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[Verizon] Can't restore phone or even lock bootloader... Bricked?

enginerrd

Lurker
May 30, 2012
4
0
I've been lurking for quite some time and haven't been able to find a solution for my issue. Here's what happened:

I cracked the screen on my Galaxy Nexus and got an insurance replacement. I then used ClockworkMod Recovery to copy over from my old device to my new device. All was good for about 12 hours when the new device started boot looping with the flashy color animation screen. I figured that might have been something I did, so I tried doing a factory reset and the like with ClockworkMod Recovery and managed to totally mess the phone. After trying to do a factory reset, the phone wouldn't boot up at all anymore -- I just get the dreaded red triangle with exclamation point. I tried formatting all the partitions with ClockworkMod (which was a bad idea). Ever since then, I've been stuck. I've spent several days so far trying to get this thing working. I have to note that Odin and fastboot modes work perfectly fine.

Among things I've tried unsuccessfully:
Flash to stock using Odin
--Odin says everything is fine, when I flash with a stock ROM that I downloaded. Upon reboot, nothing is any better and I still get the red triangle/exclamation point.
--When I try to use the tar files that ClockworkMod generated, Odin crashes immediately.

Push custom ROMs to /sdcard/ using adb while booted into ClockworkMod in hopes of getting the system to boot.
--This never works successfully. Sometimes I get no error but can't find the zip file. Other times I'll get an I/O error, or even a read-only error. The original backup is giving me checksum errors.

Flash factory ROMs using fastboot.
--I always get the red triangle/exclamation point.

Restore and flash with WUG's toolkit.
--Same thing as when I try to use fastboot. It seems that flashing the device goes fine, but the device will still not boot.

After every time I've flashed the device, whether using Odin or fastboot, I've tried doing a factory reset by pressing power+vol up+vol down and then selecting factory reset. This hasn't made any difference.

I'm about to give up on it and send the device back to the nameless insurance company, but I would like to lock the bootloader first. I can't even seem to lock the bootloader! In fastboot, I type the usual 'fastboot oem lock', and the device reports that it is locked, but after rebooting, the device always reverts back to having an unlocked bootloader.

Have I missed anything? Any thoughts? For now, I'm using my old device with the cracked screen, but I'm running out of time before insurance starts screaming at me to send back my old device. I'm lost. :thinking:
 
Wow that sounded a bit like a train wreck. So you still have cwm recovery after all that? And what kind of return do you get using the "fastboot devices" command? Is it recognizing your device still? If so, how about "adb devices"? If you can get that far I'd try to adb shell and peruse the SD card to see if your nandroid is on there or if it got wiped or got corrupted somehow.

And just to be clear, when you were attempting to fastboot install stock, you were flashing all the individual img's right? And that failed?
 
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So I haven't flashed CWM recovery, but I can boot into it absolutely fine by 'fastboot boot cwmimage.img'. Fastboot tends to work absolutely fine. When I've flashed all images (recovery, radio, radio-cdma, boot, system, userdata, bootloader... and not in that order), fastboot reports that everything was successful every time I try it. Once booted into CWM, the device does show up absolutely fine as an adb device. Pushing with adb usually isn't successful, though.

When I get back from work, I'll try checking out the sdcard with the adb shell to see if that reports back. I'm thinking I'll just bite the bullet and try to send it back to the insurance company as a defective device. At this point, I am thinking that it's a hardware issue, especially with respect to the original problem of bootlooping.

I'll also give that GNEX toolkit a shot when I get back from work.

Thanks a ton for the info, guys.
 
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So I haven't flashed CWM recovery, but I can boot into it absolutely fine by 'fastboot boot cwmimage.img'. Fastboot tends to work absolutely fine. When I've flashed all images (recovery, radio, radio-cdma, boot, system, userdata, bootloader... and not in that order), fastboot reports that everything was successful every time I try it. Once booted into CWM, the device does show up absolutely fine as an adb device. Pushing with adb usually isn't successful, though.

When I get back from work, I'll try checking out the sdcard with the adb shell to see if that reports back. I'm thinking I'll just bite the bullet and try to send it back to the insurance company as a defective device. At this point, I am thinking that it's a hardware issue, especially with respect to the original problem of bootlooping.

I'll also give that GNEX toolkit a shot when I get back from work.

Thanks a ton for the info, guys.

Wait...after flashing the recovery (stock image), you can still boot into CWM from the phone? That is odd...your flashing is not happening. Where are you getting the stock recovery image? It is not included in the image files from google (it is, but not as a .img. It is in the update zip IIRC) What order are you flashing them in? I do not think that would make a difference, but to be sure, flash them as:

fastboot flash bootloader path-TO/bootloader-toro-primekk15.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader

sleep 5

fastboot flash radio path-TO/radio-toro-i515.ek02.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader

sleep 5

fastboot flash radio-cdma path-TO/radio-cdma-toro-i515.ek05.img
fastboot reboot-bootloader

sleep 5

fastboot -w update path-TO//image-mysid-icl53f.zip

If you are on windows, just wait 5 seconds instead of typing sleep 5 (that is a linux command).

That should work. If not, you have some other serious problems.

Also, and this is a complete nitpick, but bricked=same as a brick. No powering on, no triangle, nothing.

-Nkk
 
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So I guess to clarify, I should say that I never flashed CWM onto the phone. Every time I've used CWM, it's been by simply booting from the image with 'fastboot boot cwmimage.img'.

The stuff I downloaded to flash is from Google's repository. I extracted every last file and flashed them this order:
bootloader
radio
radio-cdma
system
userdata
boot
recovery

Anyway, I have a replacement device on the way since this one seems to be toast. Thanks again for the help!

Thanks for helping me, an obvious noob, out.
 
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So I guess to clarify, I should say that I never flashed CWM onto the phone. Every time I've used CWM, it's been by simply booting from the image with 'fastboot boot cwmimage.img'.

The stuff I downloaded to flash is from Google's repository. I extracted every last file and flashed them this order:
bootloader
radio
radio-cdma
system
userdata
boot
recovery

Anyway, I have a replacement device on the way since this one seems to be toast. Thanks again for the help!

Thanks for helping me, an obvious noob, out.

Yeah, I wouldn't unzip the icl53f.zip if that's what you're doing? Instead, keep it zipped and use the following fastboot commands after the files below have all been placed into your sdk platform-tools folder (i'm making the assumption you aren't set up to fastboot flash globally):

fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-toro-primekk15.img

fastboot flash radio radio-toro-i515.ek02.img

fastboot flash radio-cdma radio-cdma-toro-i515.ek05.img

fastboot -w update image-mysid-icl53f.zip

You may be best served to fastboot reboot bootloader between commands as Nkk menioned along with a little wait in between for the sake of safety. Personally, I've done them all back to back (with a short wait between) without rebooting the bootloader each time but I'm not necessarily recommending that.

So could this be the problem here or were you in fact flashing then entire zip and not it's individual contents separately?
 
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Yeah, I wouldn't unzip the icl53f.zip if that's what you're doing? Instead, keep it zipped and use the following fastboot commands after the files below have all been placed into your sdk platform-tools folder (i'm making the assumption you aren't set up to fastboot flash globally):

It's possible that's the problem. I'll try doing what you suggested when I get a chance and post back. Thanks for the info.
 
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