Only seeing black screen; your help is needed!

[themeehan]

This afternoon my Droid fell out of my chair onto the floor and the battery popped out. Ever since, the phone will turn on but only the backlight operates (no LED).

A week or two ago I went back to a stock 2.01 from Sholes v1.1. This is the chain of events from last night. Perhaps you guys have some ideas?

• I still had sprecovery 0.99b installed and located on the root of my sdcard
• I still had the "back to 2.01" update.zip on the sdcard
• Last night, while cleaning up my phone I deleted both files
• Today when I dropped it, the battery popped out and that was the first restart since I deleted those files
• Now the screen backlight will come on as if its going to boot but nothing more
• I can do some adb commands to the phone
  • adb push and adb shell do not work; adb reboot and adb reboot recovery do work
• Regardless I only reach the black screen with the backlight (whether its an adb reboot recovery or battery pull followed by power + x)
• I put flash_image (just in case it was there and I just didn't notice it) and the same version of sprecovery (which is still the latest version) back onto my sdcard via an old Blackberry
• I am still unable to get passed the black screen with the backlight (whether its an adb reboot recovery or battery pull followed by power + x)

I'd like to try a blind navigation of the boot menu, but I'm not sure the exact sequence of clicks that I would require to try a nandroid restore or a reinstall of update.zip (assuming either will help). The phone was accepting phone calls (ringing on my friends end) until I put the files back on the SD card and did a few adb reboot and adb reboot recovery's; now it goes straight to voicemail. The phone doesn't make any noise or vibrations; with the phone plugged in MotoConnect returns "No application available". "adb devices" returns an empty list.

I was able to get it to a VZW "authorized retailer" as they are only 2 blocks away, but the woman just claimed the screen had a crack in it and directed me to the corporate store a couple miles away. I cannot see this crack in any lighting conditions.

[themeehan]

I have been able to have adb recognize the device upon doing a battery pull followed by Power + Camera and/or Power + d-pad up. I can now use adb shell, but cannot access /sdcard/ or /data/. I've posted the current file permissions below:

drwxrwxrwt root root 1969-12-31 20:34 sqlite_stmt_journals
drw-rw-rw- root root 1969-12-31 19:06 config
drwxrwx--- system cache 2010-02-01 15:56 cache
d--------- system system 1969-12-31 20:34 sdcard
lrwxrwxrwx root root 1969-12-31 20:34 d -> /sys/kernel/debug
lrwxrwxrwx root root 1969-12-31 20:34 etc -> /system/etc
drwxr-xr-x root root 2010-01-23 18:47 system
drwxr-xr-x root root 1969-12-31 19:00 sys
drwxr-x--- root root 1969-12-31 19:00 sbin
dr-xr-xr-x root root 1969-12-31 19:00 proc
-rwxr-x--- root root 6226 1969-12-31 19:00 init.sholes.rc
-rwxr-x--- root root 12383 1969-12-31 19:00 init.rc
-rwxr-x--- root root 1677 1969-12-31 19:00 init.goldfish.rc
-rwxr-x--- root root 103100 1969-12-31 19:00 init
-rw-r--r-- root root 118 1969-12-31 19:00 default.prop
drwxrwx--x system system 1969-12-31 19:00 data
drwx------ root root 2009-11-25 18:20 root
drwxr-xr-x root root 1969-12-31 20:34 dev

[themeehan]

I was able to get it working again. I finally received the 2c.6c bootloader prompt (I believe that was the code). I was then able to enter the stock bootloader and wipe my /data/ and /cache/. Upon reboot, the phone did need to dial vzw for activation. Also, about 50% of my installed apps reappeared.

[atlien003]

Same thing happened to me yesterday. Dropped phone, battery flew out, and now the blank backlit screen.

I want to try either the blind navigation to update.zip or adb shell, but I'm not that familiar with adb.

Could you walk me through the steps I should take the recover, or post some screenshots of what I need to type in adb.

I think blind naving it would be this:

1. Power + x
2. Down on d-pad 4 times to install
3. Down on d-pad 2 times to install update.zip
from there I can't remember, and I'm trying to find some videos so i can grab some glimpses and try this.

I really don't want to have to buy a new one, especially, if you were able to fix yours. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[Se7enLC]

Same thing happened to me yesterday. Dropped phone, battery flew out, and now the blank backlit screen.

The more likely case is that you broke something. Installing software to fix the problem of dropping the phone doesn't even make sense...

You'll notice that the other poster got to a point where it said bootloader before anything else was able to work. I would suggest trying that, first. Try plugging the phone into the factory charger with no battery and see if it will boot up. If you have the non-stock bootloader, see if you can boot into it (hold 'x' while it is booting).

I want to try either the blind navigation to update.zip or adb shell, but I'm not that familiar with adb. Could you walk me through the steps I should take the recover, or post some screenshots of what I need to type in adb.

Again, I *really* don't think there's much to gain from blindly navigating the screens. I would suggest the following:

1). Try rebooting into recovery (assuming that you're running clockwork or SPRecovery). Pull the battery out, and put it back in, holding X while you boot it up. If the screen comes on and says recovery, you're in good shape

2). If that *doesn't* work, try plugging it into a computer to see if it gets recognized (on the off-chance that it is actually in recovery, but just not displaying). If that's the case, use ADB to connect to it and run commands - try just the reboot command or shell command. If those work, you're in pretty good shape still, and perhaps the blind navigation might do something useful. Still seems unlikely, but you never know.

3). if you DO want to try blind navigation, I would suggest trying to do the reset options, rather than the install option. I have clockwork installed on my phone, but perhaps somebody else can offer a menu list so that you can see where options are in the menu. Again, I think you should try to connect with ADB *FIRST*, as you'll never know if the blind method is doing anything otherwise.

3). Try connecting to the phone with RSDLite and reflashing that way.

[atlien003]

Ok so I plugged into PC and was recognized, but since I have done anything root wise on Mac I don't have adb, which I can find out how to do.

I know a little adb on Mac, but I don't know any PC commands, could you help. I don't know how to get to bootloader screen.

[brando56894]

The ribbon connector for the screen probably got jostled loose, if youre brave enough open that bad boy up and see! Otherwise bring it back to verizon if you have insurance, if not its probably covered under the manufacturer warranty depending on how old the phone is.

[atlien003]

You don't think they will test whether it has been rooted?

[atlien003]

Ok so I tried using RSDLite to send me back to stock, thought maybe that would fix it. RSD recognized my phone, but for Device Properties all it would tell me was the bootloader version, all other values N/A. When I tried to Start the process the message in the status column gave me this:

Failed flashing process. Failed flashing process. Unable to retrieve initialization values from INI file. (0x7029); phone connected.

Screen is still black and backlit.

Ever seen this? Saw a few people asking about it under the "How to Root 2.1" thread, but no answer.