even with userdata.img in the zip?

Thx so far

 

[RFZ]

UPDATE: driver for adb in sideload mode was not installed correctly. Now "adb devices" lists the device, but "adb pull" or "adb backup" show "error: closed"

 

[jd1639]

UPDATE: driver for adb in sideload mode was not installed correctly. Now "adb devices" lists the device, but "adb pull" or "adb backup" show "error: closed"

You're not going to be able to pull data off with a locked bootloader and the stock recovery. Sorry

Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app

 

[RFZ]

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=38160111&postcount=4
states that "wipe and factory reset" from stock recovery does NOT wipe users media data. Can someone confirm that?

 

[RFZ]

okay, after lots of research I found more sources that told me that factory reset would not delete data from the internal media storage...
So, we tried it. And ... it deleted all data. After doing the reset in stock recovery, all data is lost.
That's really a good example why I hate devices without sdcard...

 

[Marvlesz]

okay, after lots of research I found more sources that told me that factory reset would not delete data from the internal media storage...
So, we tried it. And ... it deleted all data. After doing the reset in stock recovery, all data is lost.
That's really a good example why I hate devices without sdcard...

If you look closely at the post you linked, he was also surprised that the wipe data didn't remove his data, which is what he was expecting. As far as I know, factory reset within the stock recovery and inside Android both always wipe user data including the internal storage (yes, I learned this the hard way, too.)

I agree with you though, devices with non-removable storage are a pain.

 

[arkangel72]

Hey!
It's a softbrick but don't panic do this--->
1. Go to Google developers download the nexus 4 factory image under 'occam'
2. Download wugfresh toolkit
3. Open the toolkit.. Unlock your bootloader
4. After unlock... Go to 'flash stock+unroot'
5. Navigate to downloaded image and tick "device is softbrick/bootloop"
6 voila! It will start to revive your device

PS: don't forget to unlock the bootloader
Don't interrupt the flashing process

Thank me if it helps

-nexus⁴

---------- Post added at 06:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:35 AM ----------

This will erase all data!


-nexus⁴