Bricked Tablet

oppressor

Junior Member
Jun 6, 2016
1
0
I have a Allwinner Quadcore A33 1.2ghz 9" tablet with chipset astar-rtl8703 which I think I bricked.

What I did:

- tablet was infected with trojan/virus, impossible to remove by reset to factory settings (virus is in /system)

- I rooted the tablet with Kingo Root

- tried to remove virus with Lookout, Malware Bytes and Stubborn Trojan Killer. They failed.

- tried to delete the virus with Titanium Backup. Unsuccesful.

- used adb shell to manually mount the file system as writable and tried to manually delete the infected files from /system. Failed with message "Operation not permitted".

- after restarting tablet it is now stuck with displaying text "android" in the middle of the screen.

I didn't find the button/key combination for doing a hard-reset. Do you know which are ?

Or where can I find a image of ROM and tools to flash the tablet again ?

Thank you for your help.
 

leeshor

Senior Member
Dec 27, 2011
6,330
1,037
Welcome to the forum

After reading your post, something doesn't make sense unless you left out something. I haven't heard of a virus that can infect the recovery so a factory reset should have removed it. You didn't say what exactly the infection was but if you (previously), allowed installation of 3rd party apps or had previously been rooted (that being the most important part) I'm guessing something could have gotten into the system area. When you root, you are giving any possibly unwanted software access to everything.

More often than not when someone thinks they got a virus it was a browser hijack, not really an infection, and on the rare occasion someone did actually have some malware in their system it was frequently from having sideloaded something from other than Google or Amazon.
 

ThisIsJustMe

Junior Member
Jul 13, 2016
4
0
Aside from the reasons why, how can I enter (same bricked issue, stops at Allwinner Tech A33 Quad-Core logo after installing King Root) the recovery mode? I have tried the Up volume and start, nadda, and the Down volume and start keys combined, nadda. Anyone know?

So far, the device is no longer recognised by the USB cable, which is was before, so cannot use PC intervention and I've tried loads from cmd (adb) to a whole variety of others with flashy interfaces. My only possible solution is to use the hard resets, once I can figure out what combination of keys works with this tablet.

Manufacturer: Softwinner
Model: V11
Product astar-Y3
Kernel version: 3.4.39

If anyone has any potential fixes, I would very much appreciate it.
 
Last edited:

ThisIsJustMe

Junior Member
Jul 13, 2016
4
0
Ok here is a working solution for a bricked/non responsive V11/A33 tablet.

Grab yourself the latest version of PhoenixCard from the Internet. Then a stock image from
MEGA here. (don't worry its perfectly safe and reliable)

You will also need a PC with a SDCard and reader, that will be used to produce a Product Bootable CD-Rom.

Open PhoenixCard, browse to the downloaded img file you downloaded earlier, and make sure Product is the bootable method chosen, then click Burn.

Be aware, this process happens in a couple of jumps, with a very long gap of apparent inaction at the 33% point. You must let it complete undisturbed. Mine took 20 minutes.

Once done, click Exit and remove your SDCard from the PC, insert it into your Tablet and press the On button.

The screen will change in a few minutes or less, to a progress bar, showing the installation taking place, that will give your tablet a new lease of life. Once the progress is 100% you may get a message saying the Card is OK, followed by the android standard boot icons and your tablet has been revived.

Now stop holding your breath and take a sigh of relief.

Oh one last thing I discovered, there is NO hard reset on the A33 V11.
 

lousarh

Junior Member
Oct 20, 2016
1
0
I agree, the worst thing about the A33 Softwinner V11 is that recovery keys doesn't work :mad: so I had to wipe out all to unbrick the tablet !!

fingerprint (Allwinner/astar_y3/astar-y3:4.4.2/KVT49L/20140724:eng/test-keys)
The board is marked as ZTX-723Q(b6 or bc)

I had similar problem in theese days, unbricking my 7" son's device branded "Haehne 7x". I tryied to recovery it by ADB in first instance without succes, at least I was able to read tablet's specs, using GpGtool (google it for download, require ADB working drivers).

It' almost impossible to find the stock firmware so I'm trying tons of firmware for A33 beggin to find one that fits well with all working modules wifi, bluetooth etc..) without luck for now... the only one I found with working display and other can't switch on wifi&bluetooth :(:(

by the way, I use to flash all firmware with PhoenixUSBpro... the SD card method sometimes don't work or require too much time :cool:

here the exactly specs of my device : softwinner V11 Specification

Hope some one can help to find out a suitable firmware :)
 
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