BootLoop - No Recovery Mode

[JohnF1964]

A colleague of mine (yes honestly it wasnt me) reported that his Nexus 5 was stuck with as he put it "the wee android man in the middle of the screen" Then, before he give the phone to me to look at he said that he had tried some things with images to get it to work but it didnt work. so truthfully i am not sure what he has done or not done but the phone is stuck as follows:

When you turn the phone on you have the android robot which looks like it is doing an update.

I have gone into bootloader where I have the option to Start, Recovery Mode, Restart Bootloader and Power Off. The lock state in the Fastboot mode shows unlocked.

No matter which option you take (Even Recovery) it just goes back to the android screen that looks like it is trying to update....i cant get to the android with the exclamation mark that would allow me to do a factory reset. At this stage of the game im not worried about any lost data etc.

Any help would be of great assistance as everything i see on the web seems to need me to get into the recovery mode before doing anything.

 

[N4Newbie]

Assuming you have access to a PC, the easiest way to fix this is to:

1. Get the Wugnet Nexus Root Toolkit at WugFresh
2. Select "Soft-Bricked/Bootloop" and then Flash Stock + Unroot

 

[JohnF1964]

Thank you I am trying this now so fingers crossed. At the moment is is showing "erasing Cache on both the command prompt and the device but it has been like that for around 10 min. I will let you know how it goes.

 

[N4Newbie]

Thank you I am trying this now so fingers crossed. At the moment is is showing "erasing Cache on both the command prompt and the device but it has been like that for around 10 min. I will let you know how it goes.

The process can take quite some time, so don't get too concerned.

 

[JohnF1964]

Forgive me for being a real Newbie but im not having much luck. I initially selected what must have been the wrong image but it did get as far as erasing cache before finally failing. Now i have tried two or 3 different images as i dont get very far before the command prompt shows "FAILED <remote: flash write failure> and the phone reboots and goes into the what i have been calling update mode with the android robot. The only information I can see from which to make my choices in the Nexus Root Tookit is as follows:

Product Name: hammerhead
Variant - hammerhead D821(E) 16GB
HW Version - Rev_11
Bootloader Version: M8974A-2.6.28.0.65

In Toolkit I have selected Model Type as Nexus 5 (LG D820, D821) and the Android Build I have selected Curom Rom (LG D820, D821) KK and LP. when it comes to selecting the Factory Image then I havent a clue what to pick and the ones I have done so far dont seem to be correct and i get the aforementioned Write Failure.

 

[JohnF1964]

Just to add I downloaded the closest factory image i could find M8974A-1.0.25.0.17 and I still get the write failure.

 

[JohnF1964]

Still no joy, the last attempt which has been running now for approximately 18 hours still shows erasing cache on both command prompt (see pic) and phone.

 

[N4Newbie]

Just to add I downloaded the closest factory image i could find M8974A-1.0.25.0.17 and I still get the write failure.

Where did you find that?

IMO, you should be using either LMY48M if you want OS version 5.1.1, or MRA58N if you want version 6.0. Both can be found in the "Hammerhead" section of this page https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images

And, a pretty good writeup for manual (adb) updating here How to manually update your Nexus | Android Central

If it still fails, I might suspect a problem with the device's internal ram.

 

[JohnF1964]

Nah nothing seems to work....thanks for all your advice N4Newbie but i think the Nexus 5 will have to go in the bin.

 

[Sicily1918]

Nah nothing seems to work....thanks for all your advice N4Newbie but i think the Nexus 5 will have to go in the bin.

Before you do that, put the phone into recovery (powered off, hold Power and Vol Down), then lock and unlock the phone (re-wiping it), then run the flash-all.bat file from the latest 6.0.1 ROM from where N4Newbie said to (https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images#hammerhead) -- don't use an image from anywhere else.

I had a similar problem on a 2012 N7 and it did hang on the cache wiping for a while, but it did finally work and then everything was fine.