I’m trying to put e/ os on my razer edge 5g. I have followed the steps all the way to “temporarily booting a custom recovery…”. I do that step and when I select the recovery mode in step 5 of that area it just goes boots back into fastboot mode.
I cannot boot into the recovery mode at all. When I flash vendor boot recovery file it gives ok in command prompt window but going into recovery mode just loops back to the fastboot screen. I’m using the latest recovery file at /e/OS community nicole download, version 4.2.
This is my first time trying to install any OS on a device. I’m excited to finally give /e/ a try but stuck and unsure what to do. The rest of the guide was good and have not had any issues until that step of getting the recovery mode set. Grateful for any help someone can provide.
Hello @jswin, Welcome to the /e/ users forum.
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according to Install /e/OS on a Razer Edge 5G - “nicole”
you need to flash the boot.img and dtbo.img files,
the files are expected to be included into a recovery-IMG-e-4.2-a16-20260815662914-community-nicole.zip Unfortunately they are missing from the provided files in /e/OS community nicole download
BUT Hopefully, they also are deeply included into the main e-4.2-a16-20260815662914-community-nicole.zip
as a workaround, you will have to extract them from the payload.bin
Extracting boot.img and dtbo.img from the payload-based OTA file.
Create a temporary foder,
download the /e/OS build you want to install,
do not extract it, but put it into the folder you have just created.
I also noticed they were missing and and the install guide said to go to the lineage install guide to grab them if they were not there. So I got them at Install LineageOS on nicole | LineageOS Wiki.
But just in case they were different I extracted them from the payload file as you instructed. Followed your steps flashing those instead and then went to the recovery step. The device is still unfortunately booting into fastboot mode instead of recovery.
press Down while plugging it into a PC, then select “Recovery mode” using Volume keys and press Power.
I do not have the device but most phone have some “trick” must be performed to stop a standard restart cycle.
If you shut the phone down to get to the point
With the device powered off
you will likely start a standard shutdown restart cycle so the new recovery is wiped and due to the additional partitions flashed the phone cannot start.
Flash e-Recovery again then the trick is often based on starting to power down, as soon as the screen goes black, then start on the required button presses.
In this case it looks like you have some sort of bootloader menu.
I guess it will be some sort of experimentation with that menu to somehow avoid a normal shutdown.
Depends how that menu looks. Bear in mind the trick already quoted of “while plugging it to PC” may be used as a trigger to get what you want. So the timing of this plug in and thus trigger may be critical. Perhaps try permutations of the menu where you omit standard power down.
I’ve tried fiddling around with it to get that ‘trick’ as @aibd mentioned. I skipped the manual reboot as @piero pointed out is mentioned in the lineage guide.
Some other things I’ve tried:
Tried using other versions of the e recovery. Specifically versions 4.1 and 3.6
Tried the Lineage recovery instead
Tried skipping the reboot bootloader step after flash the boot and dtbo. Just in case it rebooting between the steps was an issue.
Switched to a different computer(new computer was Linux instead of Windows) to try it with fresh downloads of platform tools, e recovery, etc.
The tablet is still stuck in fastboot mode and only goes into fastboot mode.
Google supported devices list confirms your xdaforums link.
Retail Branding
Marketing Name
Device
Model
“Razer”
“Razer Edge”
“Razer-Edge-WiFi”
“Razer Edge WiFi”
“Razer”
“Razer Edge 5G”
“RZ45-0460”
"Razer Edge 5G
You did start from
Before following these instructions please ensure that the device is on the latest Android 12 firmware.
??
If yes … Try more permutations!
Consider that the /e/OS dev is using
a template which always unhelpfully starts “With the device powered off” … This means that the device should not be running, but does not include power down first.
he added press Volume Down while plugging it into a PC,
while he had the Lineage wiki in front of him.
So it implies simple following Lineage wiki didn’t work for him and he found he could add a extra trigger for success.
When I spent over a week to learn how to boot a Samsung into Custom recovery, I would not have described it as fiddling around. It was progressive repetition with slightly different style or timing each time.
Oh, and just in case you missed it, you have to flash recovery again after each failed attempt, as we have to assume the e-Recovery was wiped.
Sorry fiddling was a poor word choice. I’ll keep trying different permutations, timings, styles, etc. Thank you for the help. Hopefully I’ll get it to work soon.
Yes at the start I made sure it was Android 12, checked for updates and there were none.
I am flashing e recovery after every failed attempt. After each attempt I start with flashing boot, dtbo, then recovery.
