MID7033 bootloop - stock system, reset does nothing

[Slider2732]

The problem:
At switch on, the COBY logo appears and that's it.
It won't switch off with the power button, but will when the Reset on the back is pressed.


Device history:
No modifications at all. Bought second hand off Ebay because 'unit wont switch on'. It arrived in its box, with the peel away clear layer still on the screen ! the back has a few marks though.
I got it in the post and connected my wife's PengPod power plug to it, it came up with zero issues
The unit was fresh as a daisy, either it had self reset or just was never used past running out of charge and the owner had a duff power supply. Curiously, it did have 'Angry Birds' on it as the sole installed App.
For the past 2 weeks of owning it, i've added a few apps like games and have played Drag Race for probably longer than I expected.

Background of me:
I'm a newbie to tablets, 44 years old but not new to electronics with a history of over 25 years. Even Patented 'The Electronic Book' in England in 1997, which lapsed and now look at what happened ! Same username on YouTube - so i'm real with a real problem if you watch any of my vids.
I only discovered words like 'rooting' and 'bootlooping' from coming here the past few days.

Remedy measures so far:
'Power' plus 'Volume down' to get into the Android remedies page.
Wiped all user data - nothing
Wiped Cache - nothing
That Android fixing screen does nothing at all.
Carefully prised the casing away and desoldered the Batt +, nothing changed when left overnight, so it's not caught in a standby powered loop.
(System board says MID7033_V1.3)
Connecting to USB does nothing - home system is Peppermint 3 Linux, XP Pro available on other PC.
If this has 2013 Roms and therefore will totally brick by doing anything, then does anyone have any idea what can be done ?

 

[Slider2732]

I think I can condense the situation a bit

I've got the MID7035 full dump, as posted elsewhere on this forum.
As far as i'm aware, the 2 are the same tablet (only the screens being different, the manual is even for both).
If I were to install Livesuite or some other program on the PC - could i try to install those .img files without completely ruining the NAND chips ?

 

[vampirefo.]

I think I can condense the situation a bit

I've got the MID7035 full dump, as posted elsewhere on this forum.
As far as i'm aware, the 2 are the same tablet (only the screens being different, the manual is even for both).
If I were to install Livesuite or some other program on the PC - could i try to install those .img files without completely ruining the NAND chips ?

no 7035 and 7033 aren't allwinner tablets, livesuite is for allwinners.

 

[Slider2732]

Ah
Let me say thanks for replying, your work doesn't go unnoticed by even those of us who have pecked around blindly for info as 'guests'.

A possible nugget of extra info, is that I put the SD card in from my wife's PengPod and the Android recovery page does see it.
I can navigate through it. The .img files were put on it, but the 7033 didn't see them, just would navigate through folders.
Had it seen them I wouldn't have clicked to install, without knowing if the NAND chips would self implode.

Will read up on how to install whatever will install and see if this PC will see the tablet.
It looks like the 7033 is little mentioned, but am reading further back into posts.

 

[Slider2732]

Update:
Peppermint Linux didn't see the tablet.
But, running the laptop that has Win XP Pro, it recognises the 7033

2 drives show up, with nothing shown as being on them.
Edit - on another boot, by pressing the power button and the Vol down together, the PC sees just 1 drive, which it names 'VDfu'. In Device Manager it shows up as a Vimicro Super Disk at 512MB.

I've seen mention of FWDN USB drivers on the forum, but have been unable to find a download yet.
Android SDK is now downloaded and installed...it runs, but I have no idea what to do with it.

Get this !
I decided to put the 3x .img files from the 7035 dump onto a micro-SD card. Then just see if it would see them in the recovery bit of Android.
Connected the card reader/adapter to the laptop and the blue light on it faded then went out. The laptop came up with a fault error about the USB device. It had busted ! the adapter was warm as though the controller chip has fried !

Next thing is to put the 3 files straight on the VDfu disk and expect nothing to happen, but nothing is happening anyway lol


If no replies, will add to this reply as progress is hopefully made.

 

[vampirefo.]

You are kind of going at things backwards, I can tell you the 7035 dump wont work on your tablet, honestly as is, it wont work on a 7035 tablet. A dump is just a dump or back up they can't be installed without modifications to the tablet and in this case also to the dump.

I don't know anything about your tablet, except when you had it booting, you should have rooted the tablet and turned on usb debugging, then you might of been able to fix the tablet as it stands now, I see no fix, unless you can install a custom recovery on it.

then using adb pull the system, find out whats wrong with the system, fix and replace system.

 

[Slider2732]

Thanks. Yeah, much learning going on and I more fully understand the problems now.
Imagine buying a 1 year old basically new car and it runs fine for a couple of weeks...then it just won't start up one morning. Trundling around the net you see people with the same unexpected trouble, though some people have tweaked the ECU and have added keyless ignition. The complete shutdown of that brand of car is very very common and the advice is to have backed up the ECU !
Huh?
You then find out that the manufacturer offered no recall and doesn't want people to put the original data back on, so you may as well junk it and buy another full car. Erm, but all you'd done is drive it to work and back, why would you even think about data dumping the ECU ? The same thing could be said of the radio or the SatNav, when they too suddenly quit.


I was mainly interested in this, because:
It related directly to what would have become of The Electronic Book over 15 years ago.
Here's the Patent info, for those interested
Espacenet - Bibliographic data

Before the PengPod we'd never owned a tablet (which itself had to be fixed after only weeks), an 'i' anything from Apple or even a cellphone for many years now, because of the costs of my immigration from England. Not even got TV service here and the BIOS on my PC is from 2002.
So this was a little foray of a seeming bargain, to see what it's all about with tablets. Must say, it was all very impressive for the short time of use, though I never did get to read an actual book on it.
If i'd been younger i'd probably have known a bunch more, we're very much disconnected here and I wanted to catch up.

The stock MID7033 image should be available, I see no reason why a Reset back to factory defaults doesn't work, especially when the menu offers it on the device itself. It's not like the model is even current now from what I gather - why not release backup images after 2 years or something ?
It leaves the strong impression of the throw away society that many talk of.

Unless, of course, the community of users can fix up many such tablets. Traveller, yourself and others are doing just that and I support that fully. I won't give up on it and it won't be going in the trash. Perhaps the naivety is from my age, knowledgeable of the lightbulb burn hours ruling of the 1900's, but there's nothing wrong with this tablet except software.

Maybe someone does have a MID7033 software dump and a workaround, like the Pin 7/8 bridging seen on YouTube.
I remain optimistic because of the community here at this forum. Any more info I can give about the tablet ? It's had nothing done at it, bar some Apps added.
I'd just like to relax with a good book - on a screen

 

[vampirefo.]

By no means should you give up or throw away the tablet. Other users have this tablet and might be able to upload a use able backup, and provide a recovery or solution for you. I was pointing out you were wasting your time with the 7035 dump.

The factory reset works most of the time, what it does is deletes anything added to data and cache partitions, it doesn't remove anything added to the core. So if something is added or taken away from core, factory reset won't fix the problem.

Core = system, recovery, boot, bootloader. Any changes made to any of these a factory reset can't fix, Coby could release images but they won't, they choose not to.

Anyway good luck.

Sent from my CM10 Coby 9742 Android Tablet

 

[Slider2732]

Cheers. I see and yeah the 7035 thing makes sense.
So something happened to the core then and I need to know what.
Sorry for the slowness on the uptake lol
As far as i'm aware, the only way that could happen would be with a virus of some type. I mean, from the use that it's had, with me not doing any rooting etc.
Hmm.

Whatever they do at the factory needs to be done in this case i'd imagine. Start from scratch, reload Android 4.0.3 etc.
No biggie, time wise it's all worth it over here and may help others if I get this up and going.
Made sure to thank you again, the little linking bits of knowledge that most have probably known for years are appreciated

 

[Kuman]

My 7035 Coby when connected to the pc can't be turned on in order to transfer files to the computer. That's in addition to the external_sd card issue.

 

[Slider2732]

Sounds like it's got some corruption somewhere too. Again, I don't know much, but have you switched on USB debugging in the Settings ?
Oh, tell ya what I did find and maybe it might help you...a utility to reset a 7033 to factory original firmware. It may/may not work with a 7035 as well and may be just useful to have a look at rather than run.
It's near the bottom of the page and at least there are pics of how to set the Debugging mode on
Minha digital quase vida...
The trouble for me, is that I can't get in to do anything like that to reset it.

 

[vampirefo.]

This is really just a rooting script, doesn't fix anything. It's a batch script you can download and open in text editor and see what it does.

Would be nice to have a working 7033 tablet to see if script does root the tablet.

 

[Slider2732]

I've found one that does work for the 7033 and 7035, or should I say did, the download expired months back.
A version was then uploaded and your good self reuploaded it
Here's that thread, just for reference...it includes ADB and I wondered if Kuman might be being locked out by the lack of driver software on the PC (?)
http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/coby-generation-3-development/43624-root-mid7035-8.html

Do you know anyone with a 7033 who is in dire need of galactic karma ? lol
I mean, surely someone has backed up their system over the past year ?!
As I say, i'm out of the loop entirely, but someone must have a friend with a 7033.
Then I can go at mine with real known files and whatnot and we'd all have a 7033 data source, if and when this one reboots back to life.
What I have noted, is that my 7033 switches on, then 5 seconds later the screen backlight dips ever so slightly...so that says to me that it goes for the Android boot but can't find something. boot.img being a rather comical but obvious guess.

 

[Slider2732]

Am just looking at a few things and what happens when the tablet is connected to the PC.
Been looking here: [GUIDE] ADB, Fastboot, and Nandroid for Noobs - xda-developers
The USBDeview utility shows that the MID7033 connects, when the power is simply pressed on and where it bootloops with the Coby logo.
The tablet name doesn't come up when Vol + and Power are pressed, which gives me the VDfu disk of 512mb. Instead the Vimicro Super Disk comes up.



When the CobyADB root_restore MSDOS batch file is run, it won't connect unless the tablet is switched on by just pressing the power button. In which case, it says it's connected on Port 5037, but doesn't do anything.

Just a WIP progress report as I work out what's going on and not going on.