Xperia Sola keeps rebooting after reset

Question

I have a Sony Xperia Sola phone that keeps rebooting after having done a factory reset. It's been like that for hours now. I have never flashed anything custom on the phone but did an official update (with Sony update companion) once to ICS which has been working fine for months. The problem appeared after doing the factory reset. The phone is no longer under warranty and was bought without a carrier contract. So I suspect that the bootloader is not locked..

How could I fix this? I've been reading and trying for hours now and I was thinking of flashing a stock rom on the phone but not sure how to do this. And even if it has a chance of working. Sony provides a tool called Emma but it does not recognize the phone. I held the volume down button pressed and then connected usb but it does not work. I noticed that holding down volume up and power button turns the phone off but when I restart, it keeps rebooting as before.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated on how to fix or flash to something working.

Answer 1

Does the phone fully boot or does it reboot almost immediately? I have had similar experiences with phones (from other vendors) not being recognized until some time after they have booted (mostly likely services need to start etc. etc.). I love (not) how this happens just at the time when you need to repair your phone!

Have you tried removing SIM cards, extra storage etc. Sometimes if you can get the device to boot differently it will get far enough along to be "recognized".

Answer 2

I tried a lot of things. I think switching usb cables made a difference. After I switched and tried the vol down button holding while inserting the usb cable, the phone was recognized in Emma but it was locked.

But I was able to make flash mode work. So I retried PC Companion, the update option which mentions resetting the phone/having trouble which opens a new menu. There I had to download the latest firmware first and then I had to do the vol down thing again after which it started installing the firmware on the phone.

Emma and PC Companion are Sony software.