Root D3 rooting error, techie says i might have "bricked" it

[Frinkiac]

Hi all,

I'll try to keep this brief. I (stupidly) installed some update and it unrooted my phone and put all the bloatware back on. So I re-rooted, moved the bloatware, and must have accidentally moved "Telephony Provider.apk" to my SD card. Now my phone gives me a nonstop stream of "The application Phone (process com.android.phone) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again" messages, and I can't really use the phone, and have no service.

I slowly, painfully, clicked through the error messages, got back into my root explorer, and was able to move Telephony Provider.apk back from the SD card into the System-App folder that it came from. But I'm still getting the error message and it doesn't seem like anything is fixed. A tech told me that because I had moved it, it lost some properties/characteristics and wouldn't perform the same anyway.

I took it to a Droid master-man I found on craigslist and he assured me it could be fixed, he said "you can't really brick android phones." After an hour of working on it, he gave up. I did not have clockworkmod installed beforehand, and with the error messages and no service problem now, I can't get it from the phone itself. This guy hooked my phone up to his computer and when he finally gave up, he said he had no luck re-flashing it, and also no luck "brute forcing it" which I understood as manually trying to put the .apk files back into the correct folder. The guy finished by telling me that I had basically bricked my phone.

Is this true and if not, how can I go about trying to salvage my phone?

TYIA for any pointers, I'm really at a loss here.

 

[glennj]

I sure don't know, really, but everything I have read so far indicates that if you update to 5.7.906 OTA, and after that need to return to stock via an SBF-like flash, you are out of luck because the new boot-loader will not boot any earlier ROM version and there is no 906 version sbf-like file. Not yet anyway.

You might need to return the phone.

Holding off on the OTA myself, through its been really nice on Susan's unrooted D3 so far.

Glenn

 

[redsox985]

You shouldn't have to SBF/FXZ. SD card properties are different. Keep fighting the messages and long press the APK. Click "Permissions" and set it to...

Owner: R W _
Group: R _ _
Others: R _ _

Hit OK, then long press again and select "Owner", "Change Owner", or something like that. Set both fields to 0 - root. This should restore it to the proper owner and properties. If this won't fix it, then you need to SBF/FXZ or, just flash a ROM which will re-write /system. Are you on 5.6.890 or 5.7.906? This is key to doing an SBF, but you are by no means currently bricked.

 

[Frinkiac]

You shouldn't have to SBF/FXZ. SD card properties are different. Keep fighting the messages and long press the APK. Click "Permissions" and set it to...

Owner: R W _
Group: R _ _
Others: R _ _

Hit OK, then long press again and select "Owner", "Change Owner", or something like that. Set both fields to 0 - root. This should restore it to the proper owner and properties. If this won't fix it, then you need to SBF/FXZ or, just flash a ROM which will re-write /system. Are you on 5.6.890 or 5.7.906? This is key to doing an SBF, but you are by no means currently bricked.

I'm on 906. I was able to fight through the messages and get to the APK but I can't long press on it for long enough before the stupid error message pops up and cuts me short. The guy who worked on it yesterday said he tried to do the same thing changing owner via ADB. He said my phone accepted the change owner commands but didn't fix the problem.

 

[Frinkiac]

So he says it must be something other than telephony provider.apk?

What is the apk associated with the message "The application Phone (process com.android.phone) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again" ???

Seems like it would be Phone.apk ?

 

[Shurple]

you can always unroot, reformat and start over.

 

[Frinkiac]

you can always unroot, reformat and start over.

Can you elaborate?

 

[redsox985]

No, he probably can't since there's no 906 SBF/FXZ available yet to reformat the partitions of the phone. You might be able to flash the leaked 906 (identical to OTA) over the messed up system, but I would recommend a ROM since it'll definitely work. Do you have bootstrap/safestrap installed? If so, you can install a 906 stock ROM (slightly tweaked for optimization) over your borked system to get it up and running again.

[ROM] XT862 5.7.906 full, deodexed, and dst mod - xda-developers

 

[Frinkiac]

No, he probably can't since there's no 906 SBF/FXZ available yet. Do you have bootstrap/safestrap installed? If so, you can install a 906 stock ROM (slightly tweaked for optimization) over your borked system to get it up and running again.

[ROM] XT862 5.7.906 full, deodexed, and dst mod - xda-developers

Don't have strap installed, could I install it with adb and then install the stock rom?

 

[glennj]

I'm on 906. I was able to fight through the messages and get to the APK but I can't long press on it for long enough before the stupid error message pops up and cuts me short. The guy who worked on it yesterday said he tried to do the same thing changing owner via ADB. He said my phone accepted the change owner commands but didn't fix the problem.

You sure he also restored the .apk's .odx file ? Seems like an obvious thing to do, but its got to be done.

This sort of thing is why I am holding off on updating to 906, because if you go to 906 and something goes badly wrong, you might be unable to recover.

Glenn

 

[Frinkiac]

No idea, but he's given up on this project anyway.

I got ADB up and running, if anyone can give me some specific instructions about what to try or if there are any other ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

 

[redsox985]

I have created an SBF which should be able to put you back on 890, but with a few parts from 906 installed, like bootloader, recovery, etc. There is a 906 SBF patch on XDA (for SBF'ing over 906), and I simply incorporated that into a 890 SBF which can be flashed with RSD Lite. I haven't tried it because I simply don't have a reason to, but here's the link. Just unzip to your C: drive then flash with RSD.

906 SBF.7z - Minus