Howto: Un-brick Your E815!!!

[scanman1]

Ok,

We all dread this happening....

You make a change to the phone and all the sudden you have a BRICK!

With the E815, the dreaded bricking scenario happens when you use the unreliable p2kcommander program
and upload a new skin. The program crashes half way. You send the skin again and you verify the files,
and you THINK you have finished uploading a new skin. Then you choose this new skin on the phone and Whammo!

You now have a brick.

This brick does one trick, Motorola boot screen, BLANK screen, rinse and repeat!!
Once your Bricked, you cant run BitPIM, QPST, PST, or P2KCommander to remove the offending code.
The phone wont power up, it's crashing before booting up!

I.E. TRUE BRICK BEHAVIOR!!!

Now, I've been around long enough to hear this story repeated over and over with the end result being take the phone back, but I just decided I needed to play
with skinner4moto and just tweak my phone just a little bit.
This will NEVER happen to me, because I'm carefull. (Right)

After reading ALOT around here, there are several myths that need to be squashed.

Myth #1: You need a charging cable to fix the phone. Wrong! (I dont have one)
Myth #2: You need to remove the battery to fix the phone. (Wrong again)
Myth #3: you need a full charge to program the phone. (I was at 1 bar when I was done flashing/recovering)

Now I'm not saying that the above is not some good advice, but if your at the point that your going to
throw the phone into a lake it's not mandatory.

I have selected the incomplete skin a SECOND time, causing my phone to RE-BRICK itself, and repaired it AGAIN!

Why, to make sure I could repeat what I did and write this how-to.

(I have no $ lost if I did brick my phone being that I am a Verizon employee, and this phone is a company phone,
to be used for company business.)

Before anyone thinks about PM'ing me with wireless questions, I DO NOT work in the Wireless area of the company.
(I work on the fiber optic/backbone/transport/uunet high speed side. I.E. Verizon Business)

The ONLY thing I get for walking into a Verizon store is about a 50% discount on toys.

Back to the problem at hand. Your phone is in a re-boot loop.

YOU NEED TO GET THE FOLLOWING SOFTWARE:

1. MultiFlashFlex Tool 1.8 (Found in the main installation directory of MPT. Don't ask me where to get it.)
2. The Flash recovery driver, this can be found in the driver directory of the latest p2kcommander.
3. The actual flash file:VRZ_E815_01.1E.0R_PRIhh28734_CUSTOMER_UPGRADE _01.shx

Ok, Lets do it.

Since you already took the battery out when the phone froze up immediatly after you selected the faulty skin,
and your now constantly seeing the white Moto boot screen, and you still have your cable plugged in:

1. Remove the cable from phone.
2. HOLD DOWN the (#) + (*) + (Hangup)

After the next reboot cycle, you will be at the "bootloader" screen on the phone.
It will have a Blue background with a big M and say "BOOTLOADER USB INIT" at the bottom.

3. Reinsert your cable and your computer will be asking you for a new driver.

4. Install the "Motorolla Flash Interface" driver located in the drivers directory in P2KCommander.
(This is a separate driver from anything else you used to talk to the phone until now)

5. Execute the file "MultiFlashFlex.exe" in the PST installed directory.

6. Under Flash setup:

6a. Enaible Flash (X)

6b. Flash File Name:E815_01.1E.0R\VRZ_E815_01.1E.0R_PRIhh28734_CU STOMER_UPGRADE_01.shx

7. Leave FLEX blank.

8. Preferences. CHECK ALL 4 BOXES!!!

9. Click Show Devices. (Your phone will show up at the bottom pane)

10. Click start.

11. Watch as it reflashes your phone.

12. DO NOT TOUCH THE PC OR THE PHONE FOR 10 MINUTES, you can move the mouse to prevent screen saver.

13. After the PC says done, the phone will do some housekeeping with the file system.
You will see some text above the bootloader msg.
DO NOT TOUCH THE PHONE!!!! It will reboot itself when it's ready, and your now back up!!!!

Congrat's, you unbricked your E815

[scanman1]

P.S. I would be flattered if this guide was placed on Mark_Venture's site. It should replace the verbage warning people NOT to skin the phone.

[Mark_Venture]

YOU NEED TO GET THE FOLLOWING SOFTWARE:

1. MultiFlashFlex Tool 1.8 (Found in the main installation directory of MPT. Don't ask me where to get it.)
2. The Flash recovery driver, this can be found in the driver directory of the latest p2kcommander.

Slight revisions...

MultiFlashFlex comes with PST, not MPT... its found in C:\Program Files\Motorola\PST\MultiFlashFlex.exe

As for the DRIVER... if you're talking about the P2K.INF and P2k.sys... there are various versions of these... the one that comes with P2kCommander may or may not be OLDER...

The E815/V710 PST Driver Pack on http://mark.cdmaforums.com does contain the latest... As does the drivers with Motorola Software Update... With the possible execption of those that come with the RADIOCOMM software... RADIOCOMM's versions are slightly newer revision levels and dates, but the version numbers are in a different format..

[evade]

I wonder if this works because MFF does a Master Reset/Clear defaulting the skin back to Moto.

I have noticed that the behavior of the Master Reset/Clear is to reset the skin to the first skin in the skins folder in alphabetical order.

If my hunch is correct:

1) The bad skin you tested with begins with a letter after "M" in the alphabet.

2) You wouldn't be able to repeat this with a skin beginning with a letter prior to "M". For that you would need the charging cable.


Just speculation.

[scanman1]

[QUOTE=

1) The bad skin you tested with begins with a letter after "M" in the alphabet.

2) You wouldn't be able to repeat this with a skin beginning with a letter prior to "M". For that you would need the charging cable.


Just speculation.[/QUOTE]

The bad skin is XPBlue. We will have to wait until someone does this on a skin alphabetically below "M".
Personally, all my new skins from now on will be renamed with the first letter AFTER M.

How would the charging cable change the behavior of the phone when in the flash mode ? Why?

[evade]

How would the charging cable change the behavior of the phone when in the flash mode ? Why?

It wouldn't. What it would do is allow you bring up the other USB interfaces modem/p2k and repair/remove the bad skin.

[scanman1]

I forgot to mention that after the flash, I did not end up with the Motorola skin, I DID end up with the lowest alphabetic skin. In my case the Batman skin. So it is confirmed about the flash forcing the phone to the lowest alphabetic skin.

[evade]

I guess everyone who screws around with skins should load a working Aardvark skin onto their phone.

[Mark_Venture]

I forgot to mention that after the flash, I did not end up with the Motorola skin, I DID end up with the lowest alphabetic skin. In my case the Batman skin. So it is confirmed about the flash forcing the phone to the lowest alphabetic skin.

which is why I try and rename all my skins with letters N thru Z

not to mention the "Light" skin & icon issue..

[Scott Z]

Is there a software out there that you can use to back_up your phone? I'd like to know just in case I ever get into this problem. That way if you do back_up's you wouldn't have to worry about losing everything. I'm in the habbit of backing up my computer why not do it to your phone before you do a mod or try something new.

[bombzhome]

My last alphabetical skin was the skin that caused it to brick. I am back into the phone, but I'm unable to see anything. Any ideas?

[NKTizzle]

When trying to flash the phone with MultiFlashFlex, I get the following error:

[02:26:22] Flash File:C:\Documents and Settings\sundedo_\My Documents\VRZ_E815_01.1E.0R_PRIhh28734_CUSTOMER_UP GRADE_01.shx USB Port:0 Error:FLASH failed! ***Error*** Unable to connect to the Subscriber Unit. Unable to get string descriptors.


Has anyone seen this error?

[Humpa]

Has anyone seen this error?

I've seen it posted more times than I can remember (though google only has 43 results for the exact phrase).

What version of PST?
If you installed the "triplets patch", then you need to re-install PST 7.2.3. The triplets patch should not be used for our phones - I've also read you can simply re-run the uni_patch file instead of re-installing PST.

[NKTizzle]

Yea Humpa, I had searched the forums and Google, but none of the fixes worked for me. But I noticed you talked about PST 7.2.3, so I checked the version I was using. Guess what, it was 7.1.1. So I aquired 7.2.3, uni patched it, and reflashed.

Worked like a charm!!!!! Can we update the proceedure to call for 7.2.3 or greater?

[Humpa]

Yea Humpa, I had searched the forums and Google, but none of the fixes worked for me. But I noticed you talked about PST 7.2.3, so I checked the version I was using. Guess what, it was 7.1.1. So I aquired 7.2.3, uni patched it, and reflashed.

Worked like a charm!!!!! Can we update the proceedure to call for 7.2.3 or greater?

What procedure is that? The wiki should already say that - doesn't it? The last phone that worked with 7.1.1 was the V710 (I think?).