[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Plausible Deniability:
Hello everyone,

I am new here and like most posting a message for the first time I hope it's in the correct forum section.

For the record I have always been pretty good at researching things and figuring things out for myself but my current issue has me puzzled. Here is the issue:

I purchased a chinese Vivobox i3 rougly a year ago and for the most part it has worked well but has recently fallen short on its functionality.

After a recent power outage I came to find that the mini - air mouse remote stopped working except for 3 buttons which I found strange. I immediately thought no big deal just flip the box over and push the reset button and all will be good except pushing and holding the reset button then plugging in power cord didn't do anything except display a "safe mode" message in the bottom left of the screen after it booted up. This still didn't fix my problem with the remote. It still didn't work.

I went out and bought a new track pad / keypad combo unit thinking my old one had simply died but it didn't work at all.

So I tried using a USB mouse (which I should have done before buying a new wireless keypad at the begining) and it worked but things got more bizzar.

Using my mouse I setup my box (internet connection etc.) and came to find that all my downloaded apps were gone ( probably got wiped from memory ) and navigated to the Google playstore and tried downloading an app. The download appears to start by showing a progress bar but the progress bar never moves and it doesn't download any files. It stays in download mode and doesn't download anything, its weird I can check my hotmail visit plenty of pages but it will not download any android apps. Its as though the android firmware is corrupted.

In short, the box appears to have lost remote control functions, and the android functionality is all screwed up.

So this brings me to my current situation, I figured I would visit the vendor's website and get the newest firmware and flash mybox in hopes that it would correct things. I visited the vendors support website (vivobox.co) but the site is no longer up and there are no files anywhere online for this box.

With no files available I thought to try and root it and load a custom rom but I can't get the box to boot into android recovery mode to install the necessary files . I tried all manual methods I could think of but this box will not allow a boot into recovery mode. I then went online and downloaded Amlogic SD card maker.exe. Tried to create a boot recovery SD card and that failed. I tried everything.

The only thing that kinda worked was forcing a boot from SD card condition by using the shorting 2 pins method on the memory IC on the board inside with an SD card containing a complete image and firmware package for a mitricom box (found on XDA), except it freezes 1/4 of the way through the update.

In short I need to do one of 2 things, 1) find a way to manually enter android system recovery and root it to install a custom rom or 2) find a file that I can force boot with a compatible firmware.

Here are the specs. on my Vivobox i3 if anyone has any suggestions or has encountered this before.

ViVoBox i3 Android iptv spec:

Chipset: AML8726-M3 dual core

CPU: ARM Cortex A9 1-1.2GHz

GPU: Mail-400 250MHz 3D

OS: Google android 4.0

RAM: DDRIII 1GB

Flash: 4GB

Support SD card Up to 32GB

WiFi/RJ45 802.11 b/g /n , RJ45 10/100 BaseT *1

URL added Support

Decoder format H.264,MVC,MPEG-1/2/2,VC-1/WWW,AVS,RealVideo and MJPEG upto 1080p

Video support: RM/RMVB, MPEG, MKV, AVI, MP4,MOV,FLV, H.263,H.264,VC-1,DivX, Xvid, TS,RealVideo,VP6,VP8 up to 1080P support

Audio support: AAC-LC/HEAAC/HE-AAC v2,AC3,AMR NB,DTS,MP3,OGG,RA_COOK,WMA,WMA,LPCM/PCM/ADPCM,FLA

Video Output : 480i/p,576i/p,720i/p,1080i/p;3D Output

Adobe Flash: Adobe Flash 10.1 support or above

Language: 24 Language support, German, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Portuguses, Swedish, Spanish

I/O interface: HDMIx1, USBx2, RJ45x1, LNBx2, SD Card x1

Power: DC 12V/2A

Regards and thanks in advance to all that will read and take an interest in this thread

:good:.