[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bostski:
Last Lollipop update soft bricked my tablet but I was able to recover it

I updated to the newest Lollipop update and soft bricked my phone. I finally fixed the problem after a wasted days time overall, but I guess it is better than a bricked tablet.

I had initially ran TWRP from the PC to make a backup from instructions by social-design-concepts. http://xdaforums.com/android/development/intel-android-devices-root-temp-cwm-t2975096

I also looked at many online site for the information below, but this post from Jazzespresso was very helpful so I am posting my experience here.

I may have been posted before, but I had a hard time finding information about how to restore the TWRP backup from a soft bricked Lenovo S8.

I recently rooted by Tab S8 wifi only in order to delete the Dalvik data since I have done 2 factory resets in the past 2 months to clear out storage. I updated from KitKat to Lollipop with no problem. The second Lollipop update was only a small one, so I thought it would be quick, but I made a TWRP backup just in case. Thanks to social-design-concepts, otherwise I would have a dead tablet.

Long story short, the little update soft bricked my tablet, and it took about a days time to fix. Using the recovery mode by pressing Power + Volume Up when the tablet is off then resetting the tablet did not work.

In Recovery mode, the adb bridge did not work so I could not start the TWRP from the PC. I noticed the Android Recovery 3e has an update from external SD card but the TWRP file did not show up. I repackaged TWRP backups as a ZIP from online instructions, but the files were rejected as unsigned

I decided to try to flash the original KitKat rom using the Phone Flash Tool v4.4 listed at the begining of this post. The tablet showed up once but the flash process was stuck at 0%. After this the tablet was never recognized by the Flash Tool.

I then installed the Intel Flash Tool Lite v5.5.1 but the tablet was not recognized.

I booted into the Recovery mode then into the Bootloader mode, but could not connect to adb bridge. I tried to find out how to load a boot file from the SD card but without luck.

Then I figured out the solution. in desperation, I uninstalled both the Flash Tool programs, uninstalled the Android Studio, and reinstalled the Android Studio. I had the tablet in Bootloader mode connected to the PC while I was searching online other possible solutions. About 5-10 minutes later, I noticed the Lenovo tablet in the Device manager with the Intel USB Android driver. I guessed that installing the Intel Flash Tools messed up the drivers so it shows up as Intel SoC and not as a Lenovo adb device so the adb bridge would not work. I cannot explain the delay in the Device manager recognizing the tablet.

I right clicked the Lenovo ADB Device in the Device manager and selected the correct Lenovo drivers, ran the social-design-concepts TWRP batch file, ran TWRP and restored by tablet from by TWRP backup on the SD card. If I had only tried the Bootloader mode before installing the Intel Flash Tool programs.

The main lessons I learned are:

1. I should have tried to run TWRP in a recovery situation so I would know what to do when I really needed it.

2. ADB bridge needs the Bootloader mode, not Android Recovery 3e mode

3. The Intel Flash Tools will not only replace the Lenovo adb device drivers, it will relabel it as an Intel SoC Device so you are not aware of it.

4. Check your backups to make sure they are completed as my adb backup was incomplete.

I also wish that someone would somehow make a TWRP version that is able to get installed as the default Bootloader.

Hopefully this will help other people. And if someone else has posted about needing the Bootloader mode to connect to adb bridge and not Recovery mode, sorry about the redundancy.

Thanks to SDC for saving my tablet and thaks to Jazzespresso for starting this thread.:good: