Some Pixel 6 phones stop working after factory reset

Owners of some Google Pixel 6 series smartphones have noticed a strange problem: their phones are breaking down on their own after trying to restore factory settings.

It seems that the cause is recent updates. More and more Pixel 6 series owners are seeing their devices no longer work after trying to factory reset. The problem causes the device to fail to boot and displays an error message that “the device cannot load Android” and recommends a second factory reset.

One Google forum user captured an image of the error message, which reads:

Android failed to load. Your data may be corrupted. If you continue to receive this message, you may need to factory reset your device and delete all user data stored on it.

This problem was first noticed by people from Technical problems todaywho also noted a response from a “Product Expert” on the Google forums that this is a “known issue” under investigation. Google has not yet formally acknowledged the issue beyond that comment.

Affected devices have also been spotted experiencing errors during boot stating that the device is “unable to enable ext4 verity support” and is missing the “tune2fs” file, as shown in a video that OF Tech recently posted to YouTube.

The issue also affected the Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, and Pixel 6a models, but not newer Pixel models.

The root cause seems to be updates, but it’s hard to tell which update is causing it. While many claim to be running the current stable update, at least one Pixel 6 Pro owner who encountered this issue was running Android 15 Beta 3, while some other reports don’t mention the Android version at all.

There is no information about a fix, although some have noticed that Android Flash Tool does not recognize the device. It is unclear if anyone has tried Pixel Repair Tool.

We’ll update this post if new details emerge. If you have an affected Pixel 6 series device, let us know in the comments below.

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