Develop Bugs

Soft brick? Recovery not working properly

Hey guys all my restores are failing half way through. It also fails if I try to factory reset or wipe dalvik but wipe cache works fine It fails if i try flash any ROM.. And if I try to boot to system it shows SG logo then black screen I'm really kind of lost here. I've already tried flashing 4 different versions of Twrp/clockworkmod and I get the same result every time. The roms I'm trying to flash were running fine on my device before this happened. Never seen this before please help thank you.
Sent from RootBox infected sensation or my PacMan e739

djwuh said:
Hey guys all my restores are failing half way through. It also fails if I try to factory reset or wipe dalvik but wipe cache works fine It fails if i try flash any ROM.. And if I try to boot to system it shows SG logo then black screen I'm really kind of lost here. I've already tried flashing 4 different versions of Twrp/clockworkmod and I get the same result every time. The roms I'm trying to flash were running fine on my device before this happened. Never seen this before please help thank you.
Sent from RootBox infected sensation or my PacMan e739
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is this an i747 or i747m (carrier?)? what was the last thing you did to the device/had you just modified or flashed something? were you using recovery or odin to flash the 4 different recoveries?

xBeerdroiDx said:
is this an i747 or i747m (carrier?)? what was the last thing you did to the device/had you just modified or flashed something? were you using recovery or odin to flash the 4 different recoveries?
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Click to collapse
I have sgh i747 at&t us model. Unlocked Sim for Tmobile use. Before having problems. I flashed vanilla rootbox att nightly. it was running fine then I flashed acid audio mod. And it worked but not well with my player of choice. So i flashed a restore from fright before the sound mod. And all I got was 2 different Samsung logos then black screen. At this point Twrp started asking for a password. I tried an older backup. (rootbox stable) and it booted fine. Everything seemed to be working. But when I rebooted again I got the 1St SG logo then black screen. Now recovery doesn't read anything on the internal card as well as the other problems I stated. I used mskips toolkit to flash Twrp originally and now I've been flashing back and forth between recoveries using recovery flashable zips. Also every time I flash roms or restore I did factory wipe/cache/dalvik and after I started having these issues I tried wiping system and that didn't help either. Thanks for trying to help
Sent from RootBox infected sensation or my PacMan e739

what recovery are you currently sitting on?

Twrp 2.4.4.0 is what I started with and now I'm back on it but from a flashable zip this time instead of whatever mskips toolkit used
Sent from RootBox infected sensation or my PacMan e739

here is the link to an odin flashable twrp 2.5.0.0 tar: http://techerrata.com/file/twrp2/d2att/openrecovery-twrp-2.5.0.0-d2att.tar
and here's a recovery flashable twrp 2.5.0.0 zip link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1917517&d=1367104589
if you flash in recovery, be sure to reboot recovery in order to boot into the new version. i'm sure you know most of this but i'm just trying to cover all the bases.
is twrp still asking for the password or were you able to get passed that?
if you have a micro sd card, you could place a ROM/gapps on it, flash this latest twrp recovery from odin or recovery, perform a full wipe (cache, dalvik, data, system) and flash the ROM/gapps. see if that remedies your situation.
if you dont have a micro sd card, and it appears you've wiped the system so there's no OS, you may have to odin back to rooted stock and start over. keep me posted

Still no luck. i flashed twrp2.5 through recovery and after rebooting back to recovery it still asked for a password so I hit cancel at which point it lets me continue and after full wipe as you described above and a fresh flash of stable rootbox 3.9.1 (md5 matched) im still in the same situation. also factory wipe says failed still

I think at this point if it were me, I would Odin flash back to stock then start from scratch. Pain in the butt I know, and no guarantee, but usually flash back to stock is a safe bet.

Another option is to grab the Odin flashable cwm tar in the "root from recovery" method in the general section. Flash the tar, boot into recovery and flash the 6.0.3.1 zip in post #2 of my signature link. Reboot recovery and try wiping/flashing again.
Since you're not entering the password in TWRP, I think that's why you're not getting successful wipes and flashes.

now I used the power+home+vol down button combo to see if bootloader would start. it gave me a choice to download a custom rom or cancel so I canceled and the phone rebooted and i was blessed with the beautifull rootbox animation. my rootbox 3.9.1 nandroid booted and seems to be running fine. Now Im afraid to reboot in fear it will start the whole process over again. any suggestions? or should I just leave it powered on for the rest of its life lol
edit: well I got up the guff to reboot and everything came back fine again WTH. this is so weird, I wish I had a clue what happened. anyways I just wanted to thank you guys one more time for you help. hopefully we wont have to come back to this thread. Peace ;-]

Man that is strange. If that ever happens again it would be interesting to see the log if you can get it. I wonder if there were issues mounting a partition and/or your SD card. If TWRP and CWM were both having an error and the files were on your SD card that would probably be the only thing in common that could cause something like this. Some Transformers seemed to have the password issue, but doesn't seem related to your experience. Glad you got it sorted.

weird issue - not able to install custom ROMs

this is just weird, as i have been installing custom ROM like crazy...
but for some time i was on CM 10.1.2 and didnt install any custom ROM, but i felt like coming back to TW based ROMs, so tried installing DeTmobilized 1.5, but phone stuck at boot screen, i tried to restart by pulling battery out but phone displayed "encryption failed" and kept on showing phone.apk stopped working (something similar). so i decided to ODIN to stock and start fresh, this time i tried installed Dandroid 3.8.1 and it worked, so i thought of giving DeTmobilized one more try, but again it got stuck at samsung letters at the boot.
so i decided to stick with Dandroid for a while, but now i cannot install that too. it gets stuck while booting. but if i ODIN to stock everything works fine on stock firmware, its only the custom ROMs that are not working.
i also tried repartitioning using PIT file along with stock md5 hoping that would solve this issue, but it hasnt.
i need help, i cannot stay on stock ROM.
thank you.

chirantan.f said:
this is just weird, as i have been installing custom ROM like crazy...
but for some time i was on CM 10.1.2 and didnt install any custom ROM, but i felt like coming back to TW based ROMs, so tried installing DeTmobilized 1.5, but phone stuck at boot screen, i tried to restart by pulling battery out but phone displayed "encryption failed" and kept on showing phone.apk stopped working (something similar). so i decided to ODIN to stock and start fresh, this time i tried installed Dandroid 3.8.1 and it worked, so i thought of giving DeTmobilized one more try, but again it got stuck at samsung letters at the boot.
so i decided to stick with Dandroid for a while, but now i cannot install that too. it gets stuck while booting. but if i ODIN to stock everything works fine on stock firmware, its only the custom ROMs that are not working.
i also tried repartitioning using PIT file along with stock md5 hoping that would solve this issue, but it hasnt.
i need help, i cannot stay on stock ROM.
thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
boot into recovery and wipe cache partition along with davik, that should fix the stuck
also do remember first boot will always take a while
also make sure you're using the latest custom recovery (either twrp or cwm)

i would also like to note here that i tried installing AOSP based ROMs also, and AOKP didnt work, got stuck at nexus like boot animation forever, but when i tried installing CM10.1.2 (which is what i was running when i tried to get back to TW based ROM) it worked perfectly, so for now i am back to CM, but i would really get back to flashing different ROMs and trying them out. just makes me wonder if CM is the reason i am not able to install anything else, just a thought...
has anybody else tried going to any other ROMs from CM 10.1.2?
your help is appreciated!

pcshano said:
boot into recovery and wipe cache partition along with davik, that should fix the stuck
also do remember first boot will always take a while
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for your reply, but i have tried doing that, i also wipe data and system along with cache and dalvik before installing any new ROM.

pcshano said:
boot into recovery and wipe cache partition along with davik, that should fix the stuck
also do remember first boot will always take a while
also make sure you're using the latest custom recovery (either twrp or cwm)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have latest recovery , TWRP 2.6.0.0 and i have given more than an hour to boot up and still nothing. i have been flashing ROMs like an addict since i got this phone last year, but when CM 10.1 stable was released i stayed on it till today, but now i cannot install any other ROM, i can odin to stock 4.1.1 ROM or install cm 10.1.2 which i did just now, but no other ROM, either TW based on AOSP based is working...which is very weird for me.

Were you able to fix this issue at all? I am facing the same issue, in my case, the phone was encrypted on stock TW. I roooted and put in CM 10.1.2 and now when I try installing Dandroid, the install itself would work but I am struck at the "type password to unlock the screen". If I reflash CM10.1.2, I can login fine. Any pointers?

KitKat flashes fine, won't survive a soft reboot

I wiped the dust off my old S2 in hopes to get it running again. The last ROM I had on it was Jedi Mind Trick JB 4. I flashed sultanxda's CM11 ROM and it booted up fine(logged into google, installed some apps). I did a soft reboot and the phone never wanted to boot back up. It flashed the Samsung logo and then just sat at a black screen. I flashed CM11 again just to make sure it didn't get corrupted the first time, but it still did not want to come up after a reboot. Then I thought maybe it's the ROM/ZIP so I flashed ParanoidAndroid 4.6-beta5. Same issue, it boots up fine after the flash, but will not start up after a reboot.
I'm on CWM Recovery 6.0.2.7, and I wipe/format the usual before the flash. Also on radio UVMC6. Any ideas?

I'm having the same problem, did you find a fix ?

Rushaan™ said:
I'm having the same problem, did you find a fix ?
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Click to collapse
same issue, different roms .

You. Guys are using an out of date recovery. Get the newest version of twrp and you should. Be fine.

CWM: http://www.teamchopsticks.org/p/cm110-release-notes.html
TWRP: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1768742

[Q] PA 5.1 OTA issues

Maybe it's me missing something, I downloaded and installed PA 5.1, build from 20th May which I do not think is an Alpha that I would need to factory reset to do an OTA over.
However today OTA popped up with a update to the 28th May build, the upgrade seems to work but the phone then will not boot up instead I get the initial S3 screen twice with a blank screen in between then it drops in to recovery?
Think I am doing the update right i.e. download in OTA app, click install, phone reboots in to recovery runs install, reboots -- then in theory it should boot back up but at this point I have the above loop and back to recovery...
The recovery that I an using is Philz recovery - added it a couple of nights ago to install the original build of 5.1 and Gapps so that seems to work, there no errors with the OTA as its installed, the caches are being cleared first by the install script everything looks fine until the phone tries to boot back up. Have tried it 3 times now downloading a new copy of the OTA each time in case of corruption and restoring from a good backup on each failure.
Any ideas appreciated?
... and thank you in advance

paped said:
Maybe it's me missing something, I downloaded and installed PA 5.1, build from 20th May which I do not think is an Alpha that I would need to factory reset to do an OTA over.
However today OTA popped up with a update to the 28th May build, the upgrade seems to work but the phone then will not boot up instead I get the initial S3 screen twice with a blank screen in between then it drops in to recovery?
Think I am doing the update right i.e. download in OTA app, click install, phone reboots in to recovery runs install, reboots -- then in theory it should boot back up but at this point I have the above loop and back to recovery...
The recovery that I an using is Philz recovery - added it a couple of nights ago to install the original build of 5.1 and Gapps so that seems to work, there no errors with the OTA as its installed, the caches are being cleared first by the install script everything looks fine until the phone tries to boot back up. Have tried it 3 times now downloading a new copy of the OTA each time in case of corruption and restoring from a good backup on each failure.
Any ideas appreciated?
... and thank you in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, i'm on I9300 and all i can tell you is that i have the same exact problem with the same release, so you're not alone.
I was hoping this new release would work since the one of the 20 may didn't, but this one won't even boot.
I guess I9300 doesn't get love anymore...

You are not alone in this. It is happening with me too since the stable build of 28th May. I tried the on on June 12th too ...but even that is failing as well
How come it is a stable build when it has a bug like this and crashes the phone? Are we making a mistake? Does it require a different kernel or what can I do to make it work?!
~ Manthravadi

I'm stuck with this I have tried the last 3 ota updates with CWM, TWRP and Philz recovery all fail as above. Even tried downloading the full versions and doing a clean install with gapps and they fail. Could be a kernel issue but cannot find anything that states a dependency, is the kernel not part of the download like in a Linux OS? As never upgraded a kernel separately, how would you do that, is it another zip file, any ideas where to get it from?

paped said:
I'm stuck with this I have tried the last 3 ota updates with CWM, TWRP and Philz recovery all fail as above. Even tried downloading the full versions and doing a clean install with gapps and they fail. Could be a kernel issue but cannot find anything that states a dependency, is the kernel not part of the download like in a Linux OS? As never upgraded a kernel separately, how would you do that, is it another zip file, any ideas where to get it from?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually got it working finally a few days back.
You need to install boeffla kernel version 4 alpha 3 in order get the latest pa rom up and running. Go to boeffla-kernel website. In downloads select the device GT-I 9300. You will find CM12.1 NG version which is not yet stable. In that select version 4 alpha 3. Alpha 6 is latest but does not work too :/ Download Alpha 3 .. a .zip file which can be flashed using TWRP or Philz or CWM.
Wipe cache/dalvik-cache → flash boeffla → flash pa latest → flash pa gapps latest for 5.1
~ Manthravadi
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

I also have problem but thankfully when I did the steps above, it did finally boot but now I have another problem. My S3 boots properly and I can use it for a while then after a few mins it suddenly reboots with boot animation and all and I dunno what to do. It just keeps rebooting after a certain amount of mins.

@Aledresin: glad that I was able to help you. I am not experiencing any such issues at the moment. When the next PA build is released, try to flash it with boeffla 4 alpha 6.
Afaik ..some memory issues were fixed in alpha 6 and as you are using alpha 3..perhaps you are experiencing those issues.
~ Manthravadi
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

Manthravadi said:
I actually got it working finally a few days back.
You need to install boeffla kernel version 4 alpha 3 in order get the latest pa rom up and running. Go to boeffla-kernel website. In downloads select the device GT-I 9300. You will find CM12.1 NG version which is not yet stable. In that select version 4 alpha 3. Alpha 6 is latest but does not work too :/ Download Alpha 3 .. a .zip file which can be flashed using TWRP or Philz or CWM.
Wipe cache/dalvik-cache → flash boeffla → flash pa latest → flash pa gapps latest for 5.1
~ Manthravadi
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you happen to have a copy/mirror of "boeffla-kernel-4.0-alpha3-CM12.1-NG-i9300.recovery.zip"
I've been searching for a few days and can't find it anywhere. The official boeffla site no longer hosts this file and a lot of i9300 users need it to run the latest Paranoid OTA.
EDIT: Found it! It's available here: http://boeffla.df-kunde.de/sgs3/boef...load/Test/old/
Thanks to user Hawaiihemd for the info.

paped said:
Think I am doing the update right i.e. download in OTA app, click install, phone reboots in to recovery runs install, reboots -- then in theory it should boot back up but at this point I have the above loop and back to recovery...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had a very similar problem and found that if I let it automatically reboot after flashing, then I was stuck just rebooting to recovery. If I manually shut down after flashing and manually booted, then everything worked fine. You may have the same thing happening here. I also used PhilzTouch and like it a lot. Thanks to the devs!

[SOLVED]TWRP bootloop, CM12.1 bootloop, Not sure what to do here..

Do anyone know what to do here. I got a note 2 from my aunt for fixing her S6, I figured I would use this as an extra device to play around with but I absolutely HATE TouchWiz so I wanted to put CM12.1 on it, now I've done this probably thousands of times before, this phone is screwed, I can't figure out why. Even on my old Note 2 it worked, can't get this working, no idea why.
My aunt has done all the OTA updates since she bought it brand new so it was running 4.2.2 DNF4, I did a system restore to get rid of all her stuff, once it booted to the welcome screen to set it up I rebooted into download mode, used odin to flash the latest twrp, all good, wiped the phone, flash the latest cm12.1 nightly and latest opengapps, wipe dalvik, reboot, reboots back into twrp, nothing I can do, I tried this a few times with different builds and even different roms, nothing works, twrp is screwed and will not let me leave once it boots, I have to pull the battery.
So I flashed back to stock touchwiz 4.4.2, rebooted back to download, flashed CMR, figured it must work better since it's right on the download page for CM12.1, wipe it, flash the files, reboot, stuck in a boot loop at the cyanogenmod face, sits there for hours, nothing happens.
Tried the exact process using cwm and philz, nothing works, I literally can't flash anything AOSP, I've tried other roms and only stock touchwiz will boot past the boot screen, and stock touchwiz has no problem running if I run CMR, CWM, or Philz, but TWRP doesn't work on anything, it will not let me leave if I boot into recovery unless I pull the battery and let it boot normal.
Any ideas at all? I'm getting completely fed up with this phone and I'm going to throw it in the garbage if I can't figure this out, I've wasted the same amount of time that if I spent this much time at work, I could have bought a used Nexus 5 by now lol

I used DN3, U HAVE TO WIPE 3X WITH OLDER TWRP, FLASH PHILZ, dont WIPE , THEN INSTALL ROM.ITS ALL REALLY A PAIN.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk

How old are we talking for TWRP? As in a different version of 2.8.x or like 2.7.x or maybe even 2.6.x?
EDIT:
I followed your instructions and that actually worked.. I used the latest TWRP for 2.7 which was 2.7.1, I'm going to play with this a little more tomorrow and see what the latest version of twrp is that I can use without getting stuck in a boot loop, thanks a lot for that info.
The only issue I've run into now is I got Error 12 while trying to flash GAPPS so currently there are no GAPPS installed.

Glad you're running. GAPPS very touchy on some roms, Go to ROM thread for that stuff.

I'm just running regular untouched CM12.1 nightlies, any GAPPS should work but the recovery is telling me it's out of date and can't use it stbin or something like that?
However, I found out that once CM12.1 is installed, and before it's set up, I can reboot back into download, flash with odin TWRP 2.8.5 which is the newest I've found that works. and it will let me flash the latest GAPPS, the phone still boots back to the setup/welcome screen, and then I can set it all up as if everything was fine.
It's quite the work around but at least I was able to get it all working.
I also tested this again using DNF4 and it also works using this twrp to wipe and philz to flash method.
Thanks again.