Unbricking Your Droid X

[HoppingZombie]

btw i was looking into what you were saying so should i get the full sbf or the "partial" sbf
what i did was
-install bootstrap
-flash this theme
-booted up and got force close loop
-freaked out
-booted into clockwork mod
-wiped everything
-won't start up
-only recovery and bootloader
-my battery is drained
-when i plug into the wall it displays the (M) logo
thats all
i'm not sure where i am right now. and should i get the 2.2 sbf or the 2.1 sbf im going

im not sure what to do.
my battery is out. some people are saying to just plug it into the wall?

Turn the phone completely off and plug it into the wall. A screen should pop up showing a battery icon. If this is the case, let it sit for a while and wait for it to charge to at least 50%. Also, use the 2.2 SBF. I'm not sure if they ever released a full 2.2 SBF or if they only have the partial but either should be fine for this. And just go with the 2.2 SBF. You most likely had 2.2 installed anyway and if you try to flash the 2.1 SBF over 2.2, you are totally screwed. Other than that just follow the steps in the guide and it should work. Only use the section on ghetto charging your battery if the battery will not charge through the wall, and even then you should still try to borrow a battery off of a friend first. It is possible to destroy your phone using the ghetto charging method so BE CAREFUL!!!! And ask questions

thanks bro!!!
i had to resort to ghetto charging it but its working out fine.
im going to start the flashing process
after i flash it do i need to do anything? wipe data/cache/etc?

 

[HoppingZombie]

btw i checked and the pst_flash.ini was already in RSD folder

 

[HoppingZombie]

dude it worked your a fking pro

 

[xlivewire7x]

dude it worked your a fking pro

Thanks man, love hearing comments like that! Glad I could help!

 

[kbatrph]

Note to anyone using this to switch back to 2.1 from the leaked 2.2: you will most likely have to factory reset in order for the flash to work. Flashing 2.1 overtop of 2.2 didn't work for me and it's probably because of 2.2 being a more recent release. After you factory reset, follow the instructions on how flash the SBF in the Infinite Boot Loop section. You will need to reactivate after the phone is up and running again, which can be dialing *228 if the phone doesn't do it automatically.
Update: Some people have reported being able to flash back to 2.1 from 2.2 without a factory reset. If you would like to try this, follow the steps below on how to flash the SBF. After that, try pulling the battery a couple times until the device fully boots up. Some people have said they had to do it 3+ times.

Okay, I've been on these forums for a couple weeks or so and I haven't noticed anybody putting together an in-depth guide on unbricking the Droid X. With all the new theme mods and such coming out, the likelihood of you bricking your Droid X at least once is increasing greatly. I figured since I recently bricked mine to the farthest point of bricking and was still able to revive it, it would be easier to help save people some time and throw together all of the methods that I've found on how to unbrick your amazing phone. So here it goes:

The Infinite Boot Loop
Some Info
This is usually the first stage of bricking that you'll come across. If you mess with a system file or anything like that, it will prevent the Droid from being able to load all of the files for startup and will thus just keep on trying to reboot itself.
Symptoms
Kind of obvious to tell but nevertheless the symptoms you'll notice are that your Droid will never be able to boot up fully, it will display the Droid Eye animated boot screen for a few minutes and then will reboot, going straight back to the eye.
How to Fix
Before I get into the fixing part let me be clear on one thing: there is a difference between the recovery menu and the bootloader menu. This is important because your computer will not be able to recognize your phone when it's in the recovery mode (trust me, I probably wasted a couple hours realizing this ). Here is the step by step guide for Windows to reflashing the .sbf on your phone to fix the loop (couple things to note, this was taken straight from here but with added notes from me, and this works on Windows 7 64bit for anybody who thinks differently, I used it on my 7 64bit computer and it worked fine):

1. Download these files:

RSD Lite
​

32 Bit and 64 Bit Drivers (thanks for the heads-up, akappy332; didn't know the drivers were online the whole time )
​

SBF File (this has been removed. PM me and I can send you a link for download, or go to RootzWiki.com, click Droid X, hit "Ctrl +F" and look for "Motorola Droid X SBF Download - Here")
Credit to MyDroidWorld for RSD Lite.

SBF INSTRUCTIONS: Install the RSDLite 4.7 program by double clicking on the program.
Move the pst_flash.ini file into the following folder --> Program Files/Motorola/RSDLite
​

Note: It is important that you move the file to the correct folder other wise this WILL NOT WORK! I recommend copying it over twice to be sure. When is asks you if you would like to overwrite the file, make sure the new and old file sizes are the same when copying for the second time.
​

2. Install the drivers that apply to your Operating System.

3. Unzip the SBF into a folder.

Note: I read somewhere that it works best if you unzip it straight into the C:\ folder so that's what I did, but I'm not sure if it made a difference.
​

4. Open RSD Lite and find the UNZIPPED SBF

Note: When opening RSD Lite, use "Shift + Right Click" and select "Run as administrator". Some people have reported that this helps bypass some firewall in the newer Windows operating systems. If you are in XP or anything older, don't worry about doing this. Also, in order for the program to see your phone you may need to go into RSD Lite, go to "Config" and then select "DeviceID Options". A window will open and you'll want to make sure that the option "First Come-First Serve DeviceId Mode" is selected. After you do that, hit "Okay" and restart the program.
​

5. Put your Motorola Droid X in bootloader mode. Now connect the Droid X via usb.
<B>

Note: Bootloader Mode is accessed by first powering down the phone. Then, hold down the camera button, volume decrease button, and power button. This should bring you to a completely black screen with white text on it.
​

</B>
6. Click start and sit back.

Note: Make sure that your battery is at least 50% charged when doing this and do not disconnect the phone while it is reflashing. Doing so will cause you to get into a bricked mode that is a pain in the ass to get out of, but still possible. More details on that later.
​

If you are using the Linux operating system, please refer to here for instructions.
If you have any problems when going through these steps, please go through them at least twice and heed the notes that I wrote in between. If you still have questions, please feel free to ask and you will have a whole forum of people willing to help you out


"Code Corrupt" Error
Some Info
Chances are that if you are getting this error, you probably tried to reflash the .sbf and something went awry (for me it was that I only waited to charge the battery for 10% ).
Symptoms
You'll know your at this screen because, well, you'll be scared to death for your phone. This screen looks like the bootloader screen but it says "Code Corrupt" on it. If the screen says that your battery is okay and RSD Lite can still see it when you connect it to your computer, scroll up to The Infinite Boot Loop and go to the section How to Fix in order to fix the error.
How to Fix
One thing that you may notice is that when you have this error, your phone will not charge the battery and you'll only be able to see the screen turn on if its plugged into the wall. Somewhere on the screen it will say "Your Battery is Low" and "Cannot Reprogram" or something like that. The easiest way to get through this is to find a friend with a charged battery or go to your local Verizon store and see if they have a demo phone they can use to charge your battery. If you're like me though you will not be lucky in any sense like this so you will have to find the MacGyver inside of you and get a little creative. What you need for this is an old USB cord. One end must be a standard USB cable head and the other can pretty much be anything. Once you have that, follow these steps:

NOTE: I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR DAMAGE DONE TO ANY PHONE, BATTERY, ETC. FOLLOW THESE STEPS WITH CAUTION TO AVOID RISK OF DAMAGE.

1. Take your cable and cut off one of the ends, leaving a standard USB plug at the opposite end to plug into your computer.

2. Now you need to strip about and inch of the wire off until you get to the core where you should see 4 colored wires (red, black, white, and green). The colors don't really matter and they may vary, just as long as you can see a red wire and a black wire.

3. Strip off about a quarter inch of the rubber sleeving on the red and black cables, exposing the actual metal wire.

4. Twist the metal strands of each of the wires a couple of times so that all of the wires from the black cable are together and all of the wires from the red cable are together. This is just to make sure that you don't create a short circuit.

5. Here's where it gets a little tricky. You are going to use this cable to make the phone think the battery is fully charged, when in fact you will just be powering the phone using the power from the USB port. Pull out the battery on your phone and find the 4 exposed metal slots (the battery terminals).

6. Each of the far terminals should be labeled with a plus (+) or a minus (-). What you need to do is put exposed leads on the red wire up to the positive terminal and the leads of the black wire up to the negative terminal.

7. While still holding the leads on their respective terminals, slide the battery back into place in the phone. MAKE SURE THE WIRES ARE NOT TOUCHING WHEN YOU PUT THE BATTERY INTO THE PHONE! BAD THINGS COULD HAPPEN ONCE YOU PLUG THE CORD INTO THE COMPUTER!

Note: As tested by parm289, you can skip step 7 and just use the cable to charge the battery if you'd like. He recommends allowing it to charge for 6-7 minutes before placing it back into the phone. Thanks parm!

8. Once the battery is in place and the wires are on the correct terminals but not touching each other, plug the USB cord into the computer. If all has gone as it should, the screen on your phone should come on (may have to press the power button) and the phone should be telling you that the battery charge is okay and that it is okay to program. YAY! Your phone is almost back to normal!

9. Go back up to the previous section in this post that tells you how to reflash the .sbf and follow all of the instructions there. Once that has finished flashing the .sbf to your phone, your phone should be back to working order! You will most likely have to redo the entire setup on your phone but at least your phone is no longer a fancy paperweight dancedroid

Thanks to some help from other members of this forum, we have found out that you will need to reprogram your phone after flashing the .sbf if you didn't do a factory reset. This can be done by calling Verizon Wireless' toll free number (1.800.295.1614 Monday–Friday, 7AM–11PM EST - United States) and having them reactivate your phone. However, if you do a factory reset your phone will be able to reactivate itself but all the apps on your phone will be lost. Everything on your memory card should still be intact though so you may be able to reinstall your apps from that.

Here are some more tips from some members of this forum. Too lazy to format their advice straight into the guide so I'ma quote them instead

I thought i was a goner, but you saved my ass. I owe you a beer : D

I was worried for a second I was going to have to to back to using my :blackberry:

if your fix isnt working, it is because you werent reading close enough.

One thing i noted that i did different was i had read what (0x7100d) error meant here:
If you get "Failed Flashing process. (0x7100)" in RSD Lite - Android Forums at #32 he mentions how the error message indicates a file with any number of phony characters at the end. mine had 3. perhaps you may want to add that as a possible step on your guide.

thanks again, you are a true lifesaver : DDD

EDITED FOR SPELLING

Alot of the time you need to do *22800, device may not activate due to it not being able to lock on to a specific channel. Once the esn is acive in the system. The provisioning should have taken place.

Not sure if anyone tried this and posted it since their a lot of pages, but for Mac OS X(Intel based) users. If you do not have a windows or linux os dual boot, or want to deal with dual booting. I have tested running RSD Lite 4.7 in Windows XP over Parallels Desktop 5, and everything flashed okay, just make sure you don't have some weird screensaver time, or go to sleep after so long, because the flashing will fail( I made this mistake, but it did boot back up into the bootloader). If you do attempt it, I would say to make sure you give your virtual machine priority over the cpu instead of the host, and there nothing else running, besides what is needed.

Special Thanks goes out to RootzWiki for the instructions and to Phoxus for finding the .sbf file and making it possible to revive our phones!

This is everything I know about fixing a bricked Droid and if anybody sees a typo or would like to add something, please feel free to post the addendum here or PM me and I'll be sure to add it to the guide! I would like to see this stickied so that nobody has to worry about a bricked Droid X! dancedroid

Please do not PM me asking for help on specific problems, only ask for the SBF. I'm not trying to sound rude but I don't have the time to fix individual problems, I barely have the time to check my private messages every night and send out the SBF. Thanks to everyone who is helping out other forum members in solving their problems, I appreciate the help.

i'm sorry, but i need to know how to do the factory reset, since i can't get past the startup screen

 

[HoppingZombie]

dude it worked your a fking pro

Thanks man, love hearing comments like that! Glad I could help!

the only bad thing is that my phone wont recognize my battery so i can't charge it

 

[xlivewire7x]

dude it worked your a fking pro

Thanks man, love hearing comments like that! Glad I could help!

the only bad thing is that my phone wont recognize my battery so i can't charge it

Oh, sorry to tell you bud but your phone is kind of screwed, most likely because of the ghetto charging method. The same thing happened to me the second time I tried the charging method, it's not the battery it's the charging circuit in your phone. Your going to have to call Verizon Warranty Services and get a replacement. They are very easy to get a replacement from and your new phone will be there the day after you call, you just have to send your old one back in. I don't condone fraud but you can't technically get a replacement because of how you damaged your phone, but there are ways around that. PM me if you need further info.

 

[moclovman]

I am a new user and have been reading forums for 6 months, but never felt like i needed to respond. But I have to say, after going through a lot with my dx, this was an excellent write up.

It definitely saved me from having to get a new phone.

Much Thanks

 

[xlivewire7x]

I am a new user and have been reading forums for 6 months, but never felt like i needed to respond. But I have to say, after going through a lot with my dx, this was an excellent write up.

It definitely saved me from having to get a new phone.

Much Thanks

\I haven't visited this post in a while but it's nice to know people are still getting use out of it. Not to mention the fact that I love getting comments like this. Glad I could help!

 

[whills]

bricked my droid x and need help please

wife got a hold of my phone and she got into the astro file manager and started top delete files she thought I did not need. Lesson learn don't let wife touch your phone.
Anyhow I have tried to use bootloader with rsd 4.8 and sbf file it loades and says everything passed. I get " Bootloader 30.04 Err:A5,70,70,00,1F" the it says "MEM_MAP Blank Service req'd" then it goes back to rebootloader ok to program transfer mode:USB

 

[Arcstriker]

wife got a hold of my phone and she got into the astro file manager and started top delete files she thought I did not need. Lesson learn don't let wife touch your phone.
Anyhow I have tried to use bootloader with rsd 4.8 and sbf file it loades and says everything passed. I get " Bootloader 30.04 Err:A5,70,70,00,1F" the it says "MEM_MAP Blank Service req'd" then it goes back to rebootloader ok to program transfer mode:USB

Is the phone still rooted, and if using z4root are you using a perm root not temp. I noticed a problem like this when I was only temp rooted. once I did the perm root, it worked fine. Good luck

 

[whills]

it was fully rooted what am I doing wrong then?

 

[Arcstriker]

Oh, wait... Im sorry, now I know where you are, and its not good... You mean when u turn on the phone now it goes right to the bootloader? With that error, I've been there my phone was bricked, but at the bottom mine said ready to program or something like that. thats when I connected my phone to the PC and ran RSD and used the MOST CURRENT .sbf file... if you try to use an older .sbf than what software was on the phone then it won't work.

 

[moclovman]

wife got a hold of my phone and she got into the astro file manager and started top delete files she thought I did not need. Lesson learn don't let wife touch your phone.
Anyhow I have tried to use bootloader with rsd 4.8 and sbf file it loades and says everything passed. I get " Bootloader 30.04 Err:A5,70,70,00,1F" the it says "MEM_MAP Blank Service req'd" then it goes back to rebootloader ok to program transfer mode:USB

This happened to me at one point in my Droid life... download the new TBH sbf file for 2.3.320/.340... I'm guessing with a bootloader version that current you probably flashed an old sbf.

Long story short search for team black hat sbf 2.3.320/.340 then really flash through rsd light... should work.

Sorry foe not posting link, I'm on phone at work

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums App

 

[whills]

thats ok I'm giving up its a paper weight now. stays in bootloader even after downloading and installing that file