It's fixed. I think the 3 way recovery rom worked.
Hi all, I have been searching for hours and have made numerous attempts to fix this on my own. And have concluded i might have to send it to Samsung for a motherboard replacement.
Scenario:
S3 stuck on first boot screen.
Can't get into OS/ROM.
Can get into Recovery/Download Mode.
Phone cant mount /sdcard/ nor can it mount /efs/ -- aka nothing on internal storage is accessible.
How? -- Well I dont know. My battery was at 1% last night when I woke up and screen was frozen and my phone was hot so I pulled out battery. Let it cool and charge it. Next thing I find out is its just stuck.
What I've tried -- I wiped data and cache and restored a backup, as usual if something goes wrong. But then i noticed it couldnt mount sdcard. I flashed stock ROM from odin. Stock recovery said it couldnt mount efs.. which meant its soft bricked. I do not have a efs backup. I tried to flash the 3 part ROM and every possible fix... but no luck.
So what i need help with:
1.) Is there a way to reset flash counter in Download mode (its at 1) without Triangle Away? Because I cant even get into OS. Cant send it back or it'll void warranty.
2.) I figure the issue would go away if I somehow restore an efs backup? If thats the case would anyone be willing to help me out, just need to borrow the efs backup to get into OS and use Triangle Away. Ill just delete the efs folder and rebrick it after resetting my count. Idk how I may rebrick but do you guys think it may work? I mean I do not need anyone on here to give me their backup as I know its important. I could just find another device nearby if no ones willing to help.
I am stumped. Any advice or suggestion is appreciated. I know I shouldve backed up but I really dont know why it happened. Sigh.
Oh and its an international quad core S3.
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Long story short, my phone was just bricked. If you want the readers digest version, the battery died, I plugged it in but didn't wait long enough before turning it on, and as it was booting up while charging it died again, which caused a bootloop. I did a backup to my sd card through recovery mode, then left my phone and went to sleep as it was finishing. When I woke up, my phone was hot and completely bricked. Straight Talk is sending me a free replacement. I was running on cm10 nightly (I think my last update was 6/16/13.
This is my plan, can somebody tell me if you think it'll work?
- Install the same cm10 nightly update that the old phone had
- Create a backup of my new phone to the sd card
- Replace the "Data" file of the backup of the original phone with the "Data" file of the backup from my new phone
- Restore the backup of the new phone with the old data file
Do y'all think this will work? Hopefully it wasn't anything in the data file that caused the bootloop!
Oh and btw when I would reset the cache before it bricked, it would turn on and say "Updating apps" and it would go through all 150 or so, then when it said "Starting Apps", it would stop and wouldn't go any further.
Thanks in advance for your help!!!
Ok, first of all, I take full responsibility and made some really stupid mistakes. I consider myself an experienced Android user and have been flashing ROMs and radios since the OG Droid.
I am, however, new to Samsung/Touchwiz, and made an error I'm trying to determine if I can repair.
I have not flashed any custom ROMs on the Note 2, but I was unlocked/rooted with CASUAL. I was having some issues with my proximity sensor and my capacitive button lights, and decided to ODIN back to stock. Here is where I screwed up, I think. Instead of flashing like normal, I think I want a completely clean slate, and I checked Nand Erase. I know, please don't bash me, the brick sitting on the table is punishment enough. I was thinking of erasing backups, as in Nandroid (Nand) backups.
Well, everything flashed as normal and the phone bootlooped. No biggie, booted into Recovery, and it gave the warning it couldn't mount the /data partition. I did a factory reset from stock recovery, and everything seemed fine. The phone booted correctly, but it wouldn't activate on Verizon. It finally allowed me to skip set up, and I found the dreaded "Unknown" IMEI.
No, I didn't have a back up of the IMEI. I began reading and studying on ways to fix this, and it seemed simple enough, but I couldn't get QPST to recognize my phone so I could repair the IMEI. The computer could see it on COM5, but QPST kept saying No Phone.
I tried a few other methods, including EFS Professional and NV Item Reader/Writer. But everything said it couldn't communicate with the phone. I made sure I had it in the correct mode in the Phone Util hidden menu, checked USB cables, ports, and drivers a hundred times, with no joy.
Then on a whim, I checked my /efs folder with ES File Explorer, and the contents are empty. Not sure how I erased all the contents, but now I'm pretty sure I'm screwed.
I wanted you to know my steps, before I started asking questions.
1. If I can get another working Note 2, is it possible to use a copy of that phone's /efs folder on mine? If I can get QPST to work, I could then use it to inject the correct IMEI back into the folder.
2. Is there anyway anyone here could upload their /efs folder so I can try it?
3. Any suggestions on QPST and getting it to recognize my phone?
4. Am I just completely hardbricked and out of luck?
Thank you.
I know there are other similar threads, and I have searched...a lot. I'm just trying to figure out if I'm missing anything.
Also, I've found some IMEI repair services online that will fix a missing or corrupt IMEI for about $25 plus shipping. Does anyone know of a reputable repair service for this issue? I'm getting somewhat desperate to get this fixed. I'd be willing to pay someone here to fix it as well if you have the know-how and equipment.
Thank you.
Hi,
There are success stories on this issue in xda...would suggest you to read xda articles on this issue.
Thanks,
Nikhil Dhand
[email protected]
Hope your problem is solved
Thanks,
Nikhil Dhand
Email/chat: [email protected]
Hi,
I’d really appreciate it if someone can help me, as I’ve not been able to find my exact problem and solution anywhere in the last 5 days of trying to fix my Samsung Galaxy S3 SPH-L710 – Sprint.
Not sure what happened but I had just swapped out my battery and my problem began – I have 3 batteries that I charge and swap when needed… one of the reasons I’m still using the S3. Been wanting to get a new phone but just haven’t decided which one and kept putting if off. Anyway… After charging the battery I turned on the phone and it got stuck on the Samsung Galaxy S3 screen. Went online and read I should try a cache wipe. I did that and got a bunch of failed to mount lines and a few other failures. Mostly failed cache. Not sure if this had anything to do with it but I was running low on the internal free space and had to delete a few things to make more space and then it would fill up again etc… Internal size is 16gb.
Here’s what I tried:
Attempted the 4.4.2 ROM flash in Odin. – Got a PIT partition message and then tried again and got write Failures after NAND started. Tried a few more times and same thing but I don’t get the PIT error anymore… I tried different Odin versions, computers, and cables, and same results. I have the correct USB driver. I’m using the same version ROM that’s on my phone, but the build name on my phone is last (newest) update and I could only find the previous build of the same 4.4.2 version. Note – This phone was a swap by Sprint when my first S3 had a start button issue. This one is a refurbished… not sure if that changes anything.
I also tried a TWRP install via Odin and it Failed.
I tried to Root via Odin and it Failed.
I DID NOT do a factory reset because I don’t want to lose all my data.
MORE INFO:
Phone is not Rooted and never was.
Phone goes into download mode and also stock recovery mode without any problems.
I never set the developer option and I didn’t enable debugging. Not sure how, now that my phone is soft-bricked.
QUESTIONS:
I’d like to preserve all my data and settings and somehow back them up so that I can put them on a reset phone.
Is there any way to work around this soft-brick and grab all the info including the system info and settings, all my files, and pictures, etc??… Everything! … I’d like to get the phone working again and put it all back on it and be the same as it was. I have so much important stuff on the phone. I have been doing backups via Kies but haven’t done it for a few months and I don’t even want to lose even a few months of data, and the way my phone was set up. Is there anything I can do to basically get a mirror image of my phone? Assuming all the information is still intact but it just can’t mount properly.
Is the developer / debugging setting preventing me from being able to do what I tried? Is it because I’m not Rooted? Is there OEM Locking on my phone?
Should I try to install TWRP from the stock recovery via external SD card? And then Backup from there? Is that different than doing it from Odin or will that fail too?
Please help – I love my S3. No phone for 5 days and I feel so disconnected :crying:
Thank you!
Been using the soldier andriod 9 rom for a while now. was using my phone yesterday when it went off suddenly. turned it back on and got greeted with the black screen of death ((BSoD). I tried every trick available to try and get the screen to turn back on but nothing worked. I was hesitant to reset my phone because i had a lot of important accounts i got my phone logged into that are gonna be a pain in the ass to recover access to should i wipe the phone clean. Eventually i got tired of waiting and instead of just resetting my phone i got the dumb idea to try and recover a full working twrp backup i had made a month ago. After recovering the backup my screen turned back on. I was proud of myself till i realized i had lost my network signal. upon going into my about page in settings i discovered my baseband and imei values were null/empty. I started to panic since i knew what loosing your imei and baseband permanently meant. But i also quickly remembered that the twrp backup i made was a full backup including my efs and baseband folders. so thought maybe trying to recover those partitions alone would solve it. i have tried severally but my network still isnt working and my baseband and imei values are still null. i dont want to panic because i have my baseband and nfs backups. i read online that twrp sometimes can **** up when installing the recoveries and that some simple line codes in the twrp terminal can help correct the error. but unfortunately the code lines they gave in the tutorial i found doesnt seem to work for the s9. Can someone help me out here? at this moment i am out of options. i was thinking of flashing a stock firmware with odin to see if that helps but i dont want to go further without advice from a third arty. been going forward alone for a while now. i dont know if what i keep doing are actually helpping or worsening my case.
drickles said:
Been using the soldier andriod 9 rom for a while now. was using my phone yesterday when it went off suddenly. turned it back on and got greeted with the black screen of death ((BSoD). I tried every trick available to try and get the screen to turn back on but nothing worked. I was hesitant to reset my phone because i had a lot of important accounts i got my phone logged into that are gonna be a pain in the ass to recover access to should i wipe the phone clean. Eventually i got tired of waiting and instead of just resetting my phone i got the dumb idea to try and recover a full working twrp backup i had made a month ago. After recovering the backup my screen turned back on. I was proud of myself till i realized i had lost my network signal. upon going into my about page in settings i discovered my baseband and imei values were null/empty. I started to panic since i knew what loosing your imei and baseband permanently meant. But i also quickly remembered that the twrp backup i made was a full backup including my efs and baseband folders. so thought maybe trying to recover those partitions alone would solve it. i have tried severally but my network still isnt working and my baseband and imei values are still null. i dont want to panic because i have my baseband and nfs backups. i read online that twrp sometimes can **** up when installing the recoveries and that some simple line codes in the twrp terminal can help correct the error. but unfortunately the code lines they gave in the tutorial i found doesnt seem to work for the s9. Can someone help me out here? at this moment i am out of options. i was thinking of flashing a stock firmware with odin to see if that helps but i dont want to go further without advice from a third arty. been going forward alone for a while now. i dont know if what i keep doing are actually helpping or worsening my case.
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I have same issue after upgrading to UAEGT3 and now signals are gone. Following this thread for resolution.