Hello guys, you are my only hope! For two days I've been trying to resurrect my i9300 from soft brick after flashing a custom rom. I've read tons of articles and threads about it, but having all this random information in mind makes my brain blow up!
So the thing is that my EFS is corrupted, it means I've lost the IMEI and Telephony. I didn't make a backup of it, so it's impossible to restore, tried to reflash to stock roms, other versions of modems, but nothing helped.
Is anyone who has faced this kind of problem and solved it?
Gassity said:
Hello guys, you are my only hope! For two days I've been trying to resurrect my i9300 from soft brick after flashing a custom rom. I've read tons of articles and threads about it, but having all this random information in mind makes my brain blow up!
So the thing is that my EFS is corrupted, it means I've lost the IMEI and Telephony. I didn't make a backup of it, so it's impossible to restore, tried to reflash to stock roms, other versions of modems, but nothing helped.
Is anyone who has faced this kind of problem and solved it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sorry I can't help, but I would like to know how did it get corrupted in the first place.
What exactly did you do to accidentally corrupt it.
I've just flashed an update of my previous CM based rom (in my signature) and that's it(
nothing you can do, should've made a backup. send it to service to replace the motherboard
The thread is in the wrong section, General is not for questions. Hit "report" and ask for it to be moved
Have you tried flashing a stock firmware?
Gassity said:
Hello guys, you are my only hope! For two days I've been trying to resurrect my i9300 from soft brick after flashing a custom rom. I've read tons of articles and threads about it, but having all this random information in mind makes my brain blow up!
So the thing is that my EFS is corrupted, it means I've lost the IMEI and Telephony. I didn't make a backup of it, so it's impossible to restore, tried to reflash to stock roms, other versions of modems, but nothing helped.
Is anyone who has faced this kind of problem and solved it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Standard Answer .
You can try reading the multiple exact same posts > Lost EFS wrong IMEI .
Or take it to a service centre and pay for a repair .
jje
Related
Hi all,
I own a galaxy s2. I'm facing a issue which i've been trying to fix for the past couple of weeks. I tried many threads in this forum, but nothing seems to solve the issue.
This is the issue,
I used to flash custom roms on my device. I used many custom roms including cm9 RC1 and when samsung released the lastest 4.0.4 update i just wanted to chek it out. so I downloaded the generic russian (SER) firmware and flashed it using odin.
After flashing it I was stuck @ boot. i was stuck there for more than 10 mins, so I ended up removing the battery. then I went to samsung recovery(Volume Up+Power+Home) and cleared the cache and user data and rebooted the phone it worked fine. At this time I didn't bother to check whether my IMEI was there but everything worked fine.
After couple of days(without rebooting the device in that time) I droped the phone. battery came off, when I turned on the device again, prohibited mark like thing came in the status bar and there was no service, when I checked the IMEI it was not there.
At this moment I was not sure whether the drop caused the issue or the flashing caused it. I later realized IMEI issue comes because of EFS but sadly I didnt back it up. After diggin for few days I found when flashing one of the custom roms, efs was backed up automatically, I tried restoring it, but it didnt help (Maybe the backup was corrupted )
I followed various threads in this forum but nothing helped me.
Please help me get the IMEI back, I really miss my device :crying:
Shasinda said:
Hi all,
I own a galaxy s2. I'm facing a issue which i've been trying to fix for the past couple of weeks. I tried many threads in this forum, but nothing seems to solve the issue.
This is the issue,
I used to flash custom roms on my device. I used many custom roms including cm9 RC1 and when samsung released the lastest 4.0.4 update i just wanted to chek it out. so I downloaded the generic russian (SER) firmware and flashed it using odin.
After flashing it I was stuck @ boot. i was stuck there for more than 10 mins, so I ended up removing the battery. then I went to samsung recovery(Volume Up+Power+Home) and cleared the cache and user data and rebooted the phone it worked fine. At this time I didn't bother to check whether my IMEI was there but everything worked fine.
After couple of days(without rebooting the device in that time) I droped the phone. battery came off, when I turned on the device again, prohibited mark like thing came in the status bar and there was no service, when I checked the IMEI it was not there.
At this moment I was not sure whether the drop caused the issue or the flashing caused it. I later realized IMEI issue comes because of EFS but sadly I didnt back it up. After diggin for few days I found when flashing one of the custom roms, efs was backed up automatically, I tried restoring it, but it didnt help (Maybe the backup was corrupted )
I followed various threads in this forum but nothing helped me.
Please help me get the IMEI back, I really miss my device :crying:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi there
you said that you have the backup of your EFS Folder, what you need to do is follow the steps in this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1264021
its recover your imei in nine steps
my imei was lost as well and i recovered my imei following those stesp, its a great guide if you already have the backup of your EFS Folder
cheers
fr3nlysmil3 said:
hi there
you said that you have the backup of your EFS Folder, what you need to do is follow the steps in this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1264021
its recover your imei in nine steps
my imei was lost as well and i recovered my imei following those stesp, its a great guide if you already have the backup of your EFS Folder
cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried this also, but it didnt solve my issue :crying:
...
I once had a similar problem.
My imei went lost because of a rom upgrade and I DIDN'T have a backup..
I solved the problem by flashing a stock rom (any samsung stock rom will do) with ODIN.
I am not sure what happened, but it looked like that the nv_data folder was "re-generated" and I got my IMEI back.
Now I have a copy of the folder in every storage media around my house
MistahBungle said:
If you have a backup, then you should be able to recover it. There are tons of threads on here with instructions on how to restore an EFS backup. Search (if you want it fixed, that is. If you don't want it fixed, keep posting to this thread in the hope someone spoonfeeds you. Might be waiting a while tho).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried almost every thread here in xda about restoring, tried GSII_repair, kTool to restore it but none of them recovered the IMEI. I did not made a backup of efs but when I installed the Hydra H2O ICS Rom for GS2 it made the backup i guess, because a file called "efs-backup.tar.gz" was in a folder called .hydra inside the sd card.
does the drop of the device has anything to do with the erased IMEI?
robdpi said:
I once had a similar problem.
My imei went lost because of a rom upgrade and I DIDN'T have a backup..
I solved the problem by flashing a stock rom (any samsung stock rom will do) with ODIN.
I am not sure what happened, but it looked like that the nv_data folder was "re-generated" and I got my IMEI back.
Now I have a copy of the folder in every storage media around my house
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have installed stock roms from samsung using Odin, but then I discovered that efs folder get unmounted everytime I install the stock rom, phone just starts after flashing without android setup wizard, also when I long press power button, menu wont appear, device just shut down, after I restore the efs from the backup i have, and mount the efs using the CWM recovery would bring back the power button long press menu. everything else working except for Mobile Networks. and imei/baseband shows unknown
Drop Caused this problem
Hi all,
Thank you for replying on this thread and helped me figured out my problem, I have contacted Odia and he thinks that dropping the phone damaged the baseband chip inside the main board, not a flashing of the roms or efs folder issue. i have only 2 options either replace the whole board paying LKR 35,000 (New s2 costs only LKR 65,000) or use it as a MP3 player :crying:
Dear All,
My Galaxy S3 cannot connect to network after rom update. I have searched a lot but i could not figure out the problem since i have no problem with my imei. I can see correct imei, but no serial number no hardware revision and no signal when sim is inserted. without sim it can detect signals.
To figure out problem i need EFS.tar of some working I9300. If some one can provide me his efs backup in tar, i will be a big help for me.
ha ha ha ha ha! You really think someone is going to give you their efs?!
©®™ slappy
slaphead20 said:
ha ha ha ha ha! You really think someone is going to give you their efs?!
©®™ slappy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
muhammad.ali123 said:
Dear All,
My Galaxy S3 cannot connect to network after rom update. I have searched a lot but i could not figure out the problem since i have no problem with my imei. I can see correct imei, but no serial number no hardware revision and no signal when sim is inserted. without sim it can detect signals.
To figure out problem i need EFS.tar of some working I9300. If some one can provide me his efs backup in tar, i will be a big help for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but without a proper backup, you almost certainly won't be able to recover the efs folder. That's why backing up the efs folder is so critical before you begin any flashing procedure. It contains information unique to your device, without which, you have basically a very expensive media player.
donalgodon said:
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but without a proper backup, you almost certainly won't be able to recover the efs folder. That's why backing up the efs folder is so critical before you begin any flashing procedure. It contains information unique to your device, without which, you have basically a very expensive media player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does this means that even if have another efs folder it will be no use to me?
I have my EFS folder intact and it has all files in it. but there is some problem with any file, that does not allow to register to network.
That's quite unfortunate, backing up my EFS folder was the 1st thing I did after getting my phone to avoid this kind of issues (prior rooting, of course).
By the way, was it an official OTA update or was it manually injected?
Any piece of information you can bring about the issue may help people here to figure out a way to help you.
How sure are you it is the EFS that's the problem? If you can see the folder and it has files in it, why are you looking at EFS being the problem? I'd have thought with a corrupted EFS you wouldn't have a file structure to be looking at, but I may be confused as to what an EFS is/does)
Have you tried using CWM to Factory Reset, wipe data and Dalvik and then run your Rom again?
Have you tried downloading and flashing a stock ROM for your phone?
VulguM said:
That's quite unfortunate, backing up my EFS folder was the 1st thing I did after getting my phone to avoid this kind of issues (prior rooting, of course).
By the way, was it an official OTA update or was it manually injected?
Any piece of information you can bring about the issue may help people here to figure out a way to help you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Infact there was an OTA update but it failed to install from stock recovery mode. After reboot there was a message to use kies or contact service.
So i used. But kies showed that it cannot updte this phone ( because CSC was XXX ) so i used firmware inatialization method to download firmware by entering model and serial number in kies.
After update i was stuck in this situation,
Have you flashed a stock Rom with Odin to try and rectify?
Journyman16 said:
How sure are you it is the EFS that's the problem? If you can see the folder and it has files in it, why are you looking at EFS being the problem? I'd have thought with a corrupted EFS you wouldn't have a file structure to be looking at, but I may be confused as to what an EFS is/does)
Have you tried using CWM to Factory Reset, wipe data and Dalvik and then run your Rom again?
Have you tried downloading and flashing a stock ROM for your phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes i am also confused about this.
Befor touching EFS folder i did factory reset, wiped data, delvik , re installed different official and custom roms. But it did not solve my issue.
I focused my attention to efs because all my symptoms are similar to people who have lost their imei. But my imei is O.K
You have any other suggestions.
slaphead20 said:
Have you flashed a stock Rom with Odin to try and rectify?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I flashed LE8 and LH1 via odin , but it did not help
If your IMEI is intact its not generally an EFS issue.
Asking for someones EFS backup is generally a no no, and it wouldn't work anyway.
My understanding, from reading what Odia posted (who is generally considered the expert on this sort of thing) is that the EFS is in part encrypted with the devices ID, so if you use someone else's EFS on your device, it will fall back to the generic IMEI which would be worse.
Try flashing a full odin firmware and go from there.
veyka said:
If your IMEI is intact its not generally an EFS issue.
Asking for someones EFS backup is generally a no no, and it wouldn't work anyway.
My understanding, from reading what Odia posted (who is generally considered the expert on this sort of thing) is that the EFS is in part encrypted with the devices ID, so if you use someone else's EFS on your device, it will fall back to the generic IMEI which would be worse.
Try flashing a full odin firmware and go from there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried using LE8 and LH1 from samfirmware.
Is there any other full odin firmware?
I'm a little confused here. If I am reading this correctly, the phone works OK except it will not connect to a network and so doesn't work as a phone any more. Is that correct?
If so, maybe you're flashing the wrong thing - you might need to flash Modem firmware not ROM. Now I might be even more confused than I think I am, but it seems to me all the Comms stuff will require the modem side of things to be correct. It's possible I think) to have flashed a ROM that could be incompatible or which corrupted your modem side of things.
Keep in mind I am still learning this stuff, but recently I thought I'd get ready to flash a JB ROM by flashing a kernel that was supposed to be for JB - there were others there with a warning NOT to use with JB so I figured I should get one suitable for JB - long story short I had a non-starting phone and had to work from scratch with PC Odin to get everything working again.
So, I am guessing that the ROM you are flashing also needs a kernel and Modem flash. I'm also hoping if I am wrong someone more experienced will tell me why
My guess is also you'd need to flash kernel, then ROM, then Modem, and make sure they are all to whatever version o Android you are wanting to have.
Am I making sense or am I talking through my proverbial?
have you try to use another micro Sim, it can be micro Sim reader o your Sim.
I got my phone repaired from a third party repair centre,
They used SPT box to repair the efs folder. Now i have signals and it can connect normally.
It cost my $60 for repair.
Thanks to every one for helping me out in the repair.
Hello everyone.
First i'll tell what i did.
I rooted my phone couple days ago and flashed paranoid android but then i thought that i can do something more with it and tried to flash new kernel, but that pu my phone in bootloop. So i tried to flash original firmware but this didn't work and i was still stuck in bootloop. Then i found on some forum that i can do this through kies so i did flash original ROM through kies and everything was ok (i thought so because i didn't think about that my phone had no range), so i tried to flash Paranoid again and when i did it i saw that i have no range (I had also null or 0049 imei). I tried to flash new radio because i thought that this could be somehow broken. That didn't help at all so i found diffrent way to bring back range to my phone but when i did it i put my phone in factory mode so i dealt with that problem, and i had range allready but my phone still had this "only alarm calls" state. But my phone knows what carrier i have because i can choose from the list in setting but that doesn't help too. Now i found a way to do it (sort of i think) but i cannot change my recovery.
And i have no imei till now (and i didn't backup my efs folder :/ ).
That's preety much it, but i could forget about something or the order is diffrent.
I'd like to go back to paranoid android and to have service and imei
I'd appreciate anyone help with that because now i'm in middle of nothing and i'm like i lost my phone... :///
P.S. Sorry about my language skills.
Hundreds of identical posts, search and read on imei. Restore your efs backup to regain your imei.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
You see, it's not that simple because i cannot copy efs folder or delete it. I wrote this because nothing works not because i'm too lazy to do search
boomboomer said:
Hundreds of identical posts, search and read on imei. Restore your efs backup to regain your imei.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello guys! I don't ever get the need to post in a thread or comments, but this time I'm entangled in some pretty confusing stuff, I'd like help with please.
I bought a used GS3 GT-I9300 and tried to install a custom rom on it. One thing lead to another, a problem after every problem and now I'm at a dead end :\
Last time I was able to boot into a ROM, was via restoring through nandroid backup. But the IMEI had become "unknown". I searched it around to find that this was a problem with the EFS folder. Luckily I had a backup of the efs part before hand! But I can't even utilize the backup! -_-
The Problem is, whatever I flash via odin (no matter which stock rom), I end up stuck at the "Samsung Galaxy SIII" screen. I have a backup of the efs, but if I go through philz recovery, it's not able to find my backup. I've tried every guide at there, and been searching about a whole day and now I give and ask for help from you guys with experience. What am I supposed to do, to get to a point where I can use my phone? Really sad after attempting so many things. NEED ASAP HELP PLEASE! :'( Thanks in advance.
hammadfozi said:
Hello guys! I don't ever get the need to post in a thread or comments, but this time I'm entangled in some pretty confusing stuff, I'd like help with please.
I bought a used GS3 GT-I9300 and tried to install a custom rom on it. One thing lead to another, a problem after every problem and now I'm at a dead end :\
Last time I was able to boot into a ROM, was via restoring through nandroid backup. But the IMEI had become "unknown". I searched it around to find that this was a problem with the EFS folder. Luckily I had a backup of the efs part before hand! But I can't even utilize the backup! -_-
The Problem is, whatever I flash via odin (no matter which stock rom), I end up stuck at the "Samsung Galaxy SIII" screen. I have a backup of the efs, but if I go through philz recovery, it's not able to find my backup. I've tried every guide at there, and been searching about a whole day and now I give and ask for help from you guys with experience. What am I supposed to do, to get to a point where I can use my phone? Really sad after attempting so many things. NEED ASAP HELP PLEASE! :'( Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Start with the simple things first... Do you boot into recovery after flashing with odin and factory reset this is the most common thing that people don't do and this solves most bootloop issues.
Sorry if you have tried that but you really need to give a small brief list of eactly what you have tried to do because saying (quote) "attempting so many things" does not help us to narrow down what is wrong otherwise people will be suggesting things you have already tried.
Question makes no sense, if you can't find the backup in philz then you aren't using it correctly or the backup is in another format. You'll need to understand the basics before you go any further.
Search for people who've extracted the efs backup on their pc then copied all the files across, follow their example.
tallman43 said:
Start with the simple things first... Do you boot into recovery after flashing with odin and factory reset this is the most common thing that people don't do and this solves most bootloop issues.
Sorry if you have tried that but you really need to give a small brief list of eactly what you have tried to do because saying (quote) "attempting so many things" does not help us to narrow down what is wrong otherwise people will be suggesting things you have already tried.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks mate. Well I've done that. Separately tried clearing cache alone and rebooting (didn't work). Then also tried factory reset (via TWRP) that didn't work either. Then I tried factory reset + clearing cache which didn't work too. No matter what stock rom I flash via odin, or a custom ROM via recovery, My phone does not proceed ahead from the "Galaxy S III 3G" Logo.
boomboomer said:
Question makes no sense, if you can't find the backup in philz then you aren't using it correctly or the backup is in another format. You'll need to understand the basics before you go any further.
Search for people who've extracted the efs backup on their pc then copied all the files across, follow their example.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you maybe give me the link for that please? I didn't even intend to backup efs, this is something which luckily happened accidentally haha.
In hope for seeing if I made a efs backup, I searched the internal storage + SD card of my phone and narrowed it down to 3 rar files:
1. efs_01Jan2012-0001.tar.gz (52KB)
2. efsbackup.tar (5.05MB)
3. efsbackup.tar.gz (62KB)
Hi!
My S3 didn't get past the boot screen, and after some googling I came to a solution to flash the /efs partition. I did this and it booted up again, but now my IMEI has changed! I have been trying for 3 days to fix it, without any luck. I need it tomorrow for work, but I don't have service while I have another IMEI so I really need to fix it.
Can any of you brightminded geniuses help me please?
Thank you all so much in advance!
-Tobias.
Toobiiaaas said:
Hi!
My S3 didn't get past the boot screen, and after some googling I came to a solution to flash the /efs partition. I did this and it booted up again, but now my IMEI has changed! I have been trying for 3 days to fix it, without any luck. I need it tomorrow for work, but I don't have service while I have another IMEI so I really need to fix it.
Can any of you brightminded geniuses help me please?
Thank you all so much in advance!
-Tobias.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Restore your backup efs (you do have a backup don't you )
No offence but why are you trying to turn your phone into a brick messing with your efs folder should not be attempted unless you know exactly what you are doing.
I don't know where you got the idea that a bootloop is caused by the efs.. 90% of bootloops are caused by simple things like not wiping your phone correctly or incorrect files etc in rare cases it could be efs but that would have been the very last place to look.
First what as your imei changed to is it something like 00499 blah blah if so read this >> http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s3/general/ref-imei-efs-stuff-i9300-including-t2393289 <<
If still not fixed try flashing a patched modem and kernel from here >> https://drive.google.com/folderview...=sharing&tid=0B6MIUd7HJudAbU5YaGkzOUowMG8#lis <<
A little more information would be helpful