[Q] Trouble with Geewiz - Fascinate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Have not flashed anything in quite some time. Odin'd back to stock then odin'd to 4.4. Was going to connect phone to XP pc but wouldnt recognize it. Did the tap 7 times trick turned on debugging. Turned off phone. Upon restart I am stuck on the turn on samsung logo. I have done nothing more than what I have wrote. I can make it go into EDIFY recovery but nothing else. Walked off and left phone for about 15 minutes still on Samsung logo.
Thoughts on fixing this or getting back to stock even so I can try again?

kriscris said:
Have not flashed anything in quite some time. Odin'd back to stock then odin'd to 4.4. Was going to connect phone to XP pc but wouldnt recognize it. Did the tap 7 times trick turned on debugging. Turned off phone. Upon restart I am stuck on the turn on samsung logo. I have done nothing more than what I have wrote. I can make it go into EDIFY recovery but nothing else. Walked off and left phone for about 15 minutes still on Samsung logo.
Thoughts on fixing this or getting back to stock even so I can try again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's possible that it could have been a bum ODIN session, did you remove the SDCARD and the battery while executing the ODIN? For whatever reason, ODIN seems to occasionally screw up if the SDCARD or the battery is present (I have no idea why, and it's not exactly commonplace). Also, I learned from some folks that PMed me that GeeWiz 4.4 is "too big" for some devices, there is almost no room left on the SYSTEM volume on my dev phones with GW 4.4, and that seems to have caused a problem for at least some iterations of the Fascinate. I apologize for this, I thought all Fascinates were created equal
When you ODINed back to stock, did you specify the .PIT file if you were using a custom ROM (all current custom ROMs for the Fascinate that I am aware of *except* GeeWiz modify the device partition table).
> If you still want to give GeeWiz 4 a shot, here's what I recommend since you can still get into Recovery. Power down, download this newer version of GeeWiz 4: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=40050730&postcount=288 and put that file on your SDCARD. Replace the SDCARD, boot into Recovery and install that. Then, do a Factory Reset (Wipe Device Data / Wipe all User Data (Factory Reset)). That version of the ROM is smaller, the reports have been that it's small enough to fit on the devices where v4.4 is problematic.
> If you want to just go back to stock and try a different ROM, there should be no problem with that at all, you can just ODIN back to EH03 like you did before and install the ROM of your choosing, as far as I know all of them are equipped to deal with a stock device. If you need a known-good full EH03 package, I have one posted here for everyone: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=36427778&postcount=3, along with a copy of ODIN for the Fascinate and the mystical PIT file GeeWiz uses the stock partitions, so you shouldn't NEED the .pit file after going full stock, but I wanted people to have easy access to it, since it can be elusive to find.
I apologize for the difficulty, and thank you for trying my little GeeWiz ROM! I have a new (v4.5) version built that is almost identical to that zip-based version I linked above, but have not made the ODIN files for it yet, and probably won't get to that for at least a few days. Based on your description, my guess is that it was a bad ODIN or the partition tables are wonky and perhaps trying again with the SDCARD removed, battery removed, and specifying the .PIT file may clear this up. If the ROM is too big for your version of the Fascinate, I could also link up the previous (v4.3) iteration of the ROM for you, but I forget what bugs/challenges there were in that version. (It was like SO last month - lol)
Good luck, and please let us know how it goes for you.

Thanks
I just want to start off by saying thanks. I havent flashed anything in a while and maybe a forgot a few things. Its also nice to see a Dev putting so much into a project. BRAVO. I always prided myself on reading and looking for an answer before just asking.
Knowing a couple things I odin'd back to stock and then odin'd your ROM again and now it works beautifully. This is all I have done. Taken no other steps. If there is another step I didnt know it or do it. However 3 days and I couldnt be happier. Battery is going a little faster but thats never been a real issue for me.
My only problem now is I placed the edify update in the root of the sd card but when I reboot into recovery its not there. I took it off redownloaded it and put it on again same issue. Did I miss a step?
Thanks again for all the work. Breathed a bit of new life into a phone I was thinking about replacing.
djp952 said:
It's possible that it could have been a bum ODIN session, did you remove the SDCARD and the battery while executing the ODIN? For whatever reason, ODIN seems to occasionally screw up if the SDCARD or the battery is present (I have no idea why, and it's not exactly commonplace). Also, I learned from some folks that PMed me that GeeWiz 4.4 is "too big" for some devices, there is almost no room left on the SYSTEM volume on my dev phones with GW 4.4, and that seems to have caused a problem for at least some iterations of the Fascinate. I apologize for this, I thought all Fascinates were created equal
When you ODINed back to stock, did you specify the .PIT file if you were using a custom ROM (all current custom ROMs for the Fascinate that I am aware of *except* GeeWiz modify the device partition table).
> If you still want to give GeeWiz 4 a shot, here's what I recommend since you can still get into Recovery. Power down, download this newer version of GeeWiz 4: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=40050730&postcount=288 and put that file on your SDCARD. Replace the SDCARD, boot into Recovery and install that. Then, do a Factory Reset (Wipe Device Data / Wipe all User Data (Factory Reset)). That version of the ROM is smaller, the reports have been that it's small enough to fit on the devices where v4.4 is problematic.
> If you want to just go back to stock and try a different ROM, there should be no problem with that at all, you can just ODIN back to EH03 like you did before and install the ROM of your choosing, as far as I know all of them are equipped to deal with a stock device. If you need a known-good full EH03 package, I have one posted here for everyone: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=36427778&postcount=3, along with a copy of ODIN for the Fascinate and the mystical PIT file GeeWiz uses the stock partitions, so you shouldn't NEED the .pit file after going full stock, but I wanted people to have easy access to it, since it can be elusive to find.
I apologize for the difficulty, and thank you for trying my little GeeWiz ROM! I have a new (v4.5) version built that is almost identical to that zip-based version I linked above, but have not made the ODIN files for it yet, and probably won't get to that for at least a few days. Based on your description, my guess is that it was a bad ODIN or the partition tables are wonky and perhaps trying again with the SDCARD removed, battery removed, and specifying the .PIT file may clear this up. If the ROM is too big for your version of the Fascinate, I could also link up the previous (v4.3) iteration of the ROM for you, but I forget what bugs/challenges there were in that version. (It was like SO last month - lol)
Good luck, and please let us know how it goes for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

kriscris said:
I just want to start off by saying thanks. I havent flashed anything in a while and maybe a forgot a few things. Its also nice to see a Dev putting so much into a project. BRAVO. I always prided myself on reading and looking for an answer before just asking.
Knowing a couple things I odin'd back to stock and then odin'd your ROM again and now it works beautifully. This is all I have done. Taken no other steps. If there is another step I didnt know it or do it. However 3 days and I couldnt be happier. Battery is going a little faster but thats never been a real issue for me.
My only problem now is I placed the edify update in the root of the sd card but when I reboot into recovery its not there. I took it off redownloaded it and put it on again same issue. Did I miss a step?
Thanks again for all the work. Breathed a bit of new life into a phone I was thinking about replacing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem, I'm happy that it's useful for you, and I truly appreciate the kind words!
My recovery has a limitation that could be at fault here, it doesn't allow you to scroll beyond one screen of files. If the .zip is alphabetically beyond what the list will show, there is no way to select it :crying: If that's the case, you can rename it so it's aplhabetically higher up (or you can wait for me to actually do something about that limitation, but it's been that way forever .. I may have some extended off time from work coming up, perhaps I should make good on that fix ... it's been a problem for over a year I think!
The other possibility I can think of is that the file isn't really "there". How are you copying the file to the SDCARD? I've found that if the SDCARD isn't unmounted properly files are frequently truncated/lost. For example, if you are plugging the phone into a Windows PC, you should be certain to 'safely remove' it before unplugging it or turning off USB access from the phone (also applies to Linux). If you are physically removing the card and using a PC to copy the file, same thing, it should be 'safely removed' or unmounted before disconnecting it and plugging it back into the phone. If you are indeed physically removing the card, also be sure if the phone is ON when you do it to go into Settings/Storage and choose "Unmount SD card" before you pull it out. If the phone is off you can just eject it.
I hope one of these suggestions solves the problem. Please post back if not!!

Fixed
djp952 said:
No problem, I'm happy that it's useful for you, and I truly appreciate the kind words!
My recovery has a limitation that could be at fault here, it doesn't allow you to scroll beyond one screen of files. If the .zip is alphabetically beyond what the list will show, there is no way to select it :crying: If that's the case, you can rename it so it's aplhabetically higher up (or you can wait for me to actually do something about that limitation, but it's been that way forever .. I may have some extended off time from work coming up, perhaps I should make good on that fix ... it's been a problem for over a year I think!
The other possibility I can think of is that the file isn't really "there". How are you copying the file to the SDCARD? I've found that if the SDCARD isn't unmounted properly files are frequently truncated/lost. For example, if you are plugging the phone into a Windows PC, you should be certain to 'safely remove' it before unplugging it or turning off USB access from the phone (also applies to Linux). If you are physically removing the card and using a PC to copy the file, same thing, it should be 'safely removed' or unmounted before disconnecting it and plugging it back into the phone. If you are indeed physically removing the card, also be sure if the phone is ON when you do it to go into Settings/Storage and choose "Unmount SD card" before you pull it out. If the phone is off you can just eject it.
I hope one of these suggestions solves the problem. Please post back if not!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was the alphabetically ordered problem. Took about 5 minutes to fix. Thank you again.

Related

After rushing in, ODIN is not helping me to recover =(

Hi I'm a new member,
I rooted my fascinate easily enough. Then searching and learning about ROMs and Kernels I decided to do use ODIN CWM Recovery to 'backup' or whatever most forums tell you to before installing a new ROM. Point is my phone is stuck in manual boot mode and I cannot undo it.
I have tried multiple times using ODIN plus the four stock files
Stock-i500-VZW-Kernel.tar.md5
Stock-i500-VZW-pit.pit
Stock-i500-VZW-Recovery.tar.md5
Stock-i500-VZW-System.tar.md5
(I always would try to implement them in order pit/system, pit/kernel, pit/recovery)
Unfortunately after the first one (pit/system) ODIN says the process fails, I go ahead with the other two and they both amount to nothing happening. My phone does not reset or do anything for this matter and I am forced to shut down ODIN and unplug my phone (upon which it dies with no battery).
Then I put back in the battery and Im back to before in manual boot mode with
Reboot system Now
Apply sdcard:update.zip
wipe data/factory rset
wipe cache partition
Btw wiped data and wiped cache and it didn't help me =(.
Please someone help me, I really don't want this new phone to be dead... Thanks in advance
Oh and when I press "apply sdcard:update.zip" I receive
E:Can't mount \dev\block\vold\179:9
(No such file or directory)
E:Can't mount SDCARD:update.zip
Installation aborted.
I really don't care at all about keeping the phone rooted or not or whatever. I just want to be able to make calls again!
So it looks like you're stuck in blue recovery ... sounds like something that Odining a stock package should fix.
Here is a nice thread for getting back to stock (it's a sticky in the general section). The packages include system, recovery, kernel, and radio in a single file (I've actually never odin'd four separate files to get back to stock, or even ever flashed a system-only file), though no pit file.
So open up odin with your phone in download mode (with the battery out, otherwise there's a small chance of odin stalling at the end), and use:
- either the DI01 all-in-one, EB01 all-in-one, or this DL09 package in PDA
- the pit file in PIT (the link says DI01/EB01 but it also works with DL09)
- check "re-partition" if it isn't already checked
- run odin and hopefully in five minutes your phone will work again If for some reason it doesn't, that thread has instructions for using heimdall, although I've never had to resort to it.
So try this and see if it works! (For which package to use, I'd suggest trying DL09 first (since you'll need it to get to the official froyo build) and DI01 if that fails. If you're wondering whether DL09+pit actually works, I've used it to get out of a "stuck in blue recovery after odining stuff" situation myself so yes, it works.)
Thank you for the response! It's encouraging to hear any support and I think yours is promising.
So unfortunately I tried D101 and no go. Turns out this was before I realized this was for 2.1 and I'd prefer 2.2 for the upgrades. Although would you suggest 2.1 for the purpose of rooting/ROMing/Kerneling in the future? I ask because I'm slowly gaining confidence that after fixing this I might be willing to try this again...
Odin (1.7 -> I decided at your poster friend's advice to upgrade from 1.3) worked well said 'pass' and everything. Unfortunately when booting my phone it went straight to the boot screen as always.
Meanwhile I'm downloading the EB01 and your suggested DL09 to test those two.
Hopefully one of those will work but if not, I guess I'll try that heimdall technique the poster suggested in the other forum. Hopefully not tho b/c it looks a bit more complicated.
I'll let ya know if one of these others works.
Yes it worked!! Thank you so much! I would buy you a round at the ale house if I could!
After running EB01 it worked (with the pit file going all the way back to factory settings). So I'm not sure what this means - maybe since it was after upgrading to 2.2 that my phone bugged out, it could only be restored to the 2.2 state which is EB01?? Idk, thanks anways.
Oh ya for the future if I try do this again - would you suggest I stay away from ROM Manager for backing up, which I believe is what started this problem in the first place? It seemed like ODIN did a fine job of managing my OS. Any thoughts? Thankss!!
mattjac1 said:
Yes it worked!! Thank you so much! I would buy you a round at the ale house if I could!
After running EB01 it worked (with the pit file going all the way back to factory settings). So I'm not sure what this means - maybe since it was after upgrading to 2.2 that my phone bugged out, it could only be restored to the 2.2 state which is EB01?? Idk, thanks anways.
Oh ya for the future if I try do this again - would you suggest I stay away from ROM Manager for backing up, which I believe is what started this problem in the first place? It seemed like ODIN did a fine job of managing my OS. Any thoughts? Thankss!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definately stay away from rom manager cwm if you have the voodoo lagfix enabled, but since all the new fascinate roms are edify scripted, flashing through cwm in rom manager would be ok.
Sent from my Froyo'd Evil Fascinate full of PB&J

[Q] Need a bit of help

Problem: Whenever I boot my phone after the galaxy S logo dissapears the screen stays black, while the backlight on the touch sensitive buttons still come on.
So here is my background on what I have done with the phone
- It is on 2.1 Eclair
- Everything was fine. I had it rooted and running Bionix.
- When the problem started was when I was trying to install a matrix boot image, and a theme for Bionix.
- First symptons would it wouldnt get past the Vibrant (text) startup screen.
- In response I Restored to the Clockwork mod Restore which would have brang my phone back to normal.
- It did bring my phone back to normal except for one thing, there was a bug that said my cards were full and couldnt install any apps.
- So I went back into clockwork mod recovery and figured out quickly it didnt recognize my sd ext. But when my phone was on it did.
I understand that this problem is very out of now where and probably isnt very solveable with just a one click program. But I would be very thankful if anyone could give me any kind of information on this. Even if it is just saying "Its a problem with your Kernel". AlthoughI hope to see downloads and full instructions.
Thank for reading this.
CWM recovery is not supposed to be able to see your external sd, you are only supposed to be able to flash files from the internal sd.
Thanks given.
Do you know of any method I can do to fix this
You could Odin back to stock 2.1, but first turn off lag fix if there is one via voodoo app.
You want to ODIN using stock firmware and the 512 pit file. This will repartition your internal SD. You will (should) not lose personal data such as pictures, music, files.... You ended up trying to flash a theme or bootanimation that was not compatiable and when you restored traces of it have been left behind.
ODIN is the best method in these situations. Note that in rare cases it may be neccessary to do a full SD reformat.
The first thing you want to do is back everything up to your computer. All those pictures, music anything you want saved and then and only then try the odin with 512 pit.
If you need the files for odin you can check my sig for the odin exe pit file and tar file, if instead you need instructions on how to use odin i'd check here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=13132341#post13132341
shreddintyres said:
If you need the files for odin you can check my sig for the odin exe pit file and tar file, if instead you need instructions on how to use odin i'd check here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=13132341#post13132341
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for referring, I've also included the files in the guide just in case.
I certainly hope you aren't in a partitioning brick situation. I've seen this now twice and both were running Bionix 1.3.1 w/ Voodoo enabled and both somehow got certain bml partitions in an recognizable format by CWM and the Android OS. So far it hasn't been fixable with conventional flashing and PIT repartitioning. I will be trying a full JTAG re-write on one of the customer's phones tonight. I'll report back to this thread whether a JTAG session in which I fully re-write all addresses in the NAND block was able to fix this.
This marks the 3rd instance of what I'm referring to as partitioning bricking that was involved on a Vibrant that was running Bionix 1.3.1 at the time of the brick. I'm not blaming the ROM or the developer as I have used it with no issues and it's a great piece of work but perhaps the CWM packaged with it is allowing users to do things they don't intend to do causing this issue.
Thank you everyone very much for all the information and I was able to restore my phone back to stock 2.1 Eclair and then I flashed the rom bionix onto it.
I have given thanks to everyone that has posted from here on up ^^
Also if anyone is stuck in this situation also and Is reading this thing saying "what the heck I have no idea what to do". Just message me and I could full througho instructions.
Once again thank everyone and I have solved my problem. I am pretty sure it was the boot logo that made it happen.

[Q] Am I bricked?

I recently installed the nightly build of ICS on my samsung vibrant. Today the phone had a error that said encryption cannot be completed phone must be erased. I let it do a factory reset . Then I got stuck in a endless boot cycle showing the vibrant logo and then the cynogen guy for a few seconds then reboot. I could still access the recovery menu but it refused to flash any roms I threw at it. I downloaded and ran odin 1 click recovery and it changed my tmobile phone to a att phone. And it lost the recovery mode. It just shows att screen first then samsung vibrant second and just reboots. I can still get into download mode and flash roms using odin 3 but no matter what rom I select or if I choose repartion or not the flash will go through successfully but then the phone reboots into same problem as before. I suspect the recovery files are gone since no button combination anymore gets me into recovery. Is there anything else I can do?
Man I am having the exact same problem. I really hope someone can figure something out soon. Did yours randomly get that error? Or did you actually try to encrypt your phone?
Sounds like you used the wrong Odin 1 Click. If it installed Captivate bootloaders, that would cause a problem.
This is your best shot I think
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=24418319
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2
It just happened
It happened on its own. Was working fine all day walked in my house as as soon as it hit wifi it started going crazy. I had the data plan turned off months ago. Maybe theres something to it connecting up to the net. I have found out if you install your sim you get a reduced menu of recovery options but without sim it just constantly reboots. it only gives option of reboot, reinstall packages,delete all user data, delete cache data. If you try reinstalling the packages theres nothing there. Deleting caches made no differance. ADB does work and responds while in this lesser form of recovery is there a easy way to use adb to force a full system flash?
Thanks
That link was perfect had a link to eugenes no brick froyo rom which fixed my problem. Dloaded that used its pit and tar files and repartioned and im back to stock. Going back to team whiskeys mod. If all ICS roms has bugs like that is unusable.
bfranklin1986 said:
This is your best shot I think
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=24418319
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have access to BOTH your internal and external SD cards? The Encryption Bug is totally and completely random and does not discriminate. There is currently no known reason or solution. Several of us across a few different devices have been working on this for months.
Consider yourself luck if you have access to both SDs as you are the 2nd person to get in and out today. Many, many others have not been as fortunate.
If you could please pull up this thread and put as much information in there as possible, it would be greatly appreciated. Are you unlocked, what happened right before, what bootloaders are you on, what ROM were you trying to flash, what ROM did you end up getting booted,....those types of things. As much detail as you can muster together, after you catch your breath and relax a minute.
Guys DO NOT run ICS unless you have read up on the Encryption Unsuccessful bug and except the possible consequences! Every ICS T959 rom should have a warning IMO.
There is no known fix > just a work around. Odin / Heimdall / Jtag = useless
Update
I think I might have pulled the trigger to quick. While the link above did give me Eugenes rom which at least got me out of the boot cycle both internal and external sd shows 0 and I am unable to load anything on either card. I have tried differant microsd cards all of them show the same thing. So eugenes rom got me working kind of but cant store anything at all. That sucks loved my vibrant and its almost out of contract and planned on using on prepay.
Agreed 100 %
Had I of known would of stuck around on my team whiskey rom which never gave me any problems. Does this ICS bug affect amazon kindles? Ive put cynogen9 on 2 of them and am wondering if I shouldnt take it off before they turn into paper weights.
Moped_Ryder said:
Guys DO NOT run ICS unless you have read up on the Encryption Unsuccessful bug and except the possible consequences! Every ICS T959 rom should have a warning IMO.
There is no known fix > just a work around. Odin / Heimdall / Jtag = useless
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
chickenmon said:
Had I of known would of stuck around on my team whiskey rom which never gave me any problems. Does this ICS bug affect amazon kindles? Ive put cynogen9 on 2 of them and am wondering if I shouldnt take it off before they turn into paper weights.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got tagged on a Nook Color with it. BUT, since the Nook Color has a feature that no others I think do (you can boot a ROM straight from an SD card and not mess with the oringinal OS at all), I was able to just pull my Microsd out and reformat it and then put CM7 on it for my wife.
So far from what I have seen and been working on:
Vibrant, Captivate, My wife's Nook Color, A few Transformers, SGSII,...
Anything I can do?
Anything I can do to get my partions right again? I can flash the twm 5.2.2 but none of the roms i throw at it including ics passion stays in a boot cycle. Only rom that works is eugenes froyo that does not brick and it doesnt allow internal or external mem to be seen.
chickenmon said:
... Only rom that works is eugenes froyo that does not brick and it doesnt allow internal or external mem to be seen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may want to bring up this issue directly in Merio90's thread. I believe Alex9090 went thru possibly similar issues and may be able to help you in that thread (unless she happens to pop in here).
I'm assuming you were trying to mount sdcard and emmc within recovery first (storage and mounts)? If you do have access to recovery again and can mount the external sdcard, maybe try repartitioning the card within recovery (using the parameters in Merio90's instructions)? Then transfer your rom zip and re-flash.
People have actually flashed Eugene's Froyo post-EU ... but without an ext sdcard. Quite an oddity. It's the only one (AFAIK) that'll fully boot up (even after losing int sdcard access due to EU) yet without an external sdcard in place.
Your assumptions are correct. I cannot mount emmc. I cannot flash any rom via 2.5 or 5.2 recovery only through odin and only eugenes rom still allows phone to boot but no mounting of internal or external sds. Ive spent about 3 days on this. There must be some hardcore adb commands to force a true factory reset partioning and all. Very annoying. Thanks for the help if I find any ways to fix it I will repost it here.
Might be bricked?
Ok, i will admit up front that I probably did something stupid and now am sending out a cry for help. Until yesterday I had ICS 4.0.3 successfully installed. I believe it was Euphoria flavor. But, I constantly had shortage of memory problems with the new force close language on apps running in bg - was laggy. Here is where it all went wrong - Decided to dl and install CM9 nightly to fix my laggy install. Recovery went fine, but rom failed, rebooted and sent error to cm. Tried new tactic - dl and installed Slim ICS - wrong, got stuck in boot loop - but could still get into download mode. Ran Odin to restore to stock. Ran fine but Failed - no explanation, just failed. Since it would not respond, finally turned it off - OFF has now become permanent! Power button does nothing. Charging does not light up screen. No download or recovery mode! Really fearful that this IS bad. Help, help, help!!
Open to suggestion. . .
JIM in FLA
Not related at all to my original problem.
tenantrep said:
Ok, i will admit up front that I probably did something stupid and now am sending out a cry for help. Until yesterday I had ICS 4.0.3 successfully installed. I believe it was Euphoria flavor. But, I constantly had shortage of memory problems with the new force close language on apps running in bg - was laggy. Here is where it all went wrong - Decided to dl and install CM9 nightly to fix my laggy install. Recovery went fine, but rom failed, rebooted and sent error to cm. Tried new tactic - dl and installed Slim ICS - wrong, got stuck in boot loop - but could still get into download mode. Ran Odin to restore to stock. Ran fine but Failed - no explanation, just failed. Since it would not respond, finally turned it off - OFF has now become permanent! Power button does nothing. Charging does not light up screen. No download or recovery mode! Really fearful that this IS bad. Help, help, help!!
Open to suggestion. . .
JIM in FLA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, not to sound like a ****; but it's rude to hijack someone elses thread. You should've created your own thread for this.
Second; you might have fried your bootloader which in turn, yeah, that's bad and you might have bricked your phone.
Did you try to boot into recovery via the battery pull method. If not, try that and see how it works. I would link you to the instructions but I'm too lazy and tired right now to search for it and again, this is someone else's thread. Just do a search for it and you should find it.
If you need more help or guidance, create your own thread and start there.
Noticed your running Ice Cream Zenwich rc1.3. How do you like it. Ive installed slim 3 times today and twice I have gotten the encryption error within a hour. Needless to say not impressed major pain in the ass to have to do a million and half tricks with awm, adb, popping sd cards in and out etc.
Update
Also the current build of ics slim does not allow the imei information to be retrieved from sim for tmobile requiring a reflash of the modem. You have to download and install a new modem. I used csm5. The guide on the link in this post dow work but its a real pain and requires lots of trial and error. Wondering if google intentionally bricking these things knowing we all got gadget lust for the sIII now.
chickenmon said:
Noticed your running Ice Cream Zenwich rc1.3. How do you like it ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ICZen_rc1.8.3 (AOKP #39, ICS 4.0.4) + subZero #144 (New Test Kernel just released in mr_pyscho's RootzWiki kernel thread) is Linaro infused ... and I've got to say the combo is THE fastest rom experience I've ever had on my Vibe. Whatever MP did in his new test kernel just blows the doors off the previous performance limits.
Btw .. you keep encountering EU again. Really odd unless possibly your external card wasn't partitioned correctly. Not a knock directly on you, but it is a common occurrence lately. FYI, I repartitioned mine directly from recovery.
Also ... Br1cK'd (ICZen) and mr_psycho (subZero) are aware of the EU situation and try to include safeguards in their builds. However, until we know the exact root cause of EU, we're all just shooting in the dark. Imo, it's at least comforting to use a rom & kernel where the dev's are at least mindful of EU.

[Q] Encryption prevents custom ROMs being used

OK so let me start off with, great site. I have read a ton of information.
First: Siyah 4.3.3 (Latest) Kernel which now has been put to AJK v1.48s
ROM; SHOstock3 v2.5.9
PreMod Settings: SGS2 AT&T SGH-i777. Started with GB > AT&T OTA (KIES) 4.0.3 > AT&T OTA WIFI 4.0.4 (caused huge freaking headaches with battery, charging, turn off the phone loop, battery draining, etc.)
Issues:
Original Issue posted in this thread (viewing Single Post) http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=39350619&postcount=18
Creepy offered something to try. That never worked as all I was able to do was download mode or stare at the Samsung Galaxy S2 Splash Screen. Well, I took to his download repository and other links and used his One-Click Recovery to stock GB Rom to make part of my phone usable, using this link here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=18859438&postcount=199
While it is Gingerbread at least my phone is usable. I want to try his STOCK ICS method but that mentions the eMMC super-brick bug.
So this is what I have tried so far. I have tried installing Siyah 4.3.3 nomswap for my kernel using Mobil-Odin Lite. That works but it never reboots or actually says finished. What it does do is stay at the wicked purple splash with the yin yang symbol. I left it like that last night until I woke up this morning and it never changed. So I rebooted the phone and the Kernel is on there. I reboot into recovery so that I can install SHOstock3 v2.5.9. That goes off flawlessly except here the last few times it won't reboot when I go to the GO BACK. It sticks and doesn't do anything. Rebooting shows the SHOstock3 Engine Boot Animation. Once it stops it goes to ask me for the encryption password. Well I put in my password (was the same one to the unlock screen) and it reboots and you see the nifty Samsung animation logo and then goes to the Samsung Galaxy S2 Animation Logo and then just stays there. It really pisses me off.
So after all that I finally put a new Kernel on there,AJK 1,48s. Pretty cool it loads up and then reboots. Well AJK shows up after the light-blue bar fills up and then goes black and the 4 touch sensitive row keys are lit up for a bit before going dark but the phone is still on. So I rebooted to recovery (CWM now with the Kernel) fixed tweaks, went to advanced and saw all sorts of options. Tried clearing caches for ROM 2 and restarting,no effect. I removed ROM 2 and went through reboot and nothing. Restored ROM 2 and nothing. Re installed SHOstock3 v2.5.9. Did the same thing after install and not backing out when I hit GO BACK. Rebooted, same scenario that happened before with requiring password. Entering password does the same thing with a reboot and then staying on Samsung Splash Screen. If I Don't enter the password and reboot,same thing happens. So after being irritated and pissed off I ran Creepy's One-Click Fix again and paid attention to the phone and noticed it mentioned not being able to access the AT&T section or partition or something like that. So while part of my phone works under normal circumstances I want to figure out how to remove that encryption part of the phone and get full access (even though full memory and space are shown under Windows 7 and the files on the phone). The password I put on there isn't taking and I don't know if using PC methods for removing encryption (which could take awhile I know) needs to be employed (and if so which methods) or if that part is just screwed and I can't put on any other kernels or custom ROMs. Perhaps tell me where I messed up. Should I try swapping the ROMs from Advanced setting in CWM Recovery? Can I try a different ROM (kernel didn't seem to help)? I have done several factory resets dalvik cache wipes cache wipes formats,etc. and it is still there. I can say that before the whole encryption debacle (even though I was encrypted I did get in my phone after encrypting it) my pin unlock for my SIM wouldn't work and I actually SIM locked my phone. Had to go to AT&T and get a new SIM and was up and running. I put a 4 digit pin lock for the SIM (it let me do it) and when I went to unlock it after a reboot, it wanted an 8 pin for the PUK and wouldn't take what I put. I tried to change the PIN but to no avail. Once that happened I guess it snowballed. Any help is appreciated. I have searched and tried some things that looked to match my issue but none have totally helped. I do have ADB set up on my wife's laptop which I use to restore my phone to GB Stock ROM. I haven't been able to reboot the phone into Bootloader to do any fastboot commands as when I tried to do it the commands just sent the phone into normal reboot (though adb reboot recovery does boot to recovery). I Haven't tried booting to the bootloader using the new Kernel though so I will wait for confirmation or additional information before I try. Thanks guys.
Eagle
Couple of comments. Siyah 4.3.3 (and ajk) kernels are for 4.x ICS and JB so that explains why your stock Gingerbread system would not flash after you installed it. If you flash back to stock Gingerbread again, and then flash a custom kernel, use a kernel that is compatible with Gingerbread if you want to boot the system.
After doing a little research, it seems that a wipe data/factory reset will not clear the encryption, but a format data will. This information is not from a Samsung forum; it's from the Droid DNA forum. I'm thinking that the same thing may apply to the I777. See the thread here.
It might be worth a try anyway. Flash stock plus root Gingerbread, install mobile odin or mobile odin lite, and use it to flash Siyah 2.6.14. Boot into recovery and go to the Mounts and Storage section. There you can format data, (and all the other partitions, separately.)
creepyncrawly said:
Couple of comments. Siyah 4.3.3 (and ajk) kernels are for 4.x ICS and JB so that explains why your stock Gingerbread system would not flash after you installed it. If you flash back to stock Gingerbread again, and then flash a custom kernel, use a kernel that is compatible with Gingerbread if you want to boot the system.
After doing a little research, it seems that a wipe data/factory reset will not clear the encryption, but a format data will. This information is not from a Samsung forum; it's from the Droid DNA forum. I'm thinking that the same thing may apply to the I777. See the thread here.
It might be worth a try anyway. Flash stock plus root Gingerbread, install mobile odin or mobile odin lite, and use it to flash Siyah 2.6.14. Boot into recovery and go to the Mounts and Storage section. There you can format data, (and all the other partitions, separately.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much creepy. I will give that a try later and see how it goes. I hope the information I gave actually gives enough info. I know folks usually want enough. Ill post back my findings.
Eagle
quick follow up and what I tried
creepyncrawly said:
Couple of comments. Siyah 4.3.3 (and ajk) kernels are for 4.x ICS and JB so that explains why your stock Gingerbread system would not flash after you installed it. If you flash back to stock Gingerbread again, and then flash a custom kernel, use a kernel that is compatible with Gingerbread if you want to boot the system.
After doing a little research, it seems that a wipe data/factory reset will not clear the encryption, but a format data will. This information is not from a Samsung forum; it's from the Droid DNA forum. I'm thinking that the same thing may apply to the I777. See the thread here.
It might be worth a try anyway. Flash stock plus root Gingerbread, install mobile odin or mobile odin lite, and use it to flash Siyah 2.6.14. Boot into recovery and go to the Mounts and Storage section. There you can format data, (and all the other partitions, separately.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey Creepy, I have a quick follow up and want to tell you what I have tried.
So I had already used Kies to move to AT&T v 4.0.4 ICS on my phone when I read your post. Rather than flashback again to GB I went ahead and put Siyah 4.3.3 on my phone. Went great, rebooted and installed quick and everything. Well I rebooted into recovery and went to mounts and storage and formatted the data and all that there and even formatted the secondrom data and all that. Did it a couple times to make sure everything was clean and good to go. Even put AJKs kernel on there after I ran the cleanrom script and it went flawlessly. I did factory resets and wipes and all that and installed SHOstock3 v2.5.9 and started up great. Well it got past the animation and the damn Password for encryption popped up. Well I put the wrong password in and it rebooted without the SAMSUNG screen and went through the boot ani and back to the password for encryption screen. I put the right password in, it reboots and you see the Samsung logo flash quickly and then it sticks on the Samsung Galaxy S2 Splash screen. I don't know what is holding it up from going forward unless when I messed up the first go around and it deleted everything if it didn't take out the bootload command or what have you. So I don't know if this idea will work but I am going to flashback to GB and put the siyah version on there that you linked and see if that will work.
One tihng, when Iencrypted the device the first go round, I onlydid the used data and area not the whole thing. Is this affecting it somehow? Any other ideas to try? I figured a full data format would remove the encryption but it never pops up saying all encryption will be removed. What I need is access to that area of the phone if I could just mount it on the computer. Is it possible after formatting the data, or before, that I should mount internal USB, DATA, etc and try another format/wipe or at least mount them to see if they can be used? Thanks for the help. For anyone else viewing this post (which actually is a lot) any help or ideas are appreciated. I am thinking I may need to format everything and get ahold of Samsung to see if they will reset my phone for me. I just wonder if the PIN lock on my SIM card that got locked when it wouldn't take my PIN didn't mess something up as well.
Eagle
WarEagleUS said:
Hey Creepy, I have a quick follow up and want to tell you what I have tried.
So I had already used Kies to move to AT&T v 4.0.4 ICS on my phone when I read your post. Rather than flashback again to GB I went ahead and put Siyah 4.3.3 on my phone. Went great, rebooted and installed quick and everything. Well I rebooted into recovery and went to mounts and storage and formatted the data and all that there and even formatted the secondrom data and all that. Did it a couple times to make sure everything was clean and good to go. Even put AJKs kernel on there after I ran the cleanrom script and it went flawlessly. I did factory resets and wipes and all that and installed SHOstock3 v2.5.9 and started up great. Well it got past the animation and the damn Password for encryption popped up. Well I put the wrong password in and it rebooted without the SAMSUNG screen and went through the boot ani and back to the password for encryption screen. I put the right password in, it reboots and you see the Samsung logo flash quickly and then it sticks on the Samsung Galaxy S2 Splash screen. I don't know what is holding it up from going forward unless when I messed up the first go around and it deleted everything if it didn't take out the bootload command or what have you. So I don't know if this idea will work but I am going to flashback to GB and put the siyah version on there that you linked and see if that will work.
One tihng, when Iencrypted the device the first go round, I onlydid the used data and area not the whole thing. Is this affecting it somehow? Any other ideas to try? I figured a full data format would remove the encryption but it never pops up saying all encryption will be removed. What I need is access to that area of the phone if I could just mount it on the computer. Is it possible after formatting the data, or before, that I should mount internal USB, DATA, etc and try another format/wipe or at least mount them to see if they can be used? Thanks for the help. For anyone else viewing this post (which actually is a lot) any help or ideas are appreciated. I am thinking I may need to format everything and get ahold of Samsung to see if they will reset my phone for me. I just wonder if the PIN lock on my SIM card that got locked when it wouldn't take my PIN didn't mess something up as well.
Eagle
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Should I try TWRP instead of CWM and if so where should I grab it from?
Status Update
So this is what I have tried so far as of this moment.
I reflashed using your Stock + Root Gingerbread ROM.
Wiped DATA and everything in recovery menu several times.
Used Kernel Wipe and ROM Nuke for extra cleaning power.
Reinstalled the Kernel AJK and SHOstock3 ROM
Haven't installed any themes though I had Johns Blue and Villians Poison Base Theme (I believe that is what it is) on there when this all went down. Should I put them back on there?
Password still pops up. So what it looks like is that unless I stick with the unencrypted portion of the phone, I am screwed with any custom ROMs as the correct password has the phone restart and then stick at the Samsung Galaxy S2 Splash Screen. Apparently I still cannot access that area of the phones memory to wipe it at all no matter what I do. I need to access it somehow. Really driving me crazy and thinking I may need to talk with AT&T(as Samsung told me to earlier this morning lol) and see what they can do.
One thing I do notice is when I use your stock root program it actually removes the encryption or decrypts the section of the phone for the stock ROM to go on the phone which is cool.
Eagle
Any other things to try from anyone is greatly appreciated.
Been away all day. Sorry, I can't offer any other suggestions, but I have no experience with encryption. As you said, what you need to know is where the encryption is stored in memory so you can wipe or format that and restore it to original. If you can get to the right person, probably not level 1 tech support, then maybe you can find out. Somebody somewhere knows the answer to this.
would restoring my original EFS before this whole process help or is the encryption section totally blocked off?
WarEagleUS said:
would restoring my original EFS before this whole process help or is the encryption section totally blocked off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no idea whether the encryption is stored there. What kind of efs backup did you take?
creepyncrawly said:
Been away all day. Sorry, I can't offer any other suggestions, but I have no experience with encryption. As you said, what you need to know is where the encryption is stored in memory so you can wipe or format that and restore it to original. If you can get to the right person, probably not level 1 tech support, then maybe you can find out. Somebody somewhere knows the answer to this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thx bro. yeah I need to run some forensic tools and see if I can mount the whole phone system on my PC and run the tools.
creepyncrawly said:
I have no idea whether the encryption is stored there. What kind of efs backup did you take?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
a full efs backup. I made two or three actuakky using advanced efs, nitrality, and recovery.
WarEagleUS said:
a full efs backup. I made two or three actuakky using advanced efs, nitrality, and recovery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A little research indicates that there is quite a bit of stuff stored in efs besides carrier specific data. So maybe encryption could be in there. Of those tools, nitrality for sure and maybe advanced efs should be able to restore the entire efs partition. If you are comfortable with the risk - a damaged efs would render the phone useless - then you might try this to see if it clears up the encryption issue. BTW, you should learn how to back up the efs partition yourself using terminal and linux commands.
creepyncrawly said:
A little research indicates that there is quite a bit of stuff stored in efs besides carrier specific data. So maybe encryption could be in there. Of those tools, nitrality for sure and maybe advanced efs should be able to restore the entire efs partition. If you are comfortable with the risk - a damaged efs would render the phone useless - then you might try this to see if it clears up the encryption issue. BTW, you should learn how to back up the efs partition yourself using terminal and linux commands.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I should have used ADB to do that from the get go. I should have used the wife's laptop like I started to instead of my WIN 8 machine has it seems to be finicky with Android SDK (the portion at least needed to run ADB). Linux commands really aren't much different than terminal and I have done both. I was actually trying to get fastboot commands to work but my bootloader wasn't cooperating and for the life of me I couldn't find how to unlock it. I may try restoring that EFS. If nothing else I would love to be able to format that EFS and replace it with my original copy though as you said a damaged EFS may actually cause issues (who knows if it is damaged). I do know that I am fixing to chat with AT&T support. I hope I don't have to drive down to Hoover, AL to the repair facility. I would rather them send me a phone and send this one back. I am on stock 4.0.4 ICS from AT&T and any root that may be on there (though I doubt there is now) I can remove and what not
Thanks for the advice and insight Creepy. I know you tried like hell to get me an answer but in doing research on here with other problems I found out some useful information going forward my friend.
Eagle
Well, looks like I will be getting a special early upgrade and the wife will as well. I will be keeping this phone, however, to mess with this and see if I cannot get this problem fixed. Thanks Creepy so much. I appreciate your research and help more than you know. If possible I would love to keep this thread open for a while just in case I figure this out and fix the issue. It may take me a week or so but I will get back to messing with it again.
A side note. You don't need the whole sdk to get adb. You can download just the files you need from my signature.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda premium

[Q] Trying to roll back from OmniROM 4.4 to PA 4.3

Hey, guys, I made a mess.
A long time ago I decided to try out CyanogenMod for my S3 and then everything went well. I got it up and running and it was a cool ROM but I decided to stick to stock at that time. So I looked for a tutorial online and managed to get it back to stock 4.1 Android running well and as usual.
The issue I had then was that I couldn't update my phone from Google's servers anymore. Every time the phone tried to update the firmware I'd get an error, no matter if I tried it through Kies, the phone or whatever. So I decided I'd just install a ROM for a more recent version.
I found a post on a tech blog here in Brazil saying that OmniROM promised they finally had a somewhat stable version of KitKat 4.4
I went on to install it to then find a beautiful, but still very glitchy ROM. My phone froze all the time and it was starting to bother me. My initial plan was to stick to it until it got better, get the daily updates and stuff, but my phone was way too unstable for that too. So I said to myself: "Okay, no problem, so let's get a stable ROM on this little guy."
I downloaded PA 4.3 and proceeded to get it on my phone. That's when the issues started happening. I couldn't find the .zip from CWM no matter where I put it, and my sdcard1 was full because of the previous backup I created (there was a problem with that too, MD5 mismatch, but I didn't lose anything important so that's okay).
Then I did something even more stupid. I figured, why not clean up the backup and get the .zip there, so maybe it'll show up? At that point the sdcard0 (internal storage) was all different and I couldn't find the .zip for the OmniROM, but when I was on CWM it showed up instead of PA's. The problem with that is that I somehow wiped out CWM and now I can't get to recovery. If I boot up my cellphone through OmniROM, it loads up fine but I can't download the ROM Manager or the superuser from the Play Store. I'm trapped with OmniROM and it's working even less well than at first.
What should I do? Is there a way back from this? I'd really like to have my phone running again soon, I need it to keep in touch with my parents since my grandma died recently.
Thank you in advance.
EDIT: Okay, some progress. I remembered that I got CWM on the phone through Odin and went through that again. I have CWM back but still, my internal storage fails to recognize the new .zip files and only shows OmniROM's. The folder is completely different when I connect the phone to my computer. I got to see the .zip files at the sdcard1 but CWM says they're bad files. I'll trust it and redownload/transfer again. We'll see what happens.
EDIT 2: Trapped again. Can't find anything on Google. It sure sucks to be me. I can't even figure out how to get everything back to stock so I can try again. Tried turning USB debugging off but it didn't make a difference. The CWM shows me the two OmniROM .zip files and my computer shows me the PA .zip files. I'm just...
first- try to flash newer cwm based recovey. I suggest philz (is has both Odin / cwm based install):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2002953
after flashing is complete- try to download this rom:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2060403
and check if you can see it.
(you can put it in your internal or external sd, philz can access them both)
Before installing the new rom, I strongly recommend doing a 'wipe to istall new rom', cache wipe and delvik.
good luck
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
Yay, thank you! I'm not trapped anymore. The PA rom I downloaded is still "bad", but that's probably its own fault. I'll wait until NeatROM's download is complete and try with that. I'll edit this if things turn out well.
Thanks again!
EDIT: So, I tried with NeatROM and it also says it's bad. But I only tried on the external storage, so maybe that could be it. My sdcard has been returning some really funky errors when I get it on my computer so I'm worried it might be a bit compromised (and I actually found it at a bus terminal, so it never really worked properly even after formatting).
Thing is when I did the wipe I picked the option that wipes it for a new ROM, so OmniROM is gone. Is there a way to get USB connection through CWM so that I can transfer NeatROM to the internal storage? I only have this one sdcard.
EDIT 2: Finally got it! Thanks so much, amirTor, my S3 is back on track! The sdcard was the bad one, not the file. But the PA ROM didn't work anyway. I might stick to NeatROM or maybe look later. I'm gonna take a week off of all this after so much trouble.
Glad I could help (even though it seems that you pretty much helped yourself...)
1)If you got Sandisk SD card, make sure to follow my post on thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2614170
2)You can mount your phone to be shown in your pc even when in recovery mode: Mounts and storage-> moun usb mass storage
3)You should definitely stick with neat- the best stock (and aosp) rom there is :good::good::good:
ps- hitting the 'thanks' button will be appreciated :angel:
Done and done!

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