[Moto G5S Plus Questions & Answers] smbfission:
After 10 Hours... I need help, please: "Invalid zip file format! error installing zip

Guys and gals - I just want to say in advance, thank you so much for your time and help with this, I really tried hard (over 10 hours) of referencing old xda forums and youtube videos, with nothing working so far.

Ok here it goes:

So I bought for a good price the Moto g5s Plus from ali express. Everything came fine, except one thing... it had a Chinese variant baseband flashed on the phone, which means everything worked normal except I couldn't update past 7.1.1

Baseband: M8937_37.13.03.53R Montana_Chinadsds_cust

The typical phones update to 8.1 oreo, so I want to jump on that wagon. It had been about 10 years since I've flashed or unlocked anything so I was happy to find through youtube and XDA that the process was easier. But the phone came with unlocked boot.

I put TWRP on there pretty easily and everything looked like it was going to be cake.

I was getting different errors after trying different tactics of flashing - everything from error 7, to error 1, to all kinds of errors that I've overcome... but when I'd solve one error, i'd get a different error...

I spent hours of diving through youtube / xda...

Eventually it led me to that I kept getting "cant unmount" error when trying to flash roms. I realized that tha phone isn't friendly to flashing because of something called "treble" or "trebling" - one of the developers here, liquidengineer, released a version of twrp to deal with it... but it didn't work for me.

To keep it short, after like 10 hours and nothing working... I then decided to do what was in this video:

Oreo 8.1 Stock ROM on Moto G5s Plus(English):

(notice url has a space between "youtube" and ".com")

youtube .com/watch?v=-f67lVbDqkc&t=3s

The video was nice because it was step by step. I chose to do it last because it involved using a custom script.

I followed all of the steps, the script ran. What I realized after is that this script only works if original stock roms, but I had this chinese custom rom/baseband.

In short, the script wiped everything... my partitions, files, etc...

TWRP Recovery still worked so I changed the format of the partitions to E2, then E4, that allowed me to use the phone as a drive and add the roms.

when I try to install any rom in TWRP 3.1.1-1... I now just get:

data successfully decrypted, new block device:

'/dev/block/dm-0'

Updating Partition Details....

...done

Successfully decrypted with default password.

Updating partition details...

...done

Full SELinux Support is present.

MTP Enabled

Installing zip file '/sdcard/arrow-v10.0-sanders-OFFICIAL-20200329-VANILLA.zip'

Invalid zip file format!

Error installign zip file '/sdcard/arrow-v10.0-sanders-OFFICIAL-20200329-VANILLA.zip'

Updating partition details...

...done.

It doesn't matter which rom i try to install.

Factory recovery doesn't work.

I also get a Motorola error that my phone has been unlocked and cant be trusted (bad ID).

I kept this post as short as I could, and didn't include all of the different attempts I tried.... but I am now completely lost as to what to do. Please, please help! I'll paypal someone $10 for the winning answer.

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

-----------------------------------

Current Bootscreen:

AP Fastboot Flash Mode (Secure)

BL: BC.06(*) (sha-865eb9a-diety. 2017-07-07 15:02:25)

Bandbase: M8937_37.13.03.53R Montana_Chinadsds_cust

Product/Variant: montana XT1799-2 64 gb p3

Serial #: I have one

CPU: MSM8937

eMMC: 64 GB Samsung etc...

DRAM: 4GB SAMSUNG etc...

Console [Null]: null

Tools Mode Confid: DISABLED

BATTERY OK

flashing_unlocked

Software status: modified

Connect USB Data Cable

(as of now - using TWRP 3.1.1-1 (boots normal))