Droid not booting. Odd behavior.

[humanio]

Hi everyone. I've been looking around the forums and haven't really been able to find a solution to this odd problem of mine.

I've been running nightly builds of Cyanogen and everything was going great until yesterday afternoon. My battery was running kind of low (30% or so) when Rom Manager notified me of a new nightly build available for download. I went ahead and plugged in my phone via usb, using a friends USB cable he got from radio shack and let the phone charge while the download finished.

Few minutes later I turned on the phone and everything locked up, so I pressed the button again to turn off the screen hoping to refresh everything. The screen went black, while the capacitive buttons stayed lit.

The phone remained in this state until it rebooted and hung on the MOTO splash screen. I removed the battery, rebooted again and made it into the Cyanogen Splash screen and everything was going fine until it froze and hung on that splash screen as well.

I removed the battery and attempted to reboot multiple times, often waiting 10-15 minutes with no success. Someone on forums elsewhere suggested wiping my sd card and tossing Cyanogen and Gapps to install via recovery.

I wasn't thrilled with this idea but I saved everything important on my SD card and proceeded to wipe it. Again, no success.
It had also been suggested to use SBF to install 2.0.1 of Android OS.

My problem is that my phone will not turn on at all if not plugged into an outlet. However, as soon as my phone is plugged in my screen boots into the MOTO splash and hangs there indefinitely. The white light on the side of the mini USB port that indicates its charging does not light up at all.

I'm under the impression that it isn't charging when plugged in. I've tried booting intro recovery with no success. I've managed to boot into the bootloader (holding the up on the dpad) consistently but it always tells me the battery is too low the program.

Prior to this I was not able to get any indicator that the phone was charging via USB either, however this morning the white light indicator went on so I will proceed to leave it plugged in for a few hours and hope for the best.

*edit. When the phone is plugged via usb it charges for a while until the Phone turns itself on and boots into the MOTO splash until it hangs. Once it hits the MOTO splash the charge indicator goes away. :/

That beingn said, I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions? I'm not too worried that I've bricked my phone as I'm generally told is pretty impossible to do so unless something goes wrong using RSD Lite. None the less I'm pretty confused as to what to do next. Really need to get my phone working again.

Appreciate any help and input from everyone. Thanks.

-Humanio

 

[OntheSquare]

My Droid crashed yesterday too

I'm not a techie...I turned my droid off as battery was low, I plugged it into car charger and 2 min later turned it on...I heard it receiving messages and text then it went black said it was unable to boot (some tech term) whatever in upper right corner. I just cancelled insurance 2 weeks ago. I charged it for 30 min on car charger no luck, I pulled out the sim card..., I pulled battery out overnight...I charged it for 1 hour in wall charger...I charged it plugged into computer using usb...NO luck. Any advice would be great. I just found this site I'm hoping I can learn how to trick out my phone the only add on I have is Dragon Poker which was Red Star poker this app was not on btw when it crashed...

 

[humanio]

Ok so after leaving it charged a few hours I got nothing. I was able to again launch into the bootloader with the "Battery Low Cannot Program" message.

After googling around for a good while I found an interesting new way to fix or bypass that error message.

Links here:

:::HOW TO FLASH A PHONE WITH "BATTERY LOW CANNOT PROGRAM":::

https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/160373#160373

This is a little tricky but for those of you unable to get a new battery, or borrow one and would have an extra usb cable around this is a good fix.

1. Take your USB cable and keep the USB end while cutting the opposite end.
2. Strip rubber/plastic coating of the cable till you see the metal/aluminum wire.
3. Remove or simple peel open the metal/aluminum coating until you expose all four wires.
4. You should have a RED, BLACK, GREEN, & WHITE wire, we will be using the Red (Vcc+5) and Black (Ground)
5. Strip the red and black wire.

From here you can do 2 things.

A. Remove the battery from your phone. At the top of the battery you will see the contact pins.
The far left should have a + sign, while the far right should say -.
Tape the Red wire making sure it makes contact with the + pin, and do the same with the Black wire and the -.
Once you are sure the wires are only touching the + & - contacts, pop the battery back into the phone. You should have something like this:

B. Remove the battery from you phone. Inside the battery compartment you will see the 4 contact pins. (the pins that have contact with the battery)
Take the red wire and thread or loop it around the pin furthest to the left making sure it only has contact with that pin.
Take the black wire and thread or loop it around the pin furthest to the right. Again making sure it only makes contact with its specified pin.
Once done you should have something like this:

(different phone, same process)


Now plug in the USB into the computer which should hopefully solve the battery problem.

Then plug the USB data cable to your computer and your phone.
Boot into the the bootloader and reflash or do whatever needs to be done.

Once all is done, make sure you unplug both USB cables prior to removing our make shift charge/bypass cable.


I hope this helps anyone having the Low battery cannot program issue!

Will report back when I solve my own issue.

Thanks.

-human

 

[knuckleheadTech]

I realize this is an old thread but I haven't seen anyone give a Thank You. So I say thank you humanio. I have had a number of bootloops but with this one the battery would not charge and and things were getting worse. There are other posts about this but for a guy like me the pictures made all the difference.

Interesting side affect. Once I had the wires in place and the bootloader was happily reporting a charged battery I went to start my sbf process. I then found out my sbf was not a full download. I started the download again and left the wires hooked up and went to the store. I came back over an hour later with the download finished but the phone wasn't responding. My first thought was "I fried my battery", or something worse the way things were going. It turns out that my battery was fully charged! Woohoo! I pulled the wires, put the phone back together the way Motorola had intended and had a lovely time with some sbf goodness.

Thanks Again.

 

[ClassickWorld]

This method worked for me. Only problem is, now my phone does not recognize my battery. It says "Invalid battery" and my battery charging icon has a question mark. At this point my phone shut down, ad when I reboot it I get stuck on the Moto Logo & then a battery icon with a question mark.

 

[dimmer_is_a_DJ]

Ok so after leaving it charged a few hours I got nothing. I was able to again launch into the bootloader with the "Battery Low Cannot Program" message.

After googling around for a good while I found an interesting new way to fix or bypass that error message.

Links here:

:::HOW TO FLASH A PHONE WITH "BATTERY LOW CANNOT PROGRAM":::

https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/160373#160373

This is a little tricky but for those of you unable to get a new battery, or borrow one and would have an extra usb cable around this is a good fix.

1. Take your USB cable and keep the USB end while cutting the opposite end.
2. Strip rubber/plastic coating of the cable till you see the metal/aluminum wire.
3. Remove or simple peel open the metal/aluminum coating until you expose all four wires.
4. You should have a RED, BLACK, GREEN, & WHITE wire, we will be using the Red (Vcc+5) and Black (Ground)
5. Strip the red and black wire.

From here you can do 2 things.

A. Remove the battery from your phone. At the top of the battery you will see the contact pins.
The far left should have a + sign, while the far right should say -.
Tape the Red wire making sure it makes contact with the + pin, and do the same with the Black wire and the -.
Once you are sure the wires are only touching the + & - contacts, pop the battery back into the phone. You should have something like this:

B. Remove the battery from you phone. Inside the battery compartment you will see the 4 contact pins. (the pins that have contact with the battery)
Take the red wire and thread or loop it around the pin furthest to the left making sure it only has contact with that pin.
Take the black wire and thread or loop it around the pin furthest to the right. Again making sure it only makes contact with its specified pin.
Once done you should have something like this:

(different phone, same process)


Now plug in the USB into the computer which should hopefully solve the battery problem.

Then plug the USB data cable to your computer and your phone.
Boot into the the bootloader and reflash or do whatever needs to be done.

Once all is done, make sure you unplug both USB cables prior to removing our make shift charge/bypass cable.


I hope this helps anyone having the Low battery cannot program issue!

Will report back when I solve my own issue.

Thanks.

-human

WORKS LIKE A CHARM!!! THANKS FOR REPOSTING THAT, MY GOOD MAN.dancedroiddancedroiddancedroid

 

[ikahlE43]

I have is Dragon Poker which was Red Star poker

 

[metsfan67]

When i do this, i just get my green charging LED, and a blank screen. I tried plugging both usb's into the wall, with two different USB wall adapters, and still i just get the green charging LED. Any ideas?

 

[xebraman]

Same problem... instead of Droid 1/2/X its on MotoCharm MB502 instead

Hi.

First of all Big Thanks to Humanio for putting in good efforts first to solve his problem his way and then letting us all too how to do it. Picture was good.

2ndly - I use a Blackberry form factor type MotoCharm MB502 SE Asian ROM. The problem faced on my Motocharm is exactly the same. Word by word same.
However this option is also running on an assumption that you utilize a spare usb cable which i dont have. I need to have the battery charged by anymeans or borrow one or get it charged from a mobile store somewhere.
So I need atleast one of the below:
1. A Spare USB Cable + Cutter + Patience OR
2. A spare charged battery OR
3. Another user who can lend me battery

Unfortunately Moto phones are not preferred by any one in the area I live and more so when Moto does not bother to boost sales using aggressive marketing like Samsung does, so 3rd option is closed. 1 and 2 are already not feasible.

So i gotta go out to some mobile store and ask them if they can charge this dirty elephant size battery and if they can I will be able to boot using boot program.

Another limitation with this phone is that It is on Eclair 2.1 Android OS so Had to be Rooted which was completed by me 2-3 days back. It can not be upgraded to Cyanogen rom as its bootloader is locked just like Droid X's. It can only be re-programmed using same ROM Image (.sbf file) using RSD Lite.

Using RSD lite is always that risky you would be aware of already. so best of luck to me and thanks to you guys for putting in efforts to help others

Cheers.

 

[MissionImprobable]

You still have the option of flashing a Rom, but it would take a lot of patience. You'd have to figure out how to port CWM to your phone and then port the Rom yourself, but it can be done if you're in the mood.