Infinite (?) boot loop

[itchy355 24]

Alas, hello again 🙂

 

I've been using my pro1 (non-x) for some years now. Basically just on LineageOS, usually the latest version. Apart from the usual ,Connected, not charging' and some trouble with location in maps in some applications things were going quite fine. But yesterday all of a sudden the device restarted itself and kept doing so indefinitely. I am able to get into recovery, bootloader, no problem. The lineageos recovery seems not to offer any of the usual ,empty cache' options apart from factory reset, so.. after a while of trying various ways how to break this loop I bit the bullet and did the reset.

Hell, the boot loop continued as if nothing happened.

Ugh

Installed new recovery build. Installed fresh build of lineageos (although I kept it up to date via the internal updater). Installed new gapps (they're the same though if I'm not being an idiot). Everything seemed fine for a while (the internet connection was somehwat slower but .. heck) then bam, boot loop again... recovery, tried reinstalling gapps again, whoa, device booted. Since it was 2 am already I decided it was enough for that day.

Today all seemed fine, but you guessed it, it started rebooting again and this time reinstalling gapps won't work..

Well. Thanks for any clues 🙂 maybe should I try installing different gapps, different recovery, whatever.. IDK. I sincerely hope this won't be the end of my device.. 😞

EDIT1: TWRP seems not to work, there's no menu available just the logo

EDIT2: Stock firmware, you guessed it, boot loop. What the flying f*** is going on?? Seems awfully similar to this google pixel issue

Edited September 10, 2022 by itchy355
update..

[EskeRahn 5,460]

Try putting it en aeroplane mode. Some of us see issues with spontaneous reboots when the WiFi signal gets out of reach - not always but sometimes.

If Aeroplane mode helps, try with only WiFi off

(obviously not a solution, but to narrow it down, also use it without restoring your apps, again to narrow it down - it might be an updated app that somehow made it crash.)

[itchy355 24]

Thanks Eske but I can't get into android at all 😞 .. it's just booting (show kernel F powered by android logo), then either LOS animation (blue arc) or (as of now) stock F logo but then between 1 - 15 seconds it shuts down and starts booting again 😞

BTW between 2 am yesterday and 9 am today it ,was' working -- I was asleep but woke up to a normal phone -- and at that time I haven't installed almost nothing, only Chrome, one game (forge of empires) and SMS backup application. It did end up in a boot loop during that time but I was able to ,break' the loop by reinstalling gapps.. today I was no longer able to do it, haven't booted at all..

But you're right that our home wi-fi is somewhat dodgy

Edited September 10, 2022 by itchy355

[EskeRahn 5,460]

2 hours ago, itchy355 said:

But you're right that our home wi-fi is somewhat dodgy

Try to make a clean installation without connecting to WiFi, and turn off WiFi as soon as you can. If it helps, at the least we know were the bug is.
You could also try a clean install at a friend with a different WiFi, and see if things works better there. If so, we know that for some odd reason it does not work with your Access Point.... And you could try to fiddle with what bands it uses,

[itchy355 24]

well but the point is I never get past the boot sequence :[

I can try installing once more.

I do it through fastboot & adb

EDIT.. fastboot flashed lineage recovery, adb sideloaded lineage 19.1, mindgapps 12.1 and no, it immediately after first Powered by android logo goes to another reboot. Doesn't even show the lineageOS blue curve logo. F** hell.

Edited September 10, 2022 by itchy355

[Benni 183]

You can try to delete userdata using fastboot (reset all settings)

fastboot erase userdata

 

[Benni 183]

The wrong logo might be caused by using the wrong slot [A,B] the lineage wiki is very specific about when to flash to which slot

[itchy355 24]

There's no wrong logo, it's just that the device reboots again as soon as the ,ROM logo' would show up. I'll try fastboot erase (although after fastboot flash stock rom I'm pretty sure the phone was basically bone stock before my last attempt). FWIW this is like my 40th time of android flashing to various android devices and apart from an old samsung core prime (which had 0 custom roms and 1000s of stock ones) I've never encountered anything like this.. 😞 .. The worst thing it just happened out of the blue, there was no update, no nothing, I haven't even held the phone in my hand. I've just started my darts score counting application, put the phone down on the table and waited for my wife to get back from an evening cigarette (as I did 100 times before) and when I wanted to start playing the phone was rebooting itself again and again and again 😞

[itchy355 24]

IDK, not much of a change, I've tried the FB erase and the boot loop continued -- if I'm not mistaken I've seen some weird logo after several reboots -- something like lineage logo with ,erasing' below that but only for quarter of a second and then rebooting continued as always 😞

[EskeRahn 5,460]

6 minutes ago, itchy355 said:

IDK, not much of a change, I've tried the FB erase and the boot loop continued -- if I'm not mistaken I've seen some weird logo after several reboots -- something like lineage logo with ,erasing' below that but only for quarter of a second and then rebooting continued as always 😞

Ah! This description reminds a lot of AISP-S that after install goes into a boot loop, and only on the seventh(!) boot actually boots, and needed TWO sort of factory reset....

[itchy355 24]

I would gladly try that one. Thing is I can't find LOS 18.1 recovery boot.img anywhere. You specifically state that 19.1 won't work; could you perhaps up it to some google drive or whatnot?

[VaZso 1,998]

6 minutes ago, itchy355 said:

I would gladly try that one. Thing is I can't find LOS 18.1 recovery boot.img anywhere. You specifically state that 19.1 won't work; could you perhaps up it to some google drive or whatnot?

I have uploaded recovery of last official LineagaOS 18.1 here.

[itchy355 24]

Thank you Sir. Downloading now, will try flashing later today or tomorrow morning. In the meantime I've created a support ticket but I guess I'll send them the machine and they'll keep it for the better part of next year 😄

[Hook 3,020]

1 hour ago, itchy355 said:

Thank you Sir. Downloading now, will try flashing later today or tomorrow morning. In the meantime I've created a support ticket but I guess I'll send them the machine and they'll keep it for the better part of next year 😄

Joke aside, if they authorize you to send it in, you are likely to get it back within a month, depending mostly on how many other repairs they have.  They have spare parts right now. if needed, so they will fix quickly and return.  The first time I needed a repair on my Pro1, it was a month including travel to and from London (from US).  Second time, I knew I had to wait months for parts, but when parts were available, they had repairs done in 2 weeks.

 

[VaZso 1,998]

2 hours ago, Hook said:

Joke aside, if they authorize you to send it in, you are likely to get it back within a month, depending mostly on how many other repairs they have.  They have spare parts right now. if needed, so they will fix quickly and return.  The first time I needed a repair on my Pro1, it was a month including travel to and from London (from US).  Second time, I knew I had to wait months for parts, but when parts were available, they had repairs done in 2 weeks.

It depends on what the problem is.

At first, I would think the UFS / flash IC may failing which most probably means a mainboard repacement would be needed... or if not replacement, a replacement of a BGA part of the mainboard which does not seem to be an easy task if we are speaking about a replacement mainboard of Pro1.

However, strange things may happen - I don't know how USB panel has caused unbootable phones (except triggering EDL mode by a failed connection), so who knows if it may cause other problems as well...

Edited September 11, 2022 by VaZso

[itchy355 24]

Finally got to another try.

1; flashed recovery

2; booted into recovery

3; sideloaded aicp

4; reboot to recovery

5; sideloaded gapps

6; reboot now

... about 6 reboots and now it is stuck at the Pro1 logo ..

heck no!

BTW, no reply from tech support yet.

[EskeRahn 5,460]

The method looks sound in principle, but forget about AICP-S for now...
And anyway I use a MUCH older boot/image
lineage_18.1-20210913-recovery-pro1.img

You should fetch AICP-R not S, S is not stable (yet?), and still on march security patch....
I had a LOT of trouble with S....
With S, I needed to do a factory reset from within the recovery, and even so, it still asked me at the seventh boot, to factory reset again. And still after that does a bootloop after each flash of new version....

AICP-R is stable, so fetch a copy of R ASAP, as it is likely to roll out the bottom of their download list in a fortnight!

Don't waste your time on S until you got LOS 19 running, and/or R....

From your previous posts I fear that the bugs you got are deeper than AICP-S, but solve it in steps....

[itchy355 24]

=> boot loop. At least I get to actual rom booting, as opposed to only the kernel running in circles with lineageOS.

I like the AICP logo, though 😃 it makes one smile.. I'll leave the phone on charger for a while in case it somehow boots, but I won't hold my breath.

Thanks all for the help. I am afraid this is not a software issue. I'll wait for the support response..

BTW if they tell me to send it in, is it better to return to stock ROM or does it not matter?

EDIT; I'll try one more thing, AICP-r without gapps. Just for fun.
EDIT2; no change. The boot loop seems faster, though.

Edited September 13, 2022 by itchy355
Update.

[Hook 3,020]

No need to restore Stock Rom.  I last time I sent mine in it was on AICP. They can reflash it if needed.

[itchy355 24]

Hm, tech support is very very hard to reach these days. They initially told me to flash etc, so I've told them all the steps I'd done, and there's been radio silence ever since. Wondering if opening a new ticket would help.. 😞 still stuck with a borrowed phone, not cool. Oh well. I'll try to keep my optimism up.

[itchy355 24]

So, still no news; they finally got back to me (said they were sorry for the delay.. oh well) but only pointed me to a last self-repair attempt; I am supposed to use QFIL tool to put the stock ROM back.

Well, I tried, but failed; the device just doesn't show up. I was unable to find any official how-to guide anywhere, neither did I find anything on the mighty Internets. Anybody got a clue what to do? Tried asking the support guys but, well, they've gone back to radio silence.. 😄

[PoongZY 15]

1 hour ago, itchy355 said:

So, still no news; they finally got back to me (said they were sorry for the delay.. oh well) but only pointed me to a last self-repair attempt; I am supposed to use QFIL tool to put the stock ROM back.

Well, I tried, but failed; the device just doesn't show up. I was unable to find any official how-to guide anywhere, neither did I find anything on the mighty Internets. Anybody got a clue what to do? Tried asking the support guys but, well, they've gone back to radio silence.. 😄

Maybe you can try refer pro1-x documents. I assume the difference just the rom files 

[Hook 3,020]

3 hours ago, itchy355 said:

So, still no news; they finally got back to me (said they were sorry for the delay.. oh well) but only pointed me to a last self-repair attempt; I am supposed to use QFIL tool to put the stock ROM back.

Well, I tried, but failed; the device just doesn't show up. I was unable to find any official how-to guide anywhere, neither did I find anything on the mighty Internets. Anybody got a clue what to do? Tried asking the support guys but, well, they've gone back to radio silence.. 😄

Is this what you already tried? 

 

[itchy355 24]

Trying, but not much luck. Apparently my phone can be powered up in EDL mode, as I hope this is what it's supposed to look like

..but on Windows, with Qualcomm USB Driver v 1 installed as administrator, I see nothing in device manager and I see nothing in QPST .. I'll probably try VirtualBox windows or something. My physical windows computer is rather an old one with win 8.1..

EDIT: scratch that. Apparenly my A-C cable (used to connect to the old machine) was destroyed.. now it shown up, working further..

Edited February 12, 2023 by itchy355

[itchy355 24]

Alright, got somewhere but not exactly anywhere.

QFIL finally sees my port, great. But I'm missing the prog_firehose_ddr.elf file in my stock ROM. I got the ROM from here but apparently it's a build for fastboot, I guess.

All my googling attempts fail, again :)