[Q] Phone won't restore to Factory settings, help! - AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III

A lot of my factory functions/features are not working after I flashed the Serenity ROM and tried to restore:
- My alarm widgets do not appear when I drag them into the main screen (but there IS something there cause I can grab the square)
- The camera lock screen turn to open feature does not respond
- The phone is not recognized by by computer
*Here was my procedure:
I installed SuperUser using Odin and Recovery Mode, flashed Serenity ROM to my phone. Prior to that I installed Samsung Keis to my computer and made a backup... I think. It seems maybe I was supposed to do it on my phone through CWM. Anyway, I didn't like the ROM and tried to restore my last backup through Keis, but it kept the ROM and just deleted my settings. It also made an error appear "[email protected]#$ is not working." Then, I did a "wipe all/factory reset" and "wipe the cache" and replaced it with the JellyBean 4.1.1 TouchWiz ROM, hoping replacing the ROM instead would return it to factory like settings and it got the closest, but the features listed above are still not working correctly. I went to Samsung.com and grabbed the updated drivers and download the latest version of TouchWiz! I'm not sure how to just get back to the basics. I have Titanium backup, but it feels like backing up at this point is just gonna backup up the stuff I don't want restore. I've read numerous forums and watched plenty of YouTube videos to try and help but I can't figure it out. And am I missing something by not finding more "How to restore Galaxy S3 to factory" or "Remove ROM from Galaxy S3" links?? You figured that would be more common a topic than what I got.
Please help in anyway you can. I just want to go back to the beginning when it was the still the baddest stock phone out there.

ODIN back to stock. There is a link in the first sticky in the "General" section, It's called "Guides/roms/roots/recovery" that will get you the factory image. After, boot back into recovery, wipe cache and do a factory data reset and you'll be back to day 1 when you pulled the phone out of the box.

As he said factory restore with ODIN and next time never use Kies for anything except just a factory OTA update. Make all backups in TWRP or CWM recovery. Makes it so much smoother

Related

[Q] How to completely restore SGS3 to factory settings??

How can I completely restore my phone back to factory settings? I have a custom recovery (TWRP) and only used the root to delete bloatware.
I have already backed up all my contacts and SMS/MMS messages.
I have no problem re-downloading all my apps from the Market, I can do that, right?
I want to COMPLETELY return this thing back to "out-of-the-box" settings; no custom recovery, no root, no previously installed apps.
Then I am going to run the OTA update to get JellyBean and will re-root my device.
Does anyone know where I can find a complete list of bloatware that is safe to remove, from JellyBean? I know there are some pre-installed applications that shouldn't/can't be deleted.
Thanks in advance for all the help. Much appreciated.
1.Go here...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1725839
2.Download a stock image (post 2)
3. Flash image in ODIN
4. After phone reboots: power off, go into recovery, do a factory wipe/data reset, clear cache, reboot.
What about...?
I've read this entire thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1984717&highlight=factory+restore
And that seems like it might be easier than trying to learn how to use Odin (I know nothing about it), after I have just learned how to use Kies to achieve the same goal(?)
The only problem with that thread is that they talk about CWM Recovery being removed, but not TWRP. I do not want to mess my phone up anymore than I already have.
Also, I did all this root/twrp work a long time ago and I vaguely remember something about not having my flash counter tripped. I don't know if that was TWRP that didn't do it or something else. Do you think my flash counter has indeed been tripped?
Just youtube "unroot galaxy s3 at&t" and look for something recent, within the last couple of months. The steps are pretty straight forward.
FIESTY2 said:
Just youtube "unroot galaxy s3 at&t" and look for something recent, within the last couple of months. The steps are pretty straight forward.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does this (found several videos) remove the custom recovery (TWRP) as well? None of the videos talk about custom recoveries...
When you ODIN a stock image, the custom recovery will be wiped out. It'll be like you just pulled the phone from the box.

[Q] PLEASE HELP! galaxy s3 wont recover backup and liquidsmooth wont work properly

Hey guys.Im kinda a noob, so bear with me. I have a SGH i747 (att galaxy s3) and I rooted it on my mac using motochopper. I backed up all my apps and system data with titianium backup to my SD card, and i also backed up my stock ROM to my internal storage using ROM Manager. I then downloaded liquid smooth using my phones browser, and then I selected it within ROM manager and clicked "reboot and install' (keep in mind, i didn't wipe memory or anything) So it was stuck at the boot screen. Then i realized what i did and went and wiped data/factory reset, dalvic cache, and the other cache, within Clockworld mod recovery (vol up + power + home). After that, it worked, but only to find that all my apps were gone, and the play store and browser app didnt work. so basically softbricked however I can make phone calls and text (lost all contacts). Then i went into cwm and tried to restore my phone, at first it came up with two backups (neither of which had the name I named my backup) but said no files found and then when I mounted my storage, the bottom one said md5 mismatch but the top one worked. the top one would work for about 6 min then while it was restoring data it would reboot into liquid smooth and i would have like 3 apps i didnt have before (other times i would get stuck at the boot screen). I also tried restoring it right after I wiped data/ factory reset and cleared the caches, but then it would get stuck at the liquidsmooth boot screen. Tried pretty much everything.
I just want my phone back the way it was before root or anything, with all my data. But I backed up all my stuff besides apps to KIES, so willing to reset it to stock firmware if possible
need all the help i can get. thank you all very much
SuaveNNR said:
words...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, when you did a factory reset, that wiped out all your apps, contacts, personal data, etc. No big deal. Your phone is in good shape, not bricked in any way, you just don't have all your personal stuff.
The only way to get it back to stock is to flash a stock firmware via ODIN or mobile ODIN, tutorials for doing both can be found here. I'm not 100% on how to do it (ODIN) with a mac other than either booting windows if you have the capability on your computer or running windows in a virtual box and using odin that way.
Or...if you have an SD card you could stick it in your computer, download another rom or liquid smooth again and reflash the proper way in recovery to get it to work. It sounds like you neglected to flash the separate GAPPS file that is required for the AOSP ROMS.
All is good. Your phone is not in bad shape. Take a breath, do some research before you flash anything else. Don't compound the problem by flashing random things that you think might help.
worked. I owe you much gratitude
FIESTY2 said:
Well, when you did a factory reset, that wiped out all your apps, contacts, personal data, etc. No big deal. Your phone is in good shape, not bricked in any way, you just don't have all your personal stuff.
The only way to get it back to stock is to flash a stock firmware via ODIN or mobile ODIN, tutorials for doing both can be found here. I'm not 100% on how to do it (ODIN) with a mac other than either booting windows if you have the capability on your computer or running windows in a virtual box and using odin that way.
Or...if you have an SD card you could stick it in your computer, download another rom or liquid smooth again and reflash the proper way in recovery to get it to work. It sounds like you neglected to flash the separate GAPPS file that is required for the AOSP ROMS.
All is good. Your phone is not in bad shape. Take a breath, do some research before you flash anything else. Don't compound the problem by flashing random things that you think might help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I went to friends PC and ran odin. worked perfectly. no problem losing all my data as long as i have a phone that works. thank you

[Q] Really need your expert help guys! SM-T800

Alright, I'll lay out what happened. My end goal is to just have a rooted tab, but at this point, I'd be willing to just have it back to how it was. Preferably without losing everything on it.
-Looked around on how to root it, and found the following, and use the files it suggested.
- Seemed easy enough, and I had rooted/installed android on my old HP Touchpad, so I dl'd the files, and gave it a shot.
- Couldn't get CWM recovery on it, so I ran verify root and it said it wasn't rooted, even though I has SuperSU. It would even ask to grant apps permission, and I'd grant it.
- I opened SuperSU, and it'd say it needed to update the binaries, but would fail on normal, so I dl'd the newest zip, booted into recovery, and tried to load it like that, but 2 lines would come up red. I think they were just verifying signatures, so I ignored it and let it reboot.
- I opened SuperSU again, and it still said it needed the binaries updated, failed on normal attempt. I decided to try again from scratch, unrooting it and all. So, I went into the SuperSU settings and did it's thing, but it still had the version of SuperSU that initially was on it (it wouldn't let me past the "update binaries" prompt).
- I found that I needed to use Odin to flash a stock firmware back on it, and dl'd both version here.
- I tried the first one, and then it wouldn't get past the "Samsung" screen (the 2nd one with just the word Samsung, if it matters).
- I can still boot into Odin and Recovery, thankfully, so I tried the 2nd stock firmware. Same issue.
- Finally, I tried the rooting process again, hoping to get it to boot, same thing. So, I tried the 2nd stock firmware again, praying something good would happen, and still stuck on the Samsung screen.
I can still boot into Odin and recovery, but I have no idea where to go from here. I still want it rooted if possible, and I'd prefer not to lose all my games and such. I just found "[ROOT][RECOVERY] [ALL IN ONE] Cf-Autoroot-twrp-T800-T805-T-700-T705" thread here, but I didn't want to try it just yet.
It's a SM-T800. I had Lollipop on it. Don't know much else to add, but please help!
Thanks all.
Cypher5235 said:
Alright, I'll lay out what happened. My end goal is to just have a rooted tab, but at this point, I'd be willing to just have it back to how it was. Preferably without losing everything on it.
-Looked around on how to root it, and found the following, and use the files it suggested.
- Seemed easy enough, and I had rooted/installed android on my old HP Touchpad, so I dl'd the files, and gave it a shot.
- Couldn't get CWM recovery on it, so I ran verify root and it said it wasn't rooted, even though I has SuperSU. It would even ask to grant apps permission, and I'd grant it.
- I opened SuperSU, and it'd say it needed to update the binaries, but would fail on normal, so I dl'd the newest zip, booted into recovery, and tried to load it like that, but 2 lines would come up red. I think they were just verifying signatures, so I ignored it and let it reboot.
- I opened SuperSU again, and it still said it needed the binaries updated, failed on normal attempt. I decided to try again from scratch, unrooting it and all. So, I went into the SuperSU settings and did it's thing, but it still had the version of SuperSU that initially was on it (it wouldn't let me past the "update binaries" prompt).
- I found that I needed to use Odin to flash a stock firmware back on it, and dl'd both version here.
- I tried the first one, and then it wouldn't get past the "Samsung" screen (the 2nd one with just the word Samsung, if it matters).
- I can still boot into Odin and Recovery, thankfully, so I tried the 2nd stock firmware. Same issue.
- Finally, I tried the rooting process again, hoping to get it to boot, same thing. So, I tried the 2nd stock firmware again, praying something good would happen, and still stuck on the Samsung screen.
I can still boot into Odin and recovery, but I have no idea where to go from here. I still want it rooted if possible, and I'd prefer not to lose all my games and such. I just found "[ROOT][RECOVERY] [ALL IN ONE] Cf-Autoroot-twrp-T800-T805-T-700-T705" thread here, but I didn't want to try it just yet.
It's a SM-T800. I had Lollipop on it. Don't know much else to add, but please help!
Thanks all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well... you said you just updated to lollipop, but in order to not stay stuck at splash screen, you have to factory reset. I saw that you don't want to lose your games and such so you probably only have one option. That option is to flash twrp and make a nandroid of your data. Simply boot into download mode, download the twrp .tar http://twrp.me/devices/samsunggalaxytabs105.html
And now go into Odin, untick autoreboot, now hit the pda/AP button and pick the twrp tar. Hit start and let it do its thing. Now after its done flashing, your gonna have to force reboot. Simply hold power+volume up and down+home button all at the same time. Wait a bit and when the screen turns black, quickly press power+volume up+ home buttons all at the same time and it should boot into twrp.
Now in twrp, hit backup and hit backup data. Hopefully that should save your apps installed. Now after its done, go into wipe and silde factory reset. It should remove installed apps from Google play store and it won't remove pictures and such. It just removes the apps you installed. Then now reboot and wait....
Hopefully this helped
-DUHA
As said you will have to factory reset, this will wipe data and cache.
You can use the link you posted above to install TWRP and root.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-tab-s/development/root-cf-autoroot-twrp-t800-t3079488
Lollipop changes the data partition so even if you back it up and then restore it with twrp In kitkat it likely won't boot afterwards.
All you can do is wipe it and take the hit.
Alright, I have TWRP running. The size of my "data" is just over 16 gig, and my space on the sdcard is 14.9 gig, so I've been trying to delete data to knock it down. I still have 1.3 gig to go. Everything I'm deleting, in the data folder, is barely making an impact.
I see what you're saying that I probably won't be able to restore it and have it work, but I still will try. I can always factory reset it again later. Once I wipe it, though, and update back to lollipop, couldn't I restore that data backup?
I gotta take a break and knock out some real work, lol, then I'll continue, and update here. If nothing else, maybe it'll help some other poor soul like me in the future!
Once I have it booting all the way again, do I just use TWRP to install SuperSU and it's rooted? Thanks again. I appreciate it!
Not sure what youre trying to do here. Just wipe the data partition with twrp,
Sent from my SM-T805 using XDA Free mobile app
Ashyx, I was just trying to save my game data, while ending up with a rooted tab. And you were right, of course! I tried to restore the back up to no avail, haha....well, I wiped it again, and it booted up just fine, and it is rooted to boot. I can't believe it was that easy with TWRP to root it.
I'm betting this isn't going to work out, but is there anyway to extract my game data from that backup I made, and transfer just that back to my tablet? If it is possible, it'll probably be beyond my ability, I bet, but I'm just curious.
One other question. With TWRP, can I get Lollipop back on it? Or do I need something else on it first?
Now, it's off to figure out how to get my Impulse Controller to work with it so I can play my games with it!
Thanks for helping me out, regardless. I truly thought I had bricked my $600 tablet. My wife would've killed me for wasting that much money, lol!
There is an app called nandroid manager that will allow you to extract data from nandroids, you could extract your game data with that.
The better way would be to make a system and data backup of your current system, reflash lollipop then restore your lollipop data backup. Then back up your game data with titanium backup.
Restore your kitkat backup then restore your game data with tb.

[Solved] Issues activating SGS3 SPH-L710 on Sprint with Custom ROM + lots of problems

Hello all!
This is my first foray into the world of custom Android systems, and I'm having a hell of a time with it... if somebody would be able to help me out, I would greatly appreciate it.
First off, the situation:
I am on Sprint, and I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy S3 (SPH-L710) from Sprint to use as a backup phone, I used it for a while on Stock, then deactivated it so I could give it to my wife. First though, I wanted to put a custom ROM on it, and experiment/play around a bit and see what this world of options could do for me. Long story short, I ended up flashing an AICP ROM, and everything seemed to go smoothly, but when I went to activate the phone on my account again and it would not work no matter what I tried (details below). I figured maybe I could activate on the stock setup then just restore my custom setup, so I tried to revert to my stock ROM backup and I couldn't do anything because I was constantly getting messages that various programs had closed... Then I tried to wipe and restore my custom ROM backup and I get stuck in a boot loop... so I tried to flash a stock recovery and I get stuck in a boot loop... I'm out of ideas here, and now I'm stuck with a phone I can't use or do anything with, and I can't activate.
Details:
The initial rooting/install process seemed to work ok, and was fairly straightforward. I followed various guides on http://galaxys3root.com/ to get my phone rooted and backed up (Don't recall which ones now, but I've read through so much by now I don't know if it matters...).
My phone:
Samsung Galaxy S3 (Sprint) SPH-L710
Modem: L710SPRDNJ2
My Desktop:
Debian Linux
Here's the steps I performed:
Rebooted phone in Odin mode
Downloaded CWM S3 Sprint Recovery from the http://galaxys3root.com/ website (can't find the link any more)
Flashed the CWM recovery using Heimdall then rebooted phone into CWM
Installed SuperSU through CWM, then rebooted
Checked that the phone was rooted successfully (it was), then ran Titanium Backup on the whole device to my SD card, then copied the backup files to my desktop computer
Rebooted into CWM, and performed a backup through CWM, then rebooted and copied the CWM backup to my desktop.
Downloaded AICP Rom for my phone from here: http://downloadandroidrom.com/file/GalaxyS3Sprint/roms/AICP/aicp_d2spr_lp-10.0-RELEASE-20150707.zip, put it on my SD card, then installed it through CWM and rebooted
At this point, I was happy with how everything was working, so I did some minor theme customizations then made another backup through CWM, and copied it to my computer, but I did NOT run Titanium this time...
After all of this, I tried to go ahead and activate it through the Sprint web service. This process failed continuously with an unhelpful error message of "Sorry, this device can't be activated right now". I then got on Chat to see if they could activate it manually, and then the problems began. They did their thing activating the phone, but when I booted up I got no data connectivity, and couldn't make calls, and the SIM was not changing over to the new number. I was on the chat with them for over an hour trying to get the situation resolved, but that finally ended when they started asking me to punch in ## codes, because I discovered that none of them worked on my custom ROM. Some quick research told me that this was non-trivial to get around so I had them switch everything back and I started researching the issue.
I found this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1626638&highlight=sph-l710 that looked like it would let me do what I needed from the custom ROM, but I couldn't tell if it would fix my problem for sure, so I figured "I'll just restore my stock setup from that backup I took, activate it and update, then start over". This is when things got really frustrating...
First I rebooted into CWM, went to 'backup/restore', and restored my stock backup
Rebooted, and as soon as I got past the lock screen, I get inundated with messages of various apps being closed unexpectedly.
I researched a bit, discovered the issue may be caused by stale dalvik cache, so I rebooted into CWM, cleared the dalvik cache, formatted the /cache partition, then tried to restore the stock backup again, but this time I get stuck in a boot loop.
I then rebooted into CWM, tried to restore the backup of my AICP ROM, only to be stuck in a boot loop as well.
Trying to get into any usable system, I rebooted to CWM, cleared dalvik cache, then formatted /cache, /data, and /system just to be sure, and re-flashed the base AICP ROM I started with. This worked fine, and before long I had stock AICP back
Since I still couldn't get the phone to activate in the custom ROM, and my backups are apparently completely useless, I rebooted into CWM, wiped dalvik, /cache, /data, and /system again and tried to install a different stock ROM I found in the XDA forums (here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s3-sprint/development/stock-rom-4-4-2-t3010642) only to be greeted by another bootloop
At this point I've spent well over 24 man-hours trying to get this to work, reading, researching, flashing, etc all to no avail. Nothing I do seems to work, and it seems like every article, tutorial, or forum thread I read either has nothing to do with my device, is too old, or doesn't describe my problem.
I'm at wits end, and am so frustrated I'm ready to just give up and smash this device and buy a new one... My questions to the community are as follows:
I know I screwed up on a couple of things, but in my initial research of doing this there was no indication that these were even things I needed to watch out for... Is there any more organized sources of information for doing this sort of thing?
Does anybody else out there use Sprint on a custom ROM, and if so how you you pull this off
Where else have I screwed up, and how can I fix this situation? (My end goal is still to get the S3 onto Sprint with a custom ROM)
What can I do differently next time? I would like to figure this out and do it to other phones and devices I have, but if it's this much trouble every time, I just don't have the time to mess with it.
Thank you in advance, and I appreciate any information that the community can provide.
This sounds like a CWM problem to me. If I were you, I'd boot the phone into Odin Mode and flash TWRP ( www.twrp.me ) then try flashing the latest aicp nightly downloaded from the official site ( www.aicp-rom.com ). Check the md5sums on everything! Then maybe try flashing a touchwiz ROM and activating your phone. Remember that you need to wipe the internal storage when you go between KitKat and lollipop.
I'm fairly certain you have to do activation with the stock Touchwiz roms -- once the phone is activated you can flash a custom.
You should go into recovery and wipe everything (System/data/etc) EXCEPT for the External SD Card
Power off - pull the battery for a few - power on directly into download mode
Odin NJ2 back onto the phone and reboot and activate it (skip through most of the setup since you'll flash a custom after)
Once you know it's activated and working under the stock Touchwiz, then again power off and Odin TWRP recovery
Then you can go back into recovery, wipe everything except External SD, and flash the custom rom back on.
Looks like swapping CWM for TWRP did the trick.
Flashed TWRP no problems, and put CleanBean on there to get the phone activated. Still wouldn't work automatically over the Sprint website, but I got on chat with them and they fixed me right up. Downloading a fresh copy of AICP now...
Is it worth it to keep the CWM backups I made earlier, or should I just go ahead and flush them? I figured just get rid of them since restoring them wasn't working anyway, but I figured I would ask.
Now to move all the data over to the new phone. Thanks so much for your help guys!
afarris01 said:
Looks like swapping CWM for TWRP did the trick.
Flashed TWRP no problems, and put CleanBean on there to get the phone activated. Still wouldn't work automatically over the Sprint website, but I got on chat with them and they fixed me right up. Downloading a fresh copy of AICP now...
Is it worth it to keep the CWM backups I made earlier, or should I just go ahead and flush them? I figured just get rid of them since restoring them wasn't working anyway, but I figured I would ask.
Now to move all the data over to the new phone. Thanks so much for your help guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Get rid of them. TWRP can't restore CWM even if the backup is good

Totally wiped my samsung galaxy sm-t111nq device. HELP!!!!

hello everyone,
recently i wanted to upgrade my Samsung galaxy tab 3, model:sm-t111nq device to see if it would install the telephony functionality on my device because it was running on a customized stock firmware (from samsung i guess) with no telephony functionality which means i can't make or receive calls. I flashed the firmware with odin two times but it got interrupted the second time, so it couldn't boot up. i searched for solutions on the internet, any time i tries to flash the firmware using odin it stops at file analysis and every time i try flashing with recovery it says "E:/ could not mount system" or something like that, then i installed twrp recovery to see if i could remove the firmware and flash it again still the same error. Now this is where i messed up, I initially wanted to just wipe the cache completely at first following a solution online but after doing this it still didn't work and so i felt i needed to wipe more than just that, and with no backup i went ahead to wipe the whole thing including EFS, system, data, preload, i basically selected all the boxes there :crying:. now i really dont know what to do seems like i'm the only one that messed up this bad. Please help me out. Can i use the back up of another of the same type of device to restore it and get it running. Please help, just wanna use it again even if its not gonna come with the complete functionalities.

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