[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] silverdude66:
Help Please...Problems with invaild serial number

Hello everyone. I would like to just start off by saying thank you, I have learned so much from here, it’s unbelievable. So here is where my story beings. A while back, my brother hands me this Nextbook NXA116QC164 and says, “this thing doesn’t work I can’t connect to google. You can have it if you can fix it.” I’m thinking, “awesome, he always gives me stuff he can’t fix, and I usually can fix them.” So, I turn on the Nextbook and it boots into Android just fine. I click on the google store app and I get “Can't establish a reliable connection to the server.” Then I go into Settings and Accounts and see there isn’t any accounts and try to add one. Same result, “Can't establish a reliable connection to the server.” I googled the issue and tried everything under the sun, including setting the time and date correctly, clearing all google app cache and data, trying a different WIFI network, changing the Nextbook to a static IP address, manually updating the play store and google play services for the model. Nothing worked so I tried a factory reset and still got “Can't establish a reliable connection to the server.” Also, after the factory reset the Nextbook never once asks for a google login upon initial boot. I did a little more research and found deleting the host file could be the problem and that I needed to root the tablet to do this. After a little more googling I ran across this thread and everything went awesome. Rooted, downgraded to 5.0, and installed TWRP v2.8.6.0 on the tablet. Deleted the host file and still, same result. I even deleted the folder "/data/data/com.android.providers.settings,” which was another google result. None of them worked. Now, I’m beyond frustrated and take a break for about two months. So, when I came back to the project, I went old school and started plowing through log files after making it error out. After a few hours, I found something. “Checkin failed: https//android.clients.google.com/checkin : java.io.IOException: Rejected response from server: invalid hardware identifier: “ YFGV0316122010” is not a valid serial number.” I noticed that there was a space at the beginning of the string of the serial number and it was erroring out the checkin. Returning to google, I found out the google servers check for certain criteria in the hardware identifier and it cannot have any spaces. Recommendations from google to fix the issue were changing the build.prop file and changing the ISerial file. No dice. So, my next question was, how do I correct the serial number on that tablet, and all I received was that it’s illegal to change serial numbers on android devices. So, I thought I would ask you guys for help before I give up. I’ve maxed out everything I know. I’m not doing anything illegal here; it came from the factory like this, and has never connected to google or accepted trying to add an account to it. I have a picture of the blue error screen which pops up every time you try to add a google account in settings or opening the play store. Also, a picture with the error from the log file, a picture of the back of the tablet with the serial number intact, and a picture of the serial number in the about settings, so nobody thinks I’m trying to do something shady. Email me for the pictures if you would like to help. I just want this tablet to work. Everything else works on the tablet except actions pertaining to google accounts and apps. If someone could direct me on the right path, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.