[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] conectionist:
Hello.

I have a Fire TV (2nd gen.) and whenever I start it, the Amazon logo is displayed and that's that. It does not advance any further no matter how long Ieave it like that.

The device is not rooted.

I would like to somehow reset my box to its factory state, but so far nothing I've tried has worked.

Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Most of the stuff mentioned here:

a) Recovery via the Fire TV Remote

Nothing happens no matter how many times I try.

b) Recovery via a USB Keyboard (the “Alt+i+PrntScrn” method)

I've tried 4 different keyboards, both wireless and wired, (that work fine on a PC) and none of them get me into the recovery screen. I've tried one the keyboards with another FireTV and it eventually got to the recovery screen. So I'm guessing there's an(other) issue with this FireTV, from this point of view.

c) Recovery via ADB

This actually did something.

I ran the following command:

adb reboot recovery

In theory this should take me to the Android system recovery screen where I could select wipe cache, reset factory settings etc.

However, it takes me to the Amazon system recovery, which is a screen where there are no options. There's just some red text that says the following:

"Amazon system recovery <3e>

Your Amazon Fire TV will restart in a few minutes

and should resume normal operation

If it does not restart, please unplug the power cable and plug it back in

to force a restart. If you need assistance, please contact support at:

www.amazon.com/firetvsupport"

Needless to say that unplugging and plugging it back in didn't help.

2. Wiping data

I tried the following commands:

adb shell recovery --wipe_data
/system/bin/sh: recovery: not found

I managed to find an alternate solution for this:

adb shell wipe data
Wiping /data
Error opendir'ing /data 'Permission denied'
Done wiping /data

But it didn't seem to make any difference.

3. Fastboot

adb reboot bootloader
fastboot devices (I saw my device listed after this)
fastboot -w
Erase successful, but not automatically formatting.
File system type unknown not supported.
Erase successful, but not automatically formatting.
File system type unknown not supported.
erasing 'userdata'...
FAILED (remote: UnKnown Command)
finished. total time: 0.004s

fastboot erase userdata
erasing 'userdata'...
FAILED (remote: UnKnown Command)
finished. total time: 0.004s

This didn't seem to work either.

4. Sending a MASTER_CLEAR intent

Apparently it's possible to factory reset via adb.

adb shell am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MASTER_CLEAR
Error type 2
android.util.AndroidException: Can't connect to activity manager; is the system running?
at com.android.commands.am.Am.onRun(Am.java:299)
at com.android.internal.os.BaseCommand.run(BaseCommand.java:47)
at com.android.commands.am.Am.main(Am.java:97)
at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit.nativeFinishInit(Native Method)
at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit.main(RuntimeInit.java:256)

Sadly, it also failed...

Other (possibly) useful/relevant information include the following:

adb root
adbd cannot run as root in production builds

adb shell getprop ro.build.version.release
5.1.1

fastboot oem device-info
...
FAILED (remote: UnKnown Command)
finished. total time: 0.004s

The only options that I have left are the following:

1. The solution suggested here.

The problem described there seems to be the same on as mine. However, as mentioned here, this only works with FireOS 5.2.1.0 or lower. As far as I can tell, I have 5.2.4.0.

So, unless I can find a way to determine my FireOS version for sure and it turns out it's actually 5.2.1.0 or lower, or if somebody makes a recovery image that works for 5.2.4.0, this isn't really a solution...

2. Send it back to Amazon

I'm not sure if the warranty still covers it, but if it does and I don't find a way to fix this, I think this is the best choice.

3. Root it and try some root-related solutions.

So far I've only been able to try non-root solutions.

This, of course, will void my warranty, so I'd like to try this only as a last resort.

I'm not even sure I can root it in this state. From what I read on the web, at some point I'll have to select accept when superSU asks for permissions the first time. Since I can't get pass the boot screen, I don't know how I'll be able to do this...

4. Nothing

If nothing works, I guess I'll have to just cut my losses, and get a new Fire TV.

Apart from the things mentioned above I've also tried/read most the posts on xda mentioning similar problems but I haven't found anything useful.

As mentioned at the beginning of the post, I just want to reset it to its factory state. I don't care about losing everything that's on it. I just want it to be like it was after it was unboxed.

Any kind of advice/help/solution is welcomed.