[Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cicofz:
Hello everybody

It seems I'm quite late with this issue so I wasn't sure whether to post in an old thread or open a new one...

A few days ago my 12-year-old nephew, for 3 month a really proud owner of a Nexus S I9023 came to me desperately sad: He had tried to update to ICS (the manual "update.zip method") and ended up with a totally unresponsive phone like many others back in December.

I do not own an Android device myself and this stuff is all new to me (so sorry for any dumb questions or thoughts ;-) ), but after some googling and finding this great forum and especially AdamOutler's tool (and reading about other people's success with it) I was confident to be able to bring the Nexus back to life. But I'm still stuck at a certain point...

What I've done so far:

-I installed Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS natively on a PC (I failed with using a virtual installation on my Mac).

-Installed JavaSDK and the UnBrickable Resurrector.

-Downloaded the Android SDK from here and installed it following this advice (I didn't download fastboot separately as it was included in the SDK).

-Downloaded a full ROM from here , extracted the bootloader.img and boot.img from the .zip, downloaded recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.0-crespo.img and put all that stuff in the fastboot directory.

Ok, ready to go now (I think):

I start the Resurrector (R40), select "Nexus S", remove the battery, plug in USB, replace the battery (now the Resurrector recognizes the Nexus) and click "Perform Resurrection" (without holding any button on the Nexus). After a few seconds the Resurrector reports success, showing the "Android with speech bubble" and saying "Fastboot mode" below. On the Nexus the Search- and Homebutton (the both on the right side) are now lit-up, but the display is still black.

At this point I'm wondering if everything went ok, shouldn't the Nexus now already show its bootloader screen like on Adam's image or the battery charging screen ? Anyway, according to the Resurrector everything is fine, so let's continue.

I start Terminal and cd to the fastboot directory. Just to be sure the Nexus is recognized:

lsusb
Bus 002 Device 023: ID 18d1:4e20

fastboot devices
34329EB4B3F800EC	fastboot

Now I'm not exactly sure what to do next. As far as I've understood some have now flashed the bootloader, boot & recovery images first, others have "booted from the recovery.img (?)", in both cases I end up with this:

fastboot flash bootloader bootloader.img
sending 'bootloader' (1536 KB)...
OKAY [ 1.629s]
writing 'bootloader'...
FAILED (remote: Bootloader Locked - Use "fastboot oem unlock" to Unlock)
finished. total time: 1.631s

fastboot boot recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.0-crespo.img
downloading 'boot.img'...
OKAY [ 4.374s]
booting...
FAILED (remote: Bootloader Locked - Use "fastboot oem unlock" to Unlock)
finished. total time: 4.376s

But when I try to unlock, I only see this:

fastboot oem unlock
...

I wait several minutes but nothing happens. I stop this by unplugging the phone and an error appears:

FAILED (status read failed (No such device))
finished. total time: 561.710s

(I assume waiting nearly 10min is enough?)

I also tried to run fastboot as root with sudo, but that doesn't change anything. I'm really stranded at this point. :-(

This is my first contact with Android and I'm also not very familiar with Linux, but in my humble understanding I should be just one little step away from success, shouldn't I?

For me everything seems to work properly, the Resurrector reports success, saying the Nexus is in fastboot mode now, fastboot is running and recognizing it and also my attempts to "fastboot flash" or "fastboot boot" obviously work until the "Bootloader Locked" error pops up.

So the two big questions are:

1. Is it ok that after successful resurrection only Search and Home are lit-up, but the display remains black or should I see the bootloader or battery charging screen?

2. Why is fastboot stuck while unlocking?

I'm also wondering if it's worth it to set up a Linux/Windows dualboot installation to run fastboot or even Odin in Windows, I can't imagine that I have a better chance that way, this should work with Linux alone, shouldn't it?!

So, I hope I haven't bored you too much ;-)

I would really appreciate some help to make my nephew happy again...

Have a nice weekend!