[General Questions and Answers] ELutts:
Nexus 4 bootloop, bootloader/recovery modes not working, please help.

Hi devs, I'm having a helluva time with my old friend, Nexus 4. This phone has been a great device and one of my favorites for about as long as it's been in my possession, which is since it was released in 2012 or so. I've been developing software for a good while now, so I'm not new to most of the lingo or ways to get around Android. I wanted to pass this phone over to my girl because she's got a piece of crap that hurts my head any time something on it goes wrong, but I'll leave the names for your imaginations. Let's just say it's initials rhyme with LG-MS5OO. At any rate the problem happened when I OEM unlocked and flashed the latest Nexus stock firmware last week. I flashed Android 5.1.1 after fastboot flashing new bootlader and recovery images, then fastboot reboot-bootloader, then fastboot flashall. It seemed to have gone through the process just fine like it has the hundred or so times I've successfully flashed custom images or anything else I've done before. I am using a dual boot Win10/Ubuntu laptop, but that has no bearing since I've also got all of the drivers installed correctly prior to this in Windows, and Ubuntu has no issues with drivers in the first place.

I considered that my SDK needed to be updated to help, but seeing as I already did that and have the latest API and platform tools because my personal device at the moment is a Nexus 6 running the dev preview 3 Android M (6.0), I don't see that to be any issue. I was running stock + rooted KK 4.4.4 (KTU84P), with Franco kernel, I'm pretty certain anyway. I have not once ever had any issue, even if it was looping, never ever had a problem with the buttons. What I mean is that the end-all, be-all is always the factory hard-reset which can be done with the Power+Volume Down buttons until it boots to the bootloader, where fastboot functions are applied. Or by using the volume buttons from there to go to recovery mode and ADB push/pull/backup, etc. Holding down those buttons only reboots to the Google splash screen which also displays the lock at the bottom, which shows it's still unlocked.

I reinstalled the ADB driver in Windows just to be on the safe side. Also I've used (or attempted) Wug's latest NRT version to no avail since it won't recognize the device. I've also tried the original Nexus 4 Toolkit, as well as Skip's Universal Android Toolkit (Pro) version. I've read in more than one place that while the device is in the bootloop it is still possible that ADB or fastboot will work but that remains to be seen. The only things on the screen besides the Google splash screen are the flying dots that were from Lollipop. Which tells me that at least SOMETHING happened when I flashed it, or else there wouldn't be that bootup animation that it's stuck on, right?

I'm frustrated to say the least. I'm proficient enough in Ubuntu also to know that something is not right, but something is able to be done to fix this because the message I get with Ubuntu says "Unable to mount Nexus 4," specifically naming the device Nexus 4 means it knows what kind of device it is. In Win10 when USB is plugged in it says ADB device recognized. So how the EFF can I make the friggin phone stop the loop and go into bootloader or recovery mode? USB debugging is needed for ADB and fastboot, and I can't get the device OS loaded to get there and turn it on. I could absolutely push a backup at that point and be fine. Ugh! I not giving this up, I can find someone out there that knows the right things to do to fix it. Please help.

-ELutts