Hello all,
My S3 currently has TWRP 2.7.0.1 recovery and CM11 installed. It was also previously encrypted.
Recently the gapps on my S3 have completely stopped working. New accounts cannot be added and the programs immediately crash upon starting. Deleting the app-data for these has had no effect.
While I can decrypt the phone for regular use, I cannot do the same in recovery to reinstall gapps. Consequentially, it appears that the best option would be to wipe out everything to get rid of the encryption. Unfortunately, it seems that you cannot flash a new ROM over an encrypted partition via recovery. I have reached the conclusion that Odin should be used to reformat everything.
Is this a correct understanding? And how would I go about doing this safely?
First, backup everything you can. Then try a factory reset. If this doesnt help, choose format data from recovery. (Formatting /data will wipe the internal sd card).
If all else fails, then go for the odin flash. From what I have seen though the factory reset or format should be sufficient.
Be very careful using Odin of you have a 4.3 or newer bootloader. You don't want to flash an incorrect modern or bootloader which can brick your phone.
Very true, always be careful of this. I dont usually mention it for Odin flashes though because Odin will recognize the versions and will refuse to flash. Its usually flashing via recovery that is the most dangerous in my experience. (But I have seen odin flashes go bad too, its kind of rare, but always be careful with what youre doing.)
Related
I've got the intergalactic ROM installed on my S3 and I've had it for a while. I want to change ROMs but every time I flash a new one it flashes fine but when the phone boots up it tells me the setup wizard failed and a bunch of other stuff stopped working. any ideas on what it could be?
I'm using CWM.
Also if I just wanted to wipe everything on my phone and go back to stock so that I can re root it and try flashing roms then how would I do that?
You probably just need to factory reset. If you wanted to go back to stock rooted, flash the root66 firmware via odin then boot recovery and factory reset. Note that factory reset from stock recovery will wipe internal sd. From cwm/twrp it will leave internal sd alone unless you "format data".
Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk
Hi,
I was frustrated with the delay in T-Mobile's release of KitKat for the GSIII, so I decided to root my phone last night in order to try flashing CM11 on it. Rooted my phone with Towelroot, installed ROM Manager and CWM, and created backups on Kies and through CWM. Then I proceeded to do data wipe/factory reset, cache wipe, and /system format. Tried to flash CM11, but got a status 7 error.
I freaked out, so I decided to restore everything from the backup I'd created. Restoration seemed like a success, but now I get the error "Unfortunately, the process com.google.process.gapps has stopped" in an endless loop, and it prevents me and any apps from doing anything. I tried clearing dalvik cache in recovery, but the problem still persists. Read on a few threads that I should flash to stock firmware via Odin, but I'm currently on a macbook, so I can't install it.
tl;dr - Prepped to flash CM11, reached status 7 error, got freaked out, and did restore via CWM, only to get infinite loop of gapp crashes. No access to Odin or PC. Not hard bricked or soft bricked, but essentially useless phone. Help? );
if you can still get to recovery, download latest gapps and flash that
Did you factory reset before or after you restored your back up?
Yeah, I've tried flashing gapps--no avail.
And yeah, I did factory reset/data wipe, cache wipe, /system format 3x each before attempting to restore. Was that wrong? /:
Try to factory reset again
vvnn said:
Yeah, I've tried flashing gapps--no avail.
And yeah, I did factory reset/data wipe, cache wipe, /system format 3x each before attempting to restore. Was that wrong? /:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I'm not mistaken, there is some device ID that will change each time you flash a new rom. It may be something to do with this ID not matching the one in the restored data. Purely a guess but seems logical to me.
Anyway, factory resetting will most likely solve this for you, but I wanted to add that except in certain circumstances, you shouldn't ever manually format /system. (and one format on any partition is sufficient. There shouldn't be any need to format multiple times). If you format /system, you are wiping the O/S off of your device. Then what happens if you have problems flashing a rom, or firmware? I've seen it happen many times and I often end up spending a couple of days working with them just to get the thing to boot up again!
When you flash a rom, the first thing it does is format /system. So there is just no need to do this manually. At least if the rom fails to flash (such as failing the assert checks), youll still have something to boot into. Hope this helps in the future!
I have had the exact same issue. I have a Samsung note 2 N7105. I rooted made a backup in CWM and flashed ditto n3/s5 rom made another backup in CWM. No issues. Got a bit cocky seen as it was my first time doing anything like that. My next adventure was to try a custom kernel (agni). This didn't go so well, so I tried to do a restorw to my working backup of ditto n3/s5 rom through CMW. restore went smoothly and the phone booted. once I opened the lock screen I got the gapps error as described. I had to do a factory reset to get the phone working and then re-flashed ditto n3/s3. I've since flashed other roms and when ever I try to do a restore, I get the issue described. Note I am using the latest CWM. I putting off flashing and trying any other ROMs because of this issue. I do love dn3/s5 but id love to try others. Anyone can help it would be appreciate.
Edit: Check this whole first post, because I have made some additional entries concerning failures and potential cures to things. I will update when my current encryption test is complete.
For the short version see the tldr at the bottom.
I have been trying different combinations of things all day in my last ditch attempt to get encryption working without needing to flash my original firmware back on from odin, since I hate the thought of how long it takes and what could go wrong.
The secret that I have worked out today is I install TWRP, wipe everything out, factory reset, wipe etc. Then install the rom, in my case it was my TWRP backup of my original firmware installed and then later CM11 M12, then immediately after flashing, reboot to download mode and flash the stock recovery image (I had to get a guide and use my linux VPS to turn the extracted recovery.img into a .tar.md5 and use that for flashing my original recovery. Then boot to recovery (now the genuine original recovery) and perform a factory reset. Then boot the phone up and the encryption works. Right now CM11 is at 38% encryption! Just before I started this off, I also had 100% success with encryption using my TWRP backup of a stock firmware install, using this same method. Once it is encrypted I will flash TWRP back on here as I did before and it should be good.
My theory (I am too burned out to test it at this point, I just want my phone working...) is that the issue is not whether you have TWRP installed, but whether the final factory reset (before booting up phone for usage) is performed by an official recovery or a third party recovery. So I bet it would work if you perform the factory reset and then immediately flash TWRP back on there and then boot up and perform the encryption.
Plus, in theory since I am using CM11 encryption, TWRP should be able to access /data which means I can keep this encryption and flash what ever rom I want using TWRP and upon booting it "should" just work. I tested this once before when I lucked out and got encryption working on some rom (I forget now which it was) but I was able to do a wipe with TWRP and install a different rom and the encryption still worked, still booted up fine.
Do you have any thoughts on this topic? Maybe I am reinventing the wheel...? I have not seen any of this referenced in any of the text or video guides I have been checking out. So I thought I would share this just in case. It might work for other samsung phones too.
STAND BY. The encryption did not work and I am trying a slight modification that is also proceeding. I am 19% on encrypting CM10.2. This time I did the usual TWRP wipes and then once wiped, Immediate flash of the original stock recovery (no OS install yet), then perform a factory reset and then flash TWRP again. Then I installed CM10.2 and skipped through the setup wizard and went straight to setting up encryption. Where usually it fails, it is actually performing the encryption. I have hopes that since the factory reset from the stock firmware's recovery was performed BEFORE the OS install, that it should... should work this time. I have a feeling the prior one failed because of doing a factory reset from one rom's recovery on a different rom's OS. So doing the factory reset before the OS install might be what will make it work. I will update soon.
Edit: It worked flawlessly... Booted up, authenticated, everything is fine. I am now running the same test with CM11 (M12) Also, I am not sure if this will work, but once I performed the final factory reset via the stock recovery (before re-flashing TWRP to begin OS install) I made a backup. My hope is that instead of reflashing and re-flashing back and forth, that the backup I made will have everything ready as if I had done a stock recovery based factory reset. If I decide to ditch CM11 I will test this theory out. I should also mention that the last test I mentioned with CM10.2 worked even though TWRP was presently still installed. So the presence of the stock recovery is not required, rather it is the factory reset from a stock rom being the final step required before the OS ROM install process.
Edit: There seems to be an issue with CM11. Twice now it has failed to work on CM11. I will try CM12 next, using my backup of a freshly official factory reset. If it fails I will do the whole process on 12 and see if it works and report back.
Edit: CM12 encryption by using the TWRP backup of a freshly factory reset (via stock recovery) failed. I am in the process of waiting for the first initial boot and setup wizard to complete of my second attempt at CM12 encryption via the full final step of actual stock recovery factory reset before CM12 installation via TWRP that is flashed after the stock recovery factory reset. I will update if this works. If it works and boots up correctly while encrypted, then it means a TWRP of a stock recovery factory reset is not adequate to replicate a true factory reset and the developers of TWRP should be made aware of this so they can enhance their own factory reset feature to allow encryption to work. If it doesn't work then there is something definitely wrong with CM11 and CM12 since both the stock firmware and CM10.2 encrypt using this full factory reset method. Stay tuned, wizard just came on screen...
Edit: Ok, weird... this time the encryption process has begun, whereas using my TWRP backup that was made after doing the stock factory reset did not get to this point, although the percentage counter started from 100% and counting... Right now the encryption is at 146% completed. That is very odd... I will report back if the encryption process actually ends up with a successfully booting phone or not, since CM11 failed at the booting phase. Before I save this edit, ne thing I am noticing is the progress percentage is going up rather fast compared to any other ROM. Right now it is at 177% and right now it is 179%, now it is 183% and I type fast... Stay tuned.
Edit: The encryption process worked and rebooted, asked for authentication and came up, however upon unlocking verious apps like CM bug reporter and whisper and others crash sometimes resulting in a OS loading screen and a fresh unlock needing to be performed.
tldr: When installing ANY rom, you need to wipe the file systems with TWRP or other similar recovery, then flash your stock firmware's recovery image (not the whole firmware, just the recovery, which means you need to extract the recovery.img from your flash file using 7zip and then follow these instructions: http://www.w0lfdroid.com/2013/04/android-how-to-convert-img-recovery-to.html to create a .tar.md5 file that odin can use to flash your recovery rom. (load odin, click AP or PDA and set your recovery tar.md5 and untick the two boxes that are always on by default. I use Odin v3.09). Then after you have wiped the file systems with TWRP (format data, then wipe the other mount points) then with your stock recovery perform a factory reset. Then flash TWRP or what ever custom recovery you use and just install your ROM, no other formatting or anything else, just install (not restore). Then the encryption will work, assuming there are no bugs in the rom that prevent it working on your handset, as seen on my handset with CM11 and the weird bugs with apps crashing on CM12.
So my recommendation is that the developer(s) of TWRP change the way they perform the factory reset, to emulate the actual process that a stock recovery uses, so that you do not need to keep reflashing your recovery images over and over when you need a fresh install.
Notes: CM11 M12 fails to boot, post successful encryption process, while CM12 nightly (18th March 2015) has bugs with apps crashing after successful bootup post encryption.
I have verified all this twice since. It is the stock recovery factory format that is needed before you install your ROM. I hope this helps the other people that I have seen having encryption problems.
Some how I have screwed up my partitions. I was able to Odin to stock lollipop and I can get into download and recovery. However I cannot flash anything at all at this point. In TWRP when I try to flash a custom ROM, Kernel or even the lastest TWRP version, all that happens is recovery restarts. This all started when I tried to flash SlimLP ROM. It flashed fine but would only bootloop when I tried to start phone. So I wiped everything and reflashed lollipop AllianceROM. The phone started okay but I got some error message about the UID. I noticed right away that ALL my text messages which should have been wiped were intact. The phone was running really, really slow and I had continual issues installing apps from the Playstore and TiBu. I decided to try another ROM and again wiped everything, flashed and rebooted. Again text messages were intact. I believe it's my system and/or data partition that is messed up but I am not sure. I'm not knowledgable about any of this so I really need some help here.
Factory reset in TWRP a few times and power down. Pull the battery, reinstall and Odin stock OB7 again. Watch the auto boot, it should go into stock recovery noted only by a android with wavy antennas and small progress bar that may not even fill before booting the ROM.
If you don't see that, factory reset, power down and try again. Make sure stock is OK before trying another flash. Also, use internal memory to flash from. Almost sounds like your sdcard is encrypted?
BTW, I don't know of any available PIT file for our phone. I thought it may be included in the stock tar but who knows for sure? One thing I learned a while back on the older phones going from CM to stock, flash twice to correct the partitions. Maybe it still works? -different recoveries; flash, reboot recovery, flash again. Those ROMs included recovery.
Before going to Alliance, factory reset.
From the sound of things you don't need a pit file to repartition your phone. Don't attempt to mess with that. I would do what was suggested above. Just make sure you do the "factory reset" several times then wipe data several times. also go into advanced wipe and wipe everything EXCEPT your external micro-sd card several times as well. then odin flash the stock BOB7 rom tar. That should do it.
tx_dbs_tx said:
From the sound of things you don't need a pit file to repartition your phone. Don't attempt to mess with that. I would do what was suggested above. Just make sure you do the "factory reset" several times then wipe data several times. also go into advanced wipe and wipe everything EXCEPT your external micro-sd card several times as well. then odin flash the stock BOB7 rom tar. That should do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
samep said:
Factory reset in TWRP a few times and power down. Pull the battery, reinstall and Odin stock OB7 again. Watch the auto boot, it should go into stock recovery noted only by a android with wavy antennas and small progress bar that may not even fill before booting the ROM.
If you don't see that, factory reset, power down and try again. Make sure stock is OK before trying another flash. Also, use internal memory to flash from. Almost sounds like your sdcard is encrypted?
BTW, I don't know of any available PIT file for our phone. I thought it may be included in the stock tar but who knows for sure? One thing I learned a while back on the older phones going from CM to stock, flash twice to correct the partitions. Maybe it still works? -different recoveries; flash, reboot recovery, flash again. Those ROMs included recovery.
Before going to Alliance, factory reset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you both. I did just what you guys suggested and it worked out! Thank you again!
Hey guys, could one of you please tell me how to do a complete wipe?
I'm having so many problems with TWRP at the moment, and so I want to nuke the partitions in hope that it'll fix it. I've tried using the fastboot format commands for system, data & cache. I've also tried to wipe the recovery, but it gives me the error "Formatting is not supported for filesystem with type ' ' ". So for that I just use format erase and flash the recovery again.
The only other partitions I know of are the boot and bootloader, but I don't want to touch them if at all possible.
The problem I'm having and why I want to wipe sotrage is that if I install sultan's LinageOS (haven't tested with other ROMs yet), TWRP ****s the bed and will make the device undetectable from ADB, (while TWRP is still running though), and if I then try to go into TWRP again, it'll hang, crash, and somehow make the ROM think its just been freshly installed again (data partition corruption?), and it'll do that every time I reboot from then on. The only way to fix this is to wipe the phone as I mentioned earlier, but it will always get stuck again when I re-flash the ROM.
Also, another unusual thing is that when I boot the phone, it has the old boot splash from my previous ROM when loading recovery or for the first few seconds when loading a ROM. So that might be having an effect on the problems I'm having, and what makes me believe that wiping will help.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Sorry if it's a bit incoherent)
TL;DR: Flash TWRP, load TWRP, flash ROM, flash Gapps, load ROM, restart, load TWRP, TWRP hangs, crashes, and breaks ROM. ROM will keep being broken until full wipe. Also weird thing where I have old boot splash from old ROM.
Edit: Ended up bricking my phone, and using the unbrick tool to fix that. It seems that it was what I was looking for, where it wiped the phone completely. I'll have to see if that actually fixes my problem.
TWRP 3.1.xx is having this problem, believe the fix is to use the blue_spark 3.1.xx version or the nethunter 3.0.4-1 version, both found here on the forums somewhere