[Nexus 7 (2013) Q&A] barryholroyd:
BRICKED in a big way

Hi,

My Nexus 7 is bricked in the same way as it is for many of you. I can get it into the Boot Loader o.k., but when I try to go from there into Recovery Mode it hangs on the Google logo -- the screen with the triangle and exclamation point never comes up. I've seen others with this problem in the forums and followed the various proposed solutions, all to no avail.

I ran into this same situation about two weeks ago, with similar frustrations. At one point, after I had just tried connecting the USB cable for the first time when clicking on the "Recovery mode" option in the Boot Loader (I had just read that suggestion on the web), it suddenly worked -- my N7 came up fine and I was home-free. I assumed that making sure the USB cable was connected was the missing secret step.

Everything was great until today, when suddenly it was bricked again (I didn't do anything unusual within the last few days so I have no idea what triggered the problem). Unfortunately, this time around nothing I do works. In desperation, per another posting, I even tried all kinds of different timings connecting the USB cable (i.e., I physically connected the cable at different points in time after clicking on the power button for the "Recovery mode" arrow) -- each time, I simply got the Google logo (which I would let sit for five or 10 minutes -- it never went away).

* THERE DOES SEEM TO BE ONE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MY EXPERIENCE AND OTHERS. I *did manage to use fastboot to flash a new 4.4.4 ROM -- everything went perfectly smoothly. The problem is that after successfully flashing the new ROM, I *still* couldn't get into Recovery mode. Attempting that (or attempting a normal reboot) still causes my N7 to hang at the Google screen.

The device was rooted a while back but since I've done a 100% reinstallation of everything using fastboot, including clearing all data and cache, I don't think that's a factor anymore. Since connecting the USB cable *did* seem to work for me previously, I suspect the answer may be in that area, but for the life of me I can't get it to work again.

Information from my Boot Loader screen:

FASTBOOT MODE

PRODUCT NAME - deb

VARIANT - deb 32G

HW VERSION - rev_e

BOOTLOADER VERSION - FLO-04.02

BASEBAND VERSION - DEB-Z00_2.42.0_1204

CARRER INFO - None

SERIAL NUMBER - 08ad6644

SIGNING - yes

SECURE BOOT - enabled

LOCK STATE - locked

Of course, if anyone has any solutions... I'm one more person that would be *really* interested :).

Barry

P.S. I wanted to include links to other relevant posts but unfortunately I can't because I'm new to this forum. For some reason, you aren't allowed to include links until you've made at least 10 previous postings.

P.P.S. Ancillary question: Given that I've re-flashed everything and even let the battery drain to zero (left it on for a couple of days) to try to force a clear of any data retained in memory, as much as possible), I don't understand how/why devices get bricked like this. What is it that gets retained across complete factory resets and firmware re-loads that causes devices (in general) to become bricked? (Thanks :).)

P.P.P.S. I've attached the script I used to install my 4.4.4 firmware, in case anyone is interested in that. I named it "firmware_install_4-4-4.txt" so that I could upload it, but it is actually just a bash shell script. (CERTAINLY don't run it blindly against your own device -- use at your own risk.)