Bionic stuck on boot animation

BuckNut23

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May 23, 2011
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My bionic has been acting funky the last couple days. I can't figure out why, especially since I haven't installed any new apps recently. Today, I tried to hook it up to my HDMI dock and the whole phone froze. Waited a couple minutes to see if it would unfreeze itself but it didn't. I did a battery, SD, and SIM card pull and restarted. Now I'm stuck on the boot animation. I tried pulling the battery again, but got the same result...

Anyone have any insight on what I should try next? I am not rooted, btw.
 

BasPilot

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There are a few things you can try.

Built in to the system is a Recovery. Recovery is basically like a computer BIOS. It's not actually running an Operating System and doesn't exactly run on all the hardware, but it gets the job done with what it needs to do. To get to stock recovery (stock being what your phone is) you need to power on the device pushing the POWER and BOTH VOLUME BUTTONS at the same time, and hold them for a few seconds just to make sure that it sees that you are hitting them all. Upon booting of the phone into a menu with white letters, you have to navigate your phone with your buttons and not a touch screen. Press the VOLUME DOWN button one time and highlight the word Recovery then use the Volume UP button as a sort of Select function. When you do that, the screen will turn on the Red Motorola Batwing (which is the logo), and you will see that disappear shortly. When that disappears you can wait for a triangle with a ! in it, or you can press both VOLUME BUTTONS at the same time again. Now we are on a screen with blue letters. Here, your volume buttons are now up and down arrows respectively, and your POWER BUTTON becomes the "select button". You need to navigate to wipe data/Factory Reset. I'm not actually willing to hit that now and see if there is another menu under that, but you want to do that reset. I'm sorry if you lose all your data, but a working phone with no data is better than a busted phone with unaccessible data. Good news is that if you have a google account, you will be able to tell your phone to restore to this device. When you do that, put your phone down and let it get through the downloading from the Market... uh... google play... dang I hate that name... and let it finish downloading all those things so that you don't have to manually go back and find them all.

Now, if that doesn't work, I am going to put up a new post right after this one with a source for you to use for a little bit of a more advanced restore process.
 
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BasPilot

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http://www.droidforums.net/forum/motorola-droid-bionic/214902-downgrade-902-no-app-data-loss.html

Here's the original thread that I used to actually get this method, so thanks to SamuriHL on XDA and he's also over here on AC as well. He wrote that thread for downgrading... you know what, forget it... let's just do this thing.


I did loads of reading and figuring out the other day, I don't know who's method this is, I have it here somewhere, but I'm just going to give you the do this do this do that and presto version of this method. FIRST, download every attachment I have put on this post. Hmm... I'm having trouble getting the most important one of them uploaded... it may just be too big, I will find another way to get it to you... just download those two that are there...

.... this is me thinking... .... ..... .... ??? .... ...... ..... ... .. ......

Go into the thread I linked you up there and download the two zips at the end that are called House of Bionic... love that by the way.... Inside one of those zips is a file called


newvrz_xt87... and some more... .zip


When I download files from someone that says "Just download this" I am extremely tentative. You don't know me, really you don't have any reason to trust me. Aside from me just saying this... It works and I'm not a crook, so trust it! HA. Now, really, I don't need or want anything from your phone, so just get this thing going.

Now you're done wondering what kind of a freak I am and you're done downloading these things.... Open the rars and the zip with that file you located earlier and put them all on your desktop for ease of access and then so you can delete them if you wish later.

Now, first, install the Motohelper Device drivers - this come straight from Motorola and it's safe.

Then install RSDLite. This comes straight from somewhere and it works and didn't hack me, so that is probably safe too.

Now, the challenging part. You need to boot in to AP Fastboot. Like my earlier post, you need to press the POWER and BOTH VOLUME BUTTONS. when you do that a white lettered screen appears. Use the down button to get to AP Fastboot, then the UP BUTTON to select.

Once you get to the next screen, Start RSDLite on your computer. Connect your Bionic via a USB cable and for best results, use one in the back of your computer because they are... you know what, just use it...

On RSDLite, you will see a long box with "Filename" to the left of it. On the right, there is a button that has "..." on it. Really, that's the Browse files button, but no words for some reason. Click that browse files button.

Now, hunt down that file called newvrz_xt87 blah blah. Oh yeah, don't unzip that file once you have it out of the House of Bionic zip! Select that file, when you do you will get a window that pops up. Click the middle box that says uncompress and flash, I think.

Now, leave your phone connected and just wait wait wait wait wait. It will rock and roll for up to 15 minutes, maybe more. Eventually, it will restart your phone. Pay attention to the little excel looking box and it will tell you what your phone is doing at the moment. When it resets, just let it sit there. Be patient. Let it run it's course.

If your phone is booted and you haven't gotten a "Success" or some sort of similar word in the Result block, then go ahead and set your phone up.

You will be on STOCK version .902. You will need to get the Over the air (OTA) update to .905 which will bring you all the way back to exactly where your phone was WITHOUT Root, WITHOUT hacks... just like you popped it out of the box new.

Have fun!
 
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blueletter

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I've been running into this problem the past few days as well.
I've restored from safestrap and even wiped data several times, and after each time I get stuck at the animation again.
However I noticed something on my last try, It seems to only happen when I freeze bloatware. Right now I'm back to prettymuch where I was when this mess started(rooted and with all my apps back), but I'm not getting caught at the droid eye. The only thing I've done differently is not freeze any of the bloatware, I could've missed something but I think that's the only difference. Anyone got any theories on this?
 

BasPilot

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And basic troubleshooting technique is to change 1 thing at a time until you duplicate the problem. Once it is duplicated you just triggered your culprit.

If it were me, I would find what I think is the list of things I don't want. Freeze one thing at a time until I duplicate it. Then tedium sets in. After duplicating it... I do that one thing and make it happen again. Unfortunately, that means wipes, restores, many reloads. Very time consuming. But, at least you would be sure that what ever you did is the problem and you know to not do that again. Worst case scenario is that you have more than one thing messed up.

Also, you may consider putting a list of what you have frozen out here or, if you dare, on XDA... They scare me into not posting though!

Someone might look at your list of what you've frozen and say, "well see this file here? It controls your whole phone... So"

Good luck boss!
 

BuckNut23

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May 23, 2011
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Thanks for those suggestions. Funny thing I figured out by accident: an incoming call would knock the phone out of the loop and back to normal. I have no idea why this is, but for now I'm just happy to have my phone back. I plan on rooting in the near future, but if I ever encounter that problem again I'll be sure to follow your instructions.
 

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