[ZenFone 2 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] fanfan54:
Hello everyone, I've been trying to unbrick my ZenFone 2 ZE550ML for at least 5 hours...

(first, the small history...)

I've a french ASUS ZenFone 2 ZE550ML (Z008D) with 2 Go of RAM running latest Lollipop official ROM (I never unlocked bootloader or rooted it)

I suscribed to Asus beta tester program on ZenTalk forum, so I received the Marshmallow upgrade via official OTA last night.

Everything updated normally, I had enough space, update has been completed, I saw the ASUS logo on dark background because it's not unlocked, I saw the message "Optimizing apps..."(ART compiling)... and I successfully booted to Marshmallow... but just one time.

What happened is that my ZenFone 2 is... really... slow... and... with... Marshmallow... it... had... the... same.... slowness... than... with... Lollipop :silly:

And, after playing around with Marshmallow around ten minutes (apps were updating through Play Store), my phone hung, only because of slowness. I could make it sleep (screen turning on/off, that's all, no lock screen), and I could just access to shutdown/reboot menu if I press 3 seconds the Power button. But it was frozen, like it often did in Lollipop.

I waited 15 minutes, because I thought turning off while updating apps like Google Play Services was not a brilliant idea. After 15 minutes of waiting, still frozen, but even more frozen : no power menu, and orange LED was still ON even after disconnecting the charger. I decided to reset my ZenFone 2 by pressing power button 10 seconds.

And... I rebooted it => vibration, then immediately USB logo (when POWER or POWER+UP VOLUME). Nothing more after that. No LED while charging (if I plug it to a charger, it boot loop with USB logo). It's very frustrating because... I saw ASUS logo just before optimization, and I stopped it AFTER update, not during :crying:

(now what I tried)

Today I tried to apply this guide : http://xdaforums.com/zenfone2/general/guide-brick-soft-hard-bricked-zenfone-2-t3284256

I managed to install every driver, I downloaded every file/image I could...

Because of USB logo, my device is always recognized as a Moorefield device with known driver :)

Following the guide, I sent to my phone the basic 4-coulour bootloader using xFSTK, no problem

Here is the problem now : I've a working fastboot menu, fastboot is recognized by my computer, BUT almost every fastboot command fails, because my serial number was set to 0123456789ABCDEF :crying:

-> Fastboot error is systematically : FAILED (remote: flash_cmds error! (this happens after successfully downloading to phone, but it's not applying)

and, I tried "fastboot erase cache" :

******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?

erasing 'cache'...

FAILED (status read failed (Too many links))

I never had any software mess in my phone :crying:

So I don't know what to do, because I would like to flash only splashscreen, recovery and boot if possible, I don't want to lose data

I'm actually downloading a RAW for WW_ZE550ML_2.20.40.149 that I'll sideload with Asus Flash Tool (without wiping data) if it's the only way to do

Where can I find working images for fastboot that can be flashed on a generic serial number?

Thanks for your answers

Edit 1 : OH WAIT... The fastboot screen on my ZenFone 2 Z008 says :

PRODUCT_NAME - Z00A

VARIANT - ASUS_Z00A

WTF ASUS ?!?!?!?!

The ONLY things I did are : OTA update to Marshmallow (I never had OTA issues before) and sending through xFSTK the FW DNx, IFWI and OS Images FOR ZE550ML given in the guide... What happened?! Please please please, can somebody give me the right files? Thank you ^^

(sorry for eventual bad english, I'm a tired french)