How to ensure a flash was successful before rebooting - AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717

I made a super stupid mistake yesterday. When I was getting all of the downloads together in preparation for flashing, I didn't notice that a link I'd followed lead me to the International forum, and now I've got a hard brick. I'm not quite sure why that's the case and I want to understand it more.
I've had a GTablet since day one so I'm familiar with the flashing process along with adb, but my experience yesterday has obviously lead me to want to be more cautious.
When I flashed the ROM from CWM it indicated that it was successful (and I'm sure from its point of view it was) but obviously the two phones have very different internals. I was under the impression that the ROM flash doesn't touch the bootloader, but obviously it did something that the phone didn't like. My best guess is that it screwed up the partition table for the emmc, but I'm concerned that that could irrevocably brick the phone. Does anyone have a technical explanation for what happened?
Second, while it was in CWM I may have had a chance of recovering, but once I rebooted it, it was over. No recovery, no download mode, no USB activity, just a brick. How can I be sure a future ROM flash is actually successful and the phone will still be able to boot properly? Is there a way of verifying other than rebooting and crossing your fingers? I don't really want to brick another one.

Yeah... MAKE SURE THE ROM IS FOR YOUR DEVICE BEFORE YOU FLASH IT!

Related

[Q] Help with Eris and Evil Eris

I'm having a little trouble and I'm sincerely hoping you'll help. I've tried flashing my Eris using the file, "Evil_Tazz_3.zip" and my Eris is now bricked and stuck in a bootloop. All it will do is show an animation of the sketchy letters ANDROID falling down the screen and then a smoky light following close behind it reveling the Droid itself. And it'll repeat this animation rapidly about 100 times before freezing and then restarting the whole process all over. To be frank it pisses me off because it always seems that I'm the only one who has trouble with this stuff.
My Eris is rooted and it does allow me to access the recovery screen. What am I supposed to do?
Anyways, thanks for your time.
Best Regards -Joseph Bergen
jbergen said:
I'm having a little trouble and I'm sincerely hoping you'll help. I've tried flashing my Eris using the file, "Evil_Tazz_3.zip" and my Eris is now bricked and stuck in a bootloop. All it will do is show an animation of the sketchy letters ANDROID falling down the screen and then a smoky light following close behind it reveling the Droid itself. And it'll repeat this animation rapidly about 100 times before freezing and then restarting the whole process all over. To be frank it pisses me off because it always seems that I'm the only one who has trouble with this stuff.
My Eris is rooted and it does allow me to access the recovery screen. What am I supposed to do?
Anyways, thanks for your time.
Best Regards -Joseph Bergen
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whatever you do, DO NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL BTFB0 responds to your plea for help.
Do not just start trying different solutions, DO NOT FLASH ANY RUU, if you know what that is. BTFB0 is the guy who can get your phone unbricked if anyone can. He is the expert, I won't pretend to be able to duplicate his knowledge in this area.
Be patient until he has a chance to see this. You don't have to PM him, I'm sure he'll respond when he has a chance here in public. He will ask specific questions about what version of bootloader you have, 1.47 or 1.49, and you might as well find out if it's S=OFF or S=ON.
Also, do you have Amon RA recovery on your phone and can you get to it?
Have you tried flashing anything else since your phone has gotten stuck in this boot loop? If not and you can get into recovery still, then simply wipe data, wipe dalvik, and try flashing again. Don't worry you're phone doesn't sound bricked, just like you got a bad download or an error when flashing the rom. I would probably try a different rom or at least re-download the one you want to use.
It may still be wise to wait for BTFB0 to get here and offer some more advice as I am sure he has more knowledge in this area than me. But I do feel confident that he will say the same thing as I have.
Well, the OP merely said that he is having trouble with a specific ROM; he didn't mention failures during flashing; so, his problem could be as simple as having failed to "wipe" before flashing his ROM.
jbergen:
If you can boot into a custom recovery, your phone is not "bricked". It's not even soft-bricked; it's just not booting into the main OS correctly.
Providing as much detail as you can is helpful to people that are offering help to you; in particular, the following pieces of information:
- What recovery is on your phone? (Amon_RA, Clockwork? What version #?)
- When you are flashing the ROM file with your recovery, do you notice any "E:" messages?
An "E:" at the beginning of a line on the screen means that an error occurred!
- Are you having this same trouble on more than one ROM, or is this the only ROM you have tried since you rooted?
- What method did you use to root the phone?
- Did you use the "Wipe data/factory reset" menu item before you flashed the ROM file?
- Did you make any Nandroid backups that you still have on your SD card? If yes, did you attempt to restore one? What was the result? (BTW, every rooted phone user should be making Nandroid backups before they flash ROMs - no exceptions.)
- Do you have a media card slot or USB card reader device that will allow you to copy a different ROM file onto your SD card? -OR-
- Do you know how to "mount" the SD card onto the PC when your recovery is booted? (On Amon_RA, it is called "Toggle MS-USB" or something like that; it's also in the Clockwork menu somewhere too)
Given the information you have provided, there are any number of things that could be going on. I would suggest downloading a different ROM to your PC (let's say the stock HTC Eris March 2011 ROM), and then transferring it to your SD card. Then,
- Verify the exact size of the file and/or MD5 signatures of the file (if the developer provided it).
- make sure your phone is well charged
- perform a "Wipe data/factory reset" from the recovery menu
- Flash the ROM file from the recovery menu - and pay attention to the screen to see if there are any `E:' errors
- If there are errors, there is no point in attempting to boot the phone
- If there are no errors, boot the phone.
- Report your results here - and answer the questions that I asked.

[Q] YABGTAB(Yet another "bricked" Gtab) thread.

Hey, fellas. As you may or may not be aware, I am in dire straits. Recently I had been browsing the XDA forums for the first time in a long time, and lo and behold there was a magnificence I had thought to never see in our own development forum... a Honeycomb alpha! In my haste I tried to follow every instruction to the tee and discovered that I need the stock bootloader/ROM to do this.
Well, coming from cyanogenmod7 and a first time nvFlasher, I followed the instructions from one thread to flash back to stock 3588(I think it was)? So after fiddling with the drivers for about 5-10 minutes, I start flashing and everything is going great, no errors whatsoever. Then the tablet starts to boot up and what happens? A bootloop at the TapNTap screen. So, I tried to boot into recovery thinking it might be fixable with a factory/data reset...and recovery no longer works, it just reboots back int pthe TnT bootloop. And then I came to the this forum, particularly the Q&A, to ask one question...
Is my G-Tablet well and truly forked?
Sincerely, this guy.
[edit]P.S I am also currently trying a bunch of stuff atm to see if I can fix it myself, but just reply if anything I do is futile and I should consider recycling my new hunk of silicone and plastic.
Load cwm .8 via update.zip and repartition your tab. Then try nvflash again.
"Select the advanced option at the bottom of the ClockworkMod menu, then go to “partition SD card”, for the first option select 2048, and for the second option select 0. This erases data on your tablet. Be prepared. "
Or try loading it by nvflash with instructions from this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1058649
Here is a thread on how to easily flash to the 1.2 bootloader.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1039000&highlight=guide
Holy heck, thanks man. Do you have a paypal or something so I can send you like 5 dollars?
Nope, just mash the thanks button ;-)
Good luck!
No offense to the OP, but from my observations it seems that NVFlash is more of a breaker than anything. Everybody says to know NVFlash in case you end up with problems...that's fine, people can apparantley use ot to help fix errors that may have happened...
The fact is, most of the "I've bricked my G-Tablet" posts usually contain the line "So I NVflashed..."
I know that the developers use NVFlash for it's ease of use to go between roms, and see what it is that they need to see (I've never used it, so I don't know)
The fact is, the instructions that Mantara posted do not require NVFlash at all. In fact, after flashing 3588, they don't even require CWM.
If I ever softbrick, THEN I'll mess with NVFlash...but until then, it seems that NVFlash might actually cause me to have my first softbrick.
Nvflash is a handy tool to have and yes it can cause errors. Most of the time those errors occur because the partition table on the tablet don't match the partition table for the Rom being flashed. About half the gtabs have different partition tables from what is considered standard. That's why I have been pressing the issue of repartitioning when you first get your gtab and also when you move from 1.1 to 1.2. It helps make sure your tab and the software are on the same page.

Need Pro Help Here, HW Issues or SW issues with this Phone

OK, Heres the scenario, This is a replacement T-959 vibrant, sent from either TMO or Samsung, really not sure! My 1st phone never had any issues with modding, and always cooperated! Until I used KIES to update one day and It bricked, because of primary and SBL corruptions. [I know!!, found out 5 mins too late about using KIES] Anyway, since Ive had this replacement phone its done nothing but fight me from the start, never has acted right I think and I feel there's something wrong HW wise with it. My problem with it now, is it wont accept any other custom ROM I try to install, and only works with either 2.1 or 2.2 stock OEM ROM's. Meaning, Anything else ROM wise, It wont go past the last part of boot sequence, and just keeps looping, and does it over and over again! Ive tried all of Simple Honeys, Toxic 8's Roms, and each time it goes thru the loading successfully, and then starts it boot-up, but every single Flash Ive done, ROM wise, it hangs up and loops at the very last part of booting up. Ive come to realize now, it isn't the ROMS, but the phone " I THINK" Each time I tried a Custom ROM install, I started with stock fresh JFD install, and wiped and cleared out everything before starting another ROM install, but with each attempt that I try to go past anything other than Froyo stock, It does this boot loop problem at the final part!! It seems like who ever sent it to me, did something to the phone to prevent this. Modding it I mean. like right now I'm on Eugenes Froyo, with the 2E RECOVERY, It was working fine, until I upgraded the Eugenes kernel, which is suppose to work with this ROM, technically the phone still runs, but as soon as I did this, I now cant get into the two drives as mass storage to tranfer files, says insert disk, like as if its a CD Rom drive, WTF!! And like I said, this phone wont accept any other ROMS now, past stock Eclair or Froyo OEM and kernels as well. I don't understand what the problem is, My guess is they flashed something to prevent modding or its just a corrupted HW issue, anybody ever seen this before. I wish I had just JTAG'd my first phone with Josh over at Mobile Tech, and saved myself all this heartbreak and frustration, but its too late for that now! So anyway, I need to determine for sure if this phones screwed, HW wise or if there is SW to get this phone straighten out, to where it'll work right like my first one used to, and begin to accept custom ROM's like it should be able to do!! I'm at my last end with this phone, and I'm desperate to get a solid reason/answer for whats happening here, because Ive followed all the instructions and standard procedures to insure that all the attempted installs of the ROMS I mentioned go correctly. And its boiling down to either HW issues or a SW issue they created before they shipped it to me, or last but least hopefully a SW fix here, that can get the HW/phone to act right again, and maybe salvage this phone, otherwise I'm thinking I need to buy another brand new phone and hope for the best. I just don't want to be stuck and limited with Froyo stock, for the rest of my time using this phone, I want my freedom to choose again, like I had before, and also It ran so much better than OEM anyways!
Go back to stock using the sticky on the q&a then root using that same methOd and when you flash a custom room make sure you wipe dalvik and cache and delete user data
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Quote" Go back to stock using the sticky on the q&a then root using that same methOd and when you flash a custom room make sure you wipe dalvik and cache and delete user data"
If you had picked up on it in my post, have already done this dozens of times!! Oh and BTW, when at JFD = 2.1 Eclair, it wont allow the 2 drives access to in Cabled USB mass storage, and therefore unable to CWM flash with zips, then I must go to 2.2 Froyo next to be able to get past that problem, but again when I go from there to any custom ROM, it fails to boot at the very end, and starts its looping. Again, the 1st phone I had, never ever, behaved like this!! Same phone but, different dates of manufacturing and also this one came from either Samsung or TMO in Plano,TX where that's all, they do is send out phones for replacement, and this one wasn't in a original box, something they worked on, grabbed off the shelf, and sent to me!! Its just a shame that 99% of all the ROMS are in zipped form, instead of TAR files, at least then I could've tried flashing some of them from, Eclair to see if that made a difference, but when they are zipped, you must use CWM recovery to flash, and thus again presents another problem as far as what I'm going thru here!
Got any thing else, Idea wise, that actually hasn't been tried yet, that makes sense??
OK, Ive made some progress, It seems for whatever stupid reason, that unlocking my phone, [jailbreaking] was the culprit of this phones renegade behavior, I simply restored it back to a locked status as a TMO provider, and Wholla, the phones now acting right!! And I have been able to get it to the ROM I wanted and flash a better kernel as well with 0 defects!!! And then I jailbroke it again, and its working flawlessly.
Personally I don't understand why that had a bearing on its behavior, but nun the less it did. And has cause me a few extra wrinkles around my eyes in stress trying to figure this out by myself, especially when all the suggestions and procedures I did was for nothing, until this phone was restored to a locked condition again!!
Go figure Right???? Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! Anyway I hope mentioning this will prevent someone else in losing their hair or sanity!!
hello i think we have the problem, i also have openline my vibrant to be able to use here in our country.. i have 2.1 eclair, i just want to know what 2.2 ROM did you used coz you've said that it's ok to upgrade it to 2.2, but not other ROM, where did you get it.. can you pm me the link
thanks

SD card required?

Hey, im new here, and completely new to the whole "custom rom flashing" thing.
I would like to get into rooting my phone and then installing a custom rom like resurrection for example, but I have a couple of questions.
1. Do I need an SD card in my phone, to be able to root my phone/install custom roms? or can I just use the phones internal 16gb memory?
2. Would someone be kind enough to point me to a guide to rooting/installing custom roms for complete newbies like myself? I have searched the forums, but theres so many threads about different stuff, like clockworkmod/odin/cyanogenmod etc, my head is completely boggled. I just don't know where to begin with any of it.
Cheers.
1) No.
2) Everything you need to know is in the Stickies.
MistahBungle said:
1) No.
2) Everything you need to know is in the Stickies.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. No you cant root without an SD card? or No you don't need an SD card? elaborate please.
2. Nothing in that thread helps someone like me who is totally new. I don't know what any of it means. Surely there is a simple guide that explains exactly how to root your phone, without linking you to 7 other threads in the process? That's all I've found up until now.
This requires sdcard
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1501719
This doesn't
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1103399
Thanks, thats what I was looking for.
One more thing, just so I dont make a mistake, could you tell me which kernel to download? my kernel version is 3.0.15-I9100BVLPB-CL310231
cheers.
Read the bit in bold read which says 'Help ! Which file do I use ?'. This short section answers your question exactly.
ok well i tried CF-Root-SGS2_XX_OXX_LPB-v5.2-CWM5-PROPER.zip and my phone no longer boots....
tried CF-Root-SGS2_XX_OXX_LPB-v5.2-CWM5.zip and I get the same thing, so im stuck now. great.
I can get into CWM recovery, but I have no idea how to copy the rom I want to use onto the phone when its in recovery mode. This is something that is just not explained anywhere
help?
Right. In order of importance:-
1) No bumping threads within 37 minutes. Not cool. This is not your personal tech support forum.
2) You're having problems. Why ? Who knows. We're not there looking over your shoulder so we have no idea exactly what you did. I suspect you're having problems because you are in too much of a hurry/took shortcuts & didn't do what was suggested immediately after your OP.
3) However...Given the situation you find yourself in, I recommend you do one of two things:-
A) If you are absolutely sure you have CWM Recovery & not Android recovery (I say this because if your phone isn't booting normally, that normally means the flash didn't work & normally CWM wouldn't be successfully installed either), follow whatever instructions the rom you're wanting to flash has.
Every single rom on here has flashing instructions, normally on the first post on the first page of the thread on here devoted to the rom. If you can't be bothered reading those, I can't help you.
or
B) Go to Samfirmware.com. Search for the firmware that was on your phone before you tried to root it. Download this firmware. Flash the firmware you download following the instructions here. If you also end up with a .dll file, bin it. You don't need it. This will give you a clean install of stock. From there, I strongly suggest you read the CFRoot thread very carefully before you attempt to root your phone again. I also strongly recommend you read the Stickies linked to above, so you have some sort of understanding around what's what with this phone.
If you don't, being a betting man, I'll wager there's a fair chance you'll find yourself in the situation you currently find yourself in again (best case scenario), or worst case you'll end up with a 135gm paperweight as many people have on here over the past few days.
It's all up to you now. Your phone's destiny is in your hands.
Thanks for the reply, much appreciated.
Sorry for bumping, I panicked a little when my phone wouldnt boot. I just expected it to work because I have done things like this in the past and never had problems. Im a pretty tech savvy person really, im just new to android.
I wish it was as simple as reading one thread, but there are dozens of different threads on how to root this phone, and different methods, its extremely confusing.
Im downloading the stock kernel now (300+mb for some reason, and its going to take over an hour to download)
Once I get my phone back to normal, I'll read through some more threads and try and get a better understanding on how to root my phone.
I had it rooted properly as the recovery mode stated CWM in the corner, I think the issue I had was not being able to copy the rom I wanted to use, onto the phone, because I dont have an SD card.
Anyway, thanks for the help, and fingers crossed I can at least get my phone to boot again.
Man, I've never come across anything so complicated in all my life lol.
Edit: Sorted! Flashed back to original kernel and its working as it was before I started. Thanks very much for your help mate, and at least now I know how to restore my phone if I mess it up again in the future.
just thought I would update this thread and say I finally accomplished what I wanted.
Incase anyone is wondering, this is what I did:
Restored my phone back to factory settings/firmware/kernel
Booted the phone up, and copied my rom of choice to the internal memory via USB connection, and enabled debug mode.
restarted in download mode and flashed cf-root kernel (ended up with bootloop)
went ahead and installed the rom via clockwork recovery (creating a backup first)
The phone now boots into the rom im using (Resurrection Remix)
So if anyone is a little worried by getting the bootloop (but can still get into clockwork recovery) try flashing your required rom. Your phone may boot fine with new rom anyway. Mine did.

[Q] What to do with "Brick #3" - Transformer Prime

Hi everyone,
It seems I messed up my Prime and I think I know why it happened. I'll first ask my question and then detail what I think happened at the end. I've been reading around the forums for the past few days and I think I'm experiencing brick number 3 as detailed in this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1514088 I followed the link provided under option 3 which links to a thread about an Transformer Prime IRC channel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1367016 I logged in into the IRC channel and someone greeted me by asking for the binaries...frankly, I've no idea what to do in that channel.
I was on the stock Asus Jellybean Rom. I used the Asus Unlock tool and installed TWRP via fastboot as explained in their website (installed the JB.blob). Everything worked fine. I then committed a mistake. I was going to perform a data wipe before installing the new ROM (latest CM nightly) but in retrospect I think that I only performed a factory reset. It was my first time using TWRP and when I got into the wipe menu I selected wipe but I recall that the button for wiping read "slide to perform factory reset". I thought that I was wiping the data on my device but I think that I got confused and only performed a factory reset. I didn't realize that at the time and proceeded to flash the new ROM. When I restarted the device it got stuck in the Asus/Nvida splash screen.
I'm able to go into the recovery menu. I've wiped data properly many times after this and flashed CM many times but the device won't get past that splash screen. I tried flashing the ROM via ADB but whenever I enter the command the terminal shows me a list of the actions that can be performed via ADB and nothing else happens.
I've tried looking around for a solution but I've been unable to find one. Should I install/flash a stock blob rom? The links above say it may do more harm than good and no longer advice users to do that but I haven't found any other alternative. There are many threads pertaining this issue but each case is slightly different and I haven't found one that applies to my situation.
I'm mad at myself because I've had flashed so many custom roms on other devices before and had never had any problems whatsoever that I got careless when flashing the Prime. I know this is completely my fault and I don't want to waste anyone's time on this. I just would like for someone to tell me exactly what to read or where to look so that I can try and fix this situation.
just in case...I just remembered that I didn't root before flashing...could that have been the problem?
I was checking out, once again, the options in TWRP and I did wipe the device correctly. I didn't mess up as I once thought. I can't understand why this happened.
Nearly the same problem for me, case n°3 and don't know what to do. I know have a very expensive black mirror...
FIXED
YES! I was able to fix it BUT I'd be careful before trying what I did. Basically, I did what forum members had advised not to do; I flashed the Asus stock rom via fastboot. As I said before I had read plenty about the various issues with the Transformer Prime. I noticed that some people were flashing the stock rom when confronted with my situation and exhorted others to do the same since they had luck with the procedure. After that, it seems plenty of people bricked their devices by following the same procedure. This caused various senior members in XDA to no longer advise others to try to fix their tablet with that method since it was causing more harm than good (see: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1514088)
Sadly, I had no other choice but to try that method. We were advised to go to the #Asus-Transformer IRC channel but, understandingly, there aren't many people participating in that channel (it's very old!. I was able to get assistance from a very helpful (as always) android geek but we couldn't get anything to work since I was having problems with ADB recognizing my device.
So, knowing full well the possible consequences of flashing a stock asus rom I decided to go for it. After all, the worst thing that could happen was to end with a hard bricked device and the soft brick I was experiencing wasn't as different as that (i.e. I couldn't use the device anyway). So I decided to play russian roulette and see what happened. Luckily the rom installed fine and I was able to boot past the, dreadful Asus/nvidia splashscreen! I was super lucky! Even though I'm back to the stock rom I'm happy because I can use my device once again! I really wanted to try out Cyanogen on my tablet but I will have to pass on that...I will never install a custom ROM again on my Prime
So, if anyone is feeling adventurous and has lost all hope then why not play russian roulette and check out what happens when you install the asus stock rom? I downloaded the asus image from here http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=Eee+Pad+Transformer+Prime+TF201&os=32 and followed the instructions here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1680570 (just step three and four at the end since I already had a custom recovery installed). I had to unzip the download twice (it has a zip inside a zip) and copied the blob file into my fastboot directory (in the PC). I then renamed it to "update.blob" and flashed it.
Don't try it unless you are fully aware of the consequences!

Categories

Resources