[Moto G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] my1stSmartPhone:
I downloaded the CyanogenMod nightly for Moto G, cm-12-20150213-NIGHTLY-falcon.zip. I got it working. Pretty robust so far, so I want to enjoy it a bit before clobbering it by attempting to restore the Carrier stock ROM. I admit that I will have to do that at some point because I need to ensure that my backups are good.

I would like to take this opportunity to recount how I got around the problems I faced. I think that others may run into this, and my story may help them get back to a working phone when it looks like it is bricked.

The problem was that CM 11 was crippled by the repeated systemui popup messages. I thought it went away, but it came back. I still don't know what triggers it. And my backups of the carrier OS either failed to restore (twrp 2.8.3) or were not visible (twrp 2.8.4). I had spent so many days trying to think of a way ahead that simply didn't care about bricking the phone anymore. After all, it wasn't doing a whole lot of good as-is. So in one of my attempts of trying something, I erased the OS in the process of re-installing CM 11. And the re-install failed. Not a good situation, since ADB worked only when an OS was running (not when a recovery was running), and the MTP driver errors prevented the device from being accessed from windows when recovery was running. It didn't matter whether I was running twrp 2.8.3, 2.8.4, or CWM. So sideload didn't work in any of those recoveries.

There was basically no way to push *any* new OS to the phone. I forgot the details, but the CM 11 imag file that was on the phone might not have been visible to the one or more of the recoveries I tried. I was so out of options that I even tried fastboot to flash to OS, and that did not succeed.

Here is what I found worked. I don't know what particular detail was responsible for the success, so it requires experimentation.

First, I un-installed re-installed the SDK tool set for installing custom ROMs, making sure that I included Google USB drivers. The subsequent update required many more things to be installed, so that might have been part of the solution. I then looked for Motorola driver apps in Windows's Programs menu, uninstalled both, and re-installed. I don't know what contribution it had to the success, as I never got the Device Manager running. Whenever I launched it, it searched for updates, came back and reported no updates and that my device was uknown, then quit. Maybe because no OS on the device was running.

The one thing that seemed to help was that, even though the device was otherwise incommunicato from the laptop, I was able to fastboot flash recoveries. After the above re-installs, a re-install of twrp 2.8.4 allowed the computer to see the device in Windows Explorer. I believe it had something to do with better-functioning MTP USB drivers in the re-install, but I can't be sure. So I was able to copy the nightly CM 12 to the device, then use one of the recoveries to install it.

But the story didn't end there. Even after the CM install, I was still getting repeated popups. This time, however, it was something other than systemui, but otherwise, the symptoms were the same. At that point, I had pretty well concluded that my experiment with Moto G was at its end, and that I would look at Blackberry (now that they committed to stay in the handset market). But I did half-heartedly experiment a bit more. Good thing, too, because the 2nd attempt at re-installing CM 12 seems to have worked. No repeated popups so far. What I made sure that I did was to wipe out anything for which there was a check box, e.g., any cache, data partition, OS, etc. Since it was a virgin phone, I could do this with impunity, so I'm not sure how well this "solution" would fit someone else's situation. Also, I did try to wipe things in past attempts, just not with so much thoroughness.

So there you have it. I hope this helps someone.