Google Play not responding after CM13 install

Question

Today I installed Cyanogenmod CM13 and Gapps on my Asus Zenfone 2. The install went fine, but when I booted my phone, I selected the language, then when it went to look for updates, a system message appeared "Google Play services has stopped". This has caused the phone to hang at the update page, and to top it off I forgot to install TWRP, so I think I'm going to have an issue installing a fresh install.

What can I do now?

Answer 1

What happened You don't have TWRP, so your phone is bricked.¹

How can I unbrick it? Look at this website.

The website tells you

• How to install ADB (which you can also find here on Android.SE: Is there a minimal installation of ADB?, takes less space)
• And unbrick the phone from there. It also gives u the full ROM.

The latter in short requires you to:

• Download and install the drivers for your Zenphone on your Windows PC²
• Get the latest ROM for it (e.g. Zenfone ZE551ML Stock ROM (4GB version) or Zenfone ZE550ML Stock ROM (2GB version))
• use recovery-mode to install that ROM (via "Apply update from ADB", so you can use adb sideload file.zip to apply it)

---

^{1: for installing TWRP, see e.g. How to Install TWRP Recovery on Zenfone 2 and Root at Androiding.how. Before that, install the stock ROM and wipe cache+data (from recovery; a factory-reset should do the wipe as well).
2: not needed on Linux/Mac; for those OSes, see e.g. Configuring ADB on Ubuntu}