In dire need of help. Recovery reboot loop due to negligence

[dollarhax]

no go on magus idea either

 

[cole2kb]

You don't need to be in recovery to do those steps, you can do them from inside your ROM. You can stay booted into CM7, right?

Let's break this down, and start over. Now that I'm at a keyboard, I can type out a novel on this if need be. There is no reason why this shouldn't work, that I can tell.

Here goes.

Download this file to your SD card: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72059024/flash_image
Also, this one: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72059024/recovery.img

Let your phone boot up to CM7.
Download Terminal Emulator from the Market.
Plug it in to your PC.
Open a command prompt and go to the platform-tools folder.
Type in "adb remount"
If it doesn't say "remount succeeded", stop and report back as to what exactly it says / does.

Open Terminal Emulator on your phone. All of the following commands will be typed in there, not on your PC.
Type in 'su'. It should now show you a prompt for Superuser access, press 'Allow'. Go through the following commands below, one at a time.

Please report back immediately with ANY errors.

cat /sdcard/flash_image > /system/bin/flash_image

chmod 755 /system/bin/flash_image

mount -o remount,ro /system /system

flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img

reboot recovery

There is no reason I can think of why this won't work. I don't know what is going wrong otherwise without seeing it for myself, which, like I said, is possible, but we would just need to set up a time to do so.

If all went well, you should be in Xionia recovery. From here, we will flash the stock ZV9 ROM, but I don't want to bog you down with steps if you can't even get this far.

I know you've apparently done all this before, but humor me. Try it one more type, exactly as typed.

 

[dollarhax]

Did it exactly as typed, just goes back to CWM recovery failed nonsense. erases, turns on and off a few times, goes to CM7 charging screen. no errors in between any of it (other than me accidentally typing remouny instead of remount which i fixed). when i do flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery.img, should it be telling me anything? i hit enter and it just goes to the next line.

 

[cole2kb]

Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't.

How much time will it give you in recovery before it reboots? Do you have time to hit a few buttons?

My next idea is for you to copy the stock update.zip to your SD card, and just start the flash in recovery with hopes that it won't reboot mid-way through, but I can understand if you don't want to try that.

 

[cole2kb]

When you type 'su' in the terminal, does it ask you for Superuser access?

 

[cole2kb]

Also, you say you get stuck in CWM recovery, does it say Xionia CWM or just CWM?

 

[dollarhax]

I can't even get to recovery is the thing. I can't even "break" it again to just nonstop keep me in recovery. otherwise i'd be trying to flash the xonia through the sd card .zip install thing.

it does ask for SU access when i type su, allowed it etc

 

[cole2kb]

Okay, I think I understand now. I was under the impression it was entering recovery and then crashing, wiping, etc... but basically, you're saying it just begins to wipe when you reboot the phone? Or does the ROM itself crash and reboot and wipe?

 

[dollarhax]

it actually doesn't say cwm, i just assume it's th at because it's orange text and has the same background as the cwm one that i had used from before.

 

[dollarhax]

Yep if I restart it, even when holding the home + vol down + power to get to recovery it just starts wiping cache and factory resetting, then reboots the phone, then loads CM7 like a fresh install of it.

 

[dollarhax]

android system recovery..

DO NOT PULL OUT BATTERY!

formatting cache
formatting data
factory reset
restarting

that's what i get

 

[cole2kb]

Okay, so reading a few other threads, Xionia could be what is causing the reflash each time.

So, my next set of steps for you to try, is to re-do everything I said to do in the first post, EXCEPT
use this recovery instead: VM670NH_recovery.img

and in the last step, make sure to type in VM670NH_recovery.img instead of just recovery.img. Then, if I am correct, you will be basically stuck in recovery, which sounds bad, but is actually progress.

If this doesn't work, then I'm stumped, and somebody with knowledge of fastboot will have to chime in. Anybody?

 

[dollarhax]

woo it got into the recovery. now what? i do have xonia's recovery zip on here, as well as the cm7 .zips (gapps and backside iho)

thoughts? Btw, i very much appreciate the help. I'm clueless with phones but I know how frustrating troubleshooting is without being able to see what you're working with. Even if it somehow just doesn't ever work again, I understand and am very thankful.

 

[magus7091]

Wtg tracking that one down Cole.. As soon as I saw the formatting message it all clicked. So now that there is a recovery, can a different one be reflashed without format hell?

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Android Central Forums

 

[magus7091]

Just saw the other question... Now that you have a different recovery see if you can reboot normally.. If that works then you should be able to install any recovery... Cole might know for sure, but based on what I know, try it and if it starts going crazy again just reflash the other recovery. Worse comes to worse you can go back to that one.

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Android Central Forums

 

[dollarhax]

so i should try rebooting? is it bad i'm afraid to try and turn it off >_> going to wait on confirmation from Cole, not that i don't trust you, just don't want to go through all of this if i can just skip reflashing all over again.

n00blord heere.

 

[magus7091]

No offense taken at all... If I'm reading the link correctly there's a boot loop fix in xionia, and since you have the flashable zip version of xionia what should happen next is flash that, select reboot recovery, and that should get you into xionia recovery and then fix boot loop, and install gapps and done..
[edit]
Please keep us informed of any progress either way. Also, if Cole can confirm, would this step be safe or is there another recovery with that particular option?

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Android Central Forums

 

[cole2kb]

Okay!! Awesome!!

NOW, was the OV originally shipped with 2.2.1? or 2.2.2? If it was 2.2.1, I'd recommend installing this ZIP: http://forums.androidcentral.com/op...6-working-stock-2-2-1-vm670-zip-unrooted.html

Wipe /data /system /boot /cache and wipe Dalvik cache, then flash the ROM. Reboot, you will be in a stock unrooted ROM and you can go from there.

----

If it originally shipped with 2.2.2, I would flash the stock update.zip. You'll want to do this one twice. Do the wipe, flash it, reboot phone, then reboot BACK into Recovery (you'll be in stock recovery this time) and flash it again. The link is here: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/resources/update.zip

The end result (hopefully) for either of these will be a stock, unrooted ROM. From there, you'll basically start from scratch as far as rooting / installing a custom ROM. I'll try to keep an eye on this, but my eyes are closing, so if not I'll be back in the morning to see how it went.

 

[magus7091]

Is there any fix without going full stock?

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Android Central Forums

 

[dollarhax]

I'm not sure which the phone was shipped with. Should I do 2.2.1 to be safe? How should I go about putting .zips on the sd card if i cannot turn on usb sharing? just use my other phone to transfer like I was before?