Develop Bugs

Restore advice sought re MOBO replacement

Hi Guys,
Some time ago my SGH-i927 turned off and refused to come back on, it was sent to a couple of repair specialists who confirmed it was dead; an ex SGH-i927; it was no more, it had shuffled off it's mortal coil......e.t.c.
....now I have splashed out on a 'for spares showing extreme wear' handset from a well know auction site, supposedly it switches on but because of a broken screen is otherwise unusable. My hope is to swap the innards of the spares into my old phone which has a decent screen in a desperate attempt to achieve a single working handset.
I have backups both NANDROID and EFS from my old phone before it passed away. I've searched on restoring the NANDROID and this would seem to be a workable proposition, however, I have found little on restoring EFS to a 'repaired' phone. There were hints that this might over write the IMEI of the donor with the IMEI of my old phone. The legalities of this would appear to be somewhat dubious. As I presumably own the rights to both IMEI's and there will still only be one phone with it, what are your thoughts ?
My old phone was network unlocked using an unlocking code based on it's IMEI - which of the 'Backups' contains this setting (I'm guessing EFS) ?,
If I just restore the NANDROID would the unlocked status be preserved or would I need the EFS too?
What other issues might I encounter if I try to restore the EFS ?
Your help with these questions would be gratefully received.

requiem_mortis said:
Hi Guys,
Some time ago my SGH-i927 turned off and refused to come back on, it was sent to a couple of repair specialists who confirmed it was dead; an ex SGH-i927; it was no more, it had shuffled off it's mortal coil......e.t.c.
....now I have splashed out on a 'for spares showing extreme wear' handset from a well know auction site, supposedly it switches on but because of a broken screen is otherwise unusable. My hope is to swap the innards of the spares into my old phone which has a decent screen in a desperate attempt to achieve a single working handset.
I have backups both NANDROID and EFS from my old phone before it passed away. I've searched on restoring the NANDROID and this would seem to be a workable proposition, however, I have found little on restoring EFS to a 'repaired' phone. There were hints that this might over write the IMEI of the donor with the IMEI of my old phone. The legalities of this would appear to be somewhat dubious. As I presumably own the rights to both IMEI's and there will still only be one phone with it, what are your thoughts ?
My old phone was network unlocked using an unlocking code based on it's IMEI - which of the 'Backups' contains this setting (I'm guessing EFS) ?,
If I just restore the NANDROID would the unlocked status be preserved or would I need the EFS too?
What other issues might I encounter if I try to restore the EFS ?
Your help with these questions would be gratefully received.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AS i know it would preserv. if not, you wil lbe able to use old unlock code with old imei.
Be sure to backup OLD and NEW efs.
Laws here perevent to mess with radio things, and that means you are forbidden to change your imei.
Manipulating the efs may brick your phone. I would start backup efs, and restore old one, and see what happens.

bubor thankyou for your response, may I ask for clarification
Laws here perevent to mess with radio things, and that means you are forbidden to change your imei.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would restoring my Old 'EFS' to the transplanted / replacement motherboard constitute 'messing with radio things' ?
I ask so as to avoid breaking the law ...UK LAW
Please PM me if you do not wish to publish an answer

Further research would indicate that the WiFi MAC address may also be stored in the EFS folder, if I overwrite the EFS of the donor MOBO with my backup file would the WiFi still work ?
Can anyone confirm if the WiFi component would still work with a transplanted EFS ?
All thoughts gratefully received.

Absentmindedly wiped /factory, lost IMEI, what can i do?

So I formatted /factory in clockworkmod before installing a new rom. Now I have no signal and the IMEI is lost. After some research I realized that I erased nv_data.bin from /factory and with new rom install this file was missing and it is needed for the IMEI and thus getting signal and radio use.
Does anyone know of a fix, or can you please send me your nv_data.bin files so I can flash to my phone. I have no backup at all, am I screwed?
Thanks

hshaikh said:
So I formatted /factory in clockworkmod before installing a new rom. Now I have no signal and the IMEI is lost. After some research I realized that I erased nv_data.bin from /factory and with new rom install this file was missing and it is needed for the IMEI and thus getting signal and radio use.
Does anyone know of a fix, or can you please send me your nv_data.bin files so I can flash to my phone. I have no backup at all, am I screwed?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I faced a similar issue with wiping the /factory. Did NOT have a back up. Visited a local mobile service shop (one of those shops in the subway in the city center filled with china make mobiles and lots of noise), he had some sort of a box (SPT may be) and got it repaired for 600Rs. ($35 equivalent)
I suggest you do the same -
The IMEI number is on the back of the phone under the battery
Thanks
Ghanashyam

ghanashyamprabhu said:
I faced a similar issue with wiping the /factory. Did NOT have a back up. Visited a local mobile service shop (one of those shops in the subway in the city center filled with china make mobiles and lots of noise), he had some sort of a box (SPT may be) and got it repaired for 600Rs. ($35 equivalent)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there someone in the Chicago area with a SPT box that can repair my Galaxy Nexus' IMEI?
I've got this same issue. It's a growing problem especially since CWM allows you to wipe /factory. I know of several others that can use help.

The devices used to restore bricked or no-imei phones are called JTAG boxes. There are several different variations, such as RIFF or as mentioned SPT are a few ones you can buy, they are around ~$100 US.
Just google "JTAG box" or "Galaxy nexus jtag box" to get an idea of the ones out there. Amazon and eBay also have some descriptions of them.
You need or find someone with one of these if you accidentally deleted your EFS/Factory/radio/imei partition without backing them up. (mmcblk0p3 on Galaxy Nexus). The JTAG software and device will help restore your phone to the original stock condition. Not everyone has this tool, but a true phone repair shop or specialist should.

EFS partition Backup

I've bought used N910A phone and the EFS parition was corrupted, so it had to be wiped in service mode. The rest is working fine and after ODIN with stock rom + temporary root I can access to EFS partition, but it doesn't include anything so I need to put there content. The best way could be if somebody will give me the EFS partition backup then I will change IMEI and certificate for original one.
Thanks in advance for this. It will save my life!
You can PM to me if you don't want to share this EFS on the forum.

zencooler said:
I've bought used N910A phone and the EFS parition was corrupted, so it had to be wiped in service mode. The rest is working fine and after ODIN with stock rom + temporary root I can access to EFS partition, but it doesn't include anything so I need to put there content. The best way could be if somebody will give me the EFS partition backup then I will change IMEI and certificate for original one.
Thanks in advance for this. It will save my life!
You can PM to me if you don't want to share this EFS on the forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can anybody help in this, please? It is very simply help, so any support will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Doubt anyone here wants to share EFS files. When you talk about altering EFS and IMEI, you're getting into legal issues with phones.

jack man said:
Doubt anyone here wants to share EFS files. When you talk about altering EFS and IMEI, you're getting into legal issues with phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I whole heartedly agree. If you messed the phone up that bad you should mostlilely not be messing with it or take it to some place to service it for you.
And just an FYI i have seen alot of not so well english speakers askong for different parts of firmware or code of devices so the could build clones. I have been in the software and devices running linux code for over 10 years starting out with FTA (free to air) and we had a company out of south korea build our units and we did the code to make the set top boxes work. We many of our units cloned and our software stolen reversed and rebuilt to make it look like theirs. Thats why i got out of that business.
So thats why you are going to have a real hard time finding someone to share their efs partition. And you should always backup your device before doing anything to it ever and never ever aquire one with a missine imei or efs

giga8547 said:
I whole heartedly agree. If you messed the phone up that bad you should mostlilely not be messing with it or take it to some place to service it for you.
And just an FYI i have seen alot of not so well english speakers askong for different parts of firmware or code of devices so the could build clones. I have been in the software and devices running linux code for over 10 years starting out with FTA (free to air) and we had a company out of south korea build our units and we did the code to make the set top boxes work. We many of our units cloned and our software stolen reversed and rebuilt to make it look like theirs. Thats why i got out of that business.
So thats why you are going to have a real hard time finding someone to share their efs partition. And you should always backup your device before doing anything to it ever and never ever aquire one with a missine imei or efs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course I fully agree with you. I am android user since first android comercial impementation (on HTC G1), and of course I always make nandroid backup and EFS backup. This time it is completely different story. As I said I've bought phone with corrupted EFS partition, but full information about IMEI is available. So the only way to make this phone running is to get any EFS partition and change settings. For people having doubts: you can get rid IMEI from settings from the EFS partition. I just need the content to set up the rest.
Thanks in advance. Please PM to me if you can help me. Once again: thanks.

N3N Hex anyone?

Hi, i backed up my efs using twrp anyway and only did the firmware, used the phone only for a week and now the baseband is gone out of blue.
no imei.
i have tried million ways however now i think i've only two options. either i go to some profession (hard to find) to use some "boxes" and fix it for me, i play with nv-data hex file or the imei folder's to make something work!
is it possible? it might be illegal in some countries to touch the nvdata file however, if i'm only replacing my imei, i wouldn't really care if its illegal.
hope someone can help.

I don't know how but I lost my two IMEIs numbers, how to restore them please? Note10+

Hi all,
After I played with some custom roms and get back to the stock rom, I found my Note 10+ N975F without IMEIs number, is there anyway to write them again? I searched a lot on the internet but could't find any solutions.
Best Regards

I recall a mandatory step before flashing roms or tinkering with the OS, it was making an EFS backup, but, in these days I do not know if it is still the case

winol said:
I recall a mandatory step before flashing roms or tinkering with the OS, it was making an EFS backup, but, in these days I do not know if it is still the case
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's still the method used. Without the EFS backup you are left with a lemon of a device if things goes wrong. This will be a expensive lesson for the thread starter. The warranty will not cover this since the phone been rooted. If people only made some research before rooting their phone. Oh well.......

Thanks @winol and @ELMoro752 , I visited a local official Samsung partner and they told me I must change the Motherboard which cost about 350$, then I went to a repair shop, he told me maybe he can fix it from a Server (!?) for 70$ and he told me that the EFS file was deleted which contain the IMEI numbers.
Best Regards

Thanks @winol and @ELMoro752 , I visited a local official Samsung partner and they told me I must change the Motherboard which cost about 350$, then I went to a repair shop, he told me maybe he can fix it from a Server (!?) for 70$ and he told me that the EFS file was deleted which contain the IMEI numbers.
Best Regards