Boot loop problem

[surfmly29]

Having a boot loop problem. I'll describe the loop first and then what lead up to it and what I have tried so far.

I am running manualnooter 4.6.16 for 1.2 stock ROM and CWR 3.2.0.1

When powering on I see the following:
- "Reading Forever"
- Nook Color spelled out
- When Color starts to slide over towards middle of screen and then starts to flash with colors, the word color stops prior to getting to the middle. From here it goes back to spelling out Nook Color but this time it hangs at "Nook Co" and then continues to loop on this (spelling out "Nook Co" over and over). I have press power button for while to shut down.

What I have tried:
- tried powering up a number of times, with and without SD card in place, and with different SD card as well. All have the same issue.
- tried to boot into CWR with N and power button but that doesn't work. It won't boot into recovery.
NOTE UPDATE: finally got CWR boot to work with N and power button, I must not have been holding them down for the exact right amount of time. However, clearing caches and rebooting still has same issues I mention below.
- plugged USB into computer and let NC power up on its own after plugging in. This has brought me to CWR. I can move with volume and have to use N button to select anything.
- I undplugged cable and within CWR I have wiped cache and dalvik cache. Then tried rebooting via CWR menu. This time the startup go to point where word Color started flashing in colors, but then it started looping again back to the same as mentioned above.

It was working for me fine yesterday by the way. I did update a few apps, but things worked fine after that as well. All I was doing was taking SD card out (while powered down), plugging into PC to transfer some movies over for upcoming trip. The sdcard is read by the PC fine and items copied over fine. I always use 'eject' from within Windows prior to removing card. I watched the movies for few secs to confirm things as well so card was read just fine.

The only other thing was that I plugged it in last night to charge up. I first plugged it in to NC power plug with it still powered on. Then realized the power strip was not on, so I then flipped that switch so the power plug would start to charge it. When I found it this morning it was hung on CWR recovery screen. So something happened over night while it was plugged into power cable and I have no idea what.

I have a nandroid backup from about a month ago, and have titanium backups as well, but thought I would ask if there were any other options prior to doing that. I really would rather not do this since I would have to root again, etc. The nandroid was done post root/manualnooter I believe so not sure if that would even work.

Hoping to be able to just get this back up without full wipe. Was thinking I would make a bootable CWR sdcard, but not sure what that would accomplish since CWR didn't seem to fix my issue as mentioned above.

Thanks and sorry for long post, just figured I would try and provide as much info as possible since that is better than having to post over and over with answers to the initial questions that usually come up.

 

[patruns]

I suspect it tried an OTA update to 1.3 while it was charging and when it saw CWR it did not complete. Your options at this point are to do a full system restore or just go ahead and install CM7. To install CM7, go follow the instructions here and make sure you put version 3.2.0.1 of CWR on the card.: Nook Color: How to install Cyanogenmod Nightlies*|*Maurice Mongeon

If you get any format errors, just choose factory reset - wipe system/data and wipe cache as well as go to the advanced screen and wipe Davlik.

If you want to go back to stock (1.3) instead of installing the CM7 and gaaps .zip, use this .zip: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30572895/Nook_Color/update-nc-stock-1.3.zip

 

[surfmly29]

Thanks for quick reply Patruns, but not sure how this could happen. I thought having CWR/root stopped any attempts by the NC to do OTA updates. I know that is what I read when I first rooted back with autonooter on 1.1 (and I never had the OTA update happen for 1.2 while I was rooted with CWR installed on 1.1 - I had to manually install 1.2 and root it using manualnooter).

Is this new info (i.e. CWR no longer stops OTA's from happening)? Like I said, I never had OTA updates try and install when I had rooted stock ROM with CWR installed so need to understand why it would now all of sudden not block the OTA updates like it has been.

 

[J515OP]

surf, first of all thank you for an infomative post. It really helps to start out with so much info. CWR should still be stopping OTA updates and according to a recent post by Spider it is actaully doing just that. Some times boot loops happen for no apparent reason, though there usually is a cause such as a bad app install etc. but you can't really trace it.

It sounds like you have taken the appropriate steps to try and boot. I just want to clarify one point. You have CWR 3.2.0.1 installed on internal memory is that correct?

Before jumping to a custom ROM or a backup I think you may have one more option. Here is what I would do, some of which you have tried but it can't hurt to try again.

1. Power down and plug into PC usining USB cable. This may bump the Nook past the sticking point.
2. Wipe chache and davlik cache from internal CWR and reboot.
3. Put the CWR 3.2.0.1 zip file on an SD card (can be regular old data card) and insert into powered off Nook. Boot recovery and flash the CWR zip to overwrite the possibly corrupted CWR that is on there. Reboot.
4. Restore from your nandroid or install a custom ROM from CWR.

JP

 

[surfmly29]

Thanks JP.

I did try 1 and 2, but will try again as well as 3 and 4 if needed.

I also did read on other sites that the latest 1.3 BN OTA has been updating folks with rooted devices which I assume most have CWR installed on. Can you confirm that having CWR on internal EMMC (which I do have as you rightly guessed) should stop OTA updates? Here is a link to the other thread: Will Manual Nooter work with B&N 1.3? - Page 5 - xda-developers and How to reroot after the B&N 1.3 update - xda-developers

Thanks!

 

[surfmly29]

You have CWR 3.2.0.1 installed on internal memory is that correct?
3. Put the CWR 3.2.0.1 zip file on an SD card (can be regular old data card) and insert into powered off Nook. Boot recovery and flash the CWR zip to overwrite the possibly corrupted CWR that is on there. Reboot.
JP

Yes, 3.2.0.1 is on internal memory.

Feel stupid asking this, but is the 3.2.0.1 zip you mention the bootable image that is made as 1gb in size or something else? I can't seem to find a link to 3.2.0.1 for anything other than the aformentioned one.... thanks!

 

[surfmly29]

of course I find it after I post the above.... I think this is the place (or one of them): ROM Manager

From this page I selected Nook Color and downloaded a file with the name of recovery-clockwork-3.2.0.1-encore.zip. Would this be the correct file?

 

[J515OP]

I have never tried flashing the bootable image zip to the emmc. It should be the same but the bootable might have an instruction to boot directly to recovery whereas the non-bootable has the instructions to only boot recovery if n is pushed. You are not worse off if you try it ant it doesn't work than oyu are now. Here are two additional download sources you can try.

Multiupload.com - upload your files to multiple file hosting sites!

http://www.techerrata.com/dl.php?path=15&file=1gb_clockwork-3.2.0.1-eyeballer.zip

 

[surfmly29]

Tried installing from zip the recovery-clockwork-3.2.0.1-encore.zip file.... said finding update package... opening update package... installing update... installation aborted.

Went back to main menu in CWR, selected reboot, but same problem. Looks like I may need to wipe everything and start over. Is it best (or do you need to) wipe everything in this case prior to doing a nandroid restore or can I do it at this point.... guess it won't hurt to try.

I am thinking the OTA did try and install and crapped out for some reason (maybe due to being rooted and having CWR on emmc) overnight last night and I now have a bad system and/or boot partition. So wiping and starting over may be safest way to go....

 

[surfmly29]

Thought I would provide an update. Nothing worked for me so I decided to move forward with wiping clean and starting over. I found this thread over at XDA: How to reroot after the B&N 1.3 update - xda-developers and decided to try it. I went back to 1.2 stock first. Didn't root then, but rather load the B&N 1.3 update (from the B&N site following their directions). From there I followed the XDA thread and things appear good at this point. I am rooted, with 1.3.0 stock ROM, and things appear to work fine. I haven't started installing apps yet or setting it up like I want, but so far so good.

One question though. I do have Titanium Backups and wanted to know what the best way to get this done. Should I install from the Market and then do restore from Titanium or should I start with Titanium? I seem to recall when doing this in the past, if I tried to install from Market first, Titanium would not sync properly with that new install so the backup essentially didn't work (for both data and app). Not a huge deal, but am looking to get easiest and fullest restore done (i.e. kids will hate having to redue all those angry bird levels 'again').... don't want to hijack my own thread, but figured it was in line with the original problem and path to solution so it was worth a shot.

 

[patruns]

I recently had to do a complete reinstall due to a bad SD slot. After I got CM7 up and running I used Titanium backup to restore all of my settings, apps and data. I did not use the market except to update any that had been updated since the backups. You probably do not need to restore any previous settings, especially if they were when you had 1.2 installed and now have 1.3 installed, but you should be able to restore the apps and the data before venturing into the market.