Last Updated on April 4, 2017 by Mathew Diekhake
We create a great deal of how-to guides here on the site and hopefully many thousands more in the future. A large part of what we do includes customizing a smartphone or tablet with root access. Whenever you are tinkering with the OS for greater pleasure, you also run the risk of creating some issues because things didn’t go as planned. One of the most common symptoms of an OS that isn’t working well is getting stuck in a boot loop. The Boot Loop error is easy to diagnose because it will do just as the name suggests: continuously boot when it sees the Android logo and it won’t boot the OS properly. It’s easy to jump in panic mode when you see this, but it’s often easily fixed. Many people consider it as part of bricking your handset and it many respects it is.
The Quick-Fix for an Android Boot Loop is to get access to the internal system and wipe it. As you can imagine, that means potential data loss unless you have backed up the data beforehand. That’s why we always stress our readers take the time to backup the OS before tinkering with the device. You should always use Helium for Android before getting started with root access, Titanium Backup for those who already have root access, and take a NANDroid backup if you are already running with a custom recovery image. Two examples of a custom recovery image include the Team Win TWRP Recovery and the ClockworkMod CWM Recovery.
You must take a factory reset during the guide below for fixing the boot loop in your Android OS. You might already know how to take a hard reset for the Galaxy Alpha, HTC One M9, Motorola Moto E or the Motorola Moto Maxx. Well, a hard reset and a factory reset is effectively the same thing. Those of you who didn’t backup beforehand and wish to try a different method to fix a boot loop are in trouble since they aren’t any fixes that we know of. We won’t tell you it’s impossible, but from our reading, we couldn’t find another fix to this issue.
As you can read by following through the links to the Alpha, Moto Maxx, One M9 and the Moto ZE, there are many ways to take the reset option. Many guides will point you to an application available from Google Play. While that is true and you can use apps, we try to limit that option for a last resort because more apps means slowing down your operating system with bloatware.
How to fix your Android device when it’s stuck in a boot loop
1. Access the stock recovery mode or the custom recovery mode, depending on what you are using.
– the device of your choice might have a different button combination to press to enter the recovery mode. Look up what the right button combination is for your device.
2. Select “advanced” from the menu inside, followed by “wipe dalvik cache.”
3. Navigate back out of there to the main recovery menu.
4. Now choose to “wipe data factory reset” from the menu.
5. Go back to where you were on the main menu and select to “wipe cache partition.”
6. Go back one last time and select to “reboot system now.”
7. Now you can select to reboot the system and your Android OS on the smartphone or tablet will boot without the loop issue.