Mokona Modoki

Oh no! Your Motorola Xoom is Bricked (or is it)

You’ve tried everything you can think of. Hard reset, soft reset, factory reset, factory restore, factory wipe and erase. Nothing works! I thought that too!

Please read this entire article before trying anything!

So long as you can still reach the ‘Starting Fastboot Protocol Support’, by powering the device on (or resetting with Power + Volume Up) while holding the power and volume down button, you are probably not in as much trouble as you may think.

Visit this link and download the zip file:

http://www.android.net/forum/downloading/67/guest/SDK_tools.zip
(leave me a comment if the file is unavailable, I’ll upload a copy to this website)

Extract it to your C: drive, so the contents exist in:

C:SDK_tools

Visit this link:

http://developer.motorola.com/products/software/

Read this article for more information about the bundles.

Download the corrosponding bundle version for your location or region. I’m in Australia, so I downloaded the ‘Build H.6.1-38-9 for Telstra Australia’ bundle. Take a few moments to peruse the list, it’s a little confusing and I almost downloaded the wrong one. Make sure you download the right one. I’ve no idea what happens if you restore with the wrong files.

You’ll have to register to download the files. It’s free, which is not bad for something that is about to bring your Motorola Xoom back to life 🙂

Extract the archive and dump all the files directly into the C:SDK_tools directory.

Your directory listing should look something like this:

adb.exe
AdbWinApi.dll
AdbWinUsbApi.dll
boot.img
ddms.bat
fastboot.exe
recovery.img
system.img
userdata.img

Depending on the amount of damage you’ve done to your Motorola Xoom, you may or may not need to do all of the following commands:

fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
fastboot flash userdata userdata.img
fastboot erase cache
fastboot oem lock


Note 1. If you intend to root or otherwise modify the OS in the near or far future, skip the last command (fastboot oem lock).

Note 2. If no userdata.img file is present in your download, please issue the command:

fastboot erase userdata

I only managed to screw up my boot partition (I think) as I only needed to excute the first command. Try them one at a time and reboot the Motorola Xoom. Give it time to come back to life before re-entering ‘Starting Fastboot Protocol Support’ again. When I say give it some time, I mean wait at least 5 minutes.

Note: you can unlock your Motorola Xoom with the following command:

fastboot oem unlock.

As for rooting the device… well I’m sure that’s the reason some of you are here! Do some more research before attempting it again, I know I did!