Kobo Arc - Fixing a startup boot loop

Kobo Arc stuck in a boot loop

A friend of mine had their Kobo Arc suddenly stop working.  The device would start booting then not make it past the boot animation (hang and not make it to the OS).  Of course they followed all the typical troubleshooting found on Kobo's Website with the link below.

https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/sections/360002811734-Troubleshoot



However this doesn't help typically when you can't get to the OS level and my friend even booted into fastboot/recovery and did a full Factory Reset of the device.

However this doesn't help you if there is an issue with a corrupt file or if the built in storage is starting to degrade.  Remember it's 2019 and this device was released November 2012.

However I like a challenge and had a look at it.  Since it could get into fastboot we have some options.

There are Roms on XDA we could play with and help us troubleshoot

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2507886

We can re-flash the OS and see what happens which can be found here

https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019865014-Manually-update-your-Kobo-Arc-software

We chose to just to re-flash the stock OS, which is fine by me, but we have to have an android dev setup on a device, which I happen to have.  If you don't you will need a PC with the Following setup

Download and Install the Android Dev Studio

https://developer.android.com/studio

Once Completed Under Appearance & Behavior -> System Settings -> Android SDK -> enable the Google USB Driver

Enable Google USB Driver

Now you can get the ADB tools from the SDK Manager but for my workflow and using the command line I like putting everything in one place so I went and downloaded the Platform-tools from the link below and extracted it to C:/ and renamed the folder to adb.

https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.html

Open CMD prompt as an Administrator and CD to C:\adb  (Keep this open were going to need it later)

ADB Directory for working out of for flashing

I downloaded the Stock ROM for the Arc from Kobo's website and copied it from my downloads folder to the adb folder on C:\ as shown below.

ADB Directory on C:\

Then I booted the Arc up into fastboot and connected it with a good USB cable (I had issues with 2 cables hooking up the kobo as it was only charging and not detecting the adb connection).

IMPORTANT!!!  Windows should see the Kobo in fast boot mode but it won't be accessible.

Select Apply Update From ADB

Once you select apply update from ADB you will see the following screen on the kobo

Now send the package you want to apply to the device with "adb sideload "

From your administrator command prompt window type the following command

adb sideload "zeus-ota-781.zip"

If your kobo is seen by Windows, you will see the following

ADB Push

Once that has been pushed to the device it will verify and either install or abort installation.  In my case it installed the firmware without an issue and we have a working Kobo Arc.

A working Kobo Arc

Why Flash will die

Adobe Flash (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/) is quickly becoming the bane of the internet. Mostly used for online video or interactive websites, flash is quickly becoming a hassle that people don't want to deal with. Within the last year Flash has become the main vector for many malware attacks. Flash also has major issues with causing the CPU to max out, browsers crashing, and memory management. Flash is also not as good for SEO and can lower your ranking on search engines.

A brief history on Flash

Flash has been until now the best platform for delivering low bandwidth highly interactive web objects. What does that mean? Well, Flash has been a great platform for delivering interactive content and eventually making up most of the video on the web. This was due mostly to ActionScript; a programmable language for Flash that allows you to do things you couldn't do before on the web with ASP, PHP, ROR (Ruby on Rails), Perl CGI, JavaScript, QuickTime and windows media player. Flash showed much of it's promise in Version 6. That is where ActionScript became really useful, and more mainstream starting to replace the older program Director, which was almost the same program just raster based with a language called Lingo and had much more CPU and Ram requirements. Director was also given the same options as Flash for posting it to the internet via The Shockwave plug in, but did not catch on as much as Flash did, probably due to the size of the player files, and the lack of bandwidth most internet users had at the time. Flash has quickly come to be the leading video player of choice on the web, and there is no better example of this then youtube. This was probably due to flash being able to read the length of time in the "Flash Video" and the communication capabilities between different swf files where you can put in "markers" or "hotspots" to trigger events in flash players.

So why will Flash Die?

To put it simply, there is a shift to move things on the web to open source and open standards preventing any one company from controlling the web. That is only part of the story. Flash has also drifted away from why people used it in the first place. A low bandwidth solution for providing highly interactive content. Flash as it has matured has become more bloated due to request from flash users for more features and capabilities. Eventually I think Flash will disappear from the web all together unless Adobe does 3 things.

1. Makes Flash Open Source


2. Fixes Flash from hogging the Processor and Memory


3. Stops Flash from crashing web browsers

Most of the things done in flash now with the exception of a few items can be done now with javascript and css. With the move to web standardized content management systems which pretty much eliminates flash unless you put in a Flash Banner, Gallery, video player or some other flash element which has to be custom coded, Flash becomes very inconvenient to implement into websites. If Adobe were to open up Flash and get partners like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Yahoo to sign on and make flash freely available to everyone to make it easy and very cheap to produce flash swf files. This might be enough for Flash to become a true web standard and have HTML 5 have a native tag just for flash instead of using Active X (which is what they did for video). The odds of this happening are slim to none, it's hard enough to get these guys to agree on anything, let alone release control of their own technologies for an open technology that standardizes everything, which would be a benefit to us all. If Adobe wants flash to live on into the the future I think they have to open it up or it will go the way Director did into oblivion.