Please help! Bootloop. Can't get into recovery

Question

My wife, unfamiliar with rooting, agreed to update my rooted Moto C Plus when it requested an update. Needless to say, that didn't turn out well. It started booting to TWRP.

I tried finding a solution online. That led me to Troubleshooting: TWRP Boot Loop after OTA update in MOTO G4 (XT1621 Athene) where it gives the following method as a solution:

TWRP Method:

1 Go into TWRP -> Go to Advanced -> Go to Terminal: Enter

2 Please make a backup first of these files in SD card: `cp
/dev/block/platform/soc.0/7824900.sdhci/by-name/mota /sdcard/mota2
cp /dev/zero of=/dev/block/platform/soc.0/7824900.sdhci/by-name/misc
/sdcard/misc2`

3 Type this exactly: `dd if=/dev/zero
of=/dev/block/platform/soc.0/7824900.sdhci/by-name/mota HIT ENTER dd
if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/platform/soc.0/7824900.sdhci/by-name/misc`
HIT ENTER

4 Restart the phone.

On my phone, there is no soc.0 in the platform folder, instead there is mtk-msdc.0. I tried searching online for a similar solution with the folder mtk-msdc.0, but I couldn't find any,except for https://jagadgetaholic.blogspot.com/2017/06/vernee-thor-e-twrp.html.

Desperate (not knowing which file to go with), I tried dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/platform/mtk-msdc.0/11230000.msdc0/by-name/boot. That executed something. But later, when i restarted the phone, it stopped booting to TWRP. Instead, it is now just showing me this logo (Moto) screen (the one that shows first when you turn on the phone, before the TWRP) for about 30 secs or so, and then the phone restarts back to the same screen...restart... screen...and so on. Basically a bootloop, I believe it's called.

What do i do now? The fix i was looking for is one where i don't lose my files. Everything is on the internal memory. No SD card. I want to be able to get my phone to start working again without losing my files. If I could get it to start working again with everything just the way it was before this problem, i would be super grateful.

Please help!

Phone: Moto C Plus (xt1723) 2GB Ram 16 GB Internal memory

OS: Android 7

Flashing tool: MediaTek SP Flash tool v5.1644.00

Answer 1

You just erased your boot image,

I think you should stick with the proper terminology. When reading from /dev/zero it simply yields an infinite amount of (ASCII) zero bytes (after all it's a character device). /dev/null when used to write to is much closer to what one could describe as a black hole. But those are two different devices with different semantics. ( 0xC0000022L - comment)

dev/zero is 'an infinite amount of zero bytes' in Android, DD is used for copying. Here's what you ran in English:

Copy ( IF ) Input File = Zero Bytes ( OF ) Output File = Boot File

You effectively flashed your boot with a series of zeros ( Erased ).

So now that's gone, you'll need to flash it back with Fastboot..

If your device has a locked bootloader, you'll need to flash it back via SP Flash Tool.

I am working on a solution using SP Flash Tool and the stock 7.0 boot image,

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Ok before anything, do a complete backup of all regions using SP Flash Tool MTK Backup & Restore video guide

• Download a stock boot.img
  • You may need a full firmware to extract the boot.img
  • Here's the firmware i found, may be wrong moto c plus firmware on rootmygalaxy.net
• Download these repair files MT6737M Files

• Open SP Flash Tool version 5.16 or newer

• Extract the files to a folder (Folder1) on your PC

• Extract your boot.img from the firmware and place it in your folder (Folder1)

• Now you'll have four files

  • MT6737M_Android_scatter.txt
  • Preloader_xx.bin
  • recovery.img ( twrp )
  • boot.img ( stock )

• Open the Scatter file in SP Flash Tool

  • It should automatically locate the files if no names have been changed

• Unselect Preloader

  • You are only flashing boot & recovery

• Select DOWNLOAD as the method of Flash

  • NEVER SELECT FIRMWARE UPGRADE ETC..

• Turn Off The Device

  • Make sure Quick Boot is not keeping your device switched on

• Place the USB end into your PC

• Hit start in SP Flash Tool

• Plug the other end of the USB into your device

• Wait for Flash OK

P.S Please follow the backup guide to make sure if anything gets overwritten by an incorrect scatter file, we can restore it.

Tips : Each connection is a called a Handshake with the preloader, you can only use one handshake per action in SP Flash Tool, so you'll need to disconnect the usb and reconnect it to make another preloader handshake for any following action.

Do not move your device while it's flashing, try to keep the usb cable as still as possible.