[G 2014 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Wingzfly:
Hey guys!

So I've got an issue I'm struggling with on the Moto G (2014). First I'll tell you as much as I can about the phone: I bought it from the Motorola website, so I think it's running whatever the stock firmware is. Also, it's the 8 GB US model and isn't tied to any carrier. (I have it on T-Mobile, but got it directly from Motorola. I was trying to figure out what the firmware is but the closest I've been able to get is by running the Motorola Device Manager app while the phone is in fastboot mode. It says there are no available updates for: 21.11.17.titan_retuaws.retuaws.en.us The bootloader is locked and the phone is not rooted. It's pure stock, though it might have automatically gotten an OTA update to the latest official release, I can't be sure because I bought it for someone else.

Okay, so the problem. I'd bought the phone for my dad and set it up and it worked fine for about two months. Yesterday, he came by my place and asked if I could take a look at it because it was stuck on one screen and since there was no removable battery, he didn't know how to reset it. The screen it was stuck on is the boot screen where the Motorola logo is supposed to come up. It was up, but the bottom half of the logo was stretched to the side and pixelated so my first reaction was "crap, he hit it against something and there's damage to the screen." But there was no visible damage to the screen anywhere (neither from a hard hit or from pressure) and he's got the flip case for it and he said it hadn't been hit or anything.

I tried to power it down by holding down the power button, but as soon as it went off, it tried to start up again. A bootloop that always froze on that messed up Motorola boot screen. I set it on the charger for a bit and let it run through the loop a few times and at one point it got as far as the "world" screen where it shows a cartoon planet. This extended down past where the weird stretch happened on the motorola graphic and it was perfectly clear so I realized there was no damage to the screen, just some sort of boot error.

So then I tried booting into fastboot (hold both volume buttons down along with the power button for a few seconds, release) and I was able to get into fastboot. I tried scrolling down to recovery and then hitting the volume up key to select it but the second I hit the volume up key (the selection key in this mode) it reboots the phone. It doesn't go into the recovery screen, just turns off the phone. I tried this for the "Factory" (reset) option, for the "Normal Powerup" option, and the others. Instead of getting anything different, selecting any of them turns the phone off and nothing happens. The computer is recognizing that there's a device connected to it when I have the phone plugged in via usb in fastboot to my Windows 8 laptop. It also appears that I can enter commands in fastboot. (Though I'm not sure what to put in to fix this so I'm turning to you guys.)

So I can't figure out what's wrong. I've got some experience in flashing roms, both manually and with some of the tools, but haven't had to deal with what I'm assuming is a soft brick before.

Can anyone offer any help?

Thanks very much.