warning: a corrupted Rom file could brick Mi 8 completly

[topstarnec]

Just to share my today's story here.

I updated the mi 8 rom from 8.10.12 to 8.10.18 then the phone bricked!

Finally I fixed my mi8 after paid CNY 160 to chinese xiaomi professional to have an official account to flash.

the reason which caused the black brick was that the downloaded file was corrupted (it may cause by the Free Download Manager or the anti-virus program) and the corrupted rom file activated Mi 8's Anti Rollback Mechanism, then black brick (9008 mode) the phone. We wouldn't do anything in this situation without Xiaomi's official intervention.

Since i'm living in Australia and i am a chinese. i had to go to taobao.com and searched and paid a professional by a Xiaomi official maintenance account to remote flash the phone from black brick.

Suggestion: we must use a tool such as Winrar to test the compressed rom file to make sure the file alright before flashing. Otherwise the phone would be a black brick (anti-roll back, even if you not rolling back/flashing an old version)

Next time i will not buy any Xiaomi phone. I have not bricked any iphone and/or samsung phone. This was the first time a phone got bricked in my more than 10 years mobile phone flashing experience.

----------------------------------
Izarsha said:

-To make it simply, the devs should put md5 checksum on each of the rom so we can check the validity of the file. Anyways about the ARB that you mention, did you understand how actually the ARB mechanism works? Actually if the downloaded file was corrupted twrp usually give an error that the file could not be flashed or bla bla bla. I guess you are trying to reflash official rom without realizing you actually downgrading the rom. Thats how arb works, you cannot flash older version of your current firmware. If for example you are on the latest developer rom official before you flash xiaomi eu or any kind of roms, if you want to restore to official xiaomi rom or fastboot, you cannot fastboot your phone using global roms as it is an act of downgrading your current(developer) firmware. If you are on latest official global stable version before flashing xiaomi eu or any kind of roms, you could simply restore by flashing the current available stable roms. By that means, if you are flashing custom roms, ARB was not an issue. It never has unless you are trying to downgrade your current firmware using fastboot that is when ARB come into the game.
-------------------------------------

Replied:

No. i had 8.10.12 xiaomi.eu Mi 8 rom in the phone. i download the 8.10.18 xiaomi.eu rom by Free Download Manager in a widnows PC. Then i copy the corrutped file to a USB-c flash drive. I inserted the flash drive to MI 8, flashed the corrupted rom and flashed magisk 17.2 and wiped cache/dalvik by using TWRP (L.R. TEAM 0908 version). Then the phone screen would not lighted up again, black brick. Phone connected to PC shown in 9008 mode. Miflash tool need an official maintenance account to flash.

There were not any error, stop nor warning information by twrp.

You can corrupt a latest rom fiile to flash for testing if you like to.
----------------------------------

 

[cobben]

Just to share my today's story here.

I updated the mi 8 rom from 8.10.12 to 8.10.18 then the phone bricked!

Finally I fixed my mi8 after paid CNY 160 to chinese xiaomi professional to have an official account to flash.

the reason which caused the black brick was that the downloaded file was corrupted (it may cause by the Free Download Manager or the anti-virus program) and the corrupted rom file activated Mi 8's Anti Rollback Mechanism, then black brick (9008 mode) the phone. We wouldn't do anything in this situation without Xiaomi's official intervention.

Since i'm living in Australia and i am a chinese. i had to go to taobao.com and searched and paid a professional by a Xiaomi official maintenance account to remote flash the phone from black brick.

Suggestion: we must use a tool such as Winrar to test the compressed rom file to make sure the file alright before flashing. Otherwise the phone would be a black brick (anti-roll back, even if you not rolling back/flashing an old version)

Next time i will not buy any Xiaomi phone. I have not bricked any iphone and/or samsung phone. This was the first time a phone got bricked in my more than 10 years mobile phone flashing experience.

----------------------------------
Izarsha said:

-To make it simply, the devs should put md5 checksum on each of the rom so we can check the validity of the file. Anyways about the ARB that you mention, did you understand how actually the ARB mechanism works? Actually if the downloaded file was corrupted twrp usually give an error that the file could not be flashed or bla bla bla. I guess you are trying to reflash official rom without realizing you actually downgrading the rom. Thats how arb works, you cannot flash older version of your current firmware. If for example you are on the latest developer rom official before you flash xiaomi eu or any kind of roms, if you want to restore to official xiaomi rom or fastboot, you cannot fastboot your phone using global roms as it is an act of downgrading your current(developer) firmware. If you are on latest official global stable version before flashing xiaomi eu or any kind of roms, you could simply restore by flashing the current available stable roms. By that means, if you are flashing custom roms, ARB was not an issue. It never has unless you are trying to downgrade your current firmware using fastboot that is when ARB come into the game.
-------------------------------------

Replied:

No. i had 8.10.12 xiaomi.eu Mi 8 rom in the phone. i download the 8.10.18 xiaomi.eu rom by Free Download Manager in a widnows PC. Then i copy the corrutped file to a USB-c flash drive. I inserted the flash drive to MI 8, flashed the corrupted rom and flashed magisk 17.2 and wiped cache/dalvik by using TWRP (L.R. TEAM 0908 version). Then the phone screen would not lighted up again, black brick. Phone connected to PC shown in 9008 mode. Miflash tool need an official maintenance account to flash.

There were not any error, stop nor warning information by twrp.

You can corrupt a latest rom fiile to flash for testing if you like to.
----------------------------------

You did not check the sha1 hash before flashing?

Xiaomi.eu provides both md5 and sha1 hashes for all it's ROMs, which Xiaomi itself does not bother to do.

 

[topstarnec]

You did not check the sha1 hash before flashing?

Xiaomi.eu provides both md5 and sha1 hashes for all it's ROMs, which Xiaomi itself does not bother to do.

I did not check sha1 and md5.

 

[cobben]

I did not check sha1 and md5.

Ajabaja!, as we say in Swedish to admonish children caught doing something they shouldn't.

There are a number of apps for hash checking in both Android and Windows.

I use Hashr in android, available in the Play store, very barebones yet effective.

I have something in Win10, don't recall which, hardly ever use it there.

 

[Izarsha]

Someting useful for troubleshooting, you did mention you flashed it using usb flash drives. Does your flash drive authentic? Sometime, the problem came from bad usb flash drive. It occur to me once when i was using Samsung Note 3. But luckily it only stuck at bootloops. Then i put the file back to my internal storage, all work fine. From that experience, i remove the habit of flashing files from usb flash drive.

 

[topstarnec]

After the phone got bricked i went back checked the original file in the PC and found out the downloaded file was corrupted. It mostly likely caused by Free Download Manager because "Catch downlaods from all site" function enabled by default by the tool.

i used LR TEAM twrp 0908 version of recovery. You can google "recovery-TWRP-3.2.3-0908-XIAOMI8-CN-wzsx150.img"

The official download link https://yun.baidu.com/s/1_WQirPJIfmnA2eti1fBevw
download password: uhif

This custom twrp version would have bugs.

I just found out there's a newer version 0918 from the above link.

 

[Izarsha]

After the phone got bricked i went back checked the original file in the PC and found out the downloaded file was corrupted. It mostly likely caused by Free Download Manager because "Catch downlaods from all site" function enabled by default by the tool.

i used LR TEAM twrp 0908 version of recovery. You can google "recovery-TWRP-3.2.3-0908-XIAOMI8-CN-wzsx150.img"

The official download link https://yun.baidu.com/s/1_WQirPJIfmnA2eti1fBevw
download password: uhif

This custom twrp version would have bugs.

I just found out there's a newer version 0918 from the above link.

My conclusion were,

1) flashing corrupted custom rom / zip file using twrp was not the problem here since custom rom does not upgrade nor downgrade your current official firmware.

2) It might be the custom twrp it self was the culprit behind all this.

3) Yet we still dont know what the culprit really are either bad files or the twrp because finding the culprit take too much risk of bricking the phone again nor to confirm the problem that flashing corrupted file will cause the device to hardbrick. Usually twrp will give an error if the files are corrupted.

4) As a safety precaution, Its better to check md5 checksum for the rom before flashing it and make sure to stay up to date with your twrp developer as it is an unofficial build. Bug is always there.

Until then, i close the case here.

 

[topstarnec]

Just attached my two screen shots for references.