Stuck in locked bootloader with USB debugging disabled HTC one mini

[keirancie]

I found an my old HTC one mini that has a lot of family photos on it and can't figure out how to recover them. I cant enable usb debugging as it's stuck on a bootloop on the bootloader screen. Is there any way around this?

 

[ocnbrze]

welcome to AF!!!!!!!!!!!

did you something prior to this? is the phone rooted?

 

[keirancie]

Hey thanks! No it's not rooted it's all stock I just want to try flashing a batch file so it will automaticly reboot till there's enough charge but can't work out how to when I won't connrlect to the pc.

 

[ocnbrze]

can you get to the bootloader? if so what does it say on the bootloader screen?

 

[keirancie]

I lt won't let me access any of the option shown

 

[keirancie]

*locked*
M4_ul PVT Ship S-On RL
HBOOT- 2.22.0000
Os_4. 14. 401.2
EMMC-boot 1025mb
Aug 12 2015, 18:31:50.0

Fastboot

*option for controls

Bootloader
Reebot
Reboot bootloader
Power down


And on bootloader options are

Fastbkot
Recovery
Clear storage
Simlock
Check smartsd
Image crc
Showbarcode

 

[ocnbrze]

ok so first off since the phone can't be turned on, you can't enable usb debugging as mentioned in the op. this is a huge step that needs to be done in order for your computer to be able to communicate with your phone.

TBH i can't think of other ways to gain access to your phone. this is sort of a good thing which basically means your phone is secure right now.

if the phone was rooted there might be some possibilities , but you have s-on (security turned on) which means we do not have access to your system files. and you need to do some things in your phone's settings to root your phone.

without s-off (securities turned off) there is not much i can see of a way to get at your photos.

there might be someone out there who knows how to open up your phone and get a look at your phone's internals physically and be able to pull them out that way. I just saw a youtube video about a woman who can grab images and files off of a dead iphone by taking it apart, connecting some wires, and was able to get the images for a customer. apple has banned her from their forum discussions. apple claims that if the phone is damaged (ie water) there is nothing you can do about it. but this woman says yes it is still possible.....so they banned her!!!!

but i don't know how to do that or even if it is possible to do that on android phones.....sorry this is long winded.

 

[keirancie]

Thanks for the help. Al keep at it until I figure something out do you have link to the video by chance?

 

[ocnbrze]

well it was a short documentary, but here is the link to her youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPjp41qeXe1o_lp1US9TpWA

 

[keirancie]

Thank you this might be my last shot

 

[Hadron]

USB debugging can only be used when there's an ADB daemon running. This means either booting into Android or when using some custom recoveries (not the stock recovery). These older phones sometimes had odd rooting methods that you could use without unlocking and which would instsall a custom recovery, but I doubt you could use one in this state. If you could unlock the bootloader you could install a custom recovery (S-Off is not needed for that), but there are two possible catches there. One is that I cannot remember whether HTC's official unlocking erases the phone: the one time I used that was with my M7, which I don't think did erase it, but on most phones unlocking the bootloader erases the device, which would be self-defeating for you. So I would check carefully before doing that (you can find the bootloader unlock instructions at htcdev.com).

The other catch is that if you can't select any of the items on the bootloader menu that suggests there's a more serious problem. What exactly happens when you try to select them? Does it just return to the bootloader, or can you not move the cursor in the first place? If it's the latter it might be that one of the buttons is stuck, and actually a stuck button can cause the phone to boot into the bootloader anyway, so if there's any suggestion that one of the volume keys is stuck then unsticking it might fix your problem.

Unfortunately with completely stock software there's no way of accessing the data unless you can boot it into Android. From the bootloader you can only use fastboot, and fastboot can flash images to a partition or erase a partition but doesn't let you copy data or flash anything other than a partition image (and that only if the bootloader is unlocked).