Root Nexus 4 soft bricked and stuck in fastboot

[viksince1993]

:thumbup:

Do you see anything on your screen (i.e., is the custom recovery menu present)?

Also, does "adb devices" report your device's serial number? (you don't have to post that number here, though...).

yes, the custom recovery menu is present on the screen.
edit: adb devices shows an id with numbers and letters
the entire screen of the phone says:

- reboot system now
- install zip
-wipe data/factory reset
-backup and restore
-mounts and storage
-advanced

clockwork mod recovery v6.0.0.4.7
E: can't mount /cache/recovery/command
e: can't mount /cache/recovery/log
e: can't open /cache/recovery/log
e: can't mount /cache/recovery/last_log
E: can't mount /cache/recovery/last_install
e: can't open /cache/recovery/last_install

I need to step aside for a few, just going to leave this here for reference for SA and myself for future use. Vic, pay not attention to this for the time being.

e2fsck -n /dev/block/mmcblk0p[B]xx[/B]

ty ibt
Ok I won't even look at it

Edit:
Scary, I was asking for help with the red light earlier But what happened was my battery ran out, I'm going to charge it and try:
adb devices and adb shell again after 1 hour or charging

 

[bjacks12]

That's very encouraging. I know very well the sunken gut feeling of desperately trying to get it to work and then the ecstasy that comes when it does.

 

[viksince1993]

That's very encouraging. I know very well the sunken gut feeling of desperately trying to get it to work and then the ecstasy that comes when it does.

it felt great to see a different screen:smokingsomb:, it somehow gave me hope
I'm sorry I said I'd try it again after an hour but I fell asleep because of sickness and tiredness.

The phone won't turn on now after so many hours of charging(maybe because it turned itself back on from a complete black screen and then went into bootloader.)
I was able to get into the grayish-black screen after hitting Recovery mode from bootloader, and I'm sure it will be charged from there.
I'm going to update this post as soon as i can get it working

 

[scary alien]

I unpacked the CWM recovery you referenced above and soft-booted, Vik, and it indeed does have the e2fsck in the /sbin folder (although I suspect you'll be able reference it easily without the absolute path).

Anyway, I'm gonna bust-out my old GNex and play with running e2fsck on it's partitions just to see what I encounter.

Back later!

edit: oh, just saw your post...yeah, you'll need to leave/let it charge a good while...don't want to be messing around with recovery mode with less than a full charge on your battery.

 

[viksince1993]

I unpacked the CWM recovery you referenced above and soft-booted, Vik, and it indeed does have the e2fsck in the /sbin folder (although I suspect you'll be able reference it easily without the absolute path).

Anyway, I'm gonna bust-out my old GNex and play with running e2fsck on it's partitions just to see what I encounter.

Back later!

edit: oh, just saw your post...yeah, you'll need to leave/let it charge a good while...don't want to be messing around with recovery mode with less than a full charge on your battery.

Thank you Scary! I can't thank you and IBT enough...
I'll let it full charge then by waiting another hour and 45 minutes

 

[scary alien]

Note/caution/warning: these are NOT the commands that should be run on your device--these are just examples of what I ran on my GNex.

Okay, a couple of observations:

1. I've only really been able to get my /system partition on my GNex scanned with e2fsck:

Spoiler

/sbin # e2fsck -n -v -b 32768 /dev/block/mmcblk0p10
e2fsck -n -v -b 32768 /dev/block/mmcblk0p10
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p10 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Free blocks count wrong for group #0 (29662, counted=9627).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #1 (32281, counted=3270).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #2 (32330, counted=27975).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #3 (32281, counted=9448).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #4 (32330, counted=5361).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #5 (3097, counted=706).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong (0, counted=56387).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong for group #0 (6965, counted=6732).
Fix? no

Directories count wrong for group #0 (2, counted=59).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong for group #1 (6976, counted=6650).
Fix? no

Directories count wrong for group #1 (0, counted=9).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong for group #2 (6976, counted=6767).
Fix? no

Directories count wrong for group #2 (0, counted=10).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong for group #3 (6976, counted=6636).
Fix? no

Directories count wrong for group #3 (0, counted=11).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong for group #4 (6976, counted=6805).
Fix? no

Directories count wrong for group #4 (0, counted=2).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong (0, counted=40566).
Fix? no


/dev/block/mmcblk0p10: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********


41856 inodes used (100.00%)
19 non-contiguous files (0.0%)
3 non-contiguous directories (0.0%)
# of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 0/0/0
Extent depth histogram: 1043
167424 blocks used (100.00%)
0 bad blocks
0 large files

951 regular files
91 directories
0 character device files
0 block device files
0 fifos
0 links
239 symbolic links (239 fast symbolic links)
0 sockets
--------
1281 files
/sbin #

2. Running e2fsck on my boot partition results in:

/sbin # e2fsck -v -n /dev/block/mmcblk0p7
e2fsck -v -n /dev/block/mmcblk0p7
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
e2fsck: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/block/mmcblk0p7

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

/sbin #

and then running it with the -b 8193 switch and value (or a value of 32768) resulted in the same exact messages .

3. I was unable to the utility successfully against any other partition... .

So, I'm not sure what the proper command / switch / argument combinations might need to be even for my device (or how yet to determine the proper superblock sizes).

(again, note that these were sample commands on my GNex and do NOT reflect attempts or suggestions for an N4)

IBT, any ideas or experience here?

 

[iowabowtech]

IBT, any ideas or experience here?

Well, it appears your Gnex is hosed.

J/K. Did you try data (12) and cache (11)? If nothing else, perhaps just try only option -n alone? Won't output much but to say clean or not.

Those should work at minimum although you may want to unmount cache either via adb or mounts & storage in recovery. e2fsck won't run on a mounted partition or if it did for some reason, it could be damaging.

 

[scary alien]

Well, it appears your Gnex is hosed.

J/K. Did you try data (12) and cache (11)? If nothing else, perhaps just try only option -n alone? Won't output much but to say clean or not.

Those should work at minimum although you may want to unmount cache either via adb or mounts & storage in recovery. e2fsck won't run on a mounted partition or if it did for some reason, it could be damaging.

(lol, re. /system being hosed )

:thumbup:

Well, I hadn't tried those partitions because I knew they were already mounted and open.

But I did try it on /cache, un-mount /cache, and tried it again and it did work!

Spoiler

/sbin # e2fsck -v -n -b 32768 /dev/block/mmcblk0p11
e2fsck -v -n -b 32768 /dev/block/mmcblk0p11
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
e2fsck: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/block/mmcblk0p11
Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?
/sbin # umount /cache
umount /cache
/sbin # e2fsck -v -n -b 32768 /dev/block/mmcblk0p11
e2fsck -v -n -b 32768 /dev/block/mmcblk0p11
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p11 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Free blocks count wrong for group #0 (30570, counted=1609).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #1 (32301, counted=22814).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #2 (32334, counted=32325).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong (0, counted=68569).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong for group #0 (6901, counted=6885).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong for group #2 (6912, counted=6908).
Fix? no

Directories count wrong for group #2 (0, counted=1).
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong (0, counted=27617).
Fix? no


/dev/block/mmcblk0p11: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********


27648 inodes used (100.00%)
0 non-contiguous files (0.0%)
0 non-contiguous directories (0.0%)
# of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 0/0/0
Extent depth histogram: 23
110592 blocks used (100.00%)
0 bad blocks
0 large files

19 regular files
3 directories
0 character device files
0 block device files
0 fifos
0 links
0 symbolic links (0 fast symbolic links)
0 sockets
--------
22 files
/sbin #

So, now I'm just not sure what the proper commands are for the other partitions--specifically something like the boot partition (extrapolating for when Vik tries things).

 

[iowabowtech]

So, now I'm just not sure what the proper commands are for the other partitions--specifically something like the boot partition (extrapolating for when Vik tries things).

Yeah I'm not either. I think we're looking at a canary in the coal mine situation here but it's not like the phone is much good in its current state anyway.

You should be able to check p12 though SA. I've always done that without issue. Trust me, I'm a doctor. And by that I mean a doctor of...

Spoiler

 

[viksince1993]

I have a bad update...
I had just done these things in order in the command prompt::
fastboot devices
fastboot oem unlock
fastboot boot recovery-clockwork-6.0.4.7-mako.img

It booted into clockworkmod custom recovery screen but the adb devices no longer works
it just says "List of devices attached" and nothing below it
As soon as it booted into the custom rom it made these disconnect and reconnect sounds, the sound that happens when you plug a usb cable in, for like 30 seconds straight, then they stopped, now they happen every 20 seconds about 10 times (disconnect(sound)-reconnect(sound)) as long as the phone is connected to the computer
What could be happening and how to fix it? :/ The adb devices command no longer shows anything

Edit: the sound is now happening continously but it is only one sound now, It is the "disconnect" sound. I Just made sure it was by looking at system sounds

 

[iowabowtech]

I have a bad update...
I had just done these things in order in the command prompt::
fastboot devices
fastboot oem unlock
fastboot boot recovery-clockwork-6.0.4.7-mako.img

It booted into clockworkmod custom recovery screen but the adb devices no longer works
it just says "List of devices attached" and nothing below it
As soon as it booted into the custom rom it made these disconnect and reconnect sounds, the sound that happens when you plug a usb cable in, for like 30 seconds straight, then they stopped, now they happen every 20 seconds about 10 times (disconnect(sound)-reconnect(sound)) as long as the phone is connected to the computer
What could be happening and how to fix it? :/ The adb devices command no longer shows anything

Did you still have cmd open from your previous effort? If so run adb kill-server followed by adb devices.

 

[scary alien]

^^^ :rofl: (we needed that levity, IBT--thanks for that :thumbup.

I got 12 to scan okay (had to unmount /data and /sdcard as both were mounted on that device). Still had to use the -b 32678 switch, but that didn't make the others like the boot (7) partition to scan.

edit: lol, looks like I took too long to reply and my post is a bit out of order now

 

[scary alien]

Vik, it'll probably still work...try disconnecting and reconnecting your USB cable, too...

I'm confident that if you got it to work once, it'll work again :thumbup: .

 

[viksince1993]

Did you still have cmd open from your previous effort? If so run adb kill-server followed by adb devices.

No, it was new cmd window that I just opened
I just did the same thing over again in a new window and it is happening again
After about a minute of the disconnect sound I see a blinking red light where the notification blue light normally is...
I don't know what happened to it

Edit: I'll keep trying Scary, by disconnecting and reconnecting the cable like I did before
Thank you

Edit2:
Edit 3:
The phone shows a black screen with a red light blinking on the notification light
IBT and Scary, I think I know the reason...I see the red light in place of the blue notification light. . and I think it may be because the battery is not high enough...I have no idea what is happening to it but it is my guess because in my past experience with the nexus 4 I saw a red light when my battery was drained and I had to charge it for a long time to get it back to working again.
Can you plz tell me what I should do now? Should I charge it overnight to be sure the battery is working and work on it by getting the adb devices to show the id in the morning?

P.s. The phone was charged for 2 hours

 

[iowabowtech]

Interesting. This is an older screenshot but when I ran -n on my gnex, I didn't get any such errors. I was of the impression /data wouldn't be mounted in recovery without a request. Am I getting rusty? :hmmmm2:

 

[scary alien]

Interesting. This is an older screenshot but when I ran -n on my gnex, I didn't get any such errors. I was of the impression /data wouldn't be mounted in recovery without a request. Am I getting rusty? :hmmmm2:

Nah, not rusty--it's probably 'cause I've got an old version of TWRP installed (2.2.0) and it must be auto-mounting the /sdcard (and therefore /data).

~ ~ ~

Vik, do you mean the red light as in low battery indicator?

 

[iowabowtech]

Somewhat concerning that there'd be battery life issues already after 2 hrs of charge, plus it should charge while in recovery with the usb cable plugged. In my estimation, you should not be losing charge here.

 

[viksince1993]

Nah, not rusty--it's probably 'cause I've got an old version of TWRP installed (2.2.0) and it must be auto-mounting the /sdcard (and therefore /data).

~ ~ ~

Vik, do you mean the red light as in low battery indicator?

I don't think it is an indicator, but I remember seeing the red light when my phone turned off almost 2 years ago. It happened when the battery gave out. When I tried to turn it on I saw a blinking red light.
After a while of blinking I am now seeing the bootloader on the screen again. But I don't know if it is because the battery was charged enough for it to show or because if it is for some other reason than the battery... I'm clueless
I'm trying to get adb devices to show an id right now by taking the cable out and putting it back in
If my boot loader doesn't open when I press vol up+ vol down+ power button and hold them is that normal? The screen only powers on if I connect it to the computer or if I charge the phone and both of these times it just loads the bootloader....Sorry I just wanna know if my phone is normal and worth continuing to pursue to fix it in order to not waste your time and ibt's time


Edit: I just managed to repeat all the steps without the phone turning off again but adb devices still doesn't show a device name. It says "list of devices attached" and no device name below it. The computer however is still making that disconnect sound.
and after a while the notification bar said "usb device not recognized" in a notification text box
I think I should reinstall the usb drivers...should I reinstall them?

Edit 2: After about 3 minutes of the disconnect sound the phone screen went black and the red notification light shows, it is not blinking.
I think I have to reinstall the usb drivers...I'll be back with an update asap
Update: Same thing happened again: I got into the custom recovery mode screen after booting into it and as soon as it went into that screen it kept making the "disconnect windows sound" again and adb devices says:
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached

And the screen went black after about 45 seconds of disconnect sound and now there is a red light(not blinking) in place of the notification light
The phone doesn't turn on anymore as soon as I plug the cable and connect it to the computer or the charger. It shows a red light for about a minute and then the bootloader opens.
I have no idea what could be causing it...can this be solved?

 

[iowabowtech]

This is starting to sound like hardware failure potentially.

 

[viksince1993]

IBT,
I think I will have to make ends meet with an old nokia phone if hardware failure is what the problem is
Last time I sent LG to fix my phone for a broken front and back they charged me $150
If I send them my phone now to fix any possible hardware or something(they won't tell me how much they charge initially, they take it in first then they contact me by phone and tell me how much it costs), do you think it is worth it to spend up to $150 to fix the nexus 4? as opposed to buying a new phone under $300?
I have been watching the one plus one...will probably end up saving money for a few months and buying it. If you know any smartphones under $300 please suggest me some

P.s. I'll try everything I can tomorrow morning after a full night's charge as my one last effort to bring it back and report it here and most likely confirm it's dead :/

 

[bjacks12]

Moto G would fit the criteria. Very similar phone to the Nexus 4, except it only has 1 GB of RAM IIRC. You might be able to pick up a first gen Moto X for <300 now that the new one is coming out too.

 

[viksince1993]

Moto G would fit the criteria. Very similar phone to the Nexus 4, except it only has 1 GB of RAM IIRC. You might be able to pick up a first gen Moto X for <300 now that the new one is coming out too.

I'm liking the moto g, I'll look into it and the moto x today
Thanks
Edit: The phone doesn't turn on now, even after a a full night's charge...I think it is dead.
to IBT and Scary, Thank you very very much for everything you have done for me to be able to try to fix my phone.
You guys are awesome