What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it?

[ekuns]

I have a six month old Epic 4G, rooted, CWM recovery, but otherwise stock. I used Root Uninstaller to remove three of the annoying preloaded apps that I never use. I have a 32GB SD connected to the phone.

The problem: I have a very irritating "warm reboot:" problem that is making me crazy. The symptoms:

1) After booting, the phone is sometimes extremely laggy (obviously something is taking CPU).
2) Within a few minutes, the screen goes black and the four soft keys light up.
3) About ten seconds later, the GUI restarts and it starts scanning the flash.
4) This always completes. Within seconds to minutes after scanning completes, this happens again.
5) If the screen is off when it "reboots" then the screen first turns on briefly, then goes black.

What else I notice:

* The "uptime" reported is not reset. It increases as if there was no "reboot."
* This is not a real reboot. It looks like the kernel is not rebooting, just the UI layer. (?)
* Once I can get it to boot and not reboot, it's stable for days.
* Using the phone right after it boots seems to increase the chance of this happening.
* In the past, if I disabled WiFi and 4G and then went into airplane mode, this would greatly reduce the chance of this happening, but now my phone has been constantly warm rebooting even in airplane mode.
* This does not appear to be correlated with phone temperature. The phone can be cool to the touch or warm to the touch and this will happen.

Questions:

1) Is this a known issue that is not present in a 3rd party ROM?
2) I've tried wiping caches before. Makes no difference.
3) Does moving a lot of apps to SD cause this? With only 1/2 GB of built-in app memory, I have no choice but to move almost everything to the SD.
4) If my SD is full (say, of backups), does that make this more likely? Note that the scans report that they completed before this reboot ever occurs.
5) Is there a real name for this "reboot" that I can Google for? When I search for "reboot loop" or "warm reboot" I get unrelated failures. I saw one thread where someone mentioned a "sense reboot" but that seems to be an HTC thing?

What is the best solution for this? Thanks!

Note: I never applied the latest update because I'm rooted so it doesn't install.

 

[lordfire00]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

I have a six month old Epic 4G, rooted, CWM recovery, but otherwise stock. I used Root Uninstaller to remove three of the annoying preloaded apps that I never use. I have a 32GB SD connected to the phone.

The problem: I have a very irritating "warm reboot:" problem that is making me crazy. The symptoms:

1) After booting, the phone is sometimes extremely laggy (obviously something is taking CPU).
2) Within a few minutes, the screen goes black and the four soft keys light up.
3) About ten seconds later, the GUI restarts and it starts scanning the flash.
4) This always completes. Within seconds to minutes after scanning completes, this happens again.
5) If the screen is off when it "reboots" then the screen first turns on briefly, then goes black.

What else I notice:

* The "uptime" reported is not reset. It increases as if there was no "reboot."
* This is not a real reboot. It looks like the kernel is not rebooting, just the UI layer. (?)
* Once I can get it to boot and not reboot, it's stable for days.
* Using the phone right after it boots seems to increase the chance of this happening.
* In the past, if I disabled WiFi and 4G and then went into airplane mode, this would greatly reduce the chance of this happening, but now my phone has been constantly warm rebooting even in airplane mode.
* This does not appear to be correlated with phone temperature. The phone can be cool to the touch or warm to the touch and this will happen.

Questions:

1) Is this a known issue that is not present in a 3rd party ROM?
2) I've tried wiping caches before. Makes no difference.
3) Does moving a lot of apps to SD cause this? With only 1/2 GB of built-in app memory, I have no choice but to move almost everything to the SD.
4) If my SD is full (say, of backups), does that make this more likely? Note that the scans report that they completed before this reboot ever occurs.
5) Is there a real name for this "reboot" that I can Google for? When I search for "reboot loop" or "warm reboot" I get unrelated failures. I saw one thread where someone mentioned a "sense reboot" but that seems to be an HTC thing?

What is the best solution for this? Thanks!

Note: I never applied the latest update because I'm rooted so it doesn't install.

ok, first of all. you say that you are stock but rooted, what version of stock are you on? ei22 or el30? lets start from there, and then we can help you fix the problem.

 

[ekuns]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

ok, first of all. you say that you are stock but rooted, what version of stock are you on? ei22 or el30? lets start from there, and then we can help you fix the problem.

My stock base is EI22, build Gingerbread.ei22, Kernel 2.6.35.7 (the kernel as installed following QBKing77's rooting instructions for Gingerbread). Hardware version is D700.0.5, just in case there are variants. Since I am rooted, the update for EL30 won't install. It would be nice to get rid of CarrierIQ, but that's a topic for another day.

I know how to pull the system logs (I have Log Collector installed), but when I've looked following a crash or one of these reboot cycles I didn't see anything obvious. I'm not sure what to look for, or whether this app gathers the logs that I really need.

I've made both Nandroid backups and have used MyBackup Pro to make backups, and I'm tempted to just go to a custom ROM, but I can't decide which of the many ROMs would be most appropriate for me. As I understand it, going to a custom ROM would essentially require a factory reset (eqivalent). But I had to do one of those after upgrading to Gingerbread as the phone was in a reboot loop (full reboot, not what I'm dealing with now) after that update was applied.

Anyway, what's most important to me is understand WHY the phone is crashing. If I can figure that out, then I'll have some confidence that a different ROM (or some other solution) will actually fix the problem and not just delay it for a week or two.

Thanks!

 

[Paul627g]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

This all could very well be related to an application on your device. Removing a few apps of bloatware shouldn't be causing this, it almost sounds like application could be causing this not playing nice with your device or other apps.

 

[ekuns]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

This all could very well be related to an application on your device. Removing a few apps of bloatware shouldn't be causing this, it almost sounds like application could be causing this not playing nice with your device or other apps.

I just removed SetCPU, which I had never configured to do anything at boot, just in case it is doing anything non-obvious at startup ... although I don't see it acquiring root access at startup unless I have first run it manually and the phone does a UI reboot. (I essentially never run it due to this instability.)

The weird thing to me is that this is a UI reboot only, meaning the "uptime" reported by the phone is not reset when this happens.

 

[adlebo]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

I used to have this annoying reboot problem as well. I updated to el30 and then installed cm9 which works great, and i didn't have the problem since. However i must add that i didn't reinstall all apps that i used to have. One of the apps i didn't reinstall immediately is "what's app". Later on when i reinstalled "what's app" it happened again. So i uninstalled it and problem gone. So if you have what's app, i would first uninstall it to see if that's the problem. If not go to cm9 and you won't look back! Let me know what works for you!

 

[lordfire00]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

yes, they are correct, it's most likely one of your apps that is not playing nice with the rest of the phone

 

[Zeinzu]

Soft reboots are generally caused by low memory scenarios where the memory is unable to recover fast enough.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[lordfire00]

Zei, not necessarly

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[Zeinzu]

"generally"

Please read my posts before replying to them.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[ekuns]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

I used to have this annoying reboot problem as well. I updated to el30 and then installed cm9 which works great, and i didn't have the problem since. However i must add that i didn't reinstall all apps that i used to have. One of the apps i didn't reinstall immediately is "what's app". Later on when i reinstalled "what's app" it happened again. So i uninstalled it and problem gone. So if you have what's app, i would first uninstall it to see if that's the problem. If not go to cm9 and you won't look back! Let me know what works for you!

I've been thinking of CM9. I assume that if I go to CM9 I don't have to first update to EL30. I can just flash directly to CyanogenMod 9, right?

I don't have that particular app installed. Is there any way by looking at logs I can get an idea what app is causing this, if it is a specific app? Thanks!

 

[ekuns]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

Soft reboots are generally caused by low memory scenarios where the memory is unable to recover fast enough.

I thought of this, and when I monitor memory usage, free memory does not seem to go to zero or even that low. Is a "soft reboot" just Dalvik restarting, or is it something more substantial? Anyway, memory does not *appear* to be the cause for my case. Thanks, though, for the response.

 

[adlebo]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

I've been thinking of CM9. I assume that if I go to CM9 I don't have to first update to EL30. I can just flash directly to CyanogenMod 9, right?

I don't have that particular app installed. Is there any way by looking at logs I can get an idea what app is causing this, if it is a specific app? Thanks!

First of all, I do not know of a way to check which app is causing trouble. Secondly, you absolutely need to update your phone to EL30 first before going to cm9. This will upgrade the radio/modem first and then on cm9 you will have the greatest experience possible. Actually people who were on cm7 or cm9 came back to upgrade to el30 and then returned to cm9! It's not hard to update to el30 now with odin, since the "odin tar file" for el30 is available. If you read the forums by the rooting section you shouldn't have any problems.

 

[lordfire00]

If u are thinking of flashing to cm9, I strongly recommend first reading about before u do. There are much different steps when on cm9, versus bml. Cm9 is mtd

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[lordfire00]

Reboots are also kernel related.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[uscpsycho]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

I am having this exact same problem and it is driving me bonkers. Desperate to fix it but haven't been able to.

 

[adlebo]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

I am having this exact same problem and it is driving me bonkers. Desperate to fix it but haven't been able to.

If you want to fix it read about cm9 and flash it. Then let me know if you still have this very very annoying problem! Good luck.

 

[uscpsycho]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

I have considered cm9. I have considered cm7. I have considered lots of ROMs. But it seems like every ROM has problems. Some break Swype. Some break visual voice mail. Some break camera/flash functions. Some have orientation issues. Every freaking ROM seems to break something. Is there a ROM out there that doesn't have a laundry list of issues, warnings and items that need to be fixed?

When I rooted my phone I was excited about trying different ROMs but every time I got serious about doing it I became dissuaded by all the new problems I'd be inviting.

I don't want to install a ROM just to make my phone look/act like it has ICS or to get cool customizations. I want my phone to do everything it was supposed to do, do it well and do it with stability. What ROM does that????

With the exception of horrid keyboard lag, my phone seemed to work best way back when it had Froyo. I've had nothing but headaches since Gingerbread.

 

[Zeinzu]

My cm9 works just fine and dandy.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[uscpsycho]

Re: What causes "reboot on boot" warm reboots and how to I fix it

My cm9 works just fine and dandy.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

No it doesn't. There is a giant "to-do" list of things that need to be fixed or are missing. And based on what I read over at xda a good number of people complaining about various bugs & problems.

I think I'm going to take a stab at CleanGB. That seems to be what I'm looking for -- a solid, no frills ROM without any bloat that just works.