No boot, no recovery - Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi,
I have a problem with the S2 of a friend, it doesn't boot anymore, it's stuck at the "Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-i9100"-Screen right after turning it on, no boot-animation.
Recovery doesn't work but download-Mode does so it's easy to just reflash Android via Odin. I don't know why that is, she said she powered it off to go to sleep and when she picked the phone on the next day it wouldn't boot.
She has the stock Samsung 4.1.2 software without root or custom recovery (so 100% stock)
The problem is that there are many photos and text messages (specifically: WhatsApp) on the internal memory, losing them is definetly not an option!
I have two questions:
First, will reflashing a stock-firmware wipe the internal memory where all the appdata and the photos are?
And if so, can I just flash a custom recovery and back the files up somehow? And which recovery would that be and how do I back up?
Any help would be highly appreciated, thanks for your time and help!

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Id flash say philz kernel then go to recovery and flash a custom rom. Say pacman as a custom rom but thats a random rom im thinking of.

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andrewwright said:
Id flash say philz kernel then go to recovery and flash a custom rom. Say pacman as a custom rom but thats a random rom im thinking of.
Click to expand...
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Will flashing a custom ROM delete the files?
I'll flash SlimBean because I installed that for many friends and they are all happy.
Is there a custom recovery included with the philz kernel?

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No it wont delete as long as you dont format sd cards. Philz is a way to get cwm bk on your phone with odin.so put a custom rom on ext sd with pc put it in the phone then flash philz with odin then boot phone to recovery then flash custom rom from ext sd. Make sure you format data ,system ,cache before you flash for no boot problems

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Okay great thanks! She'll come here on sunday, I'll then tell you if it worked

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Oi oi it will work no problem lol :thumbup:

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andrewwright said:
Oi oi it will work no problem lol :thumbup:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay I failed, I put the Kernel-File in Odin but in Bootloader, not in PDA -.- Hard brick.
well now my question is if a JTAG-Procedure will delete any of the pictures of if it only writes to the bootloader-space.

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Omg how/why did you do that??

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I thought "It has something to do with CWM so you have to flash it with "Bootloader" -.-

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Yeah, that's why the search button was invented, by Common Sense I think.
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Sent from the little guy

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That still doesn't answer my question.
"my question is if a JTAG-Procedure will delete any of the pictures of if it only writes to the bootloader-space."

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That's exactly what it does (among other things).
Sent from the little guy

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Is there any way of saving the files?

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No not now