yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
I didn't know stock recovery did it either until someone mentioned it recently. I'm making a small utility that will flash stock locked bootloader and stock recovery, its a flashable recovery script, but of course likely requires a custom recovery to run, though I guess you can try running it as update.zip, never know.

If worse comes to worse, fastboot TWRP and then run this script from in there, it'll replace the recovery with stock anyways. If not, well I guess we'll have to do it manually.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] hrdcorsnwbrdr69:
I'm willing to try it. I couldn't do any worse to the tab. And nope, i don't have adb while in recovery. It keeps telling me device is not found.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
WARNING DRAGONS AHEAD

This will attempt to replace the bootloader with an A100 bootloader, which is LOCKED! You will NOT be able to boot a custom ROM OR Custom Recovery if it succeeds! YOU MUST HAVE EITHER A STOCK ROM OR A STOCK RECOVERY INSTALLED OR YOU WILL BE LOCKED OUT COMPLETELY!

Ok, well give this a try:

Revert to stock

Its a collection of 3 possible ways to restore the stock bootloader and recovery. Theres zips inside, each one contains one method (2 and 3 go to together). The readme.txt has the steps on using it. I hope its clear enough, and it works, I just threw this together, and is dealing with stuff I've never thought of before.

Also, for anyone else trying to restore back to stock bootloader and recovery, please give this set a try! Need some feedback on what works or not so I can attempt to correct the issue.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] hrdcorsnwbrdr69:
Gotcha. Will give it a try
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] hrdcorsnwbrdr69:
I just read the readme.txt. there were things in there I may try before returning everything to stock and sending it off... Will let u know how it goes
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] hrdcorsnwbrdr69:
It turns out, I DO still have adb

---------- Post added at 08:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:27 PM ----------

unfortunately, i have tried every way possible that you mentioned in the readme.txt. nothing worked. all i keep getting is as follows:

E:Unable to mount /system

E:Unable to mount /data

E:Unable to mount /cache

E:Unable to mount /sdc

E:Unable to stat /flexrom

E:Unable to mount /data (No such file or directory)

E:Unable to mount /data (No such file or directory)

E:Unable to mount /data (No such file or directory)

E:Unable to mount /data (No such file or directory)

any other ideas from here?? like maybe the stock system.img, etc.? would those possible work??
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
No, because system isn't there anymore, so it can't accessed.

BUT, you have ADB, so there is maybe a chance. Did you install TWRP, or is it still stock recovery? I'm not sure how many tools the stock recovery has for ADB. I guess when you have ADB up, try this:

adb shell

parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p3 this is system

print

quit

parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p8 this is data

print

quit

parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 this is recovery

print

quit

parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p4 this is cache

print

quit

parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 this is boot

print

quit

parted/dev/block/mmcblk1p1 this is sd

print

quit

parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p6 this is flexrom

print

quit

Then I guess paste back what some of those say, if anything.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] hrdcorsnwbrdr69:
K. Will see what comes up. its till on TWRP. it didnt install the bootloader or stock recovery

---------- Post added at 10:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:57 PM ----------

this is what i got:

c:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p3

/system/bin/sh: parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p3: not found

c:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p8

/system/bin/sh: parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p8: not found

c:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p1

/system/bin/sh: parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p1: not found

c:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p4

/system/bin/sh: parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p4: not found

c:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p2

/system/bin/sh: parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p2: not found

c:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell parted/dev/block/mmcblk1p1

/system/bin/sh: parted/dev/block/mmcblk1p1: not found

c:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p6

/system/bin/sh: parted/dev/block/mmcblk0p6: not found
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Oh my bad there should be a space between parted and / I didn't notice I wasn't putting one there :banghead:

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] hrdcorsnwbrdr69:
this is what i got this time using the space. lol

c:\android-sdk\platform-tools\adb shell parted /dev/block/mmcblk0p3

Error: Could not stat device /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 - No such file of directory

Retry/Cancel?

i get that with the others as well.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Ok try this:

adb shell

dmesg | grep mmcblk0p3

or if that doesn't work try

adb shell

dmesg | grep /dev/block/mmcblk0p3
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] hrdcorsnwbrdr69:
its telling me that its not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] Metallica 4 Life:
Same problem

Hey everyone, I'm in the same boat as everyone here, I've tried everything and nothing worked, trust me, it seems like it just needs a whole new motherboard.

Well, mine's going to Acer soon, gonna pay 100 dollars to get it fixed...fun
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] masr1979:
Didn't you do the mic mod?

Anyways, the tab is for sure screwy. Mine has crapped out on me a few times for no real reason and I've noticed that the internal sd and /cache have frequent issues mounting. One thing is that I've never lost adb and fastboot, so I've always been able to get around things.

What stock rom are people using to recover? I had some issues restoring with vache's, so I've been using zeronulls, and even when it did flash the rom it didn't boot up into android, but I could finally flash CM again which before I couldn't do since when I booted into recovery NOTHING was mounted.

From my experience it seems it's very difficult to brick this device beyond the point where we can't fix it, at least I hope that's the reason I've always been able to restore it.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
There is more then 1 brick, some is a soft brick, the "oops I did something wrong" kind, which can sometimes be recovered from. Then there's hard brick, which is usually a fatal mistake in flashing or hardware failure. The fatal flash kind can for example be flashing stock boot loader while running custom recovery and rom, locking yourself out of both. As far as I know, which I've never tried, the only way out is getting an update.zip to flash which seems rare these days on the ics boot loader.

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] masr1979:
Yeah I get ya, Still, I've been on these forums for a while and I think the word "brick" gets thrown around very generally. As far as I'm concerned a brick is a "hardware brick" but what we refer to as a soft-brick I wouldn't really call that as in most cases there are ways to fix the problem. Personally since messing with WinMo and then Android I've only bricked 1 device beyond the point where I couldn't bring it back myself... and that was a HTC Magic 32B onto which I flashed something meant for the 32A... the thing was DEAD after that, wouldn't turn on, or nothing. Only signed of life was the led on the phone speaker lighting up orange then turning off.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] hdemel:
My device is also hard-bricked. It was working perfectly fine and then one day it stopped turning on. I have APX access but I'm not sure about ADB. The only sign of life is the power LED and APX.

If you need someone to test anything out then let me know.

EDIT:

Date of purchase (it can be a rough guess if you don't know) ~ February 2012, it's a refurb.

ROM it was running, was it stock acer OTA update ICS, modded stock, CM9 etc ICS Leak.

Did you flash and unlock the bootloader, if so, where did you get it? Unlocked bootloader, I don't remember how or which.

Did you flash and use a custom recovery, if so, where did you get it? CWM, or TWRP? CWM.

Did you have any freezes, random reboots, odd behaviour before the brick? Actually, a couple of days before there were a couple of times when it froze and rebooted.

Did you hard reboot (use the reset button, or hold the power button)? It was off and bricked when I returned to it, I've since tried to do a hard reset.

Did you run a custom kernel (ezterry or any others) or stock kernel? Stock kernel I believe.

Did you overclock, if so what was max, and did you undervolt, if so, how low? Nope.

What have you done since the brick, any wipes, roms you've attempted to use as update.zip, any flashes attempted. I've tried to boot into recovery but beyond the LED turning on, there is no sign of life. No screen or anything.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] Metallica 4 Life:
Yes I did do the mic mod, and I really think it's a hardware brick (from the countless times I've opened this thing up)

Really it was weird how it bricked, I was running complete stock, nothing custom other than it had root.

One day I was listening to music and a song came up that I wanted to skip, so I tried to wake the damn thing up but it wouldn't, the music kept going though, so I just held the power button down and it shut down, started it back up and viola, it got stuck on the acer logo.

So yeah, I sent it back to acer and they're charging me $100 cause they found out I opened it up before, must be that darn cover switch inside it...

Well, good luck to you guys and hope someone finally gets the CPU ID, cause honestly I really don't want to pay another 100 if it bricks again, which hopefully it won't.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] conorkickass:
Purchased January 2012

Was running CM10 preview 2

Using unlocked bootloader and TWRP from the Dev section

Had a lockup, which I hard reset. The tablet didn't boot from there. Tried wiping the cache, but the tablet froze so I hard reset and when it came back up I had no mountable partitions.

Can't post the output of the cat commands in the second post because:

adb shell
- exec '/system/bin/sh' failed: No such file or directory (2) -
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] max69power:
I had the hard brick where nothing will mount because everything is missing. I was still under warranty. I was unlocked but i had not changed anything after I unlocked it. I called and sent it back unlocked as I could not get it to change back a week later and they sent me an email saying it is fixed and on it's way home. I had been waiting on a phone call with them telling me that I had hosed it. Even though I knew what I did was not the issue. Since it was almost 3 weeks after i unlocked it that it decided to break. But they fixed it under warranty so it must be a known issue. :victory: I have to say the whole not fixing the headphone issue made me mad but there warranty support is pretty decent
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] conorkickass:
Good to know! (I am still under warranty). My only issue is that I am moving to Peru for a year in less than 2 weeks, so it looks like some lucky family member will inherit my A100 when it gets shipped back to me. Maybe I'll treat myself to an upgrade.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] linuxsociety:
I have read through this entire thread and found it quiet scary. It seems to me that this is a factory defect with certain A100 devices. It's almost as if there is a random glitch in holding the "Power" button during read/write fails that causes /dev/block/mmcblk0's entire partition table to be erased/corrupted. I am curious if there is any output from

adb shell dmesg|grep mmcblk0

and also curious as to whether

adb shell parted /dev/block/mmcblk0

has any output. it may be worth pulling a few tricks from linux troubleshooting on it too, such as

adb shell dmesg|grep -i 'error\|fail\|warn'

What all exists in /dev/block? try:

adb shell ls /dev/block/

If /dev/block/mmcblk0 exists then there may be some hope, if it doesn't then either you are simply using the wrong recovery (specifically the recovery kernel) or the device is dead.. from your Linux OS PC (or cygwin) you could do something like this if you have wgetpaste installed:

adb shell dmesg|wgetpaste

and then paste the link onto the forums so we can get a full dmesg report from the kernel. (you may use pastie, nopaste, pastebunz, gist, etc instead of wgetpaste in the above command if you have one of those variants)

If you have any head scratching results from any of the above commands please also include them here if they don't output TOO many lines and if they do just add the |wgetpaste to the end of the command and provide the URL to the paste.

Good luck and hope we can start putting our finger on the problem soon and maybe work out a solution!
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] das_webos_transformer:
What do we do if the tablet freezes up, since holding power seems to be the problem, just let the battery run down? Or is the harm already done?

sent from my ICONia
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] linuxsociety:
I

wasn't

trying to tell people NOT to use the long press power key when their device locks up, but it seems to be the culprit of a lot of these bricks in this thread. If your device is doing it quiet frequently then you might want to be hesitant of using the long press power button to reset, but if it is just once in a blue moon I'd probably not think twice about it myself. Nobody can tell anyone here exactly What to do, sometimes you just have to make your own decision, if it is a factory defect and effects a large pool of owners of the A100 we could form a petition to present to Acer to replace the device with a revision that has been fixed, but we'd have to be able to prove that it effects a large pool of users and prove what the problem is while presenting a reasonable solution. It would be much like a recall. I wouldn't get my hopes up on such a thing happening though.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] das_webos_transformer:
I was just wondering, since mine was being slow earlier. Felt like it was gonna lock up. It didn't. I was just wondering

sent from my ICONia
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] linuxsociety:
When it feels sluggish like that then it most likely isn't a sign of a hard lock / soon-to-be brick, it is most likely an app that is loaded in the background that is consuming most of your system resources such as RAM and CPU. When there is a failure in the electronics of the device it usually won't give a warning sign, it will just happen.

With that being said, always beware of the possibility of poor programming in some of the apps on the Play Store. Some programs can have memory leaks or cause a runaway process. Check in your "Settings > Apps > Running" and see what all is currently running that you may not be aware of, also check in the "Cached Process" which is kind of hidden, once you are in the "Running" menu you have to click in the upper right corner where it says "Show Cached Processes" If you have apps that are eating up your system resources then you may want to uninstall them, or change their settings to not remain in the background after you close them. Also look for suspicious apps too!
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] das_webos_transformer:
Thanks for the quick response! :)

sent from my ICONia
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
The long press occurs after lock up or freeze which is caused by the emmc giving you the finger, it doesn't cause the brick, you do after its already happened hence the lockup.

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] Theonew:
OT - :eek: he's back :D. Welcome back :highfive:. Hope you enjoyed your vacation ;).
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Lol thanks good to be home again. Spent a few days up at a cabin in the woods so it was a nice break from the 105 temps we get around here.

Lot of catching up to do, I thought my phone was going to explode when it caught signal and all my texts emails PMs and IMs started rolling in lol

Tapatalked from my A100 - CM10 Build 4
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] lorrisek:
I tried using the AcerA200 Simple tool V2 for root and flash recovery method and now my a100 keeps cycling thru bootloaderversion 0.03.06-ics-ics (unlock mode) with green acer logo. First time when i used this tool everything working.... please can someone help me? :(
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Have you tried all the usual stuff? Resets, wipes, flashing a ROM etc? We need info on what you've tried so far.

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] linuxsociety:
Is there a such thing on these a100's as getting stuck in recovery boot mode? Kind of sounds like it is stuck in fastboot, but I've not heard of that on the iconia but was a common issue with kindle fire. May be worth looking into.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Its called apx and yes you can get to it but its useless to us without the sbk which we can't generate. It won't get stuck in it unless the boot loader fails for whatever reason. My KF never got stuck on that but I also don't use it anymore, so it may have eventually.

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] linuxsociety:
I think the reason the kf sometimes got stuck in boot loop was twrp not changing the boot mode back to normal on random occasions, a simple "adb shell idme bootmode 4000" would fix the issue. Or from fastboot doing "fastboot oem bootmode 4000" . This may be irrelevant to the iconia though. Just a thought.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Ooohh OK I think I know what you are talking about now. Yeah I did have that happen once when I first installed twrp on the KF. But yeah that doesn't happen on the a100 lol. It has to be triggered to activate apx which is by bootloader being smoked, or by command, which I don't recall atm.

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] lorrisek:
Yes i tried hard reset but nothing more because i can't get into stock recovery and can't connect my tab to PC
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Well I hate to say it, but read this thread, it contains plenty of things to try, and I'm to short on time to re write it all now. All of the information available is in this thread at some point.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] lorrisek:
Yes i read this thread but i can't connect my tab to PC and when I can the tab reboots by itself.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Ok guys waydownsouth has asked for those without bricks to give the output from this command:

adb shell cat /sys/devices/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:0001/name

Please post back the output from that command here, this should allow us to correlate further if specific emmc chips are prone to bricking behavior.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] Theonew:
My result:

M8G2FA
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Just realized I didn't even put mine up lol sorry guys.

M8G2FA

And off to a good start, 2 non brick tablets both seem to have the same results, just wish we could compare this to a bricked tab.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] Romman0:
Same here:

M8G2FA
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] conorkickass:
I got am email from Acer asking for 99$+tax because "a third party OS" damaged the hardware. I called and tried to argue that this was a known issue and was clearly a hardware failure, not a software issue. The person on the phone then Asked "I'm sorry, am I talking to a technician or a customer?" They refused to fix it without payment. :thumbdown:
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Well that's not to promising. Not only is mine running "a third party OS" it's one I BUILT.

Just curious though, how bad was your brick? Mine is down to APX, its barely even alive at this point.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] raphsabb:
My repair Story

Ok here is my story, I had rooted, unlocked the bootloader and the last ROM i was using was CM9.

It was a freeze then when I reset could never get pass the acer logo.

This happened to me in March I believe and I tried a million things to get it back. I finally chatted with an Acer rep about 3 weeks ago, told him it was a bad EMMC since thats what all forums were indicating and he told me to send it in since I was still under warranty till the end of august.

I got it back a few days ago, the repair ticket says they replaced the main board.

I didnt pay anything except shippin to them off course

Hope this helps u guys, I am super happy but also super concerned about whether or not I can unlock the bootloader again and install ROMs, any help/advice on the matter would b appreciated
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] conorkickass:
I had recovery but no partitions at all. No adb etc.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] das_webos_transformer:
You should be able to, I doubt they changed anything on the board. Except the chip, of course.

sent from my A1/500 Iconia slab of awsomeness
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] vmjoaquim:
Does the led turn on when you try to on the tab?
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
If you mean mine, yes but that's it. Its full APX fubar at this point. Power light, nothing else. No screen, no vibrate nothing.

I would imagine if they even could save the board, my partitions are so nuked it would need rebuilt anyways, so what was on it may never be noticed.

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] vmjoaquim:
Wow, that is bad. I guess that also means you can't boot into recovery? What about the pinhole reset button?
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
No recovery, it can't even initialise the screen.

The reset button on it is the same as on your PC, it just restarts the hardware, it doesn't do anything else. Same as holding power for a few seconds (though that's power down not reset).

I did have recovery for a little while, with full adb shell, and while we managed to pull some logs and other useful tidbits out, I wasn't able to get to the low level areas I needed to be, which is in APX, but without the SBK, we can't use it on the A100s. Even in APX mode its only useful to partition, format or image the emmc, which is probably what Acer does if its found to be OK, just corrupted or erased. Plug it in, image the device, toss it back in the box and send it back out.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] vmjoaquim:
Hmmm... I see.. Well, I'm not good with this sorta stuff. Can only provide info for the problem I had :) Good luck!
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] Metallica 4 Life:
Okay, so I decided NOT to shell out $100, give the finger to Acer and try and go with fixing it myself through this thread.

as far as mine goes, I have recovery, I have APX, but I do not have adb, even in recovery, is there a way I could get adb??

EDIT: Oh and for some reason, connecting it to my XP laptop and waiting for about 10 seconds in the acer screen, it seems to think it's an A500...weird

Oh and if there is ANYTHING you would like me to try, just tell me, I have one boring empty month of summer ahead of me, would love to have it running by the start of school :)
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
This thread isn't really meant for fixing, but gathering all the information we could on it. As it stands it is an unrecoverable error in the emmc and acer, being so nice as to lock us out, is the only way to get it repaired.

Methods for prevention are under development but we do have more hurdles to get over first. There will be no fix until Acer let's us have the sbk for our device.

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] das_webos_transformer:
Well, if you had the build tweaks it might be then cause of it being called an a500. Find one on cregis list!
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] pio_masaki:
Build.prop tweaks don't take effect until you're in android, and don't affect the USB info the hardware reports. They are similar enough that the a500 drivers could be installed and it would still work I think.

Tapatalked from my Galaxy S II.
[Acer Iconia Tab A100] Metallica 4 Life:
Well nonetheless, I'll be around if you need me to do anything or try stuff on mine, it's a paperweight as well, but I got access to recovery and APX

---------- Post added at 03:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:08 PM ----------

And to confirm, recent searches around google confirmed that it was just an XP bug, so no build.prop did this :)