Stuck in Bootloop & Unable to Access HBoot screen

[Growly]

Hi guys,

I've got a bit of a problem. My phone is stuck in a boot loop, which is a problem I've dealt with before, with help from these threads.

But this time I'm really stuck. I can't access the HBoot screen like I normally can, by holding down the volume up and power off buttons simultaneously.

I am using (racks memory) I think it's the War something mod of Cyanogen 7 I believe. I installed it 5 months ago and it's been working fine. This is not a new or recent install!

The phone does suffer from low memory issues a lot, as do all Wildfire S's. I have managed to get around that previously by moving apps to the SD card or linking to it or making user apps into system apps. I was in the middle of chatting on whatsapp when suddenly the phoned just blipped and died on me.. then it went into the boot loop. It's never happened before and my suspicion is that it ran out of memory or something.

I've tried removing the battery and leaving it out for some time, no luck. I've tried restarting without the SD card and Sim card. No luck. I've tried connecting it to my laptop... no luck. All the usual tricks just aren't working.

I have TiBu installed and my most recent back up was less than 4 weeks ago. I also did a Nandroid system backup a few months ago, so I should be able to restore ok, I just can't access the HBoot screen.

The other weird thing is, when I left the loading screen going round long enough, like in the time it would normally have booted.. suddenly the sound of my new emails popping up plays... and today, even tho it was on the load screen, it made clicking sounds like when I activate apps when my finger touched the screen. It's almost like the phone has started up as normal, but the load screen just won't go away and underneath it all is normal.

I've never had anything quite like this happen before and I've been without my phone for 3 days now, so came here in desperation for some inspiration! hehe.
I am probably going to buy a new HTC phone with a large system memory cos altho I dearly love my Wildfire S, the low memory has caused me nothing but problems since I first bought it, and I have wasted hours and hours on it, trying to get around the problems caused by it. But until then, I need to get my contacts and messages back and continue to use it for now. I would also ideally like to keep it going and give it to my sister perhaps who doesn't have a smart phone. She won't need as many apps as I do, so it would likely suit her, or maybe my Mum.
Any help anyone can give would be massively appreciated. Thanks guys!

 

[Growly]

Can't access HBoot!

Hey is anyone out there? I know lots of people get stuck in boot loops and there's a million threads of support for that, but this is different. I can't access the recovery system either. I have clockwork mod on it and normally you can get into that fine. Trying to find help on this problem is really tough cos I have to wade through all the noob threads for standard easy fix boot loops. If anyone could help me on this I'd be extremely grateful.

 

[MiCeltic]

This might be all I can offer but two things come to mind. The first is you said volume up its volume down to get into the bootloader. The other is to search in the wildfire forum regarding whatsapp. Recently I read a post about a guy who's phone crashed from whatsapp. I don't remember how he recovered you have to search on it; unfortunately the second time he couldn't recover.

Good luck

Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda app-developers app

 

[Growly]

Thank you!

This might be all I can offer but two things come to mind. The first is you said volume up its volume down to get into the bootloader. The other is to search in the wildfire forum regarding whatsapp. Recently I read a post about a guy who's phone crashed from whatsapp. I don't remember how he recovered you have to search on it; unfortunately the second time he couldn't recover.

Good luck

Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda app-developers app

Thank you for this... I'm willing to grasp at any thread at the moment. I did try the volume down option too but no dice there... but the whatsapp thread sounds promising, so I'm going to follow that up right now. It's after 4am and I've been sitting here working on this for hours and hours and at my wits end, so thank you! Fingers crossed!

 

[Growly]

Accessed HBoot!

Update:

Ok, I couldn't find the thread about whatsapp that was referred to above, but I have just tried accessing the recovery menu, using the volume down and power key, after first removing the sim card, but leaving the sd card in place. Suddenly that seemed to work! The menu came up!

I tried accessing it again with the sim card back in, and it refuses to come up again as before. So that at least is one issue resolved.

Now I'm having trouble mounting my SD card, which it says can't be mounted. I know the backups and recovery files are on the the SD card, but it just doesn't seem to see them there.

I wiped the dalvik cache in case that was causing any problems and it doesn't seem to have resolved this current issue so far. I'm going to keep trying other options as see how I get on, but I least wanted to share the solution to one of the problems my thread raised.

 

[Growly]

Further Update

I couldn't remember the name of my mod in the first post.. it was the WildChild mod.

After getting my phone into HBoot by removing the sim but keeping the SD card in, I found I was unable to mount the SD card. I researched this problem and some suggest the card may be corrupted.

I have checked the card on an external reader plugged into my PC and it read perfectly fine, and I managed to copy every bit of data on it across to the computer with ease. Others however found that after a reformat it eliminated any problems with mounting.. so that is what I am going to do and then try and restore the copy of the data I saved to the PC back onto the SD card.

Attempting now to reboot normally with the sim back in and the SD card removed this time produced a very desirable result. My phone started back up, albeit without the normal operating system. I was able to connect to wi-fi and my network and see a missed call voice mail message symbol. There are however no apps at all as yet and no background screen. I should mention that the phone did ask me to allow SuperUser permissions again.. I should also mention that I foolishly tried to Fix Permissions in CWM which then sat for a long time, eventually I removed the battery cos I thought it wasn't gonna do anything.. this is a big no no I now find out from the threads and I may have buggered it up a bit. I don't know.

My saga continues anyhow, and although I've not had much support on this, it might still be helpful for others to read and follow should whatsapp crashed their phone too and mess with their SD card somehow.

 

[Growly]

Another Update - Making Progress!

Next update on this...


I removed the SD card and put it in an external reader again on my PC.

Then I installed the free program Mini Tool Partition Wizard Home Edition and selected MiniTool Partion Wizard rather than the Power Data Recovery.

The Wizard allowed me to see the hidden partition on my drive. I understand now why it has always had trouble reading and writing to the SD card in the Ext section that was hidden. This should have been an EXT-2 or EXT-4 format partition I think, and mine is an EXT-3.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know much about these things and just learn as I go and by experiementing.

I had hoped to back up the hidden data in the partition but I was unsuccessful. Instead I found the Rebuild MBR (Master Boot Record) option and applied that to the entire SD card.

I then put it back in my phone, again without the Sim, and went into HBoot and recovery. I then went to my advanced back up and restore section and now the SD card is mountable and readable! I didn't have to wipe it or reformat!

I found my most recent up date which was the end of August... I wish I'd done them monthly, but oh well not too bad... and selected it and chose to Restore Boot.

Once it had completed I tried to reboot, but no dice. I put the sim card back in.. still didn't work... BUT I was now able to get into recovery again, this time without removing the Sim!

So inching along slowly here with this but making progress.

Next I plan to restore boot again, this time with the Sim card in.. and try and restart.. if that fails, I will go back into advanced recovery and try to also Restore System, and lastly restore SD-ext and see if each of those options repairs whatever damage that stupid Whatsapp did to my phone! I hope the little solution to various problems I've had are of some use to someone else here. Now wish me luck!

 

[MiCeltic]

Wow, you were busy last night while most of the western world slept . I'm guessing if I posted at 11:10 PM and you said it was 4:00 AM, that your in the London timeline. I thought a little bit more, later, and I think that person's post I read fixed his phone by eventually getting into recovery and restoring, which as I remember worked that one time, until he reinstalled and used Whatsapp again some time later (it was at the insistence of a girl that used it). Whatsapp has, like 300 million users, but it does seem to give some people serious problems, and that's why I think most people are hesitant to try and help. They don't want to make things worse, since there are those instances of totally bricking a phone...but as long as a person can get into recovery, it's not bricked!

Interesting...I have done the, "fix mbr" in PCs many times, but I think you've taken it to new levels using it in phones! At least I don't remember reading anything much about someone doing it (in phones) before and it's brilliant, IMHO. You really did a great job sharing what you've done and I hope you get it fixed. I clicked a, "Thanks" for a good post follow up.

Insert standard disclaimer here: I'm not telling you to do anything, or what will or won't work, but sooner or later you're gonna have to restore that backup, but it's your choice on what to do; and, it sure seems like you know what you're doing, especially having made a backup to work from. I can appreciate the way you've gone piece by piece in your restore efforts to try and find where the problem occurred. The nice thing about the Wild Child ROM is it all works, and incidentally I think the developer uses ext2 for his extended SD card partition! It sounds like you reformatted to ext2 or ext4 from ext3, so the only thing there now is what came from restoring that backup piece in Clockwork; therefore, there's nothing that would be lost that isn't already; and, you backed up everything else on the SD card. So I don't want you to brick your phone either, but I'm wondering about wiping the cache and then the dalvik-cache, and then restoring your whole Nandroid backup?! I think your Whatsapp contacts are saved and so if the phone boots to a working condition you could just uninstall Whatsapp right away, boot into recovery and wipe cache and dalvik-cache again just to be safe, and then decide what to do about using Whatsapp again. As long as you can get into recovery, ultimately you could wipe, wipe, wipe and reinstall Wild Child to start all over if nothing else works.

On the other hand maybe you've already got this whole mess straightened out, if not, I'll again wish you - Good luck!

 

[Growly]

Solved!

So I next wiped the cache partition 3 times, as someone on another thread said sometimes it takes more than one go to clear it all properly for some reason.

I also wiped the dalvik cache again a couple more times. Then I went back to my back up and restored system. Then I tried to boot my baby back up.

I was falling asleep at this time but I remember the phone partially recovered. But most of the apps were broken. I had low memory issues too, so I uninstalled a few apps, managed to restore some individual apps or update them, and log in long enough to send messages to contacts with my email so I wouldn't lose them.

Then I fell asleep with the phone in my hand haha.. when I woke up I immediately continued with it and finally worked my way back to whatsapp being the last app I wanted to deal with. I managed to get into it and send some messages.

Then I did a full nandroid restore on everything.

The phone returned to it's state as of 2 months ago when I last did a nandroid back up. But some of my TiBu apps were backed up more recently. So I manually restored those and things were mostly back to how they were before and I am fairly happy with the low loss of data.

Whatsapp was working fine for a while.. but then it started having problems. It first had all my contacts there... then it lost their names but kept their numbers, then it lost all the old messages and right now I'm in the middle of trying to restore everything again and it's stuck on a restoration. I did a full uninstall of the app, restored the back-up, then it tried to update, but it always fails and now it's just hanging. So it definitely appears that whatsapp is one of the major causes of problems on my phone.

It was also one of the largest apps I had on there. Wildchild is an awesome rom, it only lacked video really and I installed a codec and player for that and got it working again, despite the guys on the Wildchild thread saying they didn't think it was possible. Yes I had trouble with it sometimes, but most of my trouble stems back to the low memory issues and the fact I broke all my apps up by spreading parts of them over the SD card, internal storage as user apps and system memory. That's a Wildfire S problem, not the fault of the Rom.

Anyway, I've made note of all the important numbers and will be buying a larger capacity HTC phone this week. Not sure which yet, but possibly a Sensation or Sensation XE, depending on my budget.

Thanks for your support MiCeltic. Yes I'm in London hehe. And I hadn't read anything about using MBR on a phone, but it was the SD card which had the problem and that certainly fixed it without having to wipe all my data.

I think what I have here is multiple layers of problems.. and I'm really pleased that after 3 days effort I managed to get past most of them. Once I get my new phone and transfer the contacts, I will have to think twice about using whatsapp.. it's my favourite app of all tho, so it will be hard to part with. This phone has many bugs.. I will completely erase it and reflash it when I get time and either keep it as a back up and maybe gift it to my sister or mum as I said before.
:good:

 

[Growly]

Last update

OK this is my past update on this... Whatsapp had one last surprise in store for me.

After it started messing up my phone again. I gave it one last chance. I completely removed it from the phone and installed it as new from the GooglePlay store. Then when I loaded it, it found the backed up Titanium BackUp messages and restored those.. then when I opened the app, it also had restored all my most recent messages, up to the day before it crashed the whole phone. I was amazed. They must have been stored on the server or something.. I think they sit there for 3 weeks. So I'm likely only missing one weeks worth of messages at most, about 4 weeks ago! Ha! Brilliant. I'm not doing a Nandroid backup cos everything is stable again and I hope to have no more troubles until it comes time to transfer all the date to the new handset... that's gonna take a while cos I will have to learn how to gain the boot mod rights all over again and maybe even flash a custom rom as the stock is sure to be loaded with bloatware. Still.. if it has a 1GB internal memory it shouldn't slow the phone down too much.. not compared to the tiny 150MB this little baby has!

If someone wants to close this thread now, feel free.
Cheers. :good:

 

[MiCeltic]

You inspired me to read a little more last night and I did see where some people found a fix by uninstalling and then installing new (not from backup), then restoring their contacts. Seems like you've proved that point! Interestingly I read that ALL of your contacts are stored on the Whatsapp server, not just your contacts that have Whatsapp (Remember those permissions you accept when you install an app!). As I said, there are 300 million users, obviously not everyone has the problems, so hopefully it will work for you now and on your new phone, which after reading your posts I know you will make a back up of immediately and again after rooting...AND definitely before installing Whatsapp ! ! ! You might even find your next phone easier to root as a lot of them don't need an update of the bootloader on htcdev for the first step when unlocking and/or many can gain Soff!

Glad you got it working and now all's right with the world...well for now