# Need a little help with Droid X woes



## gerane (Feb 3, 2012)

Was hoping to get some help with some issues I have been dealing with for months now. I am an IT Director during the day and full time student at night, which when coupled with being on call with my job has left me almost no free time over the last year or so. Due to this I have just had to deal with the issues my phone has been having. I am shocked that I have not thrown it out the window of my car or into a wall. I have had to hold myself back many times when it comes to throwing it out the window as I am typically driving 3-4 hours a day depending on where I need to be. My phone has major issues during these drives and it has driven me crazy.

I am very familiar with the root, rom, and customizing scene. I used to flash every rom that came out and would theme them to an insane degree, but free time left me and I just didn't have the time to devout anymore. My problems started sometimes after gingerbread started rolling out. I am currently on .602 and believe a large number of my issues have started on this kernel. I am used to SBFing, checking MD5 sums, wiping everything before and after I install a rom and all the other routine practices of installing roms. However, my issues got really bad and I decided to SBF and give CM a try. This was sometime after it had been out and it was starting to become more stable.

So, I go through the routines of SBFing, making sure my MD5s match, clearing everything and doing factory resetting etc. However, I could not get it to flash. I got constant bootloops no matter what I tried. Tried different versions of CM and no matter what I did I could not avoid bootloops. I then just SBF back to full stock .602 and try to stick with it. However, all of my issues were still there. Constant slow downs, freezes, 10-20 seconds or more lock ups and I can't remember what a smooth phone functions like. I have a LG Ally as a work phone with 256mb ram and 600mhz processor and it is killing my Droid X in performance. I have tried SBFing and not installing any apps and it still has the issues. It might be ok for the first day, but the problems slowly start to show back up after the first day. Then they start to all flood back. I have had to stop streaming completely. My phone locks up, will stop and lose its place all at once, reboot all the time and just refuses to play well with streaming. This goes for pandora, iheart radio, doggcatcher, beyondpod, doubletwist, google listen, google music, amazon music, and pretty much any streaming service I have tried. I could easily get 3-4 reboots in an hour drive. Which kills a good 10-15 minutes when you factor in the time it takes for it to reboot and get stable enough to start streaming again. I now will download all my podcasts the night before using wifi and that seems to have stopped the majority of reboots while driving. I still get reboots everyday, they are now just totally random and not being caused by streaming. I'd say I get 3-5 a day on average, maybe a lot more that I am just not aware of as my phone reboots with no user input. Can be sitting on my desk untouched for hours and ill see it rebooting out of the corner of my eye.

I have tried SBFing many different times. Have tried downloading the SBF file from different computers and have checked the MD5 sums to ensure they match. If this fails for me there is no flashing a back up, as I cannot make a nandroid and havent been able to for a very long time. Every time I make a nandroid and try to flash back to it I get MD5 doesn't match errors. This happens whether I rename the files or keep them the same.

I have actually had OTA updates come through on my phone, however, they will not install. Everytime it will try to run the OTA it errors out and gives me some sort of failed to install error.

I have just been dealing with this for so many months now, it has really worn me down. I almost hate using my phone now as it is a constant fight and struggle. I literally have stared out the window when travelling and weighed the up and downs of me throwing it.

Here is where I am now. My current semester ends this week and will leave me with some actual free time. Fixing my phone is of top priority. There is also the Samsung event today, and if they announce a S3 for verizon to be released very soon I am going to try to force Verizon to give me an early upgrade and just be done with this. I am not even willing to try to resale it as I don't want to place the burden of this phone on someone else like that. Anyways, my upgrade is in August so I am still unsure of when I will be able to upgrade. I want to wait til verizon gets a net gen phone before I upgrade. So, I may have to wait a while

With that being said, I wanted to get opinions here before I jumped in and started trying to fix this thing. I am wondering if SBFing to maybe .605 or .621 would be beneficial, and if so what the best method is now for it. Also, could there be something I am missing that changed in GB that could be causing my issues? I have never experienced issues with any roms in the past that I couldnt easily fix with a SBF or Nandroid. I would still love to try CM out, but if I get stock running decent it will be hard for me to take the chance.

I hope the great minds of these forums will be able to help me deal with my nightmare of a phone. It has soured me to motorola and the reason I don't think I could buy another of their products.


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## bmt11 (Dec 30, 2011)

Is it running hot when it goes through the reboots? Streaming media, assumably charging possibly with GPS on all while sitting in the sun in your vehicle sound like a strong potential for over heating especially if your battery is going bad, have you noticed any bulges in it?

As for nandroids not restoring the only answer I could have to that is a bad/old version of CWM have you tried reinstalling it?


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## TwinShadow (Oct 17, 2011)

Hm, interesting problems. Here's what I'd say to try and do.

You can try the 605 SBF file and see how well that works, but it only has minor fixes in it, the major being a keyboard bug that I had in 602 a while back. If you're installing CM7, I recommend Pooka's CM7 as that is based on the Gingerbread kernel, not the official CM7 release as that is on Froyo. Plus, its just about fully complete with some minor bugs left to kink out last I checked.

Your CWR should be updated to the latest, which you can use ROM Manager to do so after you use bootstrap to get it first. Afterwards, you can try flashing CM7 or any other ROM. Just about every ROM (aside from official CM7) is based on the Gingerbread kernel, so you shouldn't have too many issues with that. If all else fails, I'm not sure if 621 will help or not. There's a long-winded process that you can use to get root, but it does require flashing the 604 Milestone SBF to get root and keep it when you get back to 621. Another thing you could try is if you've been using RSD Lite, you can try the Linux SBF method, however it will not flash the radios and you will need to flash them manually. Goose has posted the .15p radio on another forum if you wish to get that, instructions are in that post if needed. Otherwise, you can look for the baseband radios in the sticky for the DX Forum here.

That's about all I got for ya, so I guess we'll see how it goes from here, especially after you check out what the person above me said.


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## gerane (Feb 3, 2012)

@bmt11 I don't think it is battery related. I never keep my phone in the sun as I used to be worried about heat and my Droid X. I kept a temp meter constantly running and was constantly monitoring temps. If it went over 100 degrees and I either lay off something or just monitor it to make sure it didn't get much hotter. This lead me to have a habit of keeping my phone in a shaded area of my air conditioned car. It is streaming and sometimes charging, but I don't think it was caused by a battery issue. I can have zero apps running and be incredibly sluggish or get reboots. I rarely use GPS since I have set locations that I work out of.

The current cwm installed is indeed 2.5, so it is an outdated version. If i'm not mistaken though, when I was first having my issues, on the later tries I updated to the version 5+. I'm wondering if I got reverted back to 2.5 after an SBF. I have learned to not care too much about nandroids and have learned to be ok with an SBF back to stock if a ROM goes wrong. I had to learn this since I have been having this nandroid issue since liberty was first released. That is around the time I stopped using roms as I was just having way too many issues with my phone for it to be worth it. I also started back to school which killed a great deal of free time. I will however be updating to version 5 of the recovery, and making some new nandroids and giving them a go.

@TwinShadow I did a little research last night and decided to give AOKP a try. I decided to try installing it without an SBF since I am on rooted, stock .602. I finished the install this morning and it went smooth first try. This is a trial test run to see how it goes as I went into it expecting a bootloop or the eventual need to SBF. If I did have to SBF I was going to go to .605. I made a nandroid, but knew I didn't actually want to reuse it as I'd rather just do a fresh SBF to .605 or something of that nature instead of using a nandroid to my current configuration. So I went ahead and made so TiBu backups. I just let the play store restore all my apps and used TiBu to restore app data to 3-4 apps that I actually cared about the data.

Now I will install the latest CWM recovery and make a backup of my AOKP. So far so good on AOKP running better. It was a smooth install and went without any issues. So far it has been performing much better, though I have noticed some battery issues, but it is too early to tell as I believe that is likely due to installing the rom and re-installing all my apps and playing with settings. Down to about 65% after about 4 hours of being unplugged, which is a lot lower than normal.

I must say, I really impressed how far along the roms have come since I was last on the scene. I pray my phone holds up and doesn't crap out on me as I'd love for my issues to be resolved. I still definitely still see sluggish movement at times, and scrolling can be choppy, but I don't know if my Droid X was ever incredibly smooth at doing that. I don't know if its just that seeing new phones has spoiled me, or if the X really is still not working correctly. I am pretty sure that it has always just been slow.

I will keep you posted on how it goes. If all goes well I will likely give Gummy and CM9 a try as well. I really want to try Apex Launcher and see if I like it or Nova better, but I will have to give AOKP and Nova a full look over first.


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## Goose306 (Sep 12, 2011)

gerane said:


> I will keep you posted on how it goes. If all goes well I will likely give Gummy and CM9 a try as well. I really want to try Apex Launcher and see if I like it or Nova better, but I will have to give AOKP and Nova a full look over first.


I've been running Apex on every ICS rom I use an do enjoy it quite a bit more than Nova. You can always try out Apex on AOKP, its what I'm running right now.

Sent from my DROIDX using RootzWiki


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## TwinShadow (Oct 17, 2011)

ICS on the DX will be in beta for quite a while, so performance on them will vary on the ROM. Like CM9 has some ok battery life, I've heard mixed opinions on both Gummy and AOKP I think. CM7 has good battery life too and I can go on about 18 hours usually on a single charge. Depends on how often I'm using my phone throughout the day or something.

Apex is a good launcher and I think it works better than Nova actually. I use it on the tablet we have and I'll use it on my phone whenever I'm running ICS on it if I feel like flashing or something. I like it far better than Nova, but maybe it has been updated to a point to compete with it maybe, not sure at the moment.


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## bigmook (Jun 6, 2011)

I am running gummy on my Droid x and it is smooth with decent battery life and very few bugs.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2


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## Goose306 (Sep 12, 2011)

I find it ironic that our DX has better running ICS than many unlocked bootloader devices. My roommate's KF and my neighbor's EVO, for example. The KF has known issues because Hashcode has to re-write the entire kernel, but regardless it has more issues than just a partially-finished kernel, as various ROM portions are broken on any ICS ROM I've flashed on it.

My neighbor's EVO I've been updating AOKP on it, and it always has issues. It hotboots itself pretty regularly, can get some massive lag out of nowhere requiring reboots, HWA still has issues (I'm aware the DX doesn't have working HWA on ICS, but on the EVO the working HWA causes further issues than not having it on the DX does...) hell it still doesn't have a camcorder and didn't have a camera until very shortly ago. Again, I'm aware our camcorder is still pretty rudimentary, but considering they can rewrite kernels for the EVO while we have backport fixes and ours works I find pretty ironic.


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## Sandman007 (Sep 6, 2011)

Gerane I'm a little concerned with your method of flashing ROMS and that's why you r having so much trouble. OK let's say you just finished an SBF to stock 602 and you rooted. Here's my method. I never screw up an install unless MD5 didn't check.

0. Download Bootstrap. Boot into CWR using bootstrap. Don't flash anything. Just reboot.

1. Download ROM Manager.

2. Flash Latest CWR. (Remember CWR goes away after an SBF). Make sure to choose 2nd-init if going to a 2nd-I it ROM. That includes all ICS ROMS + CM7&MIUI.

3. Boot into Recovery.

4. Wipe Data, Wipe Cache, wipe Dalvik, Wipe System.

5. Flash ROM + Gapps. Do a full reboot before flashing anything else or you might boot loop.

6. Then Restore apps and Make nandroid.

If you follow this Method after checking MD5 on ALL downloads (including Mods) and an SBF you should have a perfect install every time.
Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2


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## Goose306 (Sep 12, 2011)

Deadly_Hamsters said:


> Gerane I'm a little concerned with your method of flashing ROMS and that's why you r having so much trouble. OK let's say you just finished an SBF to stock 602 and you rooted. Here's my method. I never screw up an install unless MD5 didn't check.
> 
> 0. Download Bootstrap. Boot into CWR using bootstrap. Don't flash anything. Just reboot.
> 
> ...


FYI you don't have to reboot to update CWR. All you need to do is hit Bootstrap Recovery and then wait for Success message and then go in and update via ROM Manager.

Also you should always update your CWR to whatever your current ROM is not what you intend to flash. E.G. if on Liberty going to MIUI you would want to update to Droid 2 CWR as Liberty is blur-based GB. If going from MIUI to Liberty then you'd choose Droid X 2nd-init, as MIUI is 2nd-init. Sometimes if you choose the wrong one it'll still go into recovery (not sure why but I assume its because its just updating the CWR version without touching the hijack) but it should match what your base is before going into CWR.

Sent from my DROIDX using RootzWiki


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## Sandman007 (Sep 6, 2011)

OK Goose thanks for the heads up. Didn't know that. 

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2


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## gerane (Feb 3, 2012)

That is almost the exact method I use. The only thing that is different was the CWR part. I stopped romming shortly after GB came out and you had to switch to droid 2 bootstrapper. All of the 2nd init and needing different versions of CWR for different roms has changed since I was active in roms. I was told that if flashing to a CM7 or similar rom, i'd need the 2nd init, which I had flashed when I was having the original issues of installing CM7.

The reason I was on a earlier version of it at the beginning of this post was I had SBF'd and just remained rooted and on stock after having issues.

I am still running good. Little choppy here and there, but understandable on a device as old as the droid x. I still have not had a reboot, which has to be a record for me since I started having all of my issues. I have even restored most all of my apps I would have normally had, and none of them have had issues. I am actually very shocked since I didn't even SBF before flashing AOKP, as I just followed the normal method of flashing over stock .602. Still unsure what was causing my issues prior. I SBF'd 6-7 times previously trying to get my phone to just work. I downloaded the the .602 file from multiple locations, made sure md5s matched, tried using multiple different versions of CWR, tried clearing everything up to 3-4 times in a row before and after flashing the rom as I had read sometimes 3 wipes is needed, and just tried everything I could think of. I even tried using a different computer in case that could have been the cause.

The only gripe I have so far is the battery life is noticeably worse. I am actually having to carry my 2800 mAH portable battery charger with me now. Previously I drive enough that just a car charger would be more than enough to keep me well above 50% all day. Now I could easily die if I am not careful. Either way, 1000% better than what I was dealing with before. I could have a 1/10th of my current battery life and it still wouldn't be worth reverting back to what i previously had.

Lets hope everything continues to go smoothly.


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## Sandman007 (Sep 6, 2011)

If 2nd-init and battery life are of main concern your best bet is probably Wizard's Defx MIUI. Highly Recommended

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2


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## hecksagon (Mar 5, 2012)

Since you are pretty swave as far as computers are concerned I will just post a few links and steps you should go through if you are just looking for the most reliable experience that will last for more than a few hours.

First grab the .340 sbf iso from here.
http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/droid-x-sbf/23638-linux-solution-your-windows-rsd-lite-problems.html

Use it like you would any bootable iso cd. Follow the on screen instructions. Then you need root it using z4root or something. I'm sure you can google around to find the z4root apk. Grab the Droid 2 boostrapper from market and install that.

Now you need to get the .15p radio to upgrade your baseband.
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-x-roms/206440-flashable-15p-baseband-available.html

Just install it like any other flashable zip in CWM Recovery.

Now grab the .605 sbf disc and use it the same as the .340.
http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/droid-x-sbf/23638-linux-solution-your-windows-rsd-lite-problems.html

Go into the stock recovery by holding power+volup+home. Then wipe data/cache. Get your phone booted up and signed in. Now enable USB debugging under applications>developer options. Then you are going to use the same disc to root. Select the D3 root method. May need to unlock your phone between reboots.

From here once again install your bootsrapper, then download Rom Manager and use that to flash the latest recovery. From here you can install whatever rom you like, but I would recommend a tried and true Blur based one. All the hardware works properly and battery life is excellent. I like Liberty because of its init.d support, which is useful for setting up some sysctl, memkiller, and undervolting mods without using an app. Plus I find Vortex's status bar icons childish looking. Your call, but I have some specific instructions in another post I will link about how to set up the automatic undervolting and mods. Should read it regardless of the rom since it has tips to find programs that are keeping your cpu from entering its lowest power states as well.

Droid X Battery Life Guide: http://rootzwiki.com/topic/24572-battery-life-guide/


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## gerane (Feb 3, 2012)

I will have to try that. After about two weeks on aokp I have started to get reboots, crashes, and my phone is moving slow again. Out is moving so slow that I actually miss calls because I can't get it to unfreeze before the call goes to voicemail. Have issues while in calls as well with poor quality out my phone will freeze up and the person may miss five to ten seconds of what I say because my phone is froze mid call. It works ok sometimes, but others I can get teen second freezes before the phone starts sluggishly moving again.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2


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