Deadstar Assembly performing at Triton Festival and more
July 21, 2010Funny Voicemail
October 31, 2010
Tonight I was using my G1, sifting through my gallery of images when all of a sudden, my phone froze and then began to reboot itself. During the reboot, It froze up and after a while of waiting, I decided to pull the battery out and rebooting it after putting it back in. My G1 Android with CyanogenMod 6.0.0 RC1 would not reboot and kept getting stuck in the T-Mobile Boot up screen as shown below. I then tried going into my recovery console by holding down the home button and power button and that didn’t work either. Luckily, when I booted up the phone by holding the camera button and the power button, I was able to access the bootloader screen. I started searching on Google for an answer to my problem and all that I came up with was people on forums ranting to others with the same issue saying, “Congratulations, you’ve bricked your phone.” I even saw one response that told the poster of the topic to throw his phone really hard on the floor until it broke so that he could call t-mobile and get a replacement phone with the insurance replacement. I thought this was one of the stupidest things I’ve heard and searched deeper for the solution to this issue.
Luckily, I came across a user on the CyanogenMod forum which guided me to this topic on how to fix the recovery image when your G1 is stuck at the bootup screen. Unfortunately, even after reading this post, I had a hard time figuring out how to get all of this to work so I decided to write a very detailed blog article on how to fix this issue.
I noticed that when I plugged in my phone with USB and turned it on by holding the Home and Power button, I would get a little red box on the top of the bootup screen that said FASTBOOT USB on it. If you see this as well, you’re in good condition to fix the problem.
I knew that I’d have to download the Android SDK in order to get some of the tools I needed to fix this issue.
Here are the exact steps I took to fix my G1.
1. I went to http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/ and downloaded the latest JDK under Java Platform, Standard Edition and installed it. Now thinking back, I may not have needed this, but did i’m going to list every step I did anyway just in case.
2. I then went to http://developer.android.com/sdk/ and downloaded the Windows version of the Android SDK. Once I Ran the SDK Setup.exe to install it, I had an issue downloading the packages in order to install the SDK so I went into Settings and ticked the box that said Force https://… sources to be fetched using http:// … (Again, I may not have needed to install the SDK packages to fix this issue, but listing it since I did it anyway.)
3. I downloaded the recovery image I wanted to use from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=4647751&postcount=1. Towards the bottom of the post, I downloaded the actual image which was the latest stable version of the Amon_RA / Cyanogen recovery image. Here’s the link for the file: http://rapidshare.com/files/387558152/recovery-RA-dream-v1.7.0-cyan.img.
4. After downloading the Recovery image, I renamed it to recovery.img to make it easier to type in the next steps below. I moved this recovery image to the Android SDK folder I still had on my desktop. I made sure to put the recovery.img file into the tools folder. The exact path was now C:\Users\The Dro\Desktop\android-sdk-windows\tools.
5. Go to your start menu and RUN CMD to open your command prompt.
6. In command Prompt, I typed in “CD desktop\android-sdk-windows\tools” to move into my tools folder where I placed the recovery.img file along with all the tools included with the Android SDK.
7. After changing the directory to your tools folder, you’re going to run the fastboot tool to flash your recovery image back into your G1 by typing “fastboot flash recovery recovery.img”. This should give you a message that says “”. This is when I plugged the USB cable back into my G1 and booted the phone up by holding down the Home and Power button to get that message at the top of the screen that said “Fastboot USB” once again. I then noticed that the command prompt had successfully reloaded the new recovery image back into the phone.
8. I turned the phone off by removing the battery and unplugging the USB cable. Then rebooted it again using the HOME and POWER button to check if the recovery image really got reloaded back into my HTC Dream / G1 Cell phone. Fortunately, I got the recovery console once again with no problems.
9. I then re-downloaded the ROM operating system I wanted to flash into my phone which was the most recent ROM at the time I wrote this post (update-cm-6.0.0-DS-RC1-signed.zip by ciwrl) and the Google Addon FRF91-MDPI-3 by ciwrl. Make sure that if you use the 6.0 ROM that you follow all necessary instructions on the CyanogenMod website in order to have the correct Radio and steps needed to get this ROM working on your G1.
10. While still in the recovery console on the G1, I clicked Alt+T to enter USB-MS Toggle Mode. This connects your phone to your PC and you can then move your ROM ZIP file onto the root of your memory card. After the file has transferred, Press the HOME key to disable the USB Toggle mode and re-enter the main menu of your recovery console.
11. Press Alt+F to enter the FLASH ZIP from SDCARD and select the ZIP file which includes the ROM you just downloaded to flash the G1 with. It should then ask you to hit the HOME key to confirm that you want to flash this ROM into your phone. Remember though, this may wipe all the data you had on your phone’s OS before. Regardless, just be glad that you’re phone isn’t really bricked and that you’re on your way to being able to use it again.
12. Once it’s done loading this onto your phone, go ahead and hit HOME + BACK button to reboot your phone. It may take a little while to boot back up the first time since you have loaded a new rom onto it, but be patient and let it do it’s thing.
I hope this has helped you “un-brick” your phone. I noticed a lot of times when looking for technical help on the web, people are very vague with directions and it makes it a little difficult for people who don’t really know what they’re doing. I definitely believe that people who don’t know what they’re doing shouldn’t be rooting their Android phones and trying to load a new OS onto it, but it seems to be the “cool” thing to do and I know you guys are going to try it anyway.
31 Comments
hey bro, i think you can help me with this, my htc dream doesnt show the red box as you said.. its bricked very badly. please help
Was your phone rooted to begin with?
yeah i tried to root it with newer version of android,
Well, You have to root it first, then you can try adding the upgraded rom to it. So my question was asking whether or not you had the phone rooted successfully first, or if it bricked while trying to root it first.
it got bricked when trying to root
it got bricked when trying to root,
as i searched through the net, i think the only
solution for me is jtaging. but that is really complicated as i read,
That will definitely fix the issue, But I wouldn’t suggest doing that if it’s your primary phone. You should practice on a phone you don’t need first. Just keep searching online or try to find someone who knows how to connect to your phone using your PC. you may be able to flash the rom without having to jtag it. There’s always a way to connect to the device so long as it still turns on. The hard part is figuring out which way works for your device depending on what caused it to lock up in the first place. It’s hard for me to really give you an answer without seeing it and playing around with it myself. Just don’t give up!
thanks!!
Hi there what i did to my G1 was that i had the froyomelt rom then it was pretty nice on my G1 but i wanted to try the elegante steel i did installed it but i remember that i had a nondroid backup from elegante steel so i reboot my g1 and i just flash the danger spl.. now it stuck in the tmobile g1 screem help bro plz
Have you installed the SDK on your PC and tested whether or not the phone was connecting with the SDK?
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hey I just try it this stuff but my phone dont do nothing with pres home + red key conected to the computer via usb I dont know how u fix y death G1
Make sure you have downloaded the android SDK. You should be able to access your phone using its tools. If your phone is actually dead and not turning on at all, that would be a reason you cannot connect to it with your pc. Make sure the phone is at least powering on at some way. This fix is for phones that are stuck on boot-up screen after they’ve been turned on. What exactly is happening with yours and what did you do before this happened? What do you believe caused this to occur?
Hey, I love the detail you put into this, and it seems like it should work. I got as far as step seven and had no result. I tried again, starting over to see if I missed anything–and still no result. My question is whether you need a rooted phone or not. I bought a pair of these for myself and my wife, and hers had a successful Cyanogen mod and (mine) had a failed one. I don’t know where the guy who did this failed but in case it was right away I am wondering if the phone had to have been rooted or something else first.
Or, do you know of any other key combos that will induce the fastboot mode on the phone? All I see on the screen is “T-Mobile G1”. Thanks!
Camera and Power Button should work. I know there’s a setup screen you can get to with a G1 whether you’re rooted or not, I just don’t recall if it’s the fastboot screen or not. I have to pull out my old G1 and test it, I’m now using a G2.
Any more ideas? I tried camera+power and got stuck again. I also tried the center button+power and found that it turns the LED on blue and then does nothing.
Has your phone ever been rooted before? Is it currently Rooted? Because this tutorial is mainly for recovering your android OS if you’ve previously tried to root the G1 and had any issues during boot-up. If you got this issue in a way other than during a hacking session, I would suggest bringing it into a T-Mobile store and see if there’s anything they can do to help recover it. It may have been caused by something else including damaged hardware inside the phone. Give me as much info as possible as to what was happening before this error occurred and I’ll try to help you if I can.
How do i make the fastboot message popout when i hold the power and home button?? Cuz I hav a hard bricked g1 that i tried to install a new radio and spl. So i successfully installed the new radio and i didnt reboot it but i was still in the recovery menu of RA v1.7.0 so i tried to install the spl but it failed to then i decided to reboot and i came across the tmobile g1 bootscreen of death and im just desperate to fix it plzzz plzzz reply 🙁
You should always reboot first in order to allow the setup to complete before installing another ROM. In this situation, when you try to boot on the phone while its connected to your computer, does your computer recognize that your phone is connected to it? Also, try booting up by holding the camera button and power button and see if you boot up into hboot at all. If you can somehow get it into debugging mode with your computer able to recognize it, you can use the Android SDK to re-flash the ROM back to it’s original state.
This does NOT work. I have tried this with a half dozen USB cables. The G1 does NOT say fastboot USB. Sounds like you have a DEV phone and the majority do not.
I am 100% sure that I do not have a DEV phone. I got my phone from the mall from a t-mobile stand and the OS on the phone when I got it was not a DEV Version. I Rooted the phone and put cyanogen mod on it and I am currently using the latest boot loader recommended for the CyanogenMod. If you do not see the FastBoot USB on your phone when it’s plugged in and before your load up screen, you may have very well bricked your phone. There are ways to recover it if it’s just a soft-brick but you’ll have to search for other tutorials on how to fix that issue because it sounds like your issue is a bit different from what occurred to my phone.
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Thank you!!! This worked for me!!
thanks for the post! i know a lot of people where giving you crap on other forums but this information helped me! thx
All you have to do to reboot is hold down the left call module, the scroll module (middle) and the right module simultaneously….and that frees the freeze.
You’re welcome.
What happened to my phone didn’t allow for this to work. The File system became corrupt so there was nothing for it to Un-Freeze to.