[Solved] Help with possibly bricked SGH-T889 Samsung Galaxy Note 2 - T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note II

Long story short, I haven't done any of this stuff for a long time.
I did stuff here: .teamandroid.com/2016/03/08/update-tmobile-galaxy-note-2-t889-android-601-resurrection-remix-marshmallow-custom-rom/2/
I followed the instructions but I think where my hiccup happened was for whatever reason, CWM didn't install it's custom recovery system even though it said it had. So I'm stuck at 3e restore. However, in my stupidity and haste, I already wiped the data because I thought I was already in the CWM menu and didn't realize the 3e system would look so similar to the screen shots. Now I can't install the custom roms because they're not signatured, and I can't install a way to bypass the signature because that stuff is also not signatured. The only access I currently have to my phone is now through an ADB Sideload functionality using my PC.
Trying to at least get back to square one, or is there a way I can flash the CWM recovery system from this location?
Thanks for any help, not sure how to proceed from here (phone has no OS on it)

Nevermind, it restored the old OS
EDIT: For future reference and for those wondering what happened, the root didn't take correctly the first time so the CWM didn't flash properly. After verifying the root and updating SuperSU to kill knox, it was no problem. Flashed 100% perfect like it should have the first time. Dumb user error on my part.

Related

Android update!

Disclaimer: This worked on my phone. I am not responsible if your phone turns into an expensive brick.
I know this isn't quite the update everyone was waiting for I managed to pull the 2.3.6 OTA files. I also managed to figure out how to flash them. Turns out CWM 5 offers root adb access, everything we need to update and root this phone. Note I tried CWM 6 but it said "possible loss of root" so apparently CWM 6 likes to reside on an already rooted phone.
Note this is not the most elegant solution. The most elegant would be a signed update.zip. The second most elegant would be something flashable with CWM or Odin. Too bad I don't know how to do those. I do know how to do this.
The first thing to do is make sure you are on the AT&T stock firmware. It doesn't matter if you've already flashed something else. No need to wipe cache or factory reset or anything (although if you run into problems you should try to do that step). Download it from samfirmware.com. Flash it with Odin. This will put you on stock 2.3.5. Even if you were already on 2.3.6, or rooted, or on Rogers, this will work. After the flash, boot the phone normally, wait a minute or so, and shut it down.
Now for the fun part. AT&T will not push the OTA to a non AT&T customer. The flash will also not work with a modified phone (hence the reflash to stock). How to gain root access to manually flash the OTA? If we install root, it will not install. If we install CWM, we will not have the stock recovery which is required to process the OTA. So...
How about this? We install CWM 5. You can find it here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1458153
Then we adb into the phone, and push the OTA files, and then reflash the stock recovery over CWM, and then manually reboot into OTA mode. That sounds crazy... crazy enough to work.
After you've flashed CWM, reboot into it and make sure your phone is still connected to your computer. We won't actually be using CWM, just the root access it provides over adb. Unzip the two zip files below (why use external hosting, I can store zips up to 11 MB on here) into a folder and run fota.bat. Ooo and ahh over your Gingerbread.
But what about root? Well, I posted in another thread a complicated method for rooting 2.3.6 using the root access from CWM, but how about easy? Boot your phone into 2.3.6 and let it sit for a minute or so, and shut it down. Reboot into Odin mode, and reflash CWM over the stock recovery (again). Copy the Superuser zip from the folder you made earlier to your SD card. Flash this with CWM. This is the beta of Superuser 3.2, courtesy of Rom Manager. Download the stericson busybox app from the Market if you want busybox as well.
This was a fun way to kill a weekend
Throws a signature verification failed error.
Try again with the new method
Had a few mild scares. After flashing CWM on stock, it refused to boot into it but after 3 tries and my screen acting up upon boot, it finally booted into CWM. Launched the bat file and it went well. Upon booting up and entering the update process, it froze up at 74% and refused to continue. Rebooted the phone and it once again entered the update process and this time it managed to finish. Phone rebooted and after checking "About phone", my phone is on 2.3.6 stock. When you initially provided the OTA files and the sig check failed, I had a good feeling this would be the only other way to do it as I tried to sign it and it also failed. Thanks for taking the time to post all of this.
Why go to 2.3.6? It´s better than 2.3.5 customized?
Better question: we're getting ICS within the month, so why bother with 2.3.6 when you can just upgrade to 4.x.x when it comes down?
-Ara
AraDreamer said:
Better question: we're getting ICS within the month, so why bother with 2.3.6 when you can just upgrade to 4.x.x when it comes down?
-Ara
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because there are some people who will want to stick with 2.3.5/6 . He made this so that those who do, can update to 2.3.6 even when they aren't with AT&T, almost hassle free.
narume said:
Had a few mild scares. After flashing CWM on stock, it refused to boot into it but after 3 tries and my screen acting up upon boot, it finally booted into CWM. Launched the bat file and it went well. Upon booting up and entering the update process, it froze up at 74% and refused to continue. Rebooted the phone and it once again entered the update process and this time it managed to finish. Phone rebooted and after checking "About phone", my phone is on 2.3.6 stock. When you initially provided the OTA files and the sig check failed, I had a good feeling this would be the only other way to do it as I tried to sign it and it also failed. Thanks for taking the time to post all of this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I was testing this, I saw that behavior if you didn't completely boot up the phone between steps (ie, flash stock firmware, boot phone, flash CWM, boot phone). I don't know what would cause it otherwise. Glad to see your phone made it.
narume said:
Because there are some people who will want to stick with 2.3.5/6 . He made this so that those who do, can update to 2.3.6 even when they aren't with AT&T, almost hassle free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually I did it because I've owned this phone for exactly two weeks and discovered all the available ROMs are based on 2.3.5 even though 2.3.6 has been out since December. CWMR with root has been out since January, and since then nobody else has rooted 2.3.6 or found a way to flash it. And I thought, it couldn't be that hard? And even more amazed when I discovered CWMR comes with root out of the box, without even touching /system. The only other missing piece was the stock recovery, which also wasn't out in the wild. 3 birds for one stone
On a side note, if you want to do some cleaning after the OTA and you decide to root, you can delete /cache/fota and /data/fota safely.
Nardholio said:
Actually I did it because I've owned this phone for exactly two weeks and discovered all the available ROMs are based on 2.3.5 even though 2.3.6 has been out since December. CWMR with root has been out since January, and since then nobody else has rooted 2.3.6 or found a way to flash it. And I thought, it couldn't be that hard? And even more amazed when I discovered CWMR comes with root out of the box, without even touching /system. The only other missing piece was the stock recovery, which also wasn't out in the wild. 3 birds for one stone
On a side note, if you want to do some cleaning after the OTA and you decide to root, you can delete /cache/fota and /data/fota safely.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, I see. Well, still, being able to flash to 2.3.6 is nice because if anyone ever decides to stick with 2.3.6 they can easily flash the update now. Maybe more people like you will pop up and start pushing out more useful content like this for the Glide so it won't be a dead area of development anymore.

[SOLVED] Oh shoot, need some help.

I flashed a ROM and now I can't make it past the boot image. I'm not sure why. It's been there for the past few minutes. So I pulled battery and went to bootloader to boot to recovery and retry. Recovery and root is working fine, but somehow it says I have an update package on my SDCard....so now my only two choices are to install or not to install and reboot.
Since I can install an update package, I think it does mean that nothing vital is screwed up. I've just been checkmated.
Now how do I enter recovery? I know I can always install an HTC update package via ADB, but I don't want to lose root and have to reroot and all.
So is there some way I can get into recovery without bootloader?
Thanks
EDIT: It looks like there's some way to boot into recovery using android SDK, but I can't figure it out. Any help?
EDIT2: I don't have a micro SD card reader, so I can't delete the pesky update package (it might be some boot.img I downloaded but never got around to)
Final EDIT+ Solved
For those who didn't understand SDK and ADB, this was a great help:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6K1XLmafPc
Actually I realized that I could boot into bootloader and then recovery without an SD card. Lawd have mewcy on idiots like me When it started getting into 4ext I popped in my SDcard again and booted right in. Everything should now be fine.
On a side note, I realized I forgot to backup my previous ROM in my haste to see if MIUI Camera worked on certain ICS roms (I got it completely working in blackout, and partially working in NeroXL). I hope to god I'll like XGS, because this was more effort than I'd like to spend on my phone.
I'll leave it to the Mods decision on whether or not to delete this, maybe this info will help others.

[Q] Bootloop with no Recovery/Download mode

Hi everybody,
I'm relatively new to ROMs and I think I've made a mistake. I rooted my phone with CASUAL (because I'm a noob like that), and after about of week of playing around with my new features I decided to try and get a new ROM, CyanogenMod 10.1. I followed a video guide on youtube called "How to install CyanogenMod 10.1 Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on the Samsung Galaxy S III/3" (can't post links) and used GooManager to flash the ROM over. The phone rebooted and it took me to a teamwin loading screen followed by a menu with 8 options. I thought it was weird, as it wasn't in the video, but one of the options was "install" so I clicked that, it showed the .zip for the ROM so I hit "flash". It rebooted again now and now continuously displays the spinning loading screen for CyanogenMod. I remember reading something something about CM 10 not working with ICS bootloaders, but all of the guides I read about flashing CM made no mention of it, so I didn't think much of it. Is this my problem?
I made a ROM backup with CWM Recovery, app and data backups with Titanium root, and even backed up my EFS folder, so I'm not worried about any data loss involved in a factory wipe or reset, but I need help getting there. I've read things about a USB jig, is this what I need to do? If so, , do I just need to make/buy and plug in the jig? What do I do afterwards?
Any and all help will be appreciated
uberchinchillaz said:
Hi everybody,
I'm relatively new to ROMs and I think I've made a mistake. I rooted my phone with CASUAL (because I'm a noob like that), and after about of week of playing around with my new features I decided to try and get a new ROM, CyanogenMod 10.1. I followed a video guide on youtube called "How to install CyanogenMod 10.1 Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on the Samsung Galaxy S III/3" (can't post links) and used GooManager to flash the ROM over. The phone rebooted and it took me to a teamwin loading screen followed by a menu with 8 options. I thought it was weird, as it wasn't in the video, but one of the options was "install" so I clicked that, it showed the .zip for the ROM so I hit "flash". It rebooted again now and now continuously displays the spinning loading screen for CyanogenMod. I remember reading something something about CM 10 not working with ICS bootloaders, but all of the guides I read about flashing CM made no mention of it, so I didn't think much of it. Is this my problem?
I made a ROM backup with CWM Recovery, app and data backups with Titanium root, and even backed up my EFS folder, so I'm not worried about any data loss involved in a factory wipe or reset, but I need help getting there. I've read things about a USB jig, is this what I need to do? If so, , do I just need to make/buy and plug in the jig? What do I do afterwards?
Any and all help will be appreciated
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it does anything it isn't a hard brick. Never use rom manager or goo manager to flash something. That is a sure fire way to kill your phone.
If it was an out of date boot loader it wouldn't have flashed.
By the sounds of if your bootloop is from not wiping.
Go here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=38838122
Everything you need to know is there. Pay close attention to step 5a it's proper wiping for twrp. Re wipe, re flash and you'll be fine. Don't forget to flash the gappps. Those videos are good and bad. Especially if you have no idea what you're doing it's a real fast way to a brick.
Sent from my SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app

Edit Oct 17, 2014 - Encrypt your device/phone with custom ROM

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any damage or liability arising out of these steps. I did not invent anything, I just tried something. Only move forward at your risk
If you don't agree ... stop reading and move on...
Background: Our phone has access to so much personal information that its scary if it fell into wrong hands. The only way to fix this is to encrypt phone. I did lot of research and here is a working solution that works for me - try at your risk.
Download Links:
a) Tested with ROM Stock 4.4.4 NH7 Galaxy S4 M919/Jfltetmo by @ShinySide
b) Tested with ROM |ROM|★KANGAKAT★|►KTU84P◄|4.4.4|Xposed|►8◄|6.26.14 by @iB4STiD
c) stock recovery AT&T S4 works with M919
d) Philz/CWM custom recovery
Encrypting with custom rom
1) Assume you are on custom recovery. - Backup everything first. Create a nandroid backup
2) Do a full wipe and install one of the two roms linked above (I have tested with few other roms ... none worked). Start the phone and set it up the way you want. Install all apps etc.
3) ODIN Stock recovery. See #c under download above. Its AT&T stock recovery but works for me. You need to know how to ODIN - find out. Doing this wrong will permanently damage your phone
4) Start your phone and turn on encryption. You will need to set lock type = password and will need to connect to charger and have 80% charge.
- Phone will do blank and stay blank for 20-30 minutes. Do not do anything. Encryption is happening behind the scenes.
- You might have to do this twice or thrice if it did not encrypt first time. For me the phone went blank first time and after 25 minutes it restarted but device was not encrypted. I redid the same steps and worked second time.
- If you interrupt the encryption process (battery pull or power up) you will see error message (encryption failed, reset device)
5) If all goes well you now have a password protected encrypted phone with custom rom!!! Check in Settings -> Security
6) You may install custom recovery ... but I don't see the point because you will need stock recovery to decrypt
To install another ROM
1) Reboot into stock recovery, then wipe data and cache (this removes encryption).
2) install your recovery of choice and install ROM using recovery. Philz/CWM
Credit goes to @Tronicus and his reply Flash a Rom on an Encrypted Android
Tronicus said:
How to Flash a rom on an encrypted Android phone (specifically this one, the I9505 SGH-I337).
The Problem: Once encrypted, you can't decrypt it easily. When encrypting the phone android will tell you you can only decrypt it using a factory reset. Naturally you assume it's talking about the "Factory Data Reset" option found in Settings --> Backup and Reset. But noooo, Android is lying through its ****ing teeth. Then you'll assume you have to wipe everything from your custom recovery mod (CWM, TWRP, or one of those). Wrong again! You'll get beautiful "can't mount /data" messages and more bull****. I read about a workaround that required installing the new rom using ADB, but I had ingeniously disabled USB debugging prior to wiping everything, so I only got so far with that option (plus it's tediously long if you haven't installed all the necessary software already and don't feel like bricking your phone because you made a typo in the command line). So, apparently the only other way to really format that partition free of its encryption is to use a stock recovery. So:
Short Version for Godlike users who know automatically how to do all this **** without any help (mimicking how most help posts are finely detailed on this site): Flash stock recovery, wipe everything, flash your custom recovery and install your new rom.
Long version for us mortals who don't know everything and haven't already downloaded already every single bit of software on earth:
Backup all the stuff you want to save. This process will truly wipe EVERYTHING. You can do it manually, or you can use an app like Titanium Backup Pro to help you (find it on Google Play Store). Here's a nice guide which recommends what to restore and what not to restore: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1480343
Flash the stock recovery using Odin. You can download a stock recovery from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=49687791&postcount=3 It's the link called "I337MK2stockrecovery.tar.md5" In case you don't know how to flash it with Odin, this short guide will help: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1506697
In step 6 replace "recovery.tar.md5" with the stock recovery you downloaded.
Wipe everything from the Stock recovery console. This little ****er will **** up the encryption all those sissies couldn't touch. You're welcome. You boot into recovery mode from a turned off phone by pressing simultaneously the volume up key + the home key + the power key until you see blue text appearing in the top left corner of your screen.
Reinstall your custom recovery. In my case I had installed the rom BEFORE flashing in the stock recovery (apparently it works, you just can't boot because of the encryption), so I was able to boot into the new rom before I returned to my custom recovery. Weird. Anyways, I recommend CWM. You can pick it up from this link: http://goo.im/devs/philz_touch/CWM_Advanced_Edition/jflte
For some weird reason they call the I337 version the "jflte" version. It's bonkers. Click there, and download the latest version that ends with .tar.md5. This version is upgradable via Odin, which we already used. Use the same instructions used as when you upgraded the stock recovery rom.
Boot into your recovery mod and flash your rom like you usually do.
A word about TWRP: it cost me many hours of work and I don't recommend it. Its website is outdated, and recommends using GooManager (which is no longer mantained) and doesn't work anymore for this. GooManager suggests using a new, different app, which doesn't have the option of installing TWRP. Then I tried using their TWRP Manager app from play store and the image file wouldn't download. Then I tried manually selecting the image file in TWRP manager that I downloaded from their site for use via the ADB method, and it bricked my phone... twice (using two different methods the app sugested). I tried so much because in theory TWRP has the ability to decrypt android's 4.4 encryption, but after looking at their github site I noticed it was filled with people's reports (including people with the S4) on how it wouldn't work decrypting squat. So I gave up, and installed CWM in 30 seconds.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any damage or liability arising out of these steps. I did not invent anything, I just tried something. Only move forward at your risk
cnewsgrp said:
One of the things I needed was the ability to encrypt my phone (device only not external SD) for security purpose. Our phones today gives access to lot of information that I would rather not fall in wrong hands. I did lot of research and here is a working solution.
Credit goes to @Tronicus and his reply Flash a Rom on an Encrypted Android
The quote looks long however it is really very simple. To install another ROM
- Install and reboot into stock recovery, then wipe data and cache (this removes encryption).
- Then install your recovery of choice and install ROM using recovery. Philz/CWM
This has been tested working on |ROM|★KANGAKAT★|►KTU84P◄|4.4.4|Xposed|►8◄|6.26.14 by @iB4STiD
This did NOT work on a Touchwiz ROM by same developer
I have not tested any other ROM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if it matters too much or not, but the stock recovery you linked to is for the AT&T S4. A good rule of thumb is to never use Odin to flash anything not specifically for your particular device... In this case the M919.
Sent from my SGH-M919 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
lordcheeto03 said:
I don't know if it matters too much or not, but the stock recovery you linked to is for the AT&T S4. A good rule of thumb is to never use Odin to flash anything not specifically for your particular device... In this case the M919.
Sent from my SGH-M919 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tested stock recovery on M919 .. it works
Honestly im surprised its not talked about more since there is a big push for personal privacy when it comes to data. Encryption really is a pain in the ass to work with on android. Figuring out how to switch or update custom roms while encrypted will drive you insane. The easiest way is to just odin back to stock and start over, but that requires a computer anytime you need to flash anything.
I recently was trying out one of the 4.4.4 GPE roms and turned on encryption. It worked great until i started missing touchwiz and wanted to go back to HyperDrive TW. So the journey began...
First of all, i backed up everything to external storage since i knew everything on the internal storage would have to be wiped. I loaded the phone into recovery mode (using TWRP) and tried wiping, but all i got was a bunch of "Failed to mount" errors. Fine. Got the same error when trying to factory reset or wiping /system, /data, /cache, and anything else. Tried formatting to different file systems and then formatting back to the original but no luck. Fixing permissions didnt help. I just kept trying everything available multiple times.
Eventually it started wiping everything except the /data mount. Well... At least i could install new custom roms. Im not sure exactly what did it because i was just throwing everything at it. Anyways I got it to install, and booted into it. Nope.
Now it was saying I needed the password to decrypt the internal storage. It would detect wrong passwords fine, but as soon as i put the correct password in, it would allow me in, show the green android encryption picture, then blank screen. I thought it was just decrypting and setting up my rom but after a few hours my screen was still black and nothing was happening. Pulled battery and went back to TWRP.
I started wiping everything again and again and tried doing everything i could to wipe everything on the internal storage. Again, not sure what did it, but eventually got it all cleaned up and got a new rom installed and could boot into it.
The whole process probably took about 6-7 hours...
I dont even want to enable encryption on the new rom...
p-hil said:
Honestly im surprised its not talked about more since there is a big push for personal privacy when it comes to data. Encryption really is a pain in the ass to work with on android. Figuring out how to switch or update custom roms while encrypted will drive you insane. The easiest way is to just odin back to stock and start over, but that requires a computer anytime you need to flash anything.
I recently was trying out one of the 4.4.4 GPE roms and turned on encryption. It worked great until i started missing touchwiz and wanted to go back to HyperDrive TW. So the journey began...
First of all, i backed up everything to external storage since i knew everything on the internal storage would have to be wiped. I loaded the phone into recovery mode (using TWRP) and tried wiping, but all i got was a bunch of "Failed to mount" errors. Fine. Got the same error when trying to factory reset or wiping /system, /data, /cache, and anything else. Tried formatting to different file systems and then formatting back to the original but no luck. Fixing permissions didnt help. I just kept trying everything available multiple times.
Eventually it started wiping everything except the /data mount. Well... At least i could install new custom roms. Im not sure exactly what did it because i was just throwing everything at it. Anyways I got it to install, and booted into it. Nope.
Now it was saying I needed the password to decrypt the internal storage. It would detect wrong passwords fine, but as soon as i put the correct password in, it would allow me in, show the green android encryption picture, then blank screen. I thought it was just decrypting and setting up my rom but after a few hours my screen was still black and nothing was happening. Pulled battery and went back to TWRP.
I started wiping everything again and again and tried doing everything i could to wipe everything on the internal storage. Again, not sure what did it, but eventually got it all cleaned up and got a new rom installed and could boot into it.
The whole process probably took about 6-7 hours...
I dont even want to enable encryption on the new rom...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah Encryption does not seem to work on TWZ roms. I tried on G Eye without luck.
I have updated op. Please check
Encryption will slow down your phone quite a bit. More battery usage + more CPU usage + slower phone = not worth it unless you've got some very private stuff you don't want being shared. Otherwise, 3rd party apps that lock a lot of files, can encrypt certain files, and hide others will do the trick perfectly well.'
Not trying to bash fully encrypting your phone, but I've tried it before and although I am very pro privacy, I had to eventually take it off due to all the extra hassle it created.
Don't know about slowing down. I am not seeing it. I feel differently about security.

[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

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