Rebooting issue becoming ridiculous.

[prolongExistence]

I know people complain about the GNex having a reboot issue but I think mine is getting a little excessive. I have the reboot logger app installed and it is reporting that my GNex has rebooted 96 times since Feb 14th (less than 4 weeks).

I am currently unrooted with a locked bootloader on stock 4.2.1. Any one have any solutions to make this phone more stable? I love the phone except for this ridiculous rebooting. I haven't bothered to root because I don't really have a need to and I don't feel like wiping everything for no good reason. I've never felt the need to use a custom ROM but now I'm starting to think that maybe that would help. Would probably also get me free tethering.

Any suggestions??

 

[slinkies]

Root with wugs nexus root toolkit and in stall jb sourcery it's awesome and ive never had any random reboots and yes it has free Wifi tethering

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Android Central Forums

 

[prolongExistence]

I started to root (before I started this thread) with Wugs but ran into a problem. I was attempting to back up everything before it wiped my entire device (which btw I feel is total nonsense anyway) and it couldn't even get past the first stage of rebooting my phone. But, I guess if I am going to flash a new ROM then there isn't much point in backing up.

 

[slinkies]

Yeah you'll have to wipe everything to do that and if your wanting to install a custom ROM that's going to wipe your device every time it's good to do a factory reset every so often to keep things running smoothly or at least wipe caches plus as long as you keep your phone synced to your Google account everything will be backed up once you reenter your Gmail info it will re download everything automatically for you its quite easy really anyways I'd recommend root and rom anyways updates are way faster I'm on jb 4.2.2 already

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Android Central Forums

 

[prolongExistence]

Ok, so on the 13th, I rooted but I kept the stock 4.2.1 ROM.

• In a day & a half it rebooted 7 times.
• But not just that, several apps just close for no apparent reason, not a 'Force Close' error, they just close.
• I've also had issues a few times where an app won't load, it just opens and sits on a white screen.
• For some odd reason, I can NOT reinstall Friendcaster, I keep getting an 'Unknown error, can not install. Error -24' error. Tried from both the Play Store and from the Amazon App Store. I finally gave up since I really only needed it to sync my contact photos. I used 'Contact Picture Sync' and it worked great.
• One of the times it rebooted it lost my wallpaper & went back to the default. Obviously not a big deal, but certainly not a normal behavior either.
• Also, 1x this morning the phone froze but the screen was still lit. I've heard of that issue but this is the first I have experienced it.
• Still can't use any Wifi tethering. I was hoping that since I rooted this time I would be able to use 'Wifi Tether for Root Users'. I've seen mixed results here in the forums but no luck for me. Keep getting an error when trying to 'Configure AP' & then of course 'Starting AP'

So, I guess I should've just saved myself the trouble & went with a custom ROM instead of keeping stock. I checked out JB Sourcery (as slinkies suggested), seems pretty nice so I'll probably try that out this weekend unless someone else has any other suggestions.

 

[prolongExistence]

So, I bit the bullet Saturday night (16th) and decided to flash JB Sourcery. It was a little rough to install, kept getting a boot loop where I couldn't get past the blue bubbly JB Sourcery screen. Finally ended up doing a factory reset and then it worked. I have noticed that if I reboot I do sometimes end up in a boot loop but a battery pull seems to stop it. Also noticed that if I try to change the battery icon in the notification bar, the app freezes. It maximizes (to steal a MS term) so that it covers the notification bar and the soft keys and then I have to hold the power btn to reboot. And of course, the battery icon never changes. I just gave up on that and keep using the 'Battery Monitor Widget' that I've always used.

On the positive side.... It's been 3 days without a single reboot!!! (Other than the few that I initiated deliberately)
The native wifi tethering app works!!

 

[gnr_2]

I know people complain about the GNex having a reboot issue but I think mine is getting a little excessive. I have the reboot logger app installed and it is reporting that my GNex has rebooted 96 times since Feb 14th (less than 4 weeks).

I am currently unrooted with a locked bootloader on stock 4.2.1. Any one have any solutions to make this phone more stable? I love the phone except for this ridiculous rebooting. I haven't bothered to root because I don't really have a need to and I don't feel like wiping everything for no good reason. I've never felt the need to use a custom ROM but now I'm starting to think that maybe that would help. Would probably also get me free tethering.

Any suggestions??

The problem isn't the phone. The problem is 4.2.1. The rebooting is a commonly reported bug in the update.

Sent from my totally awesome Sprint Galaxy Nexus, even if I don't know all its secrets yet.

 

[Luis Rodrigues1]

Hi all.
I think I've finally found the cause of this problem...
This problem occurs because memory of the Nexus gets corrupted during some less careful NEXUS USB cable disconnections. Happens the same thing with USB sticks when you forget to select "safely disconnect USB drive".
To confirm this, if you do have reboot issues, you can try to copy to your Galaxy Nexus any file over 500MB and you will see that you will have a very slow transfer rate and that you will probably not be able even to complete the transfer (will always reboot at some point).

How to solve it... Hugh... It's not straight forward...
Restoring factory settings is just not enough, it may help you for a while but when you start to add more data and start getting it into the corrupted memory of the phone, you fall into the same problem, reboots for apparently no reason at all.
In my opinion these reboots happen when NEXUS tries to access corrupted IOIOIOIOOOOIIOIOI's on the memory, it just hangs there and device hardware protection kick's off and reboots the device.
I've restored factory settings with the new 4.3 OS, and transferring a file to Nexus over 500MB constantly rebooted the device, indicating that there was in fact some connection associated with memory reading/writing from and to NEXUS.

I've managed to completely solve the problem by flashing the ClokWorkMod Recovery v6.0.3.1 into the device, boot from it, and doing the following:

• wipe data/factory reset;
• wipe cache partition;
• mounts and storage -> format /data and /data/media (/sdcard);

Restarted the device, it installs the Android OS again, and file transfer becomes suddenly much more faster and with no reboots at all.

Resuming, be extremely careful when you unplug a USB NEXUS connected to a PC, in my opinion you should always use the "safely remove device" option on your PC.

 

[prolongExistence]

Hi all.
I think I've finally found the cause of this problem...
This problem occurs because memory of the Nexus gets corrupted during some less careful NEXUS USB cable disconnections. Happens the same thing with USB sticks when you forget to select "safely disconnect USB drive".
To confirm this, if you do have reboot issues, you can try to copy to your Galaxy Nexus any file over 500MB and you will see that you will have a very slow transfer rate and that you will probably not be able even to complete the transfer (will always reboot at some point).

How to solve it... Hugh... It's not straight forward...
Restoring factory settings is just not enough, it may help you for a while but when you start to add more data and start getting it into the corrupted memory of the phone, you fall into the same problem, reboots for apparently no reason at all.
In my opinion these reboots happen when NEXUS tries to access corrupted IOIOIOIOOOOIIOIOI's on the memory, it just hangs there and device hardware protection kick's off and reboots the device.
I've restored factory settings with the new 4.3 OS, and transferring a file to Nexus over 500MB constantly rebooted the device, indicating that there was in fact some connection associated with memory reading/writing from and to NEXUS.

I've managed to completely solve the problem by flashing the ClokWorkMod Recovery v6.0.3.1 into the device, boot from it, and doing the following:

• wipe data/factory reset;
• wipe cache partition;
• mounts and storage -> format /data and /data/media (/sdcard);

Restarted the device, it installs the Android OS again, and file transfer becomes suddenly much more faster and with no reboots at all.

Resuming, be extremely careful when you unplug a USB NEXUS connected to a PC, in my opinion you should always use the "safely remove device" option on your PC.

Hmmmm, I'm not sure I agree with this theory. Anyone else care to weigh in??

At least 2 of the times that I have flashed a custom ROM, I have formatted data. I also almost never connect as a USB drive. Usually only if I need to use Wugs Toolkit for something. I still get several reboots. Seems to me that it is usually due to a dropped signal, especially dropped WiFi.

Luis, 2 questions...
1. How successful has this been? How long have you gone without a reboot? Are you sure it isn't rebooting without you realizing it (are you using a boot logger)?
2. Where did you get 4.3?

 

[ratsttam]

Hmmmm, I'm not sure I agree with this theory. Anyone else care to weigh in??

At least 2 of the times that I have flashed a custom ROM, I have formatted data. I also almost never connect as a USB drive. Usually only if I need to use Wugs Toolkit for something. I still get several reboots. Seems to me that it is usually due to a dropped signal, especially dropped WiFi.

Luis, 2 questions...
1. How successful has this been? How long have you gone without a reboot? Are you sure it isn't rebooting without you realizing it (are you using a boot logger)?
2. Where did you get 4.3?

It COULD be caused by corrupted memory, but that should have cleared out when you unlocked and it wiped your whole phone, so I don't think that's the reason. It's been reported across all Nexi that 4.2.1 had reboot issues. Since then, all GSM nexus, as well as Verizon's has been updated to 4.2.2 which was supposed to fix the reboot issue. Sprint is still on 4.2.1, so you'll have to install a different rom that's based on 4.2.2 (and they all should be by now).

Luis is mistaken about 4.3. The CDMA version of the Galaxy Nexus (sprint/verizon) don't have the necessary binary files yet. Once Sprint/Verizon make them available, then builds can be made for their respective carriers.

 

[Luis Rodrigues1]

Hi everyone...

I do have a Sarmsung Google Nexus, although it's not the Verizon version. I have the GSM version (bought in Portugal / Europe, unlocked from factory), and the 4.3 OS is already available for this version (i haven't done an OTA update, i've downloaded the OS from internet and installed it on the phone).

PRODUCT NAME: tuna
VARIANT: maguro 16GB
HW Version: 9
BOOTLOADER VERSION: PRIMELC03
BASEBAND VERSION: I9250XXLJ1
LOCK STATE: UNLOCKED

Just a couple of notes:

1. I believe that restoring factory defaults does not format your corrupted memory on the phone, only overwrites the OS and declares the rest of the memory headers as empty, although you do have them corrupted, and when you keep filling phone's memory with more data you will eventually start using the corrupted portion of it and will have again reboot issues;
2. I had the latest OTA update on my phone, it was the 4.2.1, with reboot issues. I've tried to update to 4.2.2 to overcome this issue without formatting the memory of the phone and when transferring large files the phone kept rebooting, i've had also random reboots;
3. Updated again to OS 4.3 (the latest already available for GSM models), and the same reboot issues continued. Any file over 500MB sent to the phone via USB or Bluetooth or Wi-fi would eventually reboot the phone and transfer rates aren't what they were when i bought the phone;
4. Flashed the ClokWorkMod Recovery v6.0.3.1 and formatted all that it was possible to format:

- wipe data/factory reset;
- wipe cache partition;
- mounts and storage -> format /data and /data/media (/sdcard);​

5. After point 4 the speed on the NEXUS improved dramatically, not only phone interface experience but also transfer speeds (it has become an extraordinarily fast phone, user experience has dramatically improved);
6. I do know that my phone does not reboot because when it does/did, it requests me the PIN code of my SIM card, and it's also possible to check on phone options for how long it has been connected to your phone carrier;​

Therefore, i truly believe that:

a. Reboot issues are coming from corrupted memory on you phone;
b. Corrupted memory is caused from USB disconnections during files transfers or data that's still being sent to/from the phone to other devices via USB;
c. The only way to overcome this is to format completely you NEXUS (restoring factory defaults is not enough);
d. To confirm if your phone has corrupted memory just send a large file to your phone, preferably filling completely phone's memory (via Wi-Fi, USB, BT, whatever). If you do have a corrupted memory the transfer will eventually freeze and NEXUS will kick off system protection and reboot;
e. Reboot issues are not related with the OS you have. Any OS with a NEXUS healthy memory will have no problems;
f. Reboot issues will come up when your phone has the need to use a portion of the corrupted memory to whatever he needs to do (update emails, update widgets, whatever possibility you may imagine that uses phone memory, that's why is so random...)​

Please do take special attention for the information above because it fixes permanently your NEXUS reboot issues, safely disconnecting external USB devices will prevent phone memory corruption and keep the NEXUS extremely fast and enjoyable to use.

Please do share your comments if you apply method described on point 4 to confirm all of the above.

Regards,
Luis

 

[prolongExistence]

It COULD be caused by corrupted memory, but that should have cleared out when you unlocked and it wiped your whole phone, so I don't think that's the reason. It's been reported across all Nexi that 4.2.1 had reboot issues. Since then, all GSM nexus, as well as Verizon's has been updated to 4.2.2 which was supposed to fix the reboot issue. Sprint is still on 4.2.1, so you'll have to install a different rom that's based on 4.2.2 (and they all should be by now).

Luis is mistaken about 4.3. The CDMA version of the Galaxy Nexus (sprint/verizon) don't have the necessary binary files yet. Once Sprint/Verizon make them available, then builds can be made for their respective carriers.

Yea, I have formatted the phone at least 2x when flashing a new ROM. I've also tried at least a half dozen ROMs that are all 4.2.2 and they all reboot like crazy. Some even just all together crashed to the point of being unrepairable. Had to reflash.

At this point, what do I have to loose? Next time I flash, I'll format data again & be extra cautious as Luis states. I'll probably wait until the next ROM update unless it annoys me enough to do it sooner.

 

[prolongExistence]

Luis,
Its been a week since you posted your fix. How successful has it been?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using AC Forums mobile app

 

[Luis Rodrigues1]

Luis,
Its been a week since you posted your fix. How successful has it been?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using AC Forums mobile app

So far no reboots.
It's heavy loaded with Go Launcher that as on top of it HD Widgets, email widgets running (corporative and personal), and also live stock data.
Nexus is synced with google account uploading daily photos, videos, contacts. A corporative account and SKYPE are also synced up.
SKYPE is running on the background 24hrs/day.
I also use tomtom regularly.
GPS localization services are also active, they are activated whenever an app needs to check phone location (photos, Instagram, whatever...).
I?m am taking extra care with USB data transfers between Nexus and PC.

 

[prolongExistence]

I finally went ahead and followed your directions after having over 200 reboots in a month. Since following your advice I've had 4 reboots in the first day. One thing that may be an issue is that I use TWRP instead of CWM (not crazy about CWM). In TWRP it says format /data and there is no option for format /data/media. Is there another way to format /media and can I do it without reflashing?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using AC Forums mobile app

 

[Ethan Grimes]

I finally went ahead and followed your directions after having over 200 reboots in a month. Since following your advice I've had 4 reboots in the first day. One thing that may be an issue is that I use TWRP instead of CWM (not crazy about CWM). In TWRP it says format /data and there is no option for format /data/media. Is there another way to format /media and can I do it without reflashing?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using AC Forums mobile app

First, make sure you're on TWRP 2.6 that was released pretty recently and not an earlier version. Then, to ensure a complete wipe (which is not usually recommended unless you're having issues which, you are) go to advanced wipe and check dalvik cache, system, cache, data, and internal storage. When done, go to format data and type yes. Then go to the menu where you see advanced and format data and swipe to factory (which at this point is redundant, but do it. Then adb push the rom and gapps you want and install them.

Make sure all your stuff is backed up first and try to avoid flashing anything extra or removing any system apps. If you have reboots after all of that, then the hardware of your device is definitely the problem.



Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

 

[prolongExistence]

First, make sure you're on TWRP 2.6 that was released pretty recently and not an earlier version. Then, to ensure a complete wipe (which is not usually recommended unless you're having issues which, you are) go to advanced wipe and check dalvik cache, system, cache, data, and internal storage. When done, go to format data and type yes. Then go to the menu where you see advanced and format data and swipe to factory (which at this point is redundant, but do it. Then adb push the rom and gapps you want and install them.

Make sure all your stuff is backed up first and try to avoid flashing anything extra or removing any system apps. If you have reboots after all of that, then the hardware of your device is definitely the problem.



Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

Ok, I do have to update my TWRP, I'm still on 2.4.2 although I thought I had updated to 2.5. Normally when I do this, I would use Wugs to Flash zips (Advanced Utiliities>Flash zip...) and then install with TWRP. You say to adb push, is that a matter of preference or is it a better method? And would that be the ADB Sideload Update in Wugs? When TWRP formats data is it formatting just the /data partition or is it also formatting /data/media as

Luis Rodrigues1 ​

mentions in his posts above?

Thanks for the help. My wife keeps telling me to bring it to Sprint but I'm hesitant bc I know they will just do a factory reset & tell me its fixed. I would have to try to convince them its hardware related & needs to be replaced.

 

[Ethan Grimes]

Ok, I do have to update my TWRP, I'm still on 2.4.2 although I thought I had updated to 2.5. Normally when I do this, I would use Wugs to Flash zips (Advanced Utiliities>Flash zip...) and then install with TWRP. You say to adb push, is that a matter of preference or is it a better method? And would that be the ADB Sideload Update in Wugs? When TWRP formats data is it formatting just the /data partition or is it also formatting /data/media as

Luis Rodrigues1 ​

mentions in his posts above?

Thanks for the help. My wife keeps telling me to bring it to Sprint but I'm hesitant bc I know they will just do a factory reset & tell me its fixed. I would have to try to convince them its hardware related & needs to be replaced.

To answer your question about /data/media, it's just like in windows. If you delete the main folder that is housing a subfolder, the subfolder is gone. As for your use of Wugs, I don't use toolkits so I can't tell you what to choose on it but I'll give you some instructions that will teach you how to flash roms and such on your phone much better than via a toolkit.

Alright, let's get you updated and working on your phone a little differently. I don't hate on toolkits, they can certainly be handy, but using adb and fastboot are much better ways of working on your device.

First, download the android sdk. Extract it and go through the folders to \sdk\platform-tools. Download the TWRP 2.6 .img file for the Sprint Galaxy Nexus. Copy the downloaded file into the platform-tools folder. I'm assuming the toolkit installed the necessary adb and fastboot drivers for your device so we'll move past that. The fastboot command needed to flash this is on the same page as the download, but hold shift and then right click while in the platform-tools folder to bring up a context menu so you can open a command window that starts in that folder. Type in

fastboot flash recovery openrecovery-twrp-2.6.0.0-toroplus.img

and hit enter. This will update your recovery, you should see a successful message in the command prompt window. Then reboot into recovery from the command prompt with

fastboot boot openrecovery-twrp-2.6.0.0-toroplus.img

In recovery, you'll do the wipe method I outlined in my previous post. Then, to do an adb push, you'll download the ROM and GAPPS you want (since we're trying to see if your phone has hardware issues and 4.3 is still a bit buggy, find a good 4.2.2 ROM like Mmuzzy that is pure vanilla with no tweaks except the two master key vulnerability patches). Once you download them, copy them into your platform-tools folder and then using the same command prompt as earlier, type in

adb push filename.zip data/media

and hit enter. This will make the command prompt look a bit frozen for a minute, but it's just copying the file to your device. Once it's done you'll get a successful indication. Then type in the same code but use the GAPPS zip file name. Once that's done, go to your install menu in TWRP and navigate to the data/media folder and choose your ROM. After that is selected, choose add more zips and choose your GAPPS zip, then tell it to flash. After it's done, reboot to system and you should be good to go. If your reboot issues persist, then it's a hardware issue.

Hope this helps, let us know how it goes if you decide to try my method.

If it all works fine with no reboots for a couple of days, then try downloading and flashing whatever ROM you like, if issues come back, then at least you have a baseline to work from for troubleshooting.

 

[prolongExistence]

For some reason I was thinking that /media was a symlink to a different partition. Now that I think about what you said, my thought doesn't make any sense since there are basically no limitations to how many apps can be installed. That's one of the big advantages to not having a removable sd card.


I understand your point with using toolkits. I'm tech savvy enough to do it myself, I'm just to lazy. That being said, I downloaded the latest sdk & TWRP (I had older versions of both). I followed your directions EXACTLY, only problem I had was that I couldn't get Mmuzzy's Vanilla to download correctly, it would only download a 10.5Mb file. I ended up using Mmuzzy's French Vanilla which is the last ROM I had been using. I don't think it should matter as there are barely any customizations/tweaks in the french vanilla version anyway.

Hmmm, not looking good. Couldn't even make it through setup without rebooting a couple times. I wiped & flashed again but still rebooting. Maybe I should've mentioned sooner but don't even know if it means anything... every time it crashes the log says "Kernel panic. Sync failed. Fatal exception"

Looks like a trip to Sprint may be in my near future. :-\

 

[Ethan Grimes]

Hi

For some reason I was thinking that /media was a symlink to a different partition. Now that I think about what you said, my thought doesn't make any sense since there are basically no limitations to how many apps can be installed. That's one of the big advantages to not having a removable sd card.


I understand your point with using toolkits. I'm tech savvy enough to do it myself, I'm just to lazy. That being said, I downloaded the latest sdk & TWRP (I had older versions of both). I followed your directions EXACTLY, only problem I had was that I couldn't get Mmuzzy's Vanilla to download correctly, it would only download a 10.5Mb file. I ended up using Mmuzzy's French Vanilla which is the last ROM I had been using. I don't think it should matter as there are barely any customizations/tweaks in the french vanilla version anyway.

Hmmm, not looking good. Couldn't even make it through setup without rebooting a couple times. I wiped & flashed again but still rebooting. Maybe I should've mentioned sooner but don't even know if it means anything... every time it crashes the log says "Kernel panic. Sync failed. Fatal exception"

Looks like a trip to Sprint may be in my near future. :-\

Yeah, at this point I'd recommend getting your phone stock and unrooted then handed over to Sprint. Just make them understand that it's bad hardware so they don't hand it back. Sorry bud.

FYI, a key argument for convincing them it's hardware related is to tell them you called Samsung tech support for the issue and they couldn't help. You really can call if you like, but at this point you've done more to troubleshoot than anyone on the phone will.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4