ME173X won't boot-please help

[atgcpaul]

My daughters have identical ME173xs. One boots and works fine. The other does not. When it is powered on, it just shows the Asus splash screen but doesn't proceed. It just hangs there-forever. The working one shows the splash screen which dissolves away to another screen followed by the swipe screen to login.

I have tried the power and volume up combo and it just reboots to the splash screen and is stuck. I have held down power and volume up to get to the service menu. I can cycle through the 3 options--recovery, fast boot, regular boot--and if I select any option, I get back to the splash screen and I'm stuck again.

I read there could be a battery issue so I opened it up (I'm out of warranty), disconnected the battery, but that didn't fix it.

I have connected it by USB to my computer and my computer does recognize it, but I can't open the drive to even browse it. I am willing to try to root it, but if I can't even browse the ME173x files, is it even possible to root it?

Thanks,
Paul

 

[Rukbat]

No it's not. There are a few possibilities, but without actually examining it, it would be guesswork. Your choice is to bring it into a shop for a repair estimate or replace it. (If you can't get an Android device into recovery or download, it has nothing to do with rooting, since you root the normal Linux kernel, not the recovery or download kernels.)