Stuck at ainol Tab NOVO7 Basic after ICS update

[r3sonant]

I just have it connected by USB. I am not sure how connected it actually is though. ADB seems to see it but I don't know whether it's talking to it properly or not. The tablet is visible in device manager as the Android ADB Interface and Portable Devices, although I cannot browse the file system.

[alleytom]

I just have it connected by USB. I am not sure how connected it actually is though. ADB seems to see it but I don't know whether it's talking to it properly or not. The tablet is visible in device manager as the Android ADB Interface and Portable Devices, although I cannot browse the file system.

Well, you should be able to try:

adb -d shell

(assuming you only have the tablet connected)
...and see if you can get to a shell on the device. If you do, then it is indeed talking properly.

[r3sonant]

Looks like it isn't working correctly then. I can't get a shell on the device. I just get "- exec '/system/bin/sh' failed: No such file or directory (2) -".

Obviously as it won't boot up fully I can't get in to turn on usb debugging.

Is there a way to force it into usb debugging? It responds to the commands adb reboot-bootloader and other commands.

Can I completely wipe it somehow through adb? Or at least get access to the logs, logcat doesn't work with the same error as above.

[alleytom]

Looks like it isn't working correctly then. I can't get a shell on the device. I just get "- exec '/system/bin/sh' failed: No such file or directory (2) -".

Then I'm afraid there's nothing useful you can do with adb. Maybe flashing cwm as per instructions. What you need to do is get a working system up via recovery. I know you tried several times -- perhaps with a different sd card? My brother had a similar issue with all flashes from recovery failing until he tried a different card (he still had to try a couple times, though).

[tosyu]

Looks like it isn't working correctly then. I can't get a shell on the device. I just get "- exec '/system/bin/sh' failed: No such file or directory (2) -".

Obviously as it won't boot up fully I can't get in to turn on usb debugging.

Is there a way to force it into usb debugging? It responds to the commands adb reboot-bootloader and other commands.

Can I completely wipe it somehow through adb? Or at least get access to the logs, logcat doesn't work with the same error as above.

I'm no expert but looks like there can be few means to this problem (these are just guesses as android still is a linux, a different flavour though):
- Bootloader failed to mount /boot partition and consequently not loaded kernel could not mount the /system partition and therefore there is no '/system/bin/sh'. Could happen due to partition corruption,
- Bootloader mounted and executed the kernel code but there were problems with the /system partition,
- Since you have the "novo 7 basic" screen, and I'm guessing it's just a bootimage, something failed while kernel was loading, a fatal error of some sort (kernel panic etc.) and stopped the whole boot process.

If you could pass console=tty0 parameter to bootloader options you could get a dump of kernel messages during boot, but I don't really know how :/

Or maybe like alleytom said, try ClockWorkMod. Wipe all data and try to install firmware again. Bare in mind that clockworkmod will replace your standard android recovery mode console menu, I'm not sure how safe it is (I've done it and it works, but on some threads in this forum I read it could brick your device). Here is a guide.

And here is a list od adb commands, and more info about boot logs here.

[r3sonant]

Wow. I have managed to get it working. Pretty happy.

Thanks to all the people who replied.

It turns out that using a different Micro SD card was the solution for me. I had tried every everyone had suggested and none of them worked.

Strangely I had previously updated my version of 3.2 on the tablet using the same SD card and it had worked fine so I don't know what changed to stop it working.

This is how I did it this which worked for me.

I formatted the card to FAT32, and copied "4.0.1 ICS_MR0 eng.mdliu.20111227.1122122.zip" firmware to it.

Renamed the zip file to update.zip

Made sure the tablet was powered off.

Inserted the SD card.

While holding the Volume + button powered on the tablet and kept both buttons depressed until the android guy appeared.

I then repeatedly pressed the home button to get to the ainol recovery menu.

Here I wiped the cache and did a factory reset then selected to update from the external storage.

Selected the update.zip and off it went.

I rebooted the tablet when prompted and it came up with the ainol novo7 basic screen for quite a while, I left it alone, it then went onto the ainol boot screen with animation, at which point I got my hopes up.

It did take quite a long time to finish but in the end I was at the ICS lock screen.

All of the above I had tried exactly the same several times to no avail so it was definitely changing the SD card that made the difference.



SD Card that didn't work:
Samsung MicroSD HC 4GB Class 4 formatted as FAT32.

SD Card that worked:
SanDisk Premier MicroSD 2GB formatted as FAT32.


I wonder if it is something to do with the failing card being SDHC?

r3s.

P.S. Sorry for any duplication but I have posted this in all the threads I was seeking help in case it can help others with the same issue.

[joex]

damn i'm use SDHC too and stuck in there.
when i back i will use sd 2GB, i hope it works!

[joex]

it's work thx alot...

[r3sonant]

Excellent. Glad to have helped someone

[epicylon]

Wow. I have managed to get it working. Pretty happy.

Thanks to all the people who replied.

It turns out that using a different Micro SD card was the solution for me. I had tried every everyone had suggested and none of them worked.

Strangely I had previously updated my version of 3.2 on the tablet using the same SD card and it had worked fine so I don't know what changed to stop it working.

This is how I did it this which worked for me.

I formatted the card to FAT32, and copied "4.0.1 ICS_MR0 eng.mdliu.20111227.1122122.zip" firmware to it.

Renamed the zip file to update.zip

Made sure the tablet was powered off.

Inserted the SD card.

While holding the Volume + button powered on the tablet and kept both buttons depressed until the android guy appeared.

I then repeatedly pressed the home button to get to the ainol recovery menu.

Here I wiped the cache and did a factory reset then selected to update from the external storage.

Selected the update.zip and off it went.

I rebooted the tablet when prompted and it came up with the ainol novo7 basic screen for quite a while, I left it alone, it then went onto the ainol boot screen with animation, at which point I got my hopes up.

It did take quite a long time to finish but in the end I was at the ICS lock screen.

All of the above I had tried exactly the same several times to no avail so it was definitely changing the SD card that made the difference.



SD Card that didn't work:
Samsung MicroSD HC 4GB Class 4 formatted as FAT32.

SD Card that worked:
SanDisk Premier MicroSD 2GB formatted as FAT32.


I wonder if it is something to do with the failing card being SDHC?

r3s.

P.S. Sorry for any duplication but I have posted this in all the threads I was seeking help in case it can help others with the same issue.

I tried this and it seemed to work, but it wouldn't load past the Ainol animation.
When I tried to turn it back on again it's stuck at the Anroid logo screen, without any recovery options.