4 Ways to Fix “Cannot load twrp.img” Error in Fastboot

After unlocking the device’s bootloader, the first thing a user does is install a TWRP Recovery on their device. This is because custom recoveries like TWRP allow you to install custom ROMs, flash .zip or .img files, mount partitions, encrypt or decrypt storage, create a Nandroid backup, etc. But what we would be discussing here is a general error that many of you might face while installing the TWRP Recovery on your Android. The error we are talking about fixing is: “Cannot load twrp.img. No such file or directory”. Let us see how why this error pops up and steps to rectify it. Before carrying out these steps, it is recommended that you take a full backup of your Android device beforehand.

Fix “Cannot load twrp.img” Error

Before discussing the steps to fix the “Cannot load twrp.img” error, let us first understand why this error occurs.

For installing a custom recovery like TWRP, first, we boot our Android device to fastboot mode. Then we take the help of any of the two Fastboot commands:

fastboot flash recovery <recovery-name>.img
fastboot boot <recovery-name>.img

There exist two different commands because of the difference in partitions. Older devices have a separate recovery partition and hence you could directly flash it using the fastboot flash recovery command. But since the inception of A/B partition devices, there is no separate recovery partition. Everything is managed by the boot partition now. Hence we now boot the recovery into the boot partition rather than flashing it to the non-existing recovery partition.

Now let’s come back to fixing of the “Cannot load ‘twrp.img’: No such file or directory”. There exist two reasons why this could happen. Let’s have a look at both of them.

4 Solutions to Fix TWRP Error

Below, we have provided four different fixes for the “Cannot load twrp.img. No such file or directory”. You don’t have to try all the four fixes. Anyone of them should do the job for you.

1. It goes without saying that for executing any fastboot command, you should have Android SDK Platform-tools installed on your desktop. Moreover, most of the guides on the internet simply refer to the command for flashing TWRP Recovery as fastboot flash recovery twrp.img or fastboot boot twrp.img. In this command the name of the recovery is TWRP.

However, that is hardly the case. None of the recoveries presents online is named as twrp. As a result, users directly execute the above commands without renaming the recovery. If that is the case, make sure to rename the recovery to twrp before proceeding further. This should fix the “Cannot load twrp.img. No such file or directory” error. If that is not the case, head over to our next solution.

2. In another scenario, some of the guides do tell the users to rename the recovery to twrp.img. But this is where the problem occurs. The .img is not the part of the recovery name but is rather the file extension. Without realizing it, users end up renaming the recovery to twrp.img and the complete name goes as twrp.img.img. So if you are going to rename the recovery, make sure to rename it to just twrp. However, if you still can’t fix the “Cannot load twrp.img. No such file or directory” error, then refer to the third and final solution below.

3. Make sure to always place the TWRP Recovery where the Android SDK and Platform Tools are installed. To be precise, it should be inside the platform-tools folder. Most of the time, users fail to move the recovery file inside the said folder and execute the command for flashing recovery. In that case, the said error pops up. So moving the recovery inside the platform-tools folder should fix the ”Cannot load twrp.img. No such file or directory” error.

4. However, if you don’t want to move the recovery to the platform-tools folder, there is another workaround. Just enter the fastboot flash recovery or fastboot boot recovery command and leave a space after the command. Now drag and drop the TWRP file next to that code.

For example, suppose the downloaded recovery is TWRP-3.3.1_Motorola_One_Action and is placed inside the Downloads folder. Then on dragging it next to the fastboot command, the code should look like fastboot flash recovery C:\Downloads\TWRP-3.3.1_Motorola_One_Action. This should fix the “Cannot load twrp.img. No such file or directory TWRP” error.

So these were the various steps of fixing the TWRP error. Do let us know if you face any issues while trying out the above solutions.

Read Next: How to Install Latest TWRP Recovery on Android Devices