Develop Bugs

[FIX] Working on a solution for unfortunate I9000M users with dead internal SDcard.

Hello!
I learned some new simple skills with the Gingerbread port that can allow me I think to produce a complete workaround for unfortunate I9000M users.
I9000M is a phone very similar to the Galaxy S GT-I9000, sold as "Bell Vibrant" in Canada.
This model is affected by a anormal % of defective model, so high I feel really bad for users owning one of them.
During Voodoo development, I was in contact with lots of them, including one with its internal SD dying live. Painful experience for the owner for sure and also for me helpless.
Now, to help me help you, I will need the collaboration of some of you. Not necessarily with a perfect condition working phone.
A phone affected will allow to verify the success of the operation.
UPDATE
It turns out there are several states of "dead" or "dying" phone, something I didn't anticipated based on the previous reports.
1/ Phone booting only if you plug an External SDcard
This is where I can do something not over-complex to make the phone work 99% normal, with access to the sdcard as internal storage and on USB.
There is still something to do in this area.
2/ Phone not booting at all including with an External SDcard inserted
I could fix them in theory, but my previous remove attempts were unsuccessful, using a special baked kernel for this occasion where unsuccessful for some reason.
I could maybe develop a solution if someone sends me its dead phone.
But I guess his best option is to send it to Bell instead!

Okay what do I need:
If possible, remote adb access to:
- a normal working phone
- a phone barely working using the external sdcard as "fallback", without the ability to use it as sdcard/USB.
What do you need:
- A I9000M
- An external SDcard
This will be done real time on IRC, join us at this channel: http://bit.ly/gQMeSC
Ask if you need help to setup that

Very good idea that will help many people who have wasted money on a broken phone hopefully! You are a saint my friend
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Sign me up! What do you need?
EDIT: Nevermind, you posted what you needed before I posted. I can help. I have a fully functional i9000M on Froyo and one dead i9000M phone. No matter what I do in Odin using stock Bell firmwares, it will not ... run. Won't and can't mount the internal for the life of it.
Anyways, how does one grant remote ADB access?

PreemoX2 said:
Sign me up! What do you need?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A direct access to the phone rooted via remote adb would be perfect.

Mange to do that: SGS nobel prize

DocRambone said:
Mange to do that: SGS nobel prize
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From someone residing in Stockholm, it's something
But no kidding, I think it can be done in just a few hours with direct access to phones

supercurio said:
From someone residing in Stockholm, it's something
But no kidding, I think it can be done in just a few hours with direct access to phones
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would be great, had so many bricked phones when we (with Idan) made a bell rom, really scary.
Ps check here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=880823
Loads of users u can assist

I flashed a couple of Doc's roms and my sd died. I wish all the best to this project, but am too paranoid to do any more flashing until i get my spare back

Always curious if a fix can be found. I'm in the repair loop now but if my repaired unit comes back and fails again I may just skip the process and use information you can learn in this thread.
Great stuff supercurio.

The issue is more complex and challenging that expected.
On some phones the internal SD is still here but dying, and on other phones the internal SD is not detected at all (which make things easier)

My first two phones, after they died, mmcblk0, mmcblk0p1, and mmcblk0p2 were all missing, then when I inserted an external sd, the phone started using that as the mmcblk0/p1/p2.
On my third phone, when it died, mmcblk0 was missing, but mmcblk0p1 and mmcblk0p2 were still there (I have no idea how..) But inserting an external sd did nothing...
On my fourth phone death, mmcblk0 was there, but mmcblk0p1 and mmcblk0p2 were both missing... Again, inserting an external did nothing...
The fourth time I was actually beside a computer when it died so I was able to look at adb logcat to see what it was doing... all it kept saying was a lot of various apps not being able to write to /data/data, then when I rebooted, it never came back
First two deaths: With an eclair kernel, phone would show the Samsung GT-I9000M logo, then turn off. You could then insert an external sd card and have it boot into Android. With a froyo kernel, I could only access recovery, but nothing else would boot up.
Last two deaths: With a froyo kernel, phone would show the Samsung GT-I9000M logo, then turn off, and turn back on, and turn off... till I pulled the battery out. With an eclair kernel, I could boot into recovery, but that was it.
I have a product exchange plan that if my phone dies I can go in to Futureshop and exchange it for a new one, so I don't have the dead phones anymore.
Hope this information is of some use...

got my phone dec 4th and unlocked, flashed 3 buttons fix and flashed jk3 via odin + cleared everything the very same day.
the next morning got a bunch of FC, flashed jk3 via odin again. This time cleared all data before / after flashing. The very same day my dog ate part of the bezel ( yes, it sucks.... )
JK3 was working fine, but battery was dying on me every 6 - 8 hours. Then I upgraded to jk4 via odin again using a image dump from the forum.
battery was a bit better, but after 4 days it died. It was right after *draining the battery* in my pocket and it got into the same boot loop, vibrating, flashing buttons state.
Gave the battery a good 4 hours charge, and still no luck. Tried pulling out the battery, SIM card and still nothing.
Was able to flash jk3 again, followed by a jk4 upgrade via KIES. at this stage phone got very usable, battery was good, all apps working. But I decided to get away from it as I think we might have more than 1 problem here ( hardware and software might actually be different problems ).
So I flashed jh2, got CWM going and updated to Doc's Bell rom 1.3 with jk3 modem.
It's going strong for the past 5 days, gps is still ****, battery is good though, and no FCs.

So last week I received my shiny new SGS, it replaced the dead one I returned earlier. My corp store replaced it without asking too many questions. The previous one I played with, Flashed Roms, Rooted etc. Then one day it would boot normally until after the Blue Swirl, then nothing, only LED's would light. I even lost the ability to use Download and Recovery mode. While trying to fix it I encountered many errors most were related to the Internal Storage (not surprisingly). Anyway fast forward to today. My replacement SGS was updated via Kies to 2.2 JK4 almost right after I got it. The phone has worked flawlessly, until today. No root, no custom roms, no lagfix... STOCK Froyo. For some reason the battery drained incredibly fast today. I plugged it in after the battery died and let it charge for about an hour, tried to boot it up and I got as far as the first Galaxy S logo, then it would reboot, Galaxy S logo, reboot... etc.
Recovery and download still worked. And recovery mode showed the same Internal SD errors as my last phone. I have tried to flash a few Stock Roms using Odin, none have been successful. Always flashing Galaxy S. Ive somehow managed to lose Recovery mode, but still have Download.
Does any of this help? Ill probably have my phone for the next few days before I have to send it out. Anything I can try?
If you somehow find a way to fix this plague... wow... you will make ALOT of Bell users happy.. lol..

If this works make sure Samsung can't steal your method for themselves. It's exactly the type of thing they'd do.

Hi supercurio, I have a dead sgs and a working one. The dead one was bought to be use for the time I received my screen replacement from ebay but it died. I have mmcblk0p1 missing so the phone get a black sceen after S logo when flashed with 2.1 and it loop on the i9000m screen when flashed with 2.2 and I talk french as my first language (mais celui du Québec pas de France).
The only pronleme is that I cant acces recivery for now as I lost the 3 buttons combo when it died. I made a little 301k ohm jig to acces download mode. I would have to make another one to acces recovery cause for now I can only acces it after an odin flash and repartition wich make it reboot into recovery once the flashing is done.
Can I be of any help?
Sent from my GT-I9000M using XDA App

Im on my fifth one!
Save us!
Sent from my GT-I9000M using XDA App

supercurio:
I am one of the unfortunate ones who have had 3 i9000m's die. The first one was on 2.1 and the other two times were on 2.2. All three phones (when flashed with a 2.1 ROM to boot into recovery, said mmcblk0p1 was either corrupt, or did not exist. When mmcblk0p1 disappeared, so did mmcblk0p2.)
The phone that had 2.1 would boot into the OS with an external SD card inserted. But, can't install apps, and the phone said there is no storage to store anything, anywhere. Basically it was useless.
The phones with 2.2, when the internal SD crashed, both times, it would show the initial Galaxy S (i9000[m]) screen, but then reboot after 2 seconds and loop there. It doesn't even get to the boot animation part! Recovery doesn't work. All you can access is the download mode. Only after you flash a 2.1 ROM, it will go into recovery mode, but it will puke all over the place saying mmcblk0p1 cannot be formatted, or mmcblk0p1 I/O error.
The fact that it goes into the worst possible boot loop, (displaying the Galaxy S, i9000[m] screen for 2 seconds then rebooting without showing the boot animation) scares me, since not much can be done with a phone that does that.
I really hope you can come up with some sort of solution. I've owned the phone since August of this year, and if you add up all the days that I had it in my hands and working... I only had it in my possession for less than 30 days. The rest of the time (3 months+, its been in repair). The last time I sent it back to be repaired AGAIN, was mid november, and I still don't have the phone back...

I would say the best way you guys can help out would be setting up SSH access to your computer (if it's OSX or Linux based) - that way Supercurio can remote access the shell + access the phone.
It won't be a good idea to post SSH details on the IRC ofc, so flicking him a DM with the details would be best.
All you really need to do is install OpenSSH on your computer, and set up a limited user account (Just a regular user will be fine) - Forward port 22 through your router to your computer, and give Supercurio the details. Make sure the Android SDK is available in his home directory so he can use that.
Sort out a time for Supercurio to SSH into your computer, and make sure your phone is connected. Join up on the IRC at that time and he will speak directions to you as needed.
But indeed a good idea, I actually was thinking of a way to fix this too.

Thanks for your reply. We spent several hours fighting with a dead phone yesterday on IRC.
I update the first post accordingly.

[Q] Help - Device Rebooting shortly after startup

Hello XDA-Community,
I am in a little bit of trouble with my HTC Desire and I was unable to find any documentation on here on via google to help me out so I am hoping anyone of you guys can give me a hand. Any input is very much appreciated, thank you beforehand!
So, the situation is as follows:
I have a branded T-Mobile HTC Desire (not a T-Mobile customer, though) with Froyo 2.2 stock running, I am a regular user and haven't messed with the software previously apart from installing apps as usual. Until today, where the mess started..
It is one of the old Desires with AMOLED, I think HBOOT version 0.93 or something?
I just want to say I am not bad with computers but I've only started to wrap my head around anything android-tech related as in rooting, flashing, etc. , which is why I'm here.
Now today I decided I want to go and first off, root my device so I can have a titanium backup and possibly tomorrow or sometime soon flash the oxygen rom because I hear I can have increased batterylife with that, which is my main concern (and app2sd for everything) with the HTC Desire.
So I read through lots of guides and arrived at using unrevoked³ to root the phone which worked fine. I then went and bought Titanium Backup Pro so I could make a backup of the entire thing and start flashing sooner or later.
Now I guess I made the first mistake right at that point when I did not make a backup immediately but first used TB to delete some T-Mobile bloatware which I dont use, I used the Filter option and then Remove Bloatware in the Settings to tag the apps in question ("TopApps" and "MobileTV", they are silly and just for customers anyway). TB said I have to restart the phone to remove them, which I did. I wanted to remove them before I did the backup because it was already complaining about low space after I put TB on (you know the desire and its space limitations..). And what good are useless apps in a backup, anyway?
Now, when it rebooted, at first everything looked fine, it starts up normally and goes on with loading all the stuff, I have a few widgets, GoLauncherEx, etc. which takes a bit to load at first start. But having loaded for about 1 minute after pressing the button, and when I can already see some of the UI elements properly in place (I can actually enter SIMcode and everything, or just wait at the code-login-form) - the phone just soft-resets itself and starts booting again. and again. and again. always up to the same point, I reckon.
I have tried getting the SDK and look into adb logcat while it boots (where I am an absolute noob, admittedly), and I was going to paste the entire thing here but my windows 7 "cmd" only has the last 300 lines of output selectable and I can't figure out how to "save" the rest of the log flying by when booting. It shows a lot of k9-mail errors in the log but I am not sure of that is the problem because I havent messed with k9 for months (using it as push mail client).
I am now unsure if the problem is because of TB or because of the removed bloatware, or what is going on. Right now, the phone is unusable.
I wonder if anyone can help me get the phone going again or how I could access the phone data to retrieve the phone's calendar entries and SMS, and possibly as much of the settings/data so I can just go and flash oxygen on it. I would, however, love to have a complete backup of the stock thing running, with TB and NANDroid backup, so I require a running phone I guess. I have previously synced the phonebook entries to MyPhoneExplorer on my desktop but it apparently didnt catch anything else.
I have attached the logcat output that I could capture in the txt file, if it helps with anything.
Thanks anyone for help really! Much appreciated!

Teaches you not to mess around without backing up first. You can get quite a bit of stuff to sync to your Google account like contacts and calendar entries. It also backs up other bits of data too.
From now on, it looks like you can only flash another rom or use an ruu, either way your data is gone like SMS and all that good stuff.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA Premium App

Honestly, you probably won't be able to get your data if it doesn't even get passed the first lock screen cause you may have deleted something compulsory for it to boot.
Just flash a new rom or the stock rom if you want then after you've set it all up run a titanium backup batch to save everything. Then and ONLY then should you consider installing Oxygen because Oxygen will require a number of modifications to your desire.

thanks for reading through all of it, I didnt realize the post grew so long when I posted it last night.
I know it is a prime example for the backup sense, Meape.. :/
Aegishua, It does get past the first lock screen. if I enter the SIM Code (or just leave the SIM Out), I can actually interact with the phone for several seconds, it loads widgetlocker and requests the unlock pattern, but there's not enough time to actually do anything when I see the the home screen.
I was wondering if there is a possibility to, say freeze the bootup sequence via USB adb commands or something, like you would press Pause on a desktop PC during the POST screen (yeah I know, the comparison is a little off). So at that point I could at least have time to fetch stuff from the phone to the PC.
and I noticed, if it helps anything: when the backlight is off (display dimmed), shortly before the reset the backlight flashes a couple of times which it doesnt usually do at that point of booting.
oh, and a little question for the next probable step: aegishua, what do you mean only then? I was following this guide http://rootmydroid.co.uk/guides/gen...esire-wildfire-evo-incredible-with-unrevoked/ , and would I not just get the oxygen ROM and follow Pt.3 From Step 2 onwards? Since I cannot do Step 1 anymore (full TB). I.e. just put the rom on SDcard and wipe + flash? btw, the original Oxygen thread ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=971904 ) does not say what Radio I need to flash (do I ?)- anyone care to point me in the right direction? Thanks again, I know I'm a noob at this.
Thanks a lot for any input guys

I will not be able to look at this thread for the next few hours but here's a quick update, I now started the phone without sdcard or SIM and it actually works! I mean, lots of apps are missing and icons and stuff, but the phone stays on regardless. I'm gonna go figure out whats wrong with the sdcard content, but first: backup time

[Q] Five Vibrates & Flashing Green LED - Am I Screwed? [FIXED]

I've had my DInc for over a year now, S-OFF and been through tons of different ROMs without issue.
I've been on MIUI for the past month and went to flash the newest weekly update tonight which worked fine. Cleared Cache and Davlik, flashed and then booted without issue. Everything working fine.
Went to reboot the phone, got the HTC splash and then the five vibrates with the flashing LED. Have to battery pull to get the phone to boot down. Phone will only boot if the phone is plugged into USB. Cannot mount the SD Card while in MIUI or in CWR and cannot view the EMMC either. HBoot shows S-ON now as well.
I've searched Google and here and it seems there have been no fixes in the past for this issue. Have there been any updates on this or is contacting Verizon/HTC for a replacement still the only resolution?
My dilemma is I use my phone for both work and personal and there is sensitive client information on the internal storage that I cannot access to delete. I also have no way to remove my custom splash screen or flash back to a stock ROM. If I can safely wipe the the internal memory then I would attempt a replacement if I can't resolve the issue myself.
Is there any way to fix this or at least wipe everything on the internal memory before I apply for a replacement phone?
Thanks guys!

If you can't format your internal memory, you may want to try running the ruu. That should definitely get you back to a usable point. At least I think it will. Not sure if it will help with your particular situation. You may want to research this.
Sent with my awesome sauce Incredible with some sweet CM7 action

FIXED!!
Ending up finding this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1110865
Which directed me here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=695243
Followed the above directions and everything looks like it's working again! Only tricky part was getting the files in the SDCard as I don't have a reader for the PC. Had to throw them on an FTP, download them on the phone and then unzip on the phone.

hEaTLoE said:
FIXED!!
Ending up finding this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1110865
Which directed me here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=695243
Followed the above directions and everything looks like it's working again! Only tricky part was getting the files in the SDCard as I don't have a reader for the PC. Had to throw them on an FTP, download them on the phone and then unzip on the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have an inc at home with this problem. Ill give it a shot... my daughter uses it now.

im having a hard time with the fastboot. I went into it and it installed some kinda driver but when i do the adb command it tells me that fastboot cammands arent recognized. I do have sdk installed. Im on Xp

Stuck in Bootloop & Unable to Access HBoot screen

Hi guys,
I've got a bit of a problem. My phone is stuck in a boot loop, which is a problem I've dealt with before, with help from these threads.
But this time I'm really stuck. I can't access the HBoot screen like I normally can, by holding down the volume up and power off buttons simultaneously.
I am using (racks memory) I think it's the War something mod of Cyanogen 7 I believe. I installed it 5 months ago and it's been working fine. This is not a new or recent install!
The phone does suffer from low memory issues a lot, as do all Wildfire S's. I have managed to get around that previously by moving apps to the SD card or linking to it or making user apps into system apps. I was in the middle of chatting on whatsapp when suddenly the phoned just blipped and died on me.. then it went into the boot loop. It's never happened before and my suspicion is that it ran out of memory or something.
I've tried removing the battery and leaving it out for some time, no luck. I've tried restarting without the SD card and Sim card. No luck. I've tried connecting it to my laptop... no luck. All the usual tricks just aren't working.
I have TiBu installed and my most recent back up was less than 4 weeks ago. I also did a Nandroid system backup a few months ago, so I should be able to restore ok, I just can't access the HBoot screen.
The other weird thing is, when I left the loading screen going round long enough, like in the time it would normally have booted.. suddenly the sound of my new emails popping up plays... and today, even tho it was on the load screen, it made clicking sounds like when I activate apps when my finger touched the screen. It's almost like the phone has started up as normal, but the load screen just won't go away and underneath it all is normal.
I've never had anything quite like this happen before and I've been without my phone for 3 days now, so came here in desperation for some inspiration! hehe.
I am probably going to buy a new HTC phone with a large system memory cos altho I dearly love my Wildfire S, the low memory has caused me nothing but problems since I first bought it, and I have wasted hours and hours on it, trying to get around the problems caused by it. But until then, I need to get my contacts and messages back and continue to use it for now. I would also ideally like to keep it going and give it to my sister perhaps who doesn't have a smart phone. She won't need as many apps as I do, so it would likely suit her, or maybe my Mum.
Any help anyone can give would be massively appreciated. Thanks guys!

Can't access HBoot!
Hey is anyone out there? I know lots of people get stuck in boot loops and there's a million threads of support for that, but this is different. I can't access the recovery system either. I have clockwork mod on it and normally you can get into that fine. Trying to find help on this problem is really tough cos I have to wade through all the noob threads for standard easy fix boot loops. If anyone could help me on this I'd be extremely grateful.

This might be all I can offer but two things come to mind. The first is you said volume up its volume down to get into the bootloader. The other is to search in the wildfire forum regarding whatsapp. Recently I read a post about a guy who's phone crashed from whatsapp. I don't remember how he recovered you have to search on it; unfortunately the second time he couldn't recover.
Good luck
Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda app-developers app

Thank you!
MiCeltic said:
This might be all I can offer but two things come to mind. The first is you said volume up its volume down to get into the bootloader. The other is to search in the wildfire forum regarding whatsapp. Recently I read a post about a guy who's phone crashed from whatsapp. I don't remember how he recovered you have to search on it; unfortunately the second time he couldn't recover.
Good luck
Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for this... I'm willing to grasp at any thread at the moment. I did try the volume down option too but no dice there... but the whatsapp thread sounds promising, so I'm going to follow that up right now. It's after 4am and I've been sitting here working on this for hours and hours and at my wits end, so thank you! Fingers crossed!

Accessed HBoot!
Update:
Ok, I couldn't find the thread about whatsapp that was referred to above, but I have just tried accessing the recovery menu, using the volume down and power key, after first removing the sim card, but leaving the sd card in place. Suddenly that seemed to work! The menu came up!
I tried accessing it again with the sim card back in, and it refuses to come up again as before. So that at least is one issue resolved.
Now I'm having trouble mounting my SD card, which it says can't be mounted. I know the backups and recovery files are on the the SD card, but it just doesn't seem to see them there.
I wiped the dalvik cache in case that was causing any problems and it doesn't seem to have resolved this current issue so far. I'm going to keep trying other options as see how I get on, but I least wanted to share the solution to one of the problems my thread raised.

Further Update
I couldn't remember the name of my mod in the first post.. it was the WildChild mod.
After getting my phone into HBoot by removing the sim but keeping the SD card in, I found I was unable to mount the SD card. I researched this problem and some suggest the card may be corrupted.
I have checked the card on an external reader plugged into my PC and it read perfectly fine, and I managed to copy every bit of data on it across to the computer with ease. Others however found that after a reformat it eliminated any problems with mounting.. so that is what I am going to do and then try and restore the copy of the data I saved to the PC back onto the SD card.
Attempting now to reboot normally with the sim back in and the SD card removed this time produced a very desirable result. My phone started back up, albeit without the normal operating system. I was able to connect to wi-fi and my network and see a missed call voice mail message symbol. There are however no apps at all as yet and no background screen. I should mention that the phone did ask me to allow SuperUser permissions again.. I should also mention that I foolishly tried to Fix Permissions in CWM which then sat for a long time, eventually I removed the battery cos I thought it wasn't gonna do anything.. this is a big no no I now find out from the threads and I may have buggered it up a bit. I don't know.
My saga continues anyhow, and although I've not had much support on this, it might still be helpful for others to read and follow should whatsapp crashed their phone too and mess with their SD card somehow.

Another Update - Making Progress!
Next update on this...
I removed the SD card and put it in an external reader again on my PC.
Then I installed the free program Mini Tool Partition Wizard Home Edition and selected MiniTool Partion Wizard rather than the Power Data Recovery.
The Wizard allowed me to see the hidden partition on my drive. I understand now why it has always had trouble reading and writing to the SD card in the Ext section that was hidden. This should have been an EXT-2 or EXT-4 format partition I think, and mine is an EXT-3.
Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know much about these things and just learn as I go and by experiementing.
I had hoped to back up the hidden data in the partition but I was unsuccessful. Instead I found the Rebuild MBR (Master Boot Record) option and applied that to the entire SD card.
I then put it back in my phone, again without the Sim, and went into HBoot and recovery. I then went to my advanced back up and restore section and now the SD card is mountable and readable! I didn't have to wipe it or reformat!
I found my most recent up date which was the end of August... I wish I'd done them monthly, but oh well not too bad... and selected it and chose to Restore Boot.
Once it had completed I tried to reboot, but no dice. I put the sim card back in.. still didn't work... BUT I was now able to get into recovery again, this time without removing the Sim!
So inching along slowly here with this but making progress.
Next I plan to restore boot again, this time with the Sim card in.. and try and restart.. if that fails, I will go back into advanced recovery and try to also Restore System, and lastly restore SD-ext and see if each of those options repairs whatever damage that stupid Whatsapp did to my phone! I hope the little solution to various problems I've had are of some use to someone else here. Now wish me luck!

Wow, you were busy last night while most of the western world slept . I'm guessing if I posted at 11:10 PM and you said it was 4:00 AM, that your in the London timeline. I thought a little bit more, later, and I think that person's post I read fixed his phone by eventually getting into recovery and restoring, which as I remember worked that one time, until he reinstalled and used Whatsapp again some time later (it was at the insistence of a girl that used it). Whatsapp has, like 300 million users, but it does seem to give some people serious problems, and that's why I think most people are hesitant to try and help. They don't want to make things worse, since there are those instances of totally bricking a phone...but as long as a person can get into recovery, it's not bricked!
Interesting...I have done the, "fix mbr" in PCs many times, but I think you've taken it to new levels using it in phones! At least I don't remember reading anything much about someone doing it (in phones) before and it's brilliant, IMHO. You really did a great job sharing what you've done and I hope you get it fixed. I clicked a, "Thanks" for a good post follow up.
Insert standard disclaimer here: I'm not telling you to do anything, or what will or won't work, but sooner or later you're gonna have to restore that backup, but it's your choice on what to do; and, it sure seems like you know what you're doing, especially having made a backup to work from. I can appreciate the way you've gone piece by piece in your restore efforts to try and find where the problem occurred. The nice thing about the Wild Child ROM is it all works, and incidentally I think the developer uses ext2 for his extended SD card partition! It sounds like you reformatted to ext2 or ext4 from ext3, so the only thing there now is what came from restoring that backup piece in Clockwork; therefore, there's nothing that would be lost that isn't already; and, you backed up everything else on the SD card. So I don't want you to brick your phone either, but I'm wondering about wiping the cache and then the dalvik-cache, and then restoring your whole Nandroid backup?! I think your Whatsapp contacts are saved and so if the phone boots to a working condition you could just uninstall Whatsapp right away, boot into recovery and wipe cache and dalvik-cache again just to be safe, and then decide what to do about using Whatsapp again. As long as you can get into recovery, ultimately you could wipe, wipe, wipe and reinstall Wild Child to start all over if nothing else works.
On the other hand maybe you've already got this whole mess straightened out, if not, I'll again wish you - Good luck!

Solved!
So I next wiped the cache partition 3 times, as someone on another thread said sometimes it takes more than one go to clear it all properly for some reason.
I also wiped the dalvik cache again a couple more times. Then I went back to my back up and restored system. Then I tried to boot my baby back up.
I was falling asleep at this time but I remember the phone partially recovered. But most of the apps were broken. I had low memory issues too, so I uninstalled a few apps, managed to restore some individual apps or update them, and log in long enough to send messages to contacts with my email so I wouldn't lose them.
Then I fell asleep with the phone in my hand haha.. when I woke up I immediately continued with it and finally worked my way back to whatsapp being the last app I wanted to deal with. I managed to get into it and send some messages.
Then I did a full nandroid restore on everything.
The phone returned to it's state as of 2 months ago when I last did a nandroid back up. But some of my TiBu apps were backed up more recently. So I manually restored those and things were mostly back to how they were before and I am fairly happy with the low loss of data.
Whatsapp was working fine for a while.. but then it started having problems. It first had all my contacts there... then it lost their names but kept their numbers, then it lost all the old messages and right now I'm in the middle of trying to restore everything again and it's stuck on a restoration. I did a full uninstall of the app, restored the back-up, then it tried to update, but it always fails and now it's just hanging. So it definitely appears that whatsapp is one of the major causes of problems on my phone.
It was also one of the largest apps I had on there. Wildchild is an awesome rom, it only lacked video really and I installed a codec and player for that and got it working again, despite the guys on the Wildchild thread saying they didn't think it was possible. Yes I had trouble with it sometimes, but most of my trouble stems back to the low memory issues and the fact I broke all my apps up by spreading parts of them over the SD card, internal storage as user apps and system memory. That's a Wildfire S problem, not the fault of the Rom.
Anyway, I've made note of all the important numbers and will be buying a larger capacity HTC phone this week. Not sure which yet, but possibly a Sensation or Sensation XE, depending on my budget.
Thanks for your support MiCeltic. Yes I'm in London hehe. And I hadn't read anything about using MBR on a phone, but it was the SD card which had the problem and that certainly fixed it without having to wipe all my data.
I think what I have here is multiple layers of problems.. and I'm really pleased that after 3 days effort I managed to get past most of them. Once I get my new phone and transfer the contacts, I will have to think twice about using whatsapp.. it's my favourite app of all tho, so it will be hard to part with. This phone has many bugs.. I will completely erase it and reflash it when I get time and either keep it as a back up and maybe gift it to my sister or mum as I said before.
:good:

Last update
OK this is my past update on this... Whatsapp had one last surprise in store for me.
After it started messing up my phone again. I gave it one last chance. I completely removed it from the phone and installed it as new from the GooglePlay store. Then when I loaded it, it found the backed up Titanium BackUp messages and restored those.. then when I opened the app, it also had restored all my most recent messages, up to the day before it crashed the whole phone. I was amazed. They must have been stored on the server or something.. I think they sit there for 3 weeks. So I'm likely only missing one weeks worth of messages at most, about 4 weeks ago! Ha! Brilliant. I'm not doing a Nandroid backup cos everything is stable again and I hope to have no more troubles until it comes time to transfer all the date to the new handset... that's gonna take a while cos I will have to learn how to gain the boot mod rights all over again and maybe even flash a custom rom as the stock is sure to be loaded with bloatware. Still.. if it has a 1GB internal memory it shouldn't slow the phone down too much.. not compared to the tiny 150MB this little baby has!
If someone wants to close this thread now, feel free.
Cheers. :good:

You inspired me to read a little more last night and I did see where some people found a fix by uninstalling and then installing new (not from backup), then restoring their contacts. Seems like you've proved that point! Interestingly I read that ALL of your contacts are stored on the Whatsapp server, not just your contacts that have Whatsapp (Remember those permissions you accept when you install an app!). As I said, there are 300 million users, obviously not everyone has the problems, so hopefully it will work for you now and on your new phone, which after reading your posts I know you will make a back up of immediately and again after rooting...AND definitely before installing Whatsapp ! ! ! You might even find your next phone easier to root as a lot of them don't need an update of the bootloader on htcdev for the first step when unlocking and/or many can gain Soff!
Glad you got it working and now all's right with the world...well for now

Advice needed, possible hardware issue

OK guys, long read but I really need some advice. Device is op3 running 3.2.8, magisk, phh superuser and exposed. Issue started while I was reading in news app, screen froze the the phone reboots. 1st time this has happened since I got the phone in June. Didn't think much if it. So I go back to reading in same app and after 5 min it happens again. Now I'm suspecting an issue. So I try one more time with same result. I figure an app update or something must be the problem so I reboot to TWRP(latest official version) and restore my last backup from the previous day. I boot up the phone and decide to just try some browsing. About 5 mins in, it freezes again, but doesn't reboot. I have to hold power to get it to reboot. So now I boot into twrp and decide to try a clean flash, I go to factory reset and I got error message can't mount system or cache. This worries me so I try rebooting to recovery to try again and it will not boot into recovery or system now all I get is fastboot. I have to work the next day so I just put device away and go to bed. The next morning I check the phone and it boots into system no problem. About halfway through work the phone starts all over again with same issue freezing and rebooting until only fastboot works. So I try unbrick tool, everything says OK I boot up and immediately freezes and after a couple boots I can again only get to fastboot. So I start RMA and send device off, when I get it back, the paper says they reloaded the OS. I think well its probably not fixed but I'll try it. I go through process of setting everything up as it was before and it worked fine. Until the fourth day, I'm installing an app and it freezes and reboots. Then exact same story as before, the longer I mess with it the less functional it gets, if I let it sit overnight it will work a while the next day. I have tried all the different twrp versions as well as stock recovery, I have tried other ROMs also, everything ends with same result. So I resubmitted the RMA and now I am waiting to get it back again, but I'm afraid all they are doing is reinstalling the OS again. So anyone experience anything like this before or have any suggestions/ideas what is happening. Thanks for reading and for any help provided.

budbay said:
OK guys, long read but I really need some advice. Device is op3 running 3.2.8, magisk, phh superuser and exposed. Issue started while I was reading in news app, screen froze the the phone reboots. 1st time this has happened since I got the phone in June. Didn't think much if it. So I go back to reading in same app and after 5 min it happens again. Now I'm suspecting an issue. So I try one more time with same result. I figure an app update or something must be the problem so I reboot to TWRP(latest official version) and restore my last backup from the previous day. I boot up the phone and decide to just try some browsing. About 5 mins in, it freezes again, but doesn't reboot. I have to hold power to get it to reboot. So now I boot into twrp and decide to try a clean flash, I go to factory reset and I got error message can't mount system or cache. This worries me so I try rebooting to recovery to try again and it will not boot into recovery or system now all I get is fastboot. I have to work the next day so I just put device away and go to bed. The next morning I check the phone and it boots into system no problem. About halfway through work the phone starts all over again with same issue freezing and rebooting until only fastboot works. So I try unbrick tool, everything says OK I boot up and immediately freezes and after a couple boots I can again only get to fastboot. So I start RMA and send device off, when I get it back, the paper says they reloaded the OS. I think well its probably not fixed but I'll try it. I go through process of setting everything up as it was before and it worked fine. Until the fourth day, I'm installing an app and it freezes and reboots. Then exact same story as before, the longer I mess with it the less functional it gets, if I let it sit overnight it will work a while the next day. I have tried all the different twrp versions as well as stock recovery, I have tried other ROMs also, everything ends with same result. So I resubmitted the RMA and now I am waiting to get it back again, but I'm afraid all they are doing is reinstalling the OS again. So anyone experience anything like this before or have any suggestions/ideas what is happening. Thanks for reading and for any help provided.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"I'm installing an app and it freezes and reboots"... What app were you installing, specifically?
I put my trust in XDA devs more than OnePlus devs, so... I suggest you flash FreedomOS. It's based on OxygenOS, but... tinkered by a very cool French guy . Oh, flash ElementalX kernel, too. Always better than stock. You never know

Formhault said:
"I'm installing an app and it freezes and reboots"... What app were you installing, specifically?
I put my trust in XDA devs more than OnePlus devs, so... I suggest you flash FreedomOS. It's based on OxygenOS, but... tinkered by a very cool French guy . Oh, flash ElementalX kernel, too. Always better than stock. You never know
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply! The last time that it froze, i was installing firefox from playstore. One of the ROMs I tried was freedom with elemental. It seems no matter what ROM I would flash, device would only work so long before freezing up, the main thing that seemed to matter was how long I waited before booting again, the longer I waited the longer I could use it before freezing up again.

budbay said:
Thanks for the reply! The last time that it froze, i was installing firefox from playstore. One of the ROMs I tried was freedom with elemental. It seems no matter what ROM I would flash, device would only work so long before freezing up, the main thing that seemed to matter was how long I waited before booting again, the longer I waited the longer I could use it before freezing up again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting...
Okay, this may sound weird, but try using the phone without the SIM card in it for a while, see if it freezes up. Or, get the SIM card replaced (if you can). Back when I had the HTC EVO 3D, the phone would lock up at times. Wasn't ROM related, as I experimented heavily with it and... eventually, it turned out to be the SIM card's fault. The guy at the store said he experienced that several times with other customers, but it's an extremely rare occurance. Some bad pin or God knows what. That was 4 years ago (actually, 5. Jesus! ).
Sounds hard to believe, I know. But you never know
Still, I believe there may be something wrong with your device's hardware. Try RMA'ing it again - if you dare going through the process again and risk having to deal with OnePlus' extremely lacking customer service several times a day, like I did .
PS: I see you're new here. You should know that there's a "thanks" button next to each post, which you can press so you don't post a single "Thanks!" every time. For the future, you know.

Formhault said:
Interesting...
Okay, this may sound weird, but try using the phone without the SIM card in it for a while, see if it freezes up. Or, get the SIM card replaced (if you can). Back when I had the HTC EVO 3D, the phone would lock up at times. Wasn't ROM related, as I experimented heavily with it and... eventually, it turned out to be the SIM card's fault. The guy at the store said he experienced that several times with other customers, but it's an extremely rare occurance. Some bad pin or God knows what. That was 4 years ago (actually, 5. Jesus! ).
Sounds hard to believe, I know. But you never know
Still, I believe there may be something wrong with your device's hardware. Try RMA'ing it again - if you dare going through the process again and risk having to deal with OnePlus' extremely lacking customer service several times a day, like I did .
PS: I see you're new here. You should know that there's a "thanks" button next to each post, which you can press so you don't post a single "Thanks!" every time. For the future, you know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to know, I actually considered the sim. I've been using it since my HTC onex. Might try that when I get device back, however it is working in my opo as we speak. You mentioned you've going through rma before. Any advice on how to get them to take a different action other than continuing to reload the os?

budbay said:
Good to know, I actually considered the sim. I've been using it since my HTC onex. Might try that when I get device back, however it is working in my opo as we speak. You mentioned you've going through rma before. Any advice on how to get them to take a different action other than continuing to reload the os?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No idea, honestly. The RMA I did was for a replacement, since it was within 14 days of purchase, so I got to choose to get a replacement. Should have chosen the refund, wait another month and get the 3T... had I known it was going to be released. Oh well.
In your case... I guess you can do another RMA and hope for a better intervention. Perhaps explain to them... more thoroughly? Or just go with the flow - they'll reload the OS, you'll report the same issue again... Maybe they replace it, I don't know.
Interesting that they did the OS reloading IN SERVICE. Usually, this procedure is done via remote control... So they don't have to pay for shipping when such a thing can be done via a remote session, you know... Weird.