Don't be an idiot like I was! - Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 3

TLDR; WHENEVER YOU ARE GOING TO FLASH ANYTHING, MAKE REDUNDANT BACKUPS AND GET THEM OFF THE PHONE!
I was on OC and tried a few days ago, running triangle away. It didn't work. I had philz clockwork mod recovery, which worked after flashed with mobile odin pro. Before that, I had twrp latest version.
I accepted the oc ota from nk4, did custom recovery via pc odin, and flashed supersu zip via recovery. Everything pretty much worked. I started getting system process isn't responding dialog during boot. Previously, the only thing that would fix it is boot into recovery and wipe cache. This time, I couldn't even get into custom recovery. I eventually got into a full boot up. I used mobile odin pro to flash the latest twrp recovery and told it to wipe dalvik too. That is what borked my phone. It would reboot then sit at recovery loading screen. I was upset. It would go into download mode but not recovery, and it wouldn't boot. I flashed the latest twrp in pc odin and that didn't help. I flashed nk4 in a couple of later versions of odin and that didn't fix anything. I tried a different usb port on the pc and that didn't help. I wiped cache in nk4 recovery and that didn't help. It would get stuck at yellow sprint boot screen. I knew that if I did a factory wipe in stock recovery that I'd lose all my data on internal storage. I tried many combinations to flash and get things going, to avoid losing data, but it didn't work. I pulled the sd card. Flashed again but that didn't help. I had flashed probably a half dozen times and the phone wouldn't fully boot.
I stumbled into the xda post about a full tar flash for oc. That would take over an hour at my dsl speed. I was getting desparate. I need my old data and a fully working phone for work. I was playing through ideas I'd tell sprint on how I innocently bricked the phone.
I finally pulled the trigger and wiped cache and factory reset 3x each in stock recovery. The phone fully booted. I've spent over two hours trying to get the phone back up via pc odin and titanium backup. I've burned through 90% of a charged battery. I've lost two weeks of personal data I keep track of and can't restore or fix. I'm not a newb.
For crying out loud, before you flash anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, back up and prepare for any possible losing of all data on the internal memory of the phone!
On android 5.x+, I'm not going to trust anything that flashes that is an app. Triangle away or mobile odin pro!
I will also never take an ota update. I will only trust a full tar.md5 full pc odin flash! Btw, the guy who posted in the full nk4 post, a link to latest odin programs, with odin in the url, my pc antivirus flipped out saying there's a downloader baddie in their odin 3.10 exe.

Been there done that.?

Once you have got working recovery, it automatically enables USB Debugging while on recovery. SO connect your phone at custom recovery to PC with USB cable, get an ADB browser (there are plenty, google! ) run it on PC, and there you have access to your internal storage, copy whatever personal data you have on your internal storage to your PC, after then factory reset.
Moral: Data retrieved from internal storage from non booting phone while on recovery and connected to PC with USB cable.

Related

[Q] Please help newbie with semi-bricked phone

Hi guys, I got a SGS2 just over a week ago, on Bell/Virgin network in Canada. Suffered from the battery drain issue due to being stuck with crappy UGKG2 firmware which my provider still hasn't updated.
I decided to update it myself, and did a ton of research. I successfully got Root tonight by flashing CF-Root-SGS2_ZS-OZS_KG2-v4.1-CWM4 kernel with Odin. In case it matters, I did NOT flash back my stock Kernel, so I still had the insecure kernel installed. From there, I backed up my apps with Titanium.
Went into CWM and selected boot into CWM Recovery. I followed the steps on the wiki, including creating a backup file. My only hint of what I might have done wrong was I originally selected to flash update.zip, and that process failed. I then went to the directory in which cyanogenmod is stored on my SD card, and selected that, then it installed ok. I had downloaded update-cm-7.10-GalaxyS2-signed and that's what I put on the phone. I then also installed the Google Apps.
I then hit reboot, and it only goes to the Samsung screen with the yellow triangle and just hangs there for a few minutes. Not knowing what else to do, I popped the battery out. I have since learned that I can turn it on and off, but it never goes past that screen. Wouldn't go into the recovery or download modes, always that screen. Luckily, I saw somewhere to do the 3 button thing WHILE in that screen, and that works. So I can get to recover, and download modes. So, I think I'm ok. I checked, and it does connect to Odin still.
I just want to know EXACTLY what I should do at this point. I don't want to fully brick it. There are actually two recovery files on the phone... not sure why... Or which one to pick. Should I just flash stock firmware back with Odin? One of my main goals is to get off 2.3.3 so I can have more than 8 hours of battery...
Thanks,
Rob
Boot into tecovery, do a full wipe again. (Wipe data/factory reset, wipe cache partition, advanced>wipe dalvik cache).
Now install CM7 zip twice in a row without reboot. It may take a few minutes for reboot since system is rebuilding dalvik cache. Be patient. After you see the home screen, reboot again.
Sometimes, CM won't install properly with CF root recovery. In that case reboot into download mode, flash codeworkx cwm kernel via ODIN.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1118693
Now reboot into recovery and do full wipe and twice-install !
Ok, working now with the flash twice thing. Well that's weird, would be great if it was in the wiki page...
Thanks!
Rob

Fixed phone - was boot looping even after stock ROM flash

I have an i9300 international version. It began freezing and boot looping.
Recovery and download mode were working. adb shell was working via recovery.
To figure out why it was bootlooping, I wanted to run adb logcat during boot, but to do this you need to enable usb debugging, and mine was disabled. Obviously I couldn't enable it because I couldn't boot, and even tried to enable via adb shell using the following steps:
/data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db: adb_enabled=1
and
/system/build.prop: persist.service.adb.enable=1
But I couldn't find the above sqlite database. In fact /data was empty and I couldn't access any system files via adb shell anyway.
So no usb debugging, which means the next step is flash a stock rom. I flashed I9300XXEMG4 (here) with Odin, wiped system,data,cache. Still bootlooping (samsung logo - kernel i9300 logo - samasung logo - kernel logo etc).
I read about the PIT file here. I read about how you should stay away from it at all costs. As this was a last ditch attempt I flashed the PIT file GT-I9300_mx_20120329.pit along with I9300XXEMG4.
The phone booted fine!
Unfortunately I just read this post about not coming back from EMG4... and I hadn't backed up the efs partition
Disclaimer: do not flash the PIT file unless you know what the hell you are doing.
P.S. if you have any problems with Odin not working (stuck before it starts flashing), close Odin, unplug USB and take the phone battery out, open Odin, put the battery in, boot into download mode then plug USB in. Worked fine for me.
Cheers
Everytime I flash the stock ROM, I will have bootloop. I get into stock recovery mode, do a factory wipe and reboot. My phone boots up normally after that.
YRAJ23 said:
Everytime I flash the stock ROM, I will have bootloop. I get into stock recovery mode, do a factory wipe and reboot. My phone boots up normally after that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why are you flashing the stock ROM? Upgrading? If you are flashing a different ROM or different Android version, your /data won't work with the new version. If you are flashing to a similar version, try only wiping the cache and dalvik cache.
thejonesyboy said:
Why are you flashing the stock ROM? Upgrading? If you are flashing a different ROM or different Android version, your /data won't work with the new version. If you are flashing to a similar version, try only wiping the cache and dalvik cache.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm a flash addict. I will try new ROMs. I case anything went wrong, this will by my rescue step. Last week, my phone's external speaker malfunctioned. So I need to get back to stock. I need to unroot and flash stock firmware. I encountered boothloop. So, do a factory wipe and reboot. All was OK.
YRAJ23 said:
I'm a flash addict. I will try new ROMs. I case anything went wrong, this will by my rescue step. Last week, my phone's external speaker malfunctioned. So I need to get back to stock. I need to unroot and flash stock firmware. I encountered boothloop. So, do a factory wipe and reboot. All was OK.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what type of speaker malfunctioning you got? I am facing some problem with audio/video apps. all audio/video related apps(even call ringtones) not running smoothly half of the time. I have tried many roms. Now i flashed stock firmware via odin and still have same issue.
I have not done any data/cache wipe before odin flash. Is full data/cache wipe is required for stock firmware via odin. OR any other solution you can suggest.
siwach said:
what type of speaker malfunctioning you got? I am facing some problem with audio/video apps. all audio/video related apps(even call ringtones) not running smoothly half of the time. I have tried many roms. Now i flashed stock firmware via odin and still have same issue.
I have not done any data/cache wipe before odin flash. Is full data/cache wipe is required for stock firmware via odin. OR any other solution you can suggest.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone was under warranty. So I reset the binary counter and reflashed stock ROM. Send it to Service Centre. They said my speaker was spoilt. So they replaced the speakers

[Q] Accidentally formatted with TWRP - boot loop

I accidentally formatted my internal SD card with TWRP instead of factory reseting. I can get into recovery, but loading any ROM hangs at the loading screen. For awhile, TWRP was asking for a password, and then somehow I hit the magic combination of things to make that stop happening. I adb pushed an updated TWRP and reinstalling various ROMs.
All this started from trying to install Hyperdrive RLS8. I was running RLS7 fine, went for a clean install, spaced out and formatted the phone, flashed the ROM, and had a whole slew of stability problems. Things would randomly crash instantly, booted only 50% of the time, when it did, installing things would break it, tried various things to fix it, fixing permissions and wiping cache's and such, and results were unpredictable. Kept re-formatting and reflashing with different options until I finally realized that I was formatting it and that's probably what the whole problem was.
Currently I can't boot into a ROM, it hangs on the boot animation. I tried another clean install with RLS7, and the same thing happens. I'm assuming that I need to get back to stock somehow, but I'm not sure how. Odin has always confused me. I used the all in one tool to root awhile back, and I only used odin to send a kernel tar file. If I download a stock build, it's a zip file... so how can I odin it? Is that what I need to do? I'm imagining at this point that the file structure is messed up and I need to rebuild it somehow. I don't have my nandroid backup on this computer, so I haven't tried that yet.
You can either odin stock. It's about a 1.8gb file.
Or you can get a known working ROM on your sd card, factory reset wipe, wipe preload, wipe system, install known working rom+gapps+whatever, wipe cache and wipe dalvik. Reboot. If it sticks at the samsung logo pull the battery and then try to reboot again. Sometimes first boot can take a while. I'd give it 10 minutes before throwing in the towel lol
I bricked my phone by updating Hyperdrive (which I will never (curse words... lots of them) use again. Can someone tell me where to find this stock file? I've been searching long enough to get frustrated and delete several less diplomatic posts, settling with this one.
hey guys, I am a little confused. I just came to the S4 from a galaxy nexus, and I previously used CWM as my recovery option when doing clean install of new ROMS.
When I rooted my S4, I installed TWRP (via goomananger, version 2.5.0.2) because of people saying its much better (on the galaxy nexus forums). However, I keep reading issues of people being stuck in bootloops for TWRP when wiping data.
My question is -- what is this issue? Are you not supposed to clean flash with TWRP?? Or do you only do "factory reset" option in TWRP and not wipe the data?
As I am a little confused on this issue, is it more safe to just install most recent CWM and use that as recovery instead?
Thanks alot
No worries
uberpippi said:
I accidentally formatted my internal SD card with TWRP instead of factory reseting. I can get into recovery, but loading any ROM hangs at the loading screen. For awhile, TWRP was asking for a password, and then somehow I hit the magic combination of things to make that stop happening. I adb pushed an updated TWRP and reinstalling various ROMs.
All this started from trying to install Hyperdrive RLS8. I was running RLS7 fine, went for a clean install, spaced out and formatted the phone, flashed the ROM, and had a whole slew of stability problems. Things would randomly crash instantly, booted only 50% of the time, when it did, installing things would break it, tried various things to fix it, fixing permissions and wiping cache's and such, and results were unpredictable. Kept re-formatting and reflashing with different options until I finally realized that I was formatting it and that's probably what the whole problem was.
Currently I can't boot into a ROM, it hangs on the boot animation. I tried another clean install with RLS7, and the same thing happens. I'm assuming that I need to get back to stock somehow, but I'm not sure how. Odin has always confused me. I used the all in one tool to root awhile back, and I only used odin to send a kernel tar file. If I download a stock build, it's a zip file... so how can I odin it? Is that what I need to do? I'm imagining at this point that the file structure is messed up and I need to rebuild it somehow. I don't have my nandroid backup on this computer, so I haven't tried that yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try using odin to flash to stock. Then re-root and install custom recovery and whichever rom. I had a similar problem posted here with no help from the big brains. Had to trial and error with caution on my own. Kinda disappointing since the answer is quite simple once you connect all the dots. Flashing in odin will fix yer internal storage problem because it redefines everything.
cidorov said:
Try using odin to flash to stock. Then re-root and install custom recovery and whichever rom. I had a similar problem posted here with no help from the big brains. Had to trial and error with caution on my own. Kinda disappointing since the answer is quite simple once you connect all the dots. Flashing in odin will fix yer internal storage problem because it redefines everything.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
uberpippi said:
I accidentally formatted my internal SD card with TWRP instead of factory reseting. I can get into recovery, but loading any ROM hangs at the loading screen. For awhile, TWRP was asking for a password, and then somehow I hit the magic combination of things to make that stop happening. I adb pushed an updated TWRP and reinstalling various ROMs.
All this started from trying to install Hyperdrive RLS8. I was running RLS7 fine, went for a clean install, spaced out and formatted the phone, flashed the ROM, and had a whole slew of stability problems. Things would randomly crash instantly, booted only 50% of the time, when it did, installing things would break it, tried various things to fix it, fixing permissions and wiping cache's and such, and results were unpredictable. Kept re-formatting and reflashing with different options until I finally realized that I was formatting it and that's probably what the whole problem was.
Currently I can't boot into a ROM, it hangs on the boot animation. I tried another clean install with RLS7, and the same thing happens. I'm assuming that I need to get back to stock somehow, but I'm not sure how. Odin has always confused me. I used the all in one tool to root awhile back, and I only used odin to send a kernel tar file. If I download a stock build, it's a zip file... so how can I odin it? Is that what I need to do? I'm imagining at this point that the file structure is messed up and I need to rebuild it somehow. I don't have my nandroid backup on this computer, so I haven't tried that yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes this would probably be your best bet. I wouldn't say the answer "is quite simple when you connect the dots" though, because with that logic there would be no PC problems, you would just connect the dots and format the harddrive and Windows will redefine everything else for you!
But back to seriousness, you have to download a stock factory image and its actually a tar.md5 file and not a .zip because you cant flash zips through odin. The stock factory images can be found in the development section, and they are usually quite large files (2gb+ when extracted!) and you will have to download odin and make sure you have the latest usb drivers from samsung. Then its pretty straight forward, The threads in the development section have guides for how to use odin. The stock image contains all the partitions within in it and will effectively repartition your device when you flash it so no need to use a pit file.
Surge1223 said:
Yes this would probably be your best bet. I wouldn't say the answer "is quite simple when you connect the dots" though, because with that logic there would be no PC problems, you would just connect the dots and format the harddrive and Windows will redefine everything else for you!
But back to seriousness, you have to download a stock factory image and its actually a tar.md5 file and not a .zip because you cant flash zips through odin. The stock factory images can be found in the development section, and they are usually quite large files (2gb+ when extracted!) and you will have to download odin and make sure you have the latest usb drivers from samsung. Then its pretty straight forward, The threads in the development section have guides for how to use odin. The stock image contains all the partitions within in it and will effectively repartition your device when you flash it so no need to use a pit file.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to follow up, that's what I ended up doing. I used the "No-wipe" factory image, odin'd it, re-rooted (I don't know if I had to do that step, but I did), and then loaded my ROM of choice and it works perfectly now. Thanks!

[Q] no boot after Samsung update

Hey guys its been since my first epic 1 that I been here..what I have is an unrooted s3 I updated it and it worked fine but the next day it wont boot past the big s....I was wondering if anyway to undo the update? I dont want to wipe and flash because all my pics and music and some important files that mever made it to my sd card..any help or idea?
Boot to recovery and clear cache and dalvic, probably won't help though.
Next step is always to factory reset, you might get around this by installing custom recovery (Philz recovery is recommended), use that to format system, data etc. before installing your previous stock rom via .zip. That way your internal sd files will still be there and the phone will boot.
Follow guides in general, stickies.
Ok but it wont let me in recovery mode.I can get into the odin but thats it.can I dl cwm to it from the comp in odin mode? Or do I have to root it from there and see what it does?
from the odin mode flash stock rom as per your region. Also please note you will loose your data.

Bricked Samung Tab E Verizon

Hi all,
Sigh. So it looks like I bricked my Samsung Tab E Verizon. I rooted it with King root and when I removed it, it is now in a endless boot loop. I've tried all sorts of things to try and recover it.
I used SkipSoft to set it up to be flashed but odin fails everytime. I was using the new ROMS found on this Forum. I've tried putting it into download mode and manually flash it and that didn't work. I can't Re-Root it as it won't stay on long enough to Root and they always fail. Right now I'm at a loss.
Can anyone help?
Thanks.
Do you have custom recovery or default? if you have default you can hold the home button and vol up button then the power button to get into recovery, once your done with that you can wipe cache and reboot, if that STILL does not work then factory reset your phone and re wipe cache, i know losing data sucks but its better then a brick. (this will work 99% of the time because the default recovery automatically re-installs stock rom)
If you have a custom recovery, then i recommend wiping everything including dalvik cache etc, making sure EVERYTHING is squeakly clean (execpt recovery obviously) , and find the driver for your samsung phone and download it on your computer and install, once you are done with that, put your phone into download mode, find your original STOCK rom for your phone, download it and flash it with odin, from there IF successfull you should have a fresh boot of your stock rom, then you can re-root and go on with your day.
Also make sure once you re-gain root access backup your rom so you will always have a plan b if everything goes bad. i cannot recommend this enough, even if you are an expert with flashing, there is always that small percentage things will go wrong and you should always have that backup ready.
Hi!
Thank you very much for the reply. You know, that was one of the things i tried initially when it happened. When I tried it, it wouldn't go into recovery mode. I then went on the odyssey of hell in trying to recover it.
When I read your post I was thinking; "Yeah I tried that", but then I thought I would give it another shot. I went into Factory Reset, it then actually went into the recovery menu. I deleted the cache and set it to data/factory reset and it's still looping. I get an error saying; "E:failed to mount /preload (no such directory)". I then tried to run update from external storage and it's telling me that it's disabled. I tried to update from ADB and it's disabled. I tried to apply from cache and it says; "APPLY_CACHE is depreciated". It's still looping.
Urghhhhhhhhh.......

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