Soft brick....very confused

[Insomaniac10]

Hey guys. as many of you know i am no stranger to the Android system, although i have been pretty much totally absent from the forums since i got a job with limited privelages on my comp.

Before I explain what happened to me, i should say that i have not made ANY changes to my system for at least 4 months, with the exception of build.prop updates, which i my phone has been running fine on for weeks. i found a setup i liked and ive been running it, along with the same root applications, for quite some time.

With that said, heres my timeline of events:

Normal day, doing what i always do on my phone everyday: phone was plugged in to a wall outlet at my desk. streaming music, browsing web, youtube, etc. nothing out of the ordinary

i first noticed something wierd was up when i went to install an old .apk i had saved on my sd card. i opened it through file manager which, naturally, brought up the stock package installer. i clicked ok to install, and it said "installing"..however it nevver finished. it was stuck on "installing" for several minutes. i tried a couple more times, same thing kept happening. i had no idea what was going on.

i went into settings>applications>manage applications. i scrolled down to package installer and clicked on it, with the intention of clearing cache/data, however the values never loaded, it just kept saying "computing". it was doing that for all other apps i checked as well.

then i opened titanium backup and wiped data for package installer through that. operation was performed successfully.

i went to reboot my phone, and thats the last thing it remembers. now whenever i try to turn my phone on, it gets past the kernel splash screen and its all black from there (i have the "no boot anamiation" command in my build.prop). the only response i get at that point is the led buttons will light up if i tap them. i have to pull the battery to turn the phone off/reboot.

i tried pushing packageinstaller.apk to /system/app using adb but that didnt solved anything. i also tried wiping cache/dalvik and fixing permissions through clockwork. nothing has worked.

i am running Froyo Trigger w/ Bali kernel.

sorry for the long post, but i figured id be as detailed as possible to minimize questions.

any suggestions would be great. i ask that no one please suggest factory reset/reflash/odin. i realize that those options are there, but i consider them last resorts. id rather brainstorm a solution than bail immediately.

thanks ahead.

 

[Insomaniac10]

also i forgot to mention, there was nothing wrong with the .apk i was originally trying to install. i have installed it/uninstalled it many times. i tested other .apk files i had, but package installer still behaved the same way

 

[Br1cK'd]

Got your PM

Have you tried to capture a logcat while you're phone is booting? That might tell us what is failing or hanging your boot cycle.

I wouldn't call Odin a last resort personally. Most of the time its the cleanest way to get back to a perfect running state.

Try to get that logcat though, and post it up here. It might not work at all, depends on whether the phone even gets to the portion of the boot cycle where logcat even works, but its worth a shot if you want to investigate the problem.

 

[Insomaniac10]

Got your PM

Have you tried to capture a logcat while you're phone is booting? That might tell us what is failing or hanging your boot cycle.

I wouldn't call Odin a last resort personally. Most of the time its the cleanest way to get back to a perfect running state.

Try to get that logcat though, and post it up here. It might not work at all, depends on whether the phone even gets to the portion of the boot cycle where logcat even works, but its worth a shot if you want to investigate the problem.

not sure if i should be embarrassed to admit this, but ive never used logcat...ill look into that

 

[Br1cK'd]

Your first step there is to get the android sdk setup on your pc, then once adb is part of your command line the simple command is "adb logcat" without it quotes. That will start the log displaying in the command line window.

There are other options with the logcat command, that output the log to a text document and its more in depth, but I dont remember it off the top of my head. Maybe someone can post it for you.

The only caveat is how far your phone is booting before it hangs, I think logcat will show something, but won't know for sure until you try it.


Sent from my ZenDroid, meditating on the XDA App

 

[kaintfm]

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1319802

 

[s15274n]

Eugenes Froyo that doesn't brick, followed by an Odin to jfd.

Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App