Corrupted Android logo, lost IMEI

[Guest Tony Sidaway]

I've had two goes at installing CyanogenMod 7.0.2 using the TPT method described in this thread. The first attempt seemed to work at first but it never booted first time after power off so obviously something was amiss. I restored using a "stock" TPT linked from this FAQ thread under the question "I Want to send my Phone back to the Operator - how do I make it back to stock?" That worked perfectly and, encouraged that I had learned enough to avoid any inadvertent errors, I attempted to repeat the TPT install of CyanogenMod. The TPT ran okay but then the phone immediately failed to boot and all attempts to start ended in the Android logo.

I then went into ClockworkMod recovery (which did, happily, install successfully) and copied the "stock" TPT image directory to the SD card from my PC. I performed the TPT by the same method as before, Power off followed by Menu,Vol+,Power on. This time it had a very strange effect. The Android logo is corrupted, appearing as a bright bar at the bottom of the screen, and although I am able to boot into Android the phone's IMEI has been lost and so the SIM bails and I have no phone service.

This sounds like bad medicine. I found this thread which is rather frightening, and pretty much nothing else.

Does anybody know what could have happened? Copying an image folder to the SD card and performing a TPT shouldn't be that difficult, I've no idea how I could have failed so comprehensively. The phone is a newly bought Orange San Francisco that worked fine for a few days under the original system.

Since I currently at least have a system that works I suppose I'm relieved. It just isn't a telephone at the moment.

I'm aware of the sensitivity of the forum runners about IMEI recovery methods because of the illegitimate uses to which such methods can be put. But I do have a phone and am still in possession of the original IMEI which is on the box.

Any light that can be shared on this topic, particularly by those who have had similar experiences, would be welcome.

[Guest KonstaT]

I think your case is same as here http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...0/imei-problem/

[Guest cpg]

Seeing the threads you pointed to and the fact you haven't used the windows flasher at all, i'm confident you shouldn't worry about your IMEI being lost.

The part of the phone where that's stored cannot be overwritten by TPT images.

As for what probably happened:

1. You TPT-upgraded your phone to gen2
   
2. You put a gen1 ROM on it (the stock TPT image you referred to is not enough to go back to gen1, as it misses some files)
   

The result is - you have a gen2 phone with a gen1 ROM (which uses the wrong RIL libraries, so it cannot find your SIM and cannot read your IMEI).

Edit: Though the weird thing is that the ROM boots, but since at least one of the TPTs seemed to have been interrupted, you might have ended up with a hybrid gen phone.. hmm

I would try to reapply the CM TPT image. Check the md5 of the files while they're on the SD card and if you have the card you originally got with your phone, try using that one.

If you really want to go back to gen1, proper images for this can be found in this thread.

Edited May 13, 2011 by cpg

[Guest Mushroom_Lord]

Issue 1:"The first attempt seemed to work at first but it never booted first time after power off so obviously something was amiss."

I think you will find it did work. First boots of new firmware can take a long time, or just never happen.

If it doesn't boot, rip out the battery and boot normally again - and it should (have - atleast) work(ed).

Issue 2:And you say "stock android tpt"

You need to apply the gen2 - gen1 downgrade tpt first, before applying the "stock tpt" as the stock tpt is for Gen1 devices and came about before this gen changing stuff....

Fix: Find that gen1-gen2 tpt and extract it into the image directory into the root of your sd (/sdcard/image) - I know you've done it before but no harm doing it again :)

Now boot with volume up help (and maybe menu too, if volume up alone wont work for you)

This time, whilst it is booting, leave it some time. If after say 7mins or so it doesn't do anything, take out the battery, and let it boot up again.

Any further issues just state what happens, what you did etc, and we will help. :unsure:

Edited May 13, 2011 by Mushroom_Lord

[Guest Tony Sidaway]

Thanks all for the prompt and encouraging responses. Yes indeed I did upgrade to GEN2 and so the restoration to a system designed for GEN1 could well have caused the odd effects.

The initial installation of CyanogenMod by TPT went like this:

• Download file CM7-N60-TPT.zip on an Ubuntu-based desktop system.
  
• Connect phone to Ubuntu system by USB and copy file to phone. Safely disconnect phone.
  
• Use an onboard MD5 checker app to compute MD5 sum, and check it against the one published on the thread.
  
• Use an onboard file manager app to explode the ZIP file to an image directory.
  
• Switch off phone
  
• Start TPT process with Menu,Vol+,Power on
  
• Wait about half an hour
  
• Remove battery and then replace and turn on.
  

So after initially failing to go to first boot, CyanogenMod did eventually proceed to install and I eventually saw the Skateboarding Android animation for the first time. The phone operated flawlessly for a day or two, but failed to restart after I powered off for the first time since installing CyanogenMod. After that I had sporadic success by rerunning the CyanogenMod TPT from the start, and sometimes by booting first into ClockworkMod and selecting the "reboot" option..

CyanogenMod always seems to have problems starting up. The old 2.1 ROM image it came with never had problems, nor does the current 2.1 image. It's as if the boot loader sometimes barfs on the CyanogenMod images. Even when it did load, sometimes it would spontaneously reboot, to the point where I found the phone unusable and decided to revert using the "stock" 2.1 I found via the FAQ.

Whenever installed by a CyanogenMod TPT, ClockworkMod recovery always boots with Power on,Vol- . My current image doesn't have ClockworkMod, in fact isn't rooted, and I don't see the point of installing it until I have a clear idea of what is happening.

The first time I installed the "stock" Android 2.1 by TPT, I ran the Pigfish application and it seemed to confirm that the phone was now GEN1. But as some of you have remarked it's more likely that I have a GEN2 phone with GEN1 firmware. That must be pretty confusing for the poor thing! I'm not surprised it isn't feeling too well!

Thanks, once again, to everyone for the prompt and informative replies.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Tony Sidaway

[Guest wbaw]

I think your case is same as here http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...0/imei-problem/

Exactly the same.

[Guest Tony Sidaway]

Exactly the same.

Thanks. Running the GEN2 to GEN1 stock TPT is the first solution I tried. In the end because nothing seemed to work reliably I went for CM7 N60. My problem seems to be sporadic success at reboot. Right now I have a working CyanogenMod system but if I restart or the system barfs and resets for any reason I will not be able to reboot reliably. I suspect that the boot loader may be corrupted or some hardware is acting up. I have a system that works like an angel when it works, but is a mean mother to reboot.

[Guest Tony Sidaway]

Right now I have a working CyanogenMod system but if I restart or the system barfs and resets for any reason I will not be able to reboot reliably. I suspect that the boot loader may be corrupted or some hardware is acting up. I have a system that works like an angel when it works, but is a mean mother to reboot.

And pretty soon after I wrote that the "angelic" CyanogenMod system spontaneously rebooted and all further efforts with the CyanogenMod TPT stalled on the green Android logo.

Early this afternoon after a night's rest I switched tack and reran the GEN2 to GEN1 TPT. As before, it failed and booted into ClockworkMod recovery. But I reasoned that at least I now probably had the right radio code, so I pressed ahead with the stock "Orange" TPT mentioned in the FAQ. In my experience this has always produced a bootable system.

This dual step procedure has produced what appears to be a stable GEN1 Android 2.1 system complete with Orange applications and logos. I'm all too thankful to have a stable mobile telephone after the recent hi-jinks. I can turn off the phone confident that it will reboot when I turn it back on.

I'll concentrate on making the best of this system for now, making sure that it is as stable as it appears currently. If any further problems occur I'll report them here.

For the record I've been testing file integrity using bash:

$ export D1=<TPT image folder exploded from zip on PC>

$ export D2=<TPT image folder on SD card of phone mounted via USB>

$ for FILE in $(ls $D1); do echo $FILE; cmp $D1/$FILE $D2/$FILE; echo $?;done

This lists the files in the image folder and compares each one byte-by-byte to the version on the phone. The $? is the result of the comparison, which is zero if they are identical.

I always performed this test after a safe unmount (flushing buffers to the phone SD card) and remount. This enabled me to eliminate the suspicion of SD card failure.

Edited May 14, 2011 by Tony Sidaway

[Guest wbaw]

if you're testing file integrity with bash, you just need to run this command, on the terminal on the phone (or adb shell, etc) for any tpt file i produce.

md5sum -c /sdcard/image/nandroid.md5

or there are graphical apps to test the md5sum too, like AFV.

md5 is a faster & more reliable way of checking what you have on your phone matches the original source.

if you're using the tpt method to switch between gen1 & gen2 then back again, then you need to make sure that your gen1 tpt has a gen1 copy of amss.mbn & amsshd.mbn some of the gen1 tpts created before the tpt gen2 update had them removed. otherwise your gen1 rom will have the wrong drivers for the gen2 amss radio firmware which will be left on your phone & it'll cause the problem that you had.

Edited May 14, 2011 by wbaw

[Guest Tony Sidaway]

Thank you for the advice. I think I'll poke around in git, install the Android development kit, and learn how to build CyanogenMod from source. That should keep me out of trouble for a while and I hope I'll learn a bit more about the Android boot sequence in the process.

[Guest Tony Sidaway]

I'll concentrate on making the best of this system for now, making sure that it is as stable as it appears currently. If any further problems occur I'll report them here.

My curiosity being more powerful than my will, I tried installing the Swedish Spring RLS5 ROM on Sunday. I didn't anticipate any problems because it installs and runs well on GEN1 systems. Sadly after running well most of Sunday it became more unstable, in much the same way as CyanogenMod, and in the end it simply refused to boot. Even reinstalling the firmware, and performing a factory reset, clearing the cache, and clearing the Dalvik Cache didn't help. So yesterday afternoon I went back to TPT from the image directory contained in OUK_P729BV1.0.0B10.zip. I'm going to spend a good long time testing this for stability, because there have been times over the past week or so when I've been almost convinced that I have a hardware problem.

Edited May 17, 2011 by Tony Sidaway

[Guest Tony Sidaway]

The underlying hardware problem eventually made itself known in terms so blunt that even I, a newbie to Android devices, got the message and called Orange to arrange a return. I'm running Swedish Spring release 5 on the replacement device now, and so far it's living up to its record for stability.

Thanks to all for the help, advice and encouragement on this topic. Without this input I would have had a harder time working out that this was more than just a severe case of newbyitis.