I've found myself stuck trying to flash a ROM. I'm a newbie, this was my first attempt at something like this, I though I read enough about the process but I guess I screwed up something. I will try to be to the point.
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S3 AT&T i747
Rooted phone with Casual, installed ROM Toolbox and purchased the pro upgrade.
installed TWRP 2.5 and made a nandroid backup, the only place this backup existed was in internal storage.
used ROM toolbox to backup user apps and user data
selected cyanogenmod 10.1 RC5 from within ROM Toolbox and there was a requester for gapps and a checked the box for that also. When the DL was complete I installed the ROM queue with those two items and I checked the boxes Wipe Data & Cache and Wipe dalvic-cache.
Phone went to recovery mode (i guess) and appeared to clear the memory and load the new rom, the phone rebooted and I got the cyanogenmod boot screen but then it went to a requester saying:
Unfortunately , the process com.google.process.gapps has stopped.
When you hit ok you get:
Unfortunately, setup wizard has stopped.
this requester never goes away, just keeps popping up when you hit ok.
So I removed the battery and booted the phone in recovery mode and try to restore but the restore nandroid file in not shown. If I hit the center button in the restore window it says "updating partition details" but never returns.
Whenever you power it up normally now you end up in this gapps loop.
My searching suggested I may have tried to install the wrong version of google apps somehow. What are my options for trying to recover from this? Does my backup still exist somewhere?
If process.gapps is your only warning you can try to reflash the gapps zip from here. http://goo.im/gapps/gapps-jb-20130301-signed.zip If this does not fix your problem, you will have to head deeper into the rabbit hold
You can look for your back with a file explorer. Should be in sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS/******** (random number). If you dont see them here, check your ext-sd in the same location. If you don't see them, they are gone. Do a Nandroid backup now just to be sure you have one. You should chose to back it up to external in TWRP. As for your FC problem, it would appear that you have not wiped fully. You will likely need to factory reset. the problem is this will remove everything. Titanium back up is a great product for situations like this. If you have used it, you can transfer your backup from the internal storage while connected to your pc. Also copy your DCIM folder as it will contain your photos. This is why you will need to do another Nandroid, because worst case scenario, you can just restore this one.
Thanks for the reply. I will try to reflash the gapps file from the external as soon I can download it, the site is having some trouble right now. I made another Nandroid of the phones current state and stored it to external. I did also have Titanium backup and had backups of the whole system with it. Unfortunately they are also only on the internal storage.
Re-installing the gapps zip file off the extSD from within TWRP did the trick. All the data and backups I created are also still there and are now backed up in several places.
Something that compounded the problem was the 64GB sd card I have for the phone. I was not able to mount it on either of my linux mint machines or an XP machine. Some oddness with the exFAT file system on it, I used a 4GB card I had laying around and it worked fine.
Thank you for the help, the phone is now running CM which is what I wanted and I learned a few things too.
theaxis695 said:
Re-installing the gapps zip file off the extSD from within TWRP did the trick. All the data and backups I created are also still there and are now backed up in several places.
Something that compounded the problem was the 64GB sd card I have for the phone. I was not able to mount it on either of my linux mint machines or an XP machine. Some oddness with the exFAT file system on it, I used a 4GB card I had laying around and it worked fine.
Thank you for the help, the phone is now running CM which is what I wanted and I learned a few things too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just bought a 64GB card as well. You may be having troubles mounting it due to a partition that comes factory in the SD. If this is the case, you can look at post #57 on the following page http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1915385&page=6
It helped me tremendously.
Let me first apologize for all of the information, but I wanted to give you guys as much to go on as possible.
TLDWR - Can't flash roms, can't decrypt phone, can't wipe data, can't mount internal storage, can't use ODIN....where next?
Here is what I got:
SPH-L710
Android vers - 4.2.2
Cyanogenmod vers - 10.1.0-d2spr
Was getting flaky reception when I was on 10.0.0 nightly, decided to update to 10.1.2. Downloaded the the required files through Rom Manager, rebooted into CWM Recovery version 6.0.3.1 (non-touch) and did the install (dirty)....booted up and the ROM itself worked, but all my apps were getting "stopped unexpectedly". I figured, ok, did a dirty update so stuff isn't working; I'll redo it and this time wipe everything (after backup of course). When I went to do this, I noticed that it did not mount my sdcard (internal storage, not external sd card). I thought was odd, tried manually mounting, didn't work, tried rebooting recovery and that didn't work. Thought maybe it was a fluke, tried wiping and reflashing 4.2.2 (CM 10.1.2).....it went very quickly. Rebooted, and all of my stuff is gone, which is good, but now it won't let me restore apps.
At this point, I decided I'd had enough of trying to upgrade, so I decided to downgrade back to my old CM 10.0.0....long story short, the flash went quickly, booted up, things worked, but still had the same problem with the apps. I could see the data on the internal storage when the phone was booted, but it never saw it in recovery mode. After doing some reading, I saw where the filesystem changed when going to 4.2.2 so that you can use the new profiles feature. This seems to be what caused CWM Recovery to not see my internal storage anymore.
I thought well, maybe it's because I am back on 10.0.0, so I tried downloading and flashing 10.1.0. It did the same quick flash and showed after boot that I was running on 10.1.0, but I still couldn't mount internal storage (sdcard) in Recovery. I said screw it, reinstalled my apps and decided to truck on with how it was. Short version here - installed mobileiron and touchdown, ran through the encryption in mobileiron, etc etc...mobileiron didn't recognize touchdown and I could not get LEAP for wifi to work.
Decided I would try to decrypt and completely wipe phone. Removed Mobileiron as administrator, tried to decrypt - could not. Tried tweaking security settings, reboots, adb mount and format - all to no avail. Tried wiping in recovery....this failed because it cannot read my storage (because it can't mount it and it is now encrypted)!
With the phone booted up and running adb shell, I can get to the main file system, but my sdcard, data, data/media directories all look empty. I can't mount sdcard through ADB either.
When all of this failed, I looked to ODIN to fix my woes...no luck here either. Downloaded the stock Sprint ROM (4.1.1 L710VPBLJ7 L710SPRBLJ7 ) and tried flashing it but I get hung up on the "Setup Connection"...in ODIN. I have tried multiple drivers, usb ports, battery pulls, etc...I even tried from another PC.
I know this is a lot of information and I apologize again. If you read through all that, thanks for being thorough...if not, I will answer your questions, but hopefully won't have to repeat a bunch of info again.
My end all questions are - where do I go from here? What other options do I have? Is there any repair place I might be able to take this to that they might be able to decrypt/flash the phone to stock for me?
Thanks in advance,
dwnocturnal
dwnocturnal said:
Let me first apologize for all of the information, but I wanted to give you guys as much to go on as possible.
TLDWR - Can't flash roms, can't decrypt phone, can't wipe data, can't mount internal storage, can't use ODIN....where next?
Here is what I got:
SPH-L710
Android vers - 4.2.2
Cyanogenmod vers - 10.1.0-d2spr
Was getting flaky reception when I was on 10.0.0 nightly, decided to update to 10.1.2. Downloaded the the required files through Rom Manager, rebooted into CWM Recovery version 6.0.3.1 (non-touch) and did the install (dirty)....booted up and the ROM itself worked, but all my apps were getting "stopped unexpectedly". I figured, ok, did a dirty update so stuff isn't working; I'll redo it and this time wipe everything (after backup of course). When I went to do this, I noticed that it did not mount my sdcard (internal storage, not external sd card). I thought was odd, tried manually mounting, didn't work, tried rebooting recovery and that didn't work. Thought maybe it was a fluke, tried wiping and reflashing 4.2.2 (CM 10.1.2).....it went very quickly. Rebooted, and all of my stuff is gone, which is good, but now it won't let me restore apps.
At this point, I decided I'd had enough of trying to upgrade, so I decided to downgrade back to my old CM 10.0.0....long story short, the flash went quickly, booted up, things worked, but still had the same problem with the apps. I could see the data on the internal storage when the phone was booted, but it never saw it in recovery mode. After doing some reading, I saw where the filesystem changed when going to 4.2.2 so that you can use the new profiles feature. This seems to be what caused CWM Recovery to not see my internal storage anymore.
I thought well, maybe it's because I am back on 10.0.0, so I tried downloading and flashing 10.1.0. It did the same quick flash and showed after boot that I was running on 10.1.0, but I still couldn't mount internal storage (sdcard) in Recovery. I said screw it, reinstalled my apps and decided to truck on with how it was. Short version here - installed mobileiron and touchdown, ran through the encryption in mobileiron, etc etc...mobileiron didn't recognize touchdown and I could not get LEAP for wifi to work.
Decided I would try to decrypt and completely wipe phone. Removed Mobileiron as administrator, tried to decrypt - could not. Tried tweaking security settings, reboots, adb mount and format - all to no avail. Tried wiping in recovery....this failed because it cannot read my storage (because it can't mount it and it is now encrypted)!
With the phone booted up and running adb shell, I can get to the main file system, but my sdcard, data, data/media directories all look empty. I can't mount sdcard through ADB either.
When all of this failed, I looked to ODIN to fix my woes...no luck here either. Downloaded the stock Sprint ROM (4.1.1 L710VPBLJ7 L710SPRBLJ7 ) and tried flashing it but I get hung up on the "Setup Connection"...in ODIN. I have tried multiple drivers, usb ports, battery pulls, etc...I even tried from another PC.
I know this is a lot of information and I apologize again. If you read through all that, thanks for being thorough...if not, I will answer your questions, but hopefully won't have to repeat a bunch of info again.
My end all questions are - where do I go from here? What other options do I have? Is there any repair place I might be able to take this to that they might be able to decrypt/flash the phone to stock for me?
Thanks in advance,
dwnocturnal
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where did you download your stock Rom from? Did you FULLY uninstall drivers from Windows, before reinstalling?
Sent from my hybrid GS3
joeyhdownsouth said:
Where did you download your stock Rom from? Did you FULLY uninstall drivers from Windows, before reinstalling?
Sent from my hybrid GS3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got the link to the stock stuff through ODIN from here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2189539
Missed your other question the first time I read your post....Yes, I uninstalled the drivers, rebooted, reinstalled the drivers. Tried connecting on another PC as well.
Ok, little bit of an update.
I went through Recovery and was messing around trying to mount and wipe...I couldn't mount data or sdcard, so I figured I couldn't just format them either. WRONG! I was able to format /data and /data/media, which then let me mount /data. After doing this, I rebooted recovery and I could mount sdcard...so I did and formatted it.
Now, I had my old version of CM 10.0.0 on my external sd card, so I installed that and booted up...WOOT - back to blank CM 10.0.0!
Now I've got all my data and apps saved to a folder on my PC, if I can just figure out a way to put them back on the phones storage and restore from my backup...
dwnocturnal said:
Ok, little bit of an update.
I went through Recovery and was messing around trying to mount and wipe...I couldn't mount data or sdcard, so I figured I couldn't just format them either. WRONG! I was able to format /data and /data/media, which then let me mount /data. After doing this, I rebooted recovery and I could mount sdcard...so I did and formatted it.
Now, I had my old version of CM 10.0.0 on my external sd card, so I installed that and booted up...WOOT - back to blank CM 10.0.0!
Now I've got all my data and apps saved to a folder on my PC, if I can just figure out a way to put them back on the phones storage and restore from my backup...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's sounds as if you should start a totally clean install, then backup your downloaded apps with Titanium Backup after you get ROM setup again.
Sent from my hybrid GS3
Another update:
I couldn't get my backup to restore correctly....I kept getting an error restoring /data. Luckily I had an older backup from several months further and was able to restore that. After doing so, I had to remove my google accounts, readd them, and reinstall my mobile iron client for work and I am now good to go!
Man, that was a nightmare.....thought I had soft-bricked my phone.
How do I mark this thread as solved now?
dwnocturnal said:
Another update:
I couldn't get my backup to restore correctly....I kept getting an error restoring /data. Luckily I had an older backup from several months further and was able to restore that. After doing so, I had to remove my google accounts, readd them, and reinstall my mobile iron client for work and I am now good to go!
Man, that was a nightmare.....thought I had soft-bricked my phone.
How do I mark this thread as solved now?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hit the edit/delete button under the original post, type [SOLVED] before your title. Then click the save button.
Worked!! Thanks.
dwnocturnal said:
Ok, little bit of an update.
I went through Recovery and was messing around trying to mount and wipe...I couldn't mount data or sdcard, so I figured I couldn't just format them either. WRONG! I was able to format /data and /data/media, which then let me mount /data. After doing this, I rebooted recovery and I could mount sdcard...so I did and formatted it.
Now, I had my old version of CM 10.0.0 on my external sd card, so I installed that and booted up...WOOT - back to blank CM 10.0.0!
Now I've got all my data and apps saved to a folder on my PC, if I can just figure out a way to put them back on the phones storage and restore from my backup...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It worked. Thans. It looks like this is the only solution!!! I wonder why the OS does not let people decrypt the phone......
Same Issue
demax123 said:
It worked. Thans. It looks like this is the only solution!!! I wonder why the OS does not let people decrypt the phone......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately I do have the same issue. The problem is I have not backed this up previously. Any suggestions?
was running wilco's almost stock rom (nandroid and TB backups located on external SD) and wanted to try lollipop so i flashed liquid smooth 5.01, didnt like it so i went back to wilco's.
now my problem is that "My Files" is working fine(stock file browser) but solid explorer, ASTRO, & Root Browser do not read my internal memory (storage/emulated/0) having issues with gallery(have cleared cache and data), with camera it takes picture and when i open it i can see it for a second then unable to load file error.
when i take a screenshot it says that unable to save as usb device may be in use. not sure what happened.
when flashing new rom i made a titanium backup, and a nandroid using philzs latest release.
wiped data for new rom, wiped cache, wiped dalvik cahe, and formatted system. liquid smooth ran fine just didnt like lollipop. so i went into recovery and did same procedure, but restored. alot of crashed so i cleaned flashed wilcos and restored.
now im having above error.
any suggestons?
well redid entire flash procedure, then completed phone set up, then restored. during restore operation i get the following error "volume not found skipping restore of sd-ext" then says complete. never seen that before.
Hi together,
just as a disclaimer, I don't really have knowledge in this field (custom roms etc), but I'm willing to learn and understand what is going on.
I have the Moto G5 as my daily phone with the unofficial lineage 17 from the xda-forum. It's not rooted. Now i saw that the g5 got official support for LOS18, so I wanted to upgrade. However, I had some important files on my phone, so I wanted to do a backup (with twrp), which i did on a different sd-card than the one I was using as storage. Or so i thought. The upgrade itself wasn't really a problem, at first i forgot to wipe the phone, but i realized right after the installation, wiped it accordingly to the instructions and did the installation again. The phone booted without a problem and everything seemed fine. I encrypted the phone accidently, i thought it was the lockscreen pin. But it wouldnt recognize the sd i used as storage on the previous version. Because i had pictures, music etc on the card, i wanted to restore my backup to use the phone as before. Well... to my surprise, on the sd i used to back up i couldn't find it, but strangely there were now two versions of a backup i made some months ago, only different in the timestamp (not the date) in their filename. I didn' know if one of them was the one i made, or if i had made two backups back in the days. I was confused, but i chose on of them at random and restored it. It seemed to have worked, it booted to the familiar lockscreen i set up a while ago. But then: it wouldnt accept the pin, even though i knew it was the right one - at least for the system i have used the same morning. I had to delete the lockpin.db (or how it was called) via twrp to acces the phone again. The former uncompatible storage sd now got recognized and worked, the phone showed all the apps i had before, i was still logged in in all of them etc. But: i made a photo, wanted to look at it in my gallery app, and i briefly saw my albums - then they vanished and only the photo i had taken was there. So now all the pictures, music are gone from the sd. Some funky things are different, the swipe directions for the "recent apps" and "back" buttons on the fingerprint sensor are switched and i cannot find the menu to change them. That's the story.
Here are my questions:
The backup i made - why wasn't it called with the proper date and time? Or have i deleted it somehow due to my wiping mistake? but it was on the sd... ?
I now assume i restored the old backup with a different lockscreen pin, and thats why the pin i thought was correct didn't work. But some apps which i hadn't installed at the time i made the backup where there and with all the recent data. Doesn't that mean the sd has some kind of image of the system or rather the apps themselves stored? but why are the pictures and the music gone? Is there any chancce to get it back? Can I upgrade to LOS18 and use the same sd as storage without the need to format it?
I'd like to learn what the mechanisms behind all these happenings are and would be glad if someone could explain it! Thanks in advance!
Twrp backups do no backup personal files - This includes music pictures and documents. These must be backuped up yourself to a pc, external device or the cloud.
TWRP backups do backup the following for example
System - your current rom
Data - apps and their data of your current rom, phone settings
Boot - Kernel
Never restore data on a different rom. The data contains apps and settings for your current rom and restoring this on a different rom will likely lead to a bootloop or an unstable device. This is why you had issues with passwords.
In regards to personal files - if you have formatted data of an encrypted device then it removes encryption and thus formats internal storage. Anything on this will be lost.
If you are changing roms you need to format data and then install everything again via the playstore (or manually via apk)
You can use 3rd party apps that backup apps and data but I advise against this as what it restore may be unstable on a different OS
As with the twrp date I assume twrp assigns the correct date. The file would be lost if you backup up to internal storage and your formatted data. I don't know what happened to it if you backed up to an external device.