ESP32 Stuck After Enabling Flash Encryption (Secure Boot NOT Enabled)

[Vaibhav02]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on ESP32 with ESP-IDF v5.3 and have enabled Flash Encryption in development mode.

What’s Working:

• Flashing works fine (idf.py flash)

• Flash encryption efuse (FLASH_CRYPT_CNT = 1) is set

• Secure Boot V1 and V2 are not enabled (ABS_DONE_0 = 0, ABS_DONE_1 = 0)

The Problem:
After flashing, the serial monitor shows:

Code: Select all

--- esp-idf-monitor 1.5.0 on \\.\COM5 115200
--- Quit: Ctrl+] | Menu: Ctrl+T | Help: Ctrl+T followed by Ctrl+H

But there is no output from the chip – not even bootloader logs.

What I’ve Tried:
Verified efuses with espefuse.py summary
Full flash erase + clean build + idf.py flash
Different COM ports, USB cables, baud rates

My Questions:

• Is this behavior expected when Flash Encryption is enabled but a wrong/unencrypted image is flashed?

• Could the device hang due to a bad encryption key or mismatched flash image?

• What is the best recovery strategy when Flash Encryption is enabled and device is unresponsive?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!