Few days back I received a pop-up for Software Update for my 3 year old Lenovo Yoga Tab 3. This Tab is an excellent Tab having premium looks, finish and performance. This was probably the 2nd or 3rd update I have received over the years. While the previous updates went through smoothly, this update did not happen.
The system would always prompt for an update, auto-download it and start updating a little while later. The problem starts after the Tab reboots for update. After showing the progress bar for few minutes, the update crashes on the Recovery screen (as shown in the screen shot) with a "Status 7" error. While I wanted to investigate more on the error and fix it, I couldn't do as the ab would reboot to android, download the update, reboot and this went into a loop. After googling, found few solutions on disabling the "System Update" service, which unfortunately didn't work. Coming from a Network Admin background I realised that the best way to circumvent the System Update is to block the website from where the update is being downloaded.
Solution:
From a pretty long time I have been using Open DNS (now under Cisco Umbrella) rather than the ISP DNS, to secure my Home Network. Open DNS provides pretty useful features to monitor Internet usage at your Home. One of the features is to search for "Domains" being accessed from Home. Since it was a Lenovo Tab, I searched "Lenovo" in the "Domains" section and found 3 entries of the domain lenovomm.com . One among the 3 entries was pretty clear in indicating that it was the website from where the Software / Firmware update was being downloaded, viz. tabdl.ota.lenovomm.com .
So now I went to section of "Settings -> Web Content Filtering -> Manage individual domains" and then added "tabdl.ota.lenovomm.com" under the "Always block" doman list.
It takes 3 minutes to apply the changes. Once done, I once again went to "Settings -> System Update" in the Tab. While it still prompts that an update is available, but on clicking "Download" you receive an error "Sorry, an unknown error has occured, please quit and try again". This happens because we have blocked "tabdl.ota.lenovomm.com" from the DNS level.
The same method can be applied to any system which fails to apply firmware updates and leads to a Boot loop. You can even apply the same fix if you are able to look into your Router DNS logs and block the DNS entry at Router itself. I will now have to spend some time researching why the update kept failing, so that I can fix the issue and apply the "System Update" at the earliest.
Hope this Blog post helps you in fixing a similar issue. Do share your comments and feedback in the comments section below.
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