Hello all,
To keep it concise:
Received my SII from Vodafone yestersday - all is well.
Proceeded to flash the phone with XWK37 firmware and rooted the phone by flashing chainfire's insecure kernel, applying root and then flashing the stock XWK37 kernel - have used Odin before and all is well.
By the time I finish playing with the phone it's 3.00am so I put the SII on charge (battery at around 30%) - all is still suspiciously well.
Get up at 7am to take my kid to school and when I get back I discover that the menu key no longer does anything when pressed (home key and return key still work fine) - it doesn't light up nor does it bring up a menu - all is not well.
So far I've tried:
Reflashing both the firmware and kernal - no effect.
Removing sim card, sd card and battery - no effect.
Hard resetting (both via button method and android privacy menu) / formatting sd card - no effect.
Dialling *#*#2663#*#* and updating the touch firmware - no effect.
Accused my wife of breaking my phone before she went to work - no effect.
Now If it's a hardware problem (which would be disappointing since I've only had the phone for 1 day) then I'm stuck since there is no stock UK Vodafone firmware available yet to flash back to before handing in for repair - plus I don't want to go back to using my N97 in the meantime.
Yes I preordered the N97 before it was released and got myself stuck in an 18 year contract - words can't describe how much I hate that worthless piece of Nokia - I kept it to teach myself a lesson, early adoptions don't pay off.
The only other relevant thing I can think of is that I was trying to install ADW launcher (previously used it a lot) before I went to sleep last night however although the phone claimed that it downloaded and installed - no icon appeared and I was unable to launch it although it's wallpapers showed up when I was switching my live wallpaper.
Can anyone help with any idea's of what it might be aside from a hardware issue?
If it is a hardware issue, anyone know when the Vodafone UK firmware might shown up?
Tell you what, I'll throw in a free N97 for anyone who solves the problem
Thanks guys.
K37 firmware ????
I would flash old firmware like WKDD .
Possible with pit and repartition checked if that failed . Not used either yet on SGS2 but always cleared SGS1 by that method .
jje
Thanks for the reply jje,
The XWKE7 is the latest generic XEU firmware available from this guide:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1075278
I flashed it exactly as the guide stipulated.
However I didn't even think to try flashing it to a earlier version to see if the problem might be with the actual firmware.
Should be finishing work in a couple of hours so will try flashing the older XWKDD
firmware and see if that relocates the menu key.
Will update as soon as I know.
Damn.
No luck - tried flashing KDD (and also KE1/KE2 for good measure) accompanied by full memory wipes - still no luck. All these firmware files come in one .tar package which i place into the PDA section of Odin.
Even tried one where the pda, modem and csc were split into seperate files from:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1075278&page=11
Still no return of the menu key.
When I am flashing - I leave the pit section of Odin completely alone and leave re-partition unticked - I take it this is correct?
It's strange because apart from the menu key - the S2 is working perfectly.
The only other thing I can think of is that the Vodafone branded version of the S2 in won't work with any other generic firmware which is pretty unlikely methinks.
jje - "...possible with pit and repartition checked if that failed.." - I didn't quite understand what you were recommending there mate - should I be using a pit file and checking repartition?
Any other ideas guys?
Off to go glare at my wife's dumbed down yet fully working iphone - it's laughing at me...
I've got the same problem. The menu button works just when it wants. Sometimes it doesn't react at all, sometimes it works perfectly.
I have KE1 firmware, I have rooted it and unrooted (for sim unlocking), then installed original kernel via Odin. Everything was wonderful and I was the happiest guy in the world! One day later the button began behaving like a goast! as chronicpoetic mentioned.
I would like to try installing the new firmware via Odin, but I am afraid that if it's hardware problem, then it won't be taken by service.
Any suggestions?
sounds like hardware faults guys :/
Thank you for reply! I thougt it was too, but... read below
I found out something else.
The menu button works, but with an extreme long delay - 15-30 seconds! More often just right after screen unlock. It just appears and disappers 30 times if I pushed it 30 times before.
And still it can work just perfectly. Sometimes after connecting it to PC or charging it. That dosn't work like a rule.
I am trying to find the reason of such unusual behaviour, but I am lack of expirience.
Any help?
Hello man
I hope that my info will help you
I was in samfirmware.com site and i remembered your problem and i recall that you say Vodafone
so i saw "Provider Samsung I9100 Firmwares" and one of them looks like Vodafone firmware...... please see this site hope to helps you:
http://www.samfirmware.com/WEBPROTECT-i9100.htm
sorry for my bad english
Yeapp, I visited the partner of samsung service center, they said it was a hardware.
Same thing here, any progres?
Just revisited this post - I managed to get a hold of the original Vodafone Firmware from Intratech's thread, flashed it and returned the phone - turns out it was a hardware fault.
Vodafone promptly replaced mine folks.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Hi,
My friend updated Galaxy S2 through Kies today for the first time. Everything seemed to go fine, but after successful upgrade, phone can't detect sim card anymore. Also when connected back to PC, Kies can't detect phone. What could be wrong? He haven't found any solution yet. Maybe need to re-flash with Odin
I wanted to upgrade my phone today also but I am afraid that I brick my phone the same way. We both bought our Galaxy S2 phones from Germany and live ourselves in Estonia. We didn't have any upgrades till now. It came with KE2 firmware from stock. Could it be that the problem is that buying region and region where we live/upgrade now is different? I'm just guessing. It's strange that official upgrade with newest Kies went wrong when it seemed to be successful. Hard resets also didn't help him. He tried other sim cards and these also won't work. Phone even won't ask PIN code when starting.
I googled every way and won't find that anybody have had similar problem after firmware upgrade. Does anybody have idea what to do, and what could have went wrong? I want to upgrade my phone, but don't want to mess my phone up
I appriciate when someone could help with information!
First step is a factory reset .
jje
Hi All,
I thought I’d share this as I’ve been pulling my hair out with trying to find answers to this, and sending it to old Sammy was the next option.
After trying everything on every forum, trying the QPST method, trying to use someone else's efs folder (which changed the serial as well) and every other complicated as hell method everyone had suggested, nothing worked expect his which I’ve not found mentioned anywhere as a solution to this (or any other) problem
In the Samsung Kies application under "Tools" there is "Firmware Upgrade and Initialisation,"
With your device unplugged (it will say not available for this model if its plugged in, don't plug it in until it tells you to when in download mode) select this and run the what it tells you to do,
After this is finished you will have a completely fresh install of the latest officially released firmware (for your original build eg. carrier branded) with original serial number and imei number :laugh:
It’s really silly how simple this is yet has not been mentioned or attempted by anyone else, or if it has, not mentioned by anyone else.
I crap you not…
Thanks,
[edit:] just as a note, I got into this problem by not backing up the efs, the world would be a much nicer place if everyone just backed up their efs :laugh:
This has been posted before and does not work in many cases .
Although the method can be useful to restore to original firmware .
jje
Yes, flashing a stock rom will sometimes fix the problem of the efs folder not being mounted or read. It won't fix a corrupt partition or damaged files.
The stock rom you flashed didn't contain any efs data so it isn't any substitute for a backup, you were very lucky it worked.
To my tests this work only when efs is completely empty while upgrade if not it doesn't work
sent from the state where Marijuana is NOT illegal !
Same problem
hello guys,
Well I'm to tell the story of how my aunt damaged apparently her phone
At first the phone is a samsung galaxy S3 from movistar (locked), and she bought a freaking iphone 5 to give the S3 to his husband and there it starts the problem he's in another company so she goes to a store to unlock the phone, the guys on the store supposedly unlocked the phone. So when she arrives home, she puts the sim into the phone and SORPRISE it says emergency calls only and not registered in network. After a week she calls me and hands me over the phone.
My surprise was when I put it in recovery mode, it says flash count 3, and then i did all these terrible things with thephone.
1) Flash it to a stock movistar rom 4.1.2.
2) Sorprise the IMEI sayd null.
3) Searching in the web, found the ariza patch, and I patched it without saving the efs (big mistake).
4) The phone imei's became 0049.
5) So I flash it back to the rom they put in the store and the imei went back I make sure it was the one on the back of the phone.
6) I still stuck in the emergency call not registered in the network thing.
7) Now I rooted the phone erased the whole content of the efs directory (this time with a back up).
8) Did the tutorial thing with samsung kies and I'm back with the movistar rom with the 0049 IMEI.
I don't what to do at this point besides going to samsung and send it to repair I really hope they can fix it at a low price.
Sorry for my english, I'm trying to improve it.
Best Regards
Andy Serrato... the spaniard
Start by reading the stickied faqs and guides EFS/IMEI sticky for one or just pay for a repair .
Galaxy S3(GT-I9300) having the same problem! HELP HELP HEEEELP PLEASE!!
Very unfortunately. this didn't solve my problem, the phone's Serial number is still that auto generated junk, and the EMEI is 00499901640000 as before. I had 4.1.2 on my S3 and Kies has updated it to 4.3 without resolving the issue!
can anyone give an idea on how to surely resolve this issue please. its about 3 months now ever since my phone got screwed up!
Pay for a repair
Perfect
I cannot believe this worked, but it did.
I messed up somehow by trying to flash the wrong cwm.tar file (for i9305) I needed i9300 of course and odin stopped halfway and got stuck, i then pulled the cable out and everything got very messy,.. i kept getting lots of errors etc. i somehow managed to install an old cm11 rom which worked lovely. BUT I had no baseband, no imei, no network, no number, nothing, #*06# or whatever it is, wouldn't work. nothing.
I then started to figure out how the efs filesystem worked, then foundout kies has an emergency thing where i guess they look into there database what your imei was when the phone was built. this would not work because I was using a custom rom (i think) but then I stumbled upon this post. thank goodness!!!!!
It's just restarted and internet, signal, imei is back, baseband version is back. all in order.
however, i think i was also very lucky, but for those of you who are in the position i was in, but this doesn't work, I do think there are ways to get an old efs going again and modify it to your "should be" imei,
if anyone needs an IMEI, I can give you one from a phone i had stolen in vietnam, (not sure its even legal to give it out but whatever)
thank you
Nev
EFS recovery
DonkeyDuck said:
Hi All,
I thought I’d share this as I’ve been pulling my hair out with trying to find answers to this, and sending it to old Sammy was the next option.
After trying everything on every forum, trying the QPST method, trying to use someone else's efs folder (which changed the serial as well) and every other complicated as hell method everyone had suggested, nothing worked expect his which I’ve not found mentioned anywhere as a solution to this (or any other) problem
In the Samsung Kies application under "Tools" there is "Firmware Upgrade and Initialisation,"
With your device unplugged (it will say not available for this model if its plugged in, don't plug it in until it tells you to when in download mode) select this and run the what it tells you to do,
After this is finished you will have a completely fresh install of the latest officially released firmware (for your original build eg. carrier branded) with original serial number and imei number :laugh:
It’s really silly how simple this is yet has not been mentioned or attempted by anyone else, or if it has, not mentioned by anyone else.
I crap you not…
Thanks,
[edit:] just as a note, I got into this problem by not backing up the efs, the world would be a much nicer place if everyone just backed up their efs :laugh:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WOW! This worked! I had been struggling for 3 months with my Note 2. Been flashing rom after rom and got stuck in boot cycle. Actually broke down and brought phone to a cell repair shop. She said it just needed a new battery. $50 later got my phone back. She had put stock AT&T rom on it but lo and behold, my sim card didn't work and my IMEI was null. I brought it back and she had it for a week and then said there was a hardware problem AND my USB port wasn't working and it would cost more to fix than it was worth, so she gave it back to me no charge. So I spent next months trying other roms. reading up on EFS folder, even learned some ADB stuff. To no avail. And BTW, my usb port seems to work fine. Finally this afternoon after Turkey Dinner, I stumbled across your forum message. And 15 minutes later I was downloading a repair and the son of a gun fixed everything. I verified it with a Sim card - perfect ! Apparently Samsung has a database of phone serial numbers and what IMEI code goes with them. Fanatastic! Thank you. I will be writing a serious neg review of that cell phone repair place soon.
kangerX said:
To my tests this work only when efs is completely empty while upgrade if not it doesn't work
sent from the state where Marijuana is NOT illegal !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried the method posted in the thread ..... but EFS didn't recovered ........ so i decided to follow your procedure
like making empty EFS folder.... so how can i do that ...and if so will it work .....as someone here mentioned that Download firmware package doesn't contains any EFS contains .... help me out :good:
DonkeyDuck said:
Hi All,
I thought I’d share this as I’ve been pulling my hair out with trying to find answers to this, and sending it to old Sammy was the next option.
After trying everything on every forum, trying the QPST method, trying to use someone else's efs folder (which changed the serial as well) and every other complicated as hell method everyone had suggested, nothing worked expect his which I’ve not found mentioned anywhere as a solution to this (or any other) problem
In the Samsung Kies application under "Tools" there is "Firmware Upgrade and Initialisation,"
With your device unplugged (it will say not available for this model if its plugged in, don't plug it in until it tells you to when in download mode) select this and run the what it tells you to do,
After this is finished you will have a completely fresh install of the latest officially released firmware (for your original build eg. carrier branded) with original serial number and imei number :laugh:
It’s really silly how simple this is yet has not been mentioned or attempted by anyone else, or if it has, not mentioned by anyone else.
I crap you not…
Thanks,
[edit:] just as a note, I got into this problem by not backing up the efs, the world would be a much nicer place if everyone just backed up their efs :laugh:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i love u so much right now,.. worked like a charm,.. and after thjat i was able to unlock my phone,... thanks so much i would love to give u 10000 thanks
I cant get past entering my model number,, I read it right from under the battery and it still keeps telling me to enter the model number. G550T1 doesnt change from G550T1 no matter how many times you type it... I give up.. If I could just get a twrp backup for mine I may be able to fix it. It's metropcs! flashing to the T-Mobile twrp backup by mistake thinking it was the metropcs one is what got me in this situation... Should have paid better attention...
UPDATE: It took my numbers and I'm trying it now, wish me luck
Well I got it to take my model number and did the whole software thing. Everything is all back to stock but it didnt fix the problem.. Still no net work and says theres no sim card.
Which shop samsung
Which shop samsung or repair shop bro.
Please tell.?????? me I am facing too problem.
stwischu said:
WOW! This worked! I had been struggling for 3 months with my Note 2. Been flashing rom after rom and got stuck in boot cycle. Actually broke down and brought phone to a cell repair shop. She said it just needed a new battery. $50 later got my phone back. She had put stock AT&T rom on it but lo and behold, my sim card didn't work and my IMEI was null. I brought it back and she had it for a week and then said there was a hardware problem AND my USB port wasn't working and it would cost more to fix than it was worth, so she gave it back to me no charge. So I spent next months trying other roms. reading up on EFS folder, even learned some ADB stuff. To no avail. And BTW, my usb port seems to work fine. Finally this afternoon after Turkey Dinner, I stumbled across your forum message. And 15 minutes later I was downloading a repair and the son of a gun fixed everything. I verified it with a Sim card - perfect ! Apparently Samsung has a database of phone serial numbers and what IMEI code goes with them. Fanatastic! Thank you. I will be writing a serious neg review of that cell phone repair place soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am having a problem with my SCH-1605. Phone was working great rooted for 6mos and must have updated itself or I just dumbly installed one that screwed the phone up. I tried new sim from verizon (did not work), un-rooting, re-flashing with ODIN with pit and FW as suggested on other posts (for other problems) and did something wrong I forget what , got the triangle thing and then recovered with Kies and every thing supposedly was back to stock (and un-rooted). Called Samsung, went to BB service center and they reflashed firmware (same thing I did I am guessing LOL, but I humored the tech line by letting them do it again). They then told me to ship it to them and although it was not under warranty (2nd owner) they would do the full software re flash(??) and check the hardware (I would be responsible for repair and I agreed as long as they contacted me if over 125$). Well I just got the phone shipped back today with a refusal (void in warranty) to repair for rooted device!! I am pissed at this because it was ALREADY a voided warranty repair ticket. ..No contacting me, just ran it through tagged it unrepairable and shipped it back aaaargh!
Anyway, I am hoping the bright minds and technical expertise of the xda members can help us out with this problem.
I was wondering if I should try another ROM (for another radio) and I was looking at the safestrap method, but I and am leery because I have the VRUEMJ9 build and do not see instructions/files for it. (I am newber, but can follow instructions, have been researching for weeks and finally asking for HELP because I am stumped, confused, with little $$ to buy a new phone right now (full-time got cut to part-time thanks to HC issue but thats for another forum!)
Thank you in advance for any help on this issue!!
Here I have a customers Galaxy Mega from AT&T, She claims she isn't rooting or installing any types of custom recovery on her phone, we replaced the board on the phone once, and she came back a day later with the same issue. The phone bootloops, but when I try to get into recovery it says "Unauthorized Software has been detected take it to the nearest AT&T store for help" She says the phone was updating, and it does this. This has happened twice now, and I've tried Odin back to stock, and Kies, but at no avail. What is the possibilities, or how can I fix this? Thanks.
I am not an AT&T Representative btw, but her Knox void counter says 0x1 (Which I guess means its tripped)
Usually we only deal with hardware repairs such as cracked screens or components, but we don't want to be left with a dead board.
Thanks for all the help in advance. How can I get this phone to at least just come back on?
I believe she got the kk official update and this has happened to many users i read and this is an official update which is pretty poor of samsung to do this..and if it was updated to the NE7 rom i believe for the AT&T phone then at this time there is no fix as far as i know..this has even happened on the i527m (canadian version) as after the update a bootloop or touchscreen not working and no wifi..so she is telling the truth i believe..and samsung should address this problem as it is their update causing these problems.
On some phones it seems to update alright but the majority of them it is not working out well at all, so i do not think it is a board problem it is the bootloader that could be causing all this grief and many a few other files in the update.
Now i am not sure on the boards you are replacing as they would be good..but as soon as the update comes in again...it could be making the phone act the same way as the last time it updated.