NOTE: This device is not mine, it belongs to my girlfriend and I am the one troubleshooting for her.
here goes:
Yesterday, while a friend of my girlfriend's was playing with her Galaxy Nexus (my GF's), it suddenly rebooted itself without warning.
From what I understand, Nexus bootloops that are caused by faulty flashing usually loops at the "Google" logo (correct me if I'm wrong). Her's is a different story, her Galaxy Nexus is pure stock, locked bootloader, un-rooted and definitely nothing custom on in; literally pure stock. Instead of looping at the "Google" logo, her GNexus loops at the "X" logo, my assumption is that there is something, maybe a rogue app, that is causing her device to bootloop upon reaching startup phase.
I know this isn't a software/ROM level issue since we were able to get to her lockscreen a few times and then the phone reboots after a few seconds. I've tried wiping cache but didn't work, and she won't let me try wipe data/factory reset because she has a lot of important files on her phone. So odin flashing and wipe data/factory reset is out of the question.
so here are some details that might be of interest:
1.) Her phone is not rooted and is pure stock android 4.1.2
2.) does not have custom recovery
3.) does not have usb debugging enabled (not sure, but I assume it's not enabled)
4.) can still boot to fastboot/recovery/download mode
5.) reboots at the X logo
So the basic troubleshooting methods are out, now I'm thinking of using adb pull to extract files from her phone via adb, but problem is, usb debugging is off! Is there any way of recovering her files at least without booting to the ROM itself so I can flash another version of android on it (via odin)?
I've also read about "safe mode" that boots the device without starting up 3rd party apps, only the core essentials. I'd like to go down that route if possible, but we've tried most of the guides on how to boot into safe mode but to no avail. There was one time though that the device booted up and she managed to: open power menu > hold power off > reboot to safe mode, but nothing happened, it just rebooted only to get stuck at the X again.
I may be overthinking this, so I've turned to XDA for help. I know you guys don't like people asking n00bish queries but I've exhausted everything I can think of and I'd like to try everything before I go down the route where I can possibly do even more damage.
I really need help with this, anyone have any ideas? We'd really appreciate it!