Stock Droid stuck at M logo after OTA 2.2

[alex2112]

My brother's Droid1 has died after applying the 2.2 update OTA. He bought the phone off of a friend so there is no support from Verizon on this. The phone has never been rooted or messed with at all. The phone was fine running stock 2.1 for months (the 2.1 update came OTA too). He was prompted to update the phone to 2.2, which he accepted. Since the update was applied, the phone was freezing up randomly and would require a battery pull to get it back. One day it froze and after a battery pull, the phone sat at the M logo and wouldn't boot.

I took a look at it and the phone can still get to the bootloader by holding d-pad up. Using the information on this and other forums, I downloaded the stock 2.0.1 .sbf and used RSD lite to flash the phone "back to stock" successfully. When the phone is to reboot though, it goes right back to the M logo and stays there. I can get into the bootloader as many times as I want, and I've flashed the stock .sbf's of 2.0.1, 2.1 and even 2.2 to no avail. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

 

[Troops2990]

you could maybe just try to root it using http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-labs/74028-root-droid-1-regardless-os-version.html and see if that works.

 

[xliderider]

Try taking the sd card out of the device and see if it will boot up and running fine without the sd card. My Droid 1 absolutely would not run froyo roms, but would run 2.1 roms fine. It ended up being a bad filesystem on the memory card. A reformat of the card solved all the problems on froyo.

Hopefully, the memory card just got corrupted recently causing all the problems.

 

[alex2112]

In terms of the sd card... I have been trying to get this droid back both with and without an sd card in the slot but it doesn't make a difference.

I have attemped the sprecovery suggestion too, and RSD Lite flashes the .sbf just fine and the phone shows "SW Update Complete" after flashing. But once rebooted, the phone hangs at the M logo again and won't go into recovery by holding X. Another interesting thing is that sometimes, the M logo isn't centered in the middle of the screen, and sometimes it is even half cut-off at the very edge of the screen. There seems to be something horribly corrupted with the phone, but the fact that I can still get into the bootloader and successfully flash .sbf's seems promising, but at this point I'm about ready to call this a complete loss and accept the fact that it's probably bricked.

Does anyone else have any suggestions I can try?

 

[dietche]

Sounds like that friend drove that phone real hard and you have actual hardware issues.
The offset logo is a rather bad sign, more so than even the boot looping. If I had to
guess it sounds like it's failing on the "video card" initialization into other screen modes.
This likely means she got really hot and blew out part of the chip itself.

A few other possibilities are bad ram, bad LCD driver chip (making the driver fail init),
that it got wet, and even a bad circuit trace or solder joint somewhere.

The phone does have a moisture sensor in the battery compartment, a teeny tiny dot.
As I remember it, that should have a white background and a red cross. If it's the
other way around, with a red background, it got wet. Don't quote me .

Now that you have it half disassembled, go ahead and open it up all the way, and LOOK
at her, with a huge magnifying glass. Be very picky and see if you can spot any bad
solder (pitted or discolored or dull is bad, shiny is good), or any lifted or cut traces,
or any signs of corrosion (a greenish hue instead of shiny copper looking).

Also look at each component and see if you see anything bubbled or blackened or severed.
Take your time and examine everything in a grid pattern.

If you see anything suspicious, post, and I'm sure one of us fellow Droid lovers can try
to further help.

All in all, it doesn't look good frankly. Your troubleshooting techniques are spot on and
have all but eliminated SDCard and software issues. What's left after that is just not
good. Not good at all, I'm afraid. Sorry.

--D