No Valid OS Recurring Issue

wayfarer

NemoNada Here's my recommendations, based on what I've dealt with.

Plug your phone into a charger and power on. If you're greeted with the red "No Valid OS" screen, just leave it for 10-15 minutes. If your phone is plugged in, it will attempt to reboot, and may eventually roll back to it's state before the update.

If your phone successfully rolls back

Don't power down!
Let your phone re-download and re-install the update
Restart
Repeat, if necessary

If your phone doesn't recover, and instead remains stuck at the red No Valid OS screen

Power Down, holding power for 10 seconds if necessary
Hold the power and volume down buttons to access the bootloader
Use the volume keys to select Rescue Mode, and power to select
Some white text will appear on a black background. You have to wait several minutes for this to time out, and take you to GrapheneOS Recovery
Plug the phone into a PC with adb (from the Android SDK) installed
On the PC, download the latest OTA image for your device from the GrapheneOS releases
On the phone, select "Apply update from ADB"
On the PC, use "adb sideload [imagename].zip" to send the image
Pray

I hope that's helpful, that's mostly from memory. In theory, Recovery Mode should work as well as Rescue Mode but I was only able to access the GrapheneOS Recover menu from Rescue Mode.

This is what @de0u suggested, just with some added detail.

I've left OEM unlocking enabled as a precaution now, but I didn't have any trouble sending OTA images even with a locked bootloader.

NemoNada

wayfarer Thanks heaps. I'll try this out and hopefully it should resolve. I managed to get it to roll back so I had a usable phone but I haven't tried the rest yet. I've left OEM unlocking enabled too, just in case.

NemoNada

de0u Yes, the first time I've seen it. After a couple of attempts at rebooting it (I'm guessing probably 3-5 times, but I wasn't counting) it rolled back to the usable version but I haven't been game to retry a reboot yet. Thank you heaps for the link. I'll give it a read and if the problem persists I'll try that out.

NemoNada

chenxiaolong I made the erroneous conclusion that Graphene has the same number of rollback points. Good to know. Are you using a Linux system for your sideloading? I only ask because I have both Windows and Linux available to me and was wondering which is easier to do this with?

After plugging it in and rebooting the problem seems to have resolved. Thank you everyone. I'm bookmarking this page for future reference.

chenxiaolong

NemoNada

Are you using a Linux system for your sideloading? I only ask because I have both Windows and Linux available to me and was wondering which is easier to do this with?

Either should work equally well, though Linux may be easier because no extra drivers need to be installed.

ispotato

Just had this issue occur to me. Had to reboot after phone froze up. Sideloaded latest update for Pixel 7, but did not fix issue. What else could I try?

ispotato

After leaving it alone connected to my computer for a bit mocking me with the "no os " prompt, it was charging and displayed the charging bolt on the screen, disconnected it, pressed the power button, and was able to boot up properly again. I have no idea how that worked.

de0u

ispotato Providing power while it struggles is good. Typically if it struggles for a while it will succeed. Plus, running out of power during an update is risky.

Barkel

Just wanted to chime in that I ran into this problem on my Pixel 7. Up until the update around a month ago everything went smoothly. Then I got the No valid OS found error when I did the update. Got it to reboot after a couple tries and it seemed to download and install the update properly. Since then I have continued to occasionally run into the booting issue.

The phone has so far always managed to eventually reboot. Attaching it to a power supply seems to help it happen faster. I'm not technically proficient but I've read up on the process of sideloading and feel I could try that in Rescue mode if it fails and normal rebooting doesn't seem to work. I'm not inclined to experiment with it though just to see what happens.

In the meantime I've backed up onto a flash drive and have taken to avoiding rebooting unless I'm in at home. I have considered if this is related to a hardware failure though the phone being less then a year old and the coincidence of it running perfectly up until that update has made me kind of wonder about that.

GiftedAccess

+1-ing this with a pixel 6.
My events were:
-1 day staying on completely dead battery
-after plugging it in i saw 2 restart until the "battery with bolt" appeared, then when wanted to load in (holding the power button) again 2 restarts until i saw the "sparking percents".
-Battery 100%, pulled down.
-Had to go online, update got pulled, while aurora got the app updates too. Updater promted me to reboot. when everithing finidhed, i rebooted.
-2 reboot failed, third loaded in.

A full reinstall would help or not really?

de0u

GiftedAccess A full reinstall would help or not really?

It seems as if that is not necessary or effective, so I don't think it is recommend at present.

GiftedAccess

de0u I thought only to the case when it is an escalating problem, where a value or something non function-critical changing with reboots or something and at the given boot it fails.
I heard, saw no defenite explanation of the cause... (ok firmware, but how, what.. [i will have tocheck]).
I hope only an interstellar particle hit in the right place, in the right time, and not something what degrades in my phone phisicly... or the firmware will be fixed soon.

Mahalo

This morning I experienced the no valid OS issue and could only get it working again by sideloading the update. Luckily it worked out.

DeletedUser115

Mahalo Glad it worked! Which phone model do you have?

macrosploit

This just happened to me today on a Pixel 7.
The phone battery drained completely and when I tried to charge and boot the device it unfortunately could not.
Currently my device is just rebooting into the "No valid operating systems could be found" screen with code 5.
Since it is not fixing itself I will try sideloading the update now.

Barkel

Bit of a follow up. Have not 2023110700run into the issue since the last post. Albeit I have only rebooted on a few occasions.
I just installed the 2023110700 update and rebooted without issue. Hoping the issue is resolved.

ispotato

Posting my own update. Running build number UP1A.231105.003.2023111500 and I got the no valid OS error again after rebooting. I brought a portable charger with me hoping it would help boot up my phone but I could only get it to display the battery level percentage. I needed to go back home to connect via laptop in order to get the pixel 7 to boot again.

Does anyone know of any updates to get this bug fixed?

akc3n

ispotato
This is a known firmware issue. Typically rebooting (sometimes multiple times+ ) will resolve it. This is something that is outside the scope of the GrapheneOS project.