After installing the recovery program on my Galaxy S8, I am unable to do the “Reboot the device into recovery mode” step. I’ve seen many, many posts about how difficult it is to time. This post seems to be about the same issue as I am having.
I am confused, frankly, because I don’t believe I am seeing the behaviour that is expected if you fail the “crucial step”. I was expecting to end up in the default Android recovery screen, not the Download screen again. The easy installer is not giving me any indication that something went wrong installing the recovery program.
I am following the method outlined here. I’ve been at this for two days now and it is getting quite frustrating. I have made sure the USB cable I am using works, and I also cleaned out my USB port beforehand because it used to disconnect if moved.
One thing that feels worth pointing out is that wdi-simple.exe seems to run every time I try to install the recovery program. I saw in a different post that this shouldn’t happen, and that it should only run once. Is this an issue?
So, if installing /e/ without the buggy easy-installer,
you are at the step (7), using Windows, Odin,
put the vbmeta.img.tar file under BL
and the recovery.img.tar file under AP
Other tip :
let the “auto-reboot” option enable, and PREPARE YOUR FINGERS !
Waiting for Recovery is waiting for you to do your button presses to boot to e-Recovery.
I am not absolutely certain … but, as far as I understand it “wait-for-sideload” is the next / second “standby” situation, Edit but it is not happening.
However if you never saw e-Recovery (as in that photo) I think you must have just missed the “Crucial step”
The significance of --no reboot is that you can start in your own time. You are on the green Downloading screen, you bring the phone down to black, you move it quickly to Start “Boot to Recovery” without ever letting it do a “standard reboot cycle”.
Any time you miss the crucial step your recovery is expected to be overwritten back to standard Android recovery (you are seeing this?), so you must flash it again, you don’t get a second chance!
I’ve been using this method and have not had success so far. I am confident that I am switching just as quickly as in the video. It seems like the timing window is much smaller for me than in the video. I suppose I will keep trying.
Could you clarify? This sounds like I don’t need to be quick? -On second thought, I’m guessing --no reboot just means it won’t automatically reboot after the Download is finished. Is that correct?
That’s the thing. I am not getting into the standard Android recovery, I am just getting back into Download mode on reboot. Could this mean I’m not switching buttons quickly enough, and it just registers that I’m pressing VolDown + Bixby + Power? If that is the case, it’s a bit odd to me because I am not holding it down for 7 seconds.
Indeed, you really have to anticipate it and move before a “full close”, some models generate a very small blip of text or colour should you see that, treat that as the signal! I seem to remember doing it many times, counting the seconds and experimenting with the finger move almost before the black screen.
Yes, so you can unplug it, walk around the room, meditate and prepare yourself for the big event.
So this would be the standard behaviour where Android Recovery was unbootable for some reason, the phone “falls back” to Download mode.
So you are running Easy Installer again each time after each “fail”?
We know it is registering the Volume down + Power, because this is commencing the standard “Soft reset”, it seems not to be registering the move to “Boot into Recovery” early enough.
Maybe next time you run Easy Installer, check the log before the finger press. You have plenty of time. Use ^F in a copy of the log to look for
(debug)RECOVERY upload successful
… now you should be more confident you have e_Recovery waiting there for you (maybe once or twice the upload failed!?)
I’ve probably tried two dozen times now. I used a metronome to time perfectly when I should switch buttons. I found this video and I’m doing exactly as in the video and it’s not working. I know that the video is for TWRP and another OS entirely, but getting into recovery should be the same, right?
I’m thinking tomorrow I’ll just go and try to install it manually as @piero suggested. I am frustrated because it feels like the easy installer is just a red herring that I’ve wasted hours on trying to get it to work.
I am sorry to hear about the time you invested in this.
I think it is possible that e-Recovery is not being flashed successfully … it is unfamiliar to me that the job collapses within 1 minute at this point.
The logic is that Easy Installer has to remain online to carry on when you provide the phone booted e-Recovery.
What is much more common in a log is multiple repetition of (debug)"waiting for recovery".
Just a thought
I guess this is an advanced troubleshooting suggestion … I wonder if there is any chance that unplugging the phone is having a negative effect. I think disconnecting the phone is not critical. If one were to open the current.log alongside Easy Installer, is there any evidence that Easy Installer collapses when the device is unplugged?
Say one tries to proceed without disconnecting the phone, can / does Easy Installer proceed … can current.log be reloaded and show better progress?
I just did a test run and from what i understand it says stage is closing when I close the installer. So I wonder if I was just extra quick that time, and closed the installer right away when I saw it hadn’t booted into Recovery. I sampled some of the other log files and they look the same- the time between wait-for-sideload and stage is closing is just different. Probably because I don’t always immediately close the installer?
I think for most of yesterday I have not been unplugging the phone during attempts.
I think I’m done trying to troubleshoot the installer, and I’m now going to do it manually. I appreciate all the replies.
I quite understand you spent enough time on Easy Installer … but we don’t close Easy Installer at this point, the job is only half done … one would leave the Easy Installer running … for the next bit.
In other words … we flash the Recovery partition, Easy Installer waits while we deal with the phone … when we return we do jobs like “Format data” under the “supervision” of Easy Installer … then finally Easy Installer will flash /e/OS. Only then, with with out newly transformed phone, would one close Easy Installer … it is expected to standby for the next job till finished.
I understand. Let me clarify: I booted into download mode according to the easy installer, waited until it finished flashing, and then tried the “soft reboot” button presses followed by the “recovery mode” button presses. Only once it booted did I close the installer, because it would boot into the Download mode every time, indicating that it didn’t work. Then I would exit download mode on the phone, start it normally and do the whole thing all over again.
Okay. Following this guide, I tried to flash the recovery manually. To save time/effort I reused the heimdall.exe that came with the easy-installer.
That gave the same result as the easy-installer: Heimdall told me that the Recovery upload was successful, but I was not able to boot into recovery and was just kicked to the Download mode again.
At this point I switched to this guide but I just kept using Heimdall because I was already familiar with it. And I was able to successfully flash TWRP and boot into it! I’m now continuing with the guide and I’ll add a solution once I have /e/ installed.
This seems to point at an issue with the recovery image, maybe? I will leave that to someone else to figure out.
I hope I didn’t come across as angry at you. The only thing I’m upset at is the easy installer xD. I guess I should have figured that it wasn’t going to work after the first ten or so tries, and should have tried to do something different. Thank you for your quick replies, I appreciate it.
I didn’t detect anything negative towards me in your account @krokodilregister. If anything I was aware of being defensive on account of my interpretation of the the close juxtaposition of “waiting for recovery” and wait-for-sideload, uncertainty, and whether I was trying_to_make_the_log_fit with changes in the code for the latest version of Easy Installer together with this already linked post.