7mo ago

My old HP 7 tablet wont boot and just shows the USB logo, is there any way to either get it working again or at least recover the files?

It was working perfectly fine until it just randomly became unresponsive and then eventually tried to reboot itself. I've tried restarting it multiple times and plugging it in to my computer but neither of those did anything. I don't care if it doesn't work anymore but I'd like to recover the files if possible, any ideas?

I couldn't take a good picture of it but I did take one:

Edit: As far as I can tell, I can't get it working nor can I recover the files on it. I'm not losing much, as there is nothing important on it but it's just weird that it was working perfectly fine and then stopped work almost immediately. But it's fine, it's over 10 years old at this point, I had a feeling something like this would happen.

16 comments

Unfortunately, file recovery is unlikely. Most systems today have locked bootloaders and encryption by default for userdata. If you can't get into the main OS, the data is typically lost.
With that said, you mentioned this is older hardware. Have you tried booting it with different combinations of power + volume buttons held to see if you can reach a bootloader menu?
- I just tried it and there is something called "droidboot". There are four options "reboot droidboot", "reboot", "recovery" and "power off". Should I try the recovery option?
  
  Recovery sounds promising! Let's see what happens.
  I don't claim to be an expert by any means but it's better than a logo screen.
All I find are guides on how to go into recovery mode to wipe and reset. Which doesn't help you much when it comes to saving files:
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Tablets-and-Mobile-Devices-Archive-Read-Only/My-HP-7-1800-tablet-is-not-fully-booting-up/td-p/7712791
- I acutally tried that and it will boot into the droidboot menu but it wont go into the recovery menu. So yeah, it's probably dead. But it's fine, there wasn't anything important.

16 comments