How to wipe your gTablet and start over, or recover a brick - NOT FOR NOOBS!!

[pbrauer]

Ok, so I get a lot of questions about either recovering a "bricked" device, or how to make sure things are really wiped off the tablet. I also get a lot of messages from people that have funky things happening after they flash repeatedly. This is due a lot of time to there being the proverbial "ghosts in the machine" or just when people want to sell their devices.

The guys over at XDA-Developers have come up with some tools and processes that can be used to completely wipe and restore your device to an almost pristine state. That being said this is absolutely not for noobs to try. The gTablet is pretty hard to brick, but screw these processes up and you do exactly that. However, if you follow these instructions to the letter, if you download all the files you need BEFORE you start, and you have all of the stuff you are told to do done first, you will be fine.

These 3 processes should be more than enough to step a user that wants to get a little deeper into their tablet and still be able to recover if necessary. Here are a couple of additional thoughts before the links. If the ROM you are using is stable and ok, MAKE A CLOCKWORK MOD RECOVERY before you flash. That way if you hate what you change to, you can recover quickly and easily. Fuganater has put together a great step-by-step on installing Clockwork already on this forum. READ THAT!

Since these are constantly evolving I am going to provide links along with descriptions, but not the actual processes here:

1. NVFLASH - This will restore your device to what is generally considered to be the safest place to start over from. It will change your partition structure, it WILL not necessarily erase everything on your device. It will set everything back to bekit's TnT Stock 3588 ROM. [STICKY][ROM] nvflash FULL restore, using bekit's original image (Instructions) - xda-developers

2. FORMAT - This will erase EVERYTHING on your tablet EXCEPT the SD-CARD. DO NOT RUN THIS unless you have everything you need for NVFLASH (Item #1). DO NOT RUN THIS unless you have the APX drivers setup for NVFLASH. DO NOT RUN THIS unless you really really want to wipe the device. [UTILITY] G-Tablet Format - xda-developers

3. ADB for Windows - this is actually much more difficult to get functioning correctly on the gTablet than on other devices. Android Debug Bridge (ADB) gives you a way to control at the root level your tablet, and there are a lot of things that are much easier to do this way. Here is a guide to get it set up: [STICKY][GUIDE] adb for your gtab (windows) - xda-developers

 

[fridge011]

i ran into a problem yesterday when i decided i had enough of gharmony and crappy youtube performance and used nvflash to get back to vegan 5.1.1. i got stuck in a bootloop and 99% of the time you need to repartition to fix it, and since i nvflashed i didnt have cwm anymore. After hours of searching i found out that you need to unzip cwm and then unzip the recovery folder inside of it. youre then left with recovery.img. you take that file and put it in nvflash, you then rename file "part9.img" (inside nvflash) to something else.img and change "recovery.img" to "part9.img" and put the gtab in apx mode and nvflash it. that puts cwm onto your gtab and you can then go into recovery mode and repartition and fix the bootloop and get back into stock tnt.

 

[Morgue]

Apparently the OTA updater is currently down, and the 3588 stock ROM will probably not be downloaded to the tab. The instructions at [STICKY][ROM] nvflash FULL restore, using bekit's original image (Instructions) - xda-developers have you install an earlier ROM then update via OTA. If following those instructions make sure to follow the "Install it manually" instructions.

Really only applies if you want it back to stock only as if you are gonna load another ROM on it won't matter, but I thought it worth mentioning.

 

[mrmichaelhallett]

Hello
My Windows 7 x64 laptop (HP Quad Core DV7 blah blah blah) rebooted during an APX mode NVFlash back to stock 4349 and now it is completely black. (Well I still get the red LED when I plug in the power adapter. ) )

I have the back off (using 2 old credit cards it was not that hard after removing the rubber feet and small phillips screws)

I can see the power connector (white with about 10 wires of different colors under a piece of clearish green tape)

I can unplug the connector and did so but plugging it back in it still will not boot.

I let the battery die (well I left it over nite until it seemed completely drained - not sure it actually did drain because it was probably off)

I read a note about grounding out the connectors and some capacitors but though there was a picture no details were given about just how to do that without damaging something.

Can anyone shed any light on the correct procedure for grounding out the battery connectors, capacitors etc?

Is this even a way to possibly unbrick a Viewsonic GTablet?

I can see what looks like a reset button hole ... Is there a way to possibly use that to recover?

I am within 30 days and may look into returning it (Amazon.com) unless I would get in some kind of trouble with them ( I was running Mountain Laurel before trying to go back to stock)

Any Help Greatly appreciated!!!!!

New Member - Michael

 

[pbrauer]

Put the tablet back together and send it back if it is under warranty. You can just restart NVFlash. Black screen but showing charging means the tab is still in APX mode.