MeCool M8S Pro L (LB version) - Hung on Pairing Remote Screen

[clarkss12]

Here is what happened in my scenario: (SPOILER: my bad box has a bad wifi / bluetooth chip)

I found the correct version of TWRP for the box that worked for me (twrp.q20x-3.2.1-0_2.img). I renamed it to recovery.img and copied it over to a blank 32GB SD Micro. Placed it in my good box.

I then finagled and shaped a paper clip to short the pins on the box from the front vent holes (the 1st & 2nd slots on the right of the blue light), I found a picture of the board on here somewhere.

With a little patience I held the paper clip in place, you will feel the paper clip hitting the holes on the board if you are in the right spots, then I plugged in the power and booted it from the SD and used TWRP to do a full backup of the good box.

I then put the SD card in the bad box, booted it to the SD card, done a full restore. The box now boots right up and functions well, however it does NOT have bluetooth or WIFI. The original remote works, but the voice functions do NOT work. I bought a cheap voice remote ($15) off of Amazon that uses a USB dongle and it semi works (you have to activate the voice on-screen then use the dongle remote).

I will try to do a clean backup of the box after the Remote Pairing in the next day or two and then upload TWRP and the Backup files to Google drive or something so at least you can get the box functioning again. And if your hardware is good, everything should work correctly. You will have to manually pair your remote.

If your chip is bad, like mine, then you can at least still get some use out of the box. Mine went to a spare bedroom for grand kids and works great for kodi and such (wired network). I had a Microsoft 360 controller dongle and he even uses it to play game using a 360 controller.

Hope this helps

Wanderer, that is some great information.......... thanks.

[Wanderer190]

HOW TO WORK AROUND / FIX:

Per request of others, here is a way to get a MeCool M8S Pro (LB version) box that won't go past the blue pairing screen (it probably has a bad WiFi/Bluetooth chip).

1. Download the following 2 files. I have the download link below from a Google drive, so no crap to deal with.

File 1) - recovery.img --- (this is actually the twrp.q20x-3.2.1-0_2.img file, just renamed for booting)
File 2) - 2014-12-31--18-01-07_M8S_PRO_L-userdebug_712_NHG47L_201804171507.zip. --- (this is a backup that I created from a working box with TWRP after a factory reset and after it was paired with the remote (I did install the Google Voice app (helps with using a dongle voice remote)) This backup is after the 04-17-2018 OTA update.

2. Unzip the backup file on your PC.
3. Copy the recovery.img & the unzipped backup DIRECTORY (yes, leave it in the directory) to a blank SD card.
4. Insert the SD card in the box
5. Either short the pins with a paperclip (like I mentioned in my previous post, (here's a pic of the one I made) or by taking the box apart and doing it that way.

6. With the pins shorted, plug in the power.

If done right, you should boot into TWRP, just select RESTORE and you should see the backup, choose it and allow it to do it's thing. The drivers for BT & wifi are in the backup, it is just skipping the pairing screen that is unable to find the hardware on a box with a bad chip).

After it's finished, just reboot the box or unplug it and plug it back in. Like I said in my previous post, you can use USB dongle game controllers and voice remotes, run any of the apps you normally would, games, etc.. It's just a box that doesn't have wifi or bluetooth any more and the voice remote has to be activated on-screen.

I found this $15 voice remote that works great, has air mouse and keyboard on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Files:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...Wc?usp=sharing

If the chip in your box is still good, you can manually pair your remote and should be good as new

NOTE: If you do a factory reset, you will be back at the same problem, so you might want to keep a copy of these files on your PC to do a reset in the future.

Also, if you have a box that is stuck in booting, this may help, but use at your own discretion and I am not liable in any way.

I hope this helps get a few bricked boxes "unbricked" as I did with mine.

[clarkss12]

HOW TO WORK AROUND / FIX:

Per request of others, here is a way to get a MeCool M8S Pro (LB version) box that won't go past the blue pairing screen (it probably has a bad WiFi/Bluetooth chip).

1. Download the following 2 files. I have the download link below from a Google drive, so no crap to deal with.

File 1) - recovery.img --- (this is actually the twrp.q20x-3.2.1-0_2.img file, just renamed for booting)
File 2) - 2014-12-31--18-01-07_M8S_PRO_L-userdebug_712_NHG47L_201804171507.zip. --- (this is a backup that I created from a working box with TWRP after a factory reset and after it was paired with the remote (I did install the Google Voice app (helps with using a dongle voice remote)) This backup is after the 04-17-2018 OTA update.

2. Unzip the backup file on your PC.
3. Copy the recovery.img & the unzipped backup DIRECTORY (yes, leave it in the directory) to a blank SD card.
4. Insert the SD card in the box
5. Either short the pins with a paperclip (like I mentioned in my previous post, (here's a pic of the one I made) or by taking the box apart and doing it that way.

6. With the pins shorted, plug in the power.

If done right, you should boot into TWRP, just select RESTORE and you should see the backup, choose it and allow it to do it's thing. The drivers for BT & wifi are in the backup, it is just skipping the pairing screen that is unable to find the hardware on a box with a bad chip).

After it's finished, just reboot the box or unplug it and plug it back in. Like I said in my previous post, you can use USB dongle game controllers and voice remotes, run any of the apps you normally would, games, etc.. It's just a box that doesn't have wifi or bluetooth any more and the voice remote has to be activated on-screen.

I found this $15 voice remote that works great, has air mouse and keyboard on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Files:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...Wc?usp=sharing

If the chip in your box is still good, you can manually pair your remote and should be good as new

NOTE: If you do a factory reset, you will be back at the same problem, so you might want to keep a copy of these files on your PC to do a reset in the future.

Also, if you have a box that is stuck in booting, this may help, but use at your own discretion and I am not liable in any way.

I hope this helps get a few bricked boxes "unbricked" as I did with mine.

Great tutorial!!!

[Wanderer190]

@clarkss12: Thanks. Just trying to help and give back to the community.

[Appys]

HOW TO WORK AROUND / FIX:

Per request of others, here is a way to get a MeCool M8S Pro (LB version) box that won't go past the blue pairing screen (it probably has a bad WiFi/Bluetooth chip).

1. Download the following 2 files. I have the download link below from a Google drive, so no crap to deal with.

File 1) - recovery.img --- (this is actually the twrp.q20x-3.2.1-0_2.img file, just renamed for booting)
File 2) - 2014-12-31--18-01-07_M8S_PRO_L-userdebug_712_NHG47L_201804171507.zip. --- (this is a backup that I created from a working box with TWRP after a factory reset and after it was paired with the remote (I did install the Google Voice app (helps with using a dongle voice remote)) This backup is after the 04-17-2018 OTA update.

2. Unzip the backup file on your PC.
3. Copy the recovery.img & the unzipped backup DIRECTORY (yes, leave it in the directory) to a blank SD card.
4. Insert the SD card in the box
5. Either short the pins with a paperclip (like I mentioned in my previous post, (here's a pic of the one I made) or by taking the box apart and doing it that way.

6. With the pins shorted, plug in the power.

If done right, you should boot into TWRP, just select RESTORE and you should see the backup, choose it and allow it to do it's thing. The drivers for BT & wifi are in the backup, it is just skipping the pairing screen that is unable to find the hardware on a box with a bad chip).

After it's finished, just reboot the box or unplug it and plug it back in. Like I said in my previous post, you can use USB dongle game controllers and voice remotes, run any of the apps you normally would, games, etc.. It's just a box that doesn't have wifi or bluetooth any more and the voice remote has to be activated on-screen.

I found this $15 voice remote that works great, has air mouse and keyboard on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Files:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...Wc?usp=sharing

If the chip in your box is still good, you can manually pair your remote and should be good as new

NOTE: If you do a factory reset, you will be back at the same problem, so you might want to keep a copy of these files on your PC to do a reset in the future.

Also, if you have a box that is stuck in booting, this may help, but use at your own discretion and I am not liable in any way.

I hope this helps get a few bricked boxes "unbricked" as I did with mine.

Indeed a great help by you for unbricking boxes with dead chips,
P.S to avoid the reset by pins all you need to do is keep the menu button pressed while you power on..With the recovery.img in the sd card and the twrp backup folders the box will go to twrp recovery,,,after that it is child's play thanks to this forum and the folks here are awesome
Airplay works, voice control with android remote(same router for ethernet to box and wifi to phone) works..Basically you lost the mobility of wifi/bt and some ease of access but at least you get something after all instead of a brick..Just wish we had a dongle with the same chipset so that there was effectively no loss..So far there is no dongle that works with this driver and dont know how to add another external one yet.

[mobdrofreak]

Links to the LB Image files on here:
1. M8S_PRO_L-NHG47L-20180316.143701.V0213.IMG - http://freaktab.org/a28c3f52268572bb
2. M8S_PRO_L-NHG47L-20180417.150752.V0213.IMG - http://freaktab.org/8e1ecd22568550f2

Burn Card Maker is simple. I use v2.0.2. Simply run it, use Burn Card Maker to burn the image to a SD card. Insert the SD card in the box, hold reset in (or short pins in this case) and plug in power. It does the rest.

Hi I'm very new to this aspect of dealing with the boxes. I saw in another thread you mentioned trying to install the OTA and it not working. So I tried updating on mine, the OTA failed and then it booted to recovery mode and I can not get out of that. Wipe it clean, factory reset, no matter what it boots to recovery mode. The files that you mentioned above, will this also work if I save them to a usb drive and plug that into the box and find the file in recovery mode? if not any suggestions? Sorry to bug you, but seems you have some insight on these boxes. I have had previous MeCool boxes that worked, but I started looking up the issues with the LB version and realized that's what this newest box is.

[gefattern]

Hi I'm very new to this aspect of dealing with the boxes. I saw in another thread you mentioned trying to install the OTA and it not working. So I tried updating on mine, the OTA failed and then it booted to recovery mode and I can not get out of that. Wipe it clean, factory reset, no matter what it boots to recovery mode. The files that you mentioned above, will this also work if I save them to a usb drive and plug that into the box and find the file in recovery mode? if not any suggestions? Sorry to bug you, but seems you have some insight on these boxes. I have had previous MeCool boxes that worked, but I started looking up the issues with the LB version and realized that's what this newest box is.

Hi ,

i think this update leaved nothing behind , so your Box now only has a Recovery , u must flash new ,

i think the TWRP way will work otherwise use the PC ,

good luck / gefattern

[mobdrofreak]

Hi ,

i think this update leaved nothing behind , so your Box now only has a Recovery , u must flash new ,

i think the TWRP way will work otherwise use the PC ,

good luck / gefattern

ah perfect. Thanks for that.