Expert advice needed please. This is a puzzle that someone might enjoy solving.
Although I have a fair bit of experience with flashing, I tried to flash my 8.0 for the first time and it has dramatically failed. It was probably my fault - not an uncommon story.
What is less common is that I am struggling to figure out how to undo the damage I've done. What's really making this difficult is that no computer recognises the device as USB any more so I can't use Odin, Kies, etc to repair or return to stock. I have tried everything I can think of to deal with the USB issue, the usual cable, driver, port nonsense. I don't think the USB problem is Windows now.
I suspect one of these things may have happened:
The USB port just went bad coincidentally during this flash process (charge, no data). I have ordered a new port but it will take weeks to arrive.
Has the device come out of Developer/USB debugging mode somehow? I can't tell because I can't boot to an OS.
I wonder if the ROM flash has corrupted the firmware the deals with USB - is that possible? Where is the devices USB drivers located? Is it in the bootloader, something like BIOS?
I'm suspicious of the bootloader, as the screen is weirdly corrupted now when I turn on or reboot the device - fuzzy white lines rather than a logo - but that disappears when OS tries to load, or I go into Recovery/Download.
I actually did do a backup of the original ROM to the SD card; but restoring it doesn't work, just produces an endless Samsung boot, even if I then wipe and reset.
I can get into Download mode, and a Recovery (Philz for N5120) but since I can't connect to the devise with USB in any way, it's very hard to get the Recovery to flash anything new and useful. I did put my SD Card in another phone and copied over the stock ROM zip from Samsung, but it refuses to flash - I think because it doesn't like Philz Recovery? I can't think how to replace Philz Recovery with another by flashing, without USB.
I may have to wait to replace the USB port, but I fear that won't fix it. Until then, I can only think of one other thing to try, and that is to copy a ROM onto the SD Card through another phone, and try to flash it. Lineage doesn't flash, and nor does the stock zip I got from Samsung. Would anything else work?
Can I flash an alternative recovery from within the recovery? Philz only lets me flash zips, not img or tars.
So it's quite a mess, but if anyone has a brilliant idea of how to get out of this, I'd love to hear it.
THANK YOU if you have a genius idea.
So after a few days of working on this, I did manage to resolve it, and I thought I'd just add a note about how I escaped this obscure problem.
The device went bad because I stupidly flashed an incompatible Recovery to the device and somewhere between doing this, backup and restoring and flashing, it corrupted mostly everything including something in the bootloader.
Oddly enough, the solution seemed to be to mess up the Recovery even more by flashing something even more random - it seems this provoked the device into restoring its own basic Recovery. Using this to wipe and reset the device somehow enabled Download mode's USB interface to start working again so I was able to use Kies to return to stock, which repaired everything including the bootloader.
Finally, I flashed the correct Recovery for this device, and then managed to flash the ROM I wanted. A happy ending to a stressful story; the device now works better than it ever has done before.
Related
Okay my friends wife had an unlucky bad file flash and ended up hard bricking somehow.
And keep this in mind that she never flashed a Int. version.
She flashed the SlimRom 3.1.0-D2SPR then she flashed the custom kernel unlocker file
to use the K747 kernel for slimrom, but the thing was ( She has TWRP ) when she slid the bar to flash
the file, the screen went back to the TWRP home page she waited 5-10 minutes then she tried reflashing the file again
and it said failed. Rebooted and the phone's hard bricked after installing the kernel. ( No LED when USB plugged in for recharge,
No power or haptic feedback. )
Her husband used the same method to install slim rom and his phone is fine
but the screen never went to the TWRP home page, it went straight into installing it.
The thing that boggles my mind is that she flashed everything in order and it hard bricked.
Rom first, rebooted recovery, kernel unlock, cache and dalvik cleared. rebooted recovery
When she tried flashing the K747 AOSP Kernel, she said it never went to the page screen that would show
it install, it just went straight to the home page, retry flashing but failed. ( here's the weird part I've never experienced. )
Is her devices bootloader corrupted? Because all I'm thinking is she's the one in a million of people that has a defective
device itself and a bad flash ( This is what I think ) hard brick her device.
But my suggested solution if correct would be force odin mode via USB Jig or send it in for jtag repairs if possible.
If there is no chance for the both of these solutions then a full blown replacement repair will be the last thing she'll do
because she doesn't have TEP or a warranty on the device.
Spark91 said:
Is her devices bootloader corrupted? Because all I'm thinking is she's the one in a million of people that has a defective
device itself and a bad flash ( This is what I think ) hard brick her device.
But my suggested solution if correct would be force odin mode via USB Jig or send it in for jtag repairs if possible.
If there is no chance for the both of these solutions then a full blown replacement repair will be the last thing she'll do
because she doesn't have TEP or a warranty on the device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, I'm just going to rattle through my thought process on this, just to get things clear in my mind:
Her phone cannot turn on at all. Do a battery pull/replace and make sure that there's no going into recovery or download mode. If that's the case, then JTAG might be your only solution.
This happened when trying to flash a kernel. It seems unlikely that a kernel would screw up the bootloader. I was under the impression that only recovery zips touch the bootloader/recovery partition.
If the kernel or Rom zip was for an international GS3, then it would try to write to the bootloader partition. But since you said your buddy's phone flashed the same files just fine, it seems unlikely that they flashed the international zips.
I've had TWRP fail to flash a zip. Each time I tried to flash a zip, it would say it failed. All I had to do was reboot into recovery (even if I hadn't flashed a ROM, so I had no system file), and then I could flash the file. Sometimes TWRP had those issues for me. Her story reminded me exactly of when that happened to me, but if hers won't load into recovery (or download mode), that's a major difference.
After all that, I honestly have no clue how this happened. It sounds to me like the JTAG is the best bet. You can find them online for around $60. Sorry this happened, and I hope you find a good fix for your friend's wife.
Its possible that you can still fix this....
Couple questions. When you try to turn it on, what exactly happens? does it vibrate? what occurs?
There is a possiblity that you can bypass the idea of holding the power button and vol button, try to adb reboot recovery command. ive had this save me about 5 times now when flashing goes bad.
http://droidlessons.com/how-to-install-adb-on-a-windows-7-pc/
make sure adb is installed...
while the phone is trying to boot, keep typing or copy/pasting or in cmd pressing up and enter after you enter the command.
adb devices
if it gives you the UID of your phone you at least know that you might have the ability to fix it.
From here just type
adb reboot recovery and it will reboot into the recovery to allow you to flash a "good" kernel again.
Bit of advice.. I am always paranoid after going through this so many times of a bad flash. As a result i never stack flashes.. for instance.
if i want to flash a rom, kernel, modem, radio..
i wipe dalvik, flash rom, wipe dalvik, wipe system, wipe cache.
Reboot let android do its thing...
reboot into recovery.
wipe dalvik, flash kernel, wipe dalvik, wipe system, wipe cache.
reboot, let android fully boot up.
reboot into recovery
wipe dalvik, flash radio, wipe dalvik, wipe system, wipe cache.
reboot...you get the point.
Just precations i started doing because of issues ive had in the past. If you have a mac, the commands are a bit different so let me know...
This is interesting, Hamspiced.
I didn't know that flashing a kernal can "brick" your phone.
Do you happen to know why or how this happens? You allude to stacking flashes... I normally only stack gapps with the ROM, but I was wondering if it's important to reboot and go through the setup prior to flashing gapps.
Thanks for the info!
topherk said:
This is interesting, Hamspiced.
I didn't know that flashing a kernal can "brick" your phone.
Do you happen to know why or how this happens? You allude to stacking flashes... I normally only stack gapps with the ROM, but I was wondering if it's important to reboot and go through the setup prior to flashing gapps.
Thanks for the info!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When i had my evo things flashed slightly different.
There were many issues in kernel flashing where if the kernel didnt download properly or you had a bad dl. it will what we called soft-brick. This would allow the phone to "act" like it was booting up but only display a black screen and never boot. Screen would flicker, phone was active but nothing would display and it will not boot loop. kind of just freeze.
We noticed that if we connect the phone to the computer we could actually use adb to access the phone. from there we noticed that we could push recoveries, and even push kernels and radios to the phone even though it wasnt displaying anything.
I figured the easiest way to get through this issue is to see if you can Reboot Recovery through adb if it allows you, and hopefully then you can restore functionality.
Help possibly?
Can you get it into download mode and just use Odin to flash it?
Hello,
I have an HTC One M8 (T-Mobile) that I had a friend root (he has a PC, I have a Mac, plus he's done it before) and all was going well until I installed a rooted app (I think it was Super SU or something) and my phone went into a boot loop, showing nothing but the HTC logo when I tried to turn it on. I panicked, even though it wasn't the end of the world, as I had just bought this phone from a classifieds source and had no personal info/pictures/contacts/anything on it yet.
However, I am still stuck with a soft bricked phone. My friend suggested going into recovery mode and rebooting (see attached picture) but it didn't help. Then he tried side-loading a ROM onto the device, but his computer (both of them, PCs, and even his brother's PC for good measure) didn't show it recognized the phone anywhere in the file system. And he said he looked EVERYWHERE and tried everything. Then he tried downloading HTC's own proprietary system for installing a custom ROM (I forget what it's called) but his PC wouldn't recognize it, so he couldn't use it either). He all but gave up on trying to restore my phone to how it was after he ran into the last of these problems.
I, however, refuse to believe that with the wealth of knowledge at my disposal via the internet that there is no way to fix this, even though I have a Mac. Is there ANYONE who's patient and Terminal-savvy that can help me get my M8 back to normal working condition? I don't even care about rooting it anymore. Thanks in advance for your instructions/suggestions.
I would just go into TWRP and mount the internal storage as usb, copy a ROM to the phone, umount internal storage and do a full wipe and install the ROM.
Do you want Stock, modified stock, CM??, GPE? you just need to figure out which version of ROM you want.
I think I already tried this...
I was just trying to install the stock firmware via a micro USB but the phone wouldn't recognize it on the micro USB stick in TWRP, is there a reason for this? As I'm assuming a restore to stock firmware is impossible if it can't recognize or read the firmware I'm trying to restore it to. Thank you
Hello? Anyone?
Well, as usual, I've managed to mess things up and here I am again. Somehow, I installed something or other that required rebooting. When I did, I kept getting an error that the systemui was messed up. So I decided to try to flash a custom ROM since it appeared this thing was already FUBAR and that's where the fun began. It WAS running stock 4.4.2. I wiped everything in preparation to flash the stock .tot file. Went to flash a zip from the external sdcard, and it refused telling me it couldn't mount the card! The only hopeful thing is that it powers up, I can get into download/recovery, and it's recognized by the PC through LGFT and ADB.
I can't flash anything, can't push or install through ADB, can't sideload anything. LG flash tools gets to about 38 seconds and then fails. It's like the devices permission were all changed to read only. The device is rooted and has CWM recovery. Is there a way to completely slick this thing (except for recovery - I'd do that too if need be) to reset permissions.
Any/all suggestions gladly accepted.
gjtoth said:
Well, as usual, I've managed to mess things up and here I am again. Somehow, I installed something or other that required rebooting. When I did, I kept getting an error that the systemui was messed up. So I decided to try to flash a custom ROM since it appeared this thing was already FUBAR and that's where the fun began. It WAS running stock 4.4.2. I wiped everything in preparation to flash the stock .tot file. Went to flash a zip from the external sdcard, and it refused telling me it couldn't mount the card! The only hopeful thing is that it powers up, I can get into download/recovery, and it's recognized by the PC through LGFT and ADB.
I can't flash anything, can't push or install through ADB, can't sideload anything. LG flash tools gets to about 38 seconds and then fails. It's like the devices permission were all changed to read only. The device is rooted and has CWM recovery. Is there a way to completely slick this thing (except for recovery - I'd do that too if need be) to reset permissions.
Any/all suggestions gladly accepted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Surprisingly, there was nothing wrong with the phone nor the software nor the PC. After screwing around with this for a couple of days, I had a thought to try a different USB cable. So, I popped it on and, lo & behold, I'm able to flash to stock! Lesson learned: Don't use cheap cables and try changing cables when you're have weird problems like this. :good:
Hello XDA,
Recently, a Samsung Captivate Glide was given to me to see if I could repair it. They told me the phone wouldn't turn on anymore, the screen remained black. Although they said they had just replaced the battery, I insisted that the battery was the problem. Upon hooking it up to a multimeter it became apparent that the battery was in deep sleep so I recovered it with a sliced USB cable. The phone then turned on to charge, but since I didn't feel like waiting for it to charge I inserted my S2 battery to boot it up.
Upon booting up the phone the Rogers screen came up (it's the Rogers model - sch-i927r), it adjust the brightness a bit and then proceeded to sit there forever. Since it wouldn't boot up I tried checking if Download Mode was still working. And it was! Same goes for the Android Recovery. Since this phone was never rooted or had a custom recovery it still had Gingerbread. Since the owner needed some files that were still on the phone I decided to flash TWRP, the CM11 compiled one, copy all the files to my PC and proceed to flash CM11 after making a backup.
However the phone refused to flash TWRP. I also tried CWM and going back to Stock but had no positive results. I even tried different Odin versions and different PCs. All of them gave out the same error that I have attached as a Picture. Upon googling it it seems like the storage is in read only mode, which I learnt from the Galaxy Tab 10.1 forums and also that the only solution would be to go back to Samsung.
Lastly I attempted to wipe from the built in recovery It asked for a password, however the original owner claimed he never had one. Upon forcing the flash by entering the wrong password the phone said it completed successfully but looking at the internal storage proves otherwise as all the files are still there. Trying to reboot to the system makes it either go to a black screen or corrupt the GPU memory (possibly - see attached pics.).
Looking around on the XDA forums I stumbled upon a thread by @steadfasterX which made a mod to boot the phone from an SD card. Since the eMMC of the phone is likely corrupt and causing this, could we use an SD card as the internal storage and boot up from there?
I am out of ideas. I don't have a backup of the EFS so I am being really cautious and fixing it wouldn't be worth it. So please help me! Any help is very much appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
chrismin13 said:
Hello XDA,
Recently, a Samsung Captivate Glide was given to me to see if I could repair it. They told me the phone wouldn't turn on anymore, the screen remained black. Although they said they had just replaced the battery, I insisted that the battery was the problem. Upon hooking it up to a multimeter it became apparent that the battery was in deep sleep so I recovered it with a sliced USB cable. The phone then turned on to charge, but since I didn't feel like waiting for it to charge I inserted my S2 battery to boot it up.
Upon booting up the phone the Rogers screen came up (it's the Rogers model - sch-i927r), it adjust the brightness a bit and then proceeded to sit there forever. Since it wouldn't boot up I tried checking if Download Mode was still working. And it was! Same goes for the Android Recovery. Since this phone was never rooted or had a custom recovery it still had Gingerbread. Since the owner needed some files that were still on the phone I decided to flash TWRP, the CM11 compiled one, copy all the files to my PC and proceed to flash CM11 after making a backup.
However the phone refused to flash TWRP. I also tried CWM and going back to Stock but had no positive results. I even tried different Odin versions and different PCs. All of them gave out the same error that I have attached as a Picture. Upon googling it it seems like the storage is in read only mode, which I learnt from the Galaxy Tab 10.1 forums and also that the only solution would be to go back to Samsung.
Lastly I attempted to wipe from the built in recovery It asked for a password, however the original owner claimed he never had one. Upon forcing the flash by entering the wrong password the phone said it completed successfully but looking at the internal storage proves otherwise as all the files are still there. Trying to reboot to the system makes it either go to a black screen or corrupt the GPU memory (possibly - see attached pics.).
Looking around on the XDA forums I stumbled upon a thread by @steadfasterX which made a mod to boot the phone from an SD card. Since the eMMC of the phone is likely corrupt and causing this, could we use an SD card as the internal storage and boot up from there?
I am out of ideas. I don't have a backup of the EFS so I am being really cautious and fixing it wouldn't be worth it. So please help me! Any help is very much appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can not boot from sd card, you can use sd card as system partition, but you still need place kernel+ramdisk on internal flash.
You can try to replace bootloader
bubor said:
you can not boot from sd card, you can use sd card as system partition, but you still need place kernel+ramdisk on internal flash.
You can try to replace bootloader
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply, I'll try updating the bootloader. Would it be risky though? I couldn't flash anything else and have no nandroid backup. Also, how would I go about using the SD Card as system?
EDIT: Risked it, flashed correctly but I still get the same error and I still have the Rogers bootloader. Any other ideas?
chrismin13 said:
Thanks for the reply, I'll try updating the bootloader. Would it be risky though? I couldn't flash anything else and have no nandroid backup. Also, how would I go about using the SD Card as system?
EDIT: Risked it, flashed correctly but I still get the same error and I still have the Rogers bootloader. Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
maybe check "phone bootloader update" on the left side, I think I didnt check when I did update, and it worked without checking.
First try this pack: http://dualhoki.vim.hu/bubor/dev/I927UCLG9_OneClick.exe
Try to repartition with pit file ( put pit file in pit box, no other files, and check re-partition)
You can find an alternative of odin http://glassechidna.com.au/heimdall/ . I remember there are many other options in heimdall, maybe you can find usefull error messages.
bubor said:
maybe check "phone bootloader update" on the left side, I think I didnt check when I did update, and it worked without checking.
First try this pack: http://dualhoki.vim.hu/bubor/dev/I927UCLG9_OneClick.exe
Try to repartition with pit file ( put pit file in pit box, no other files, and check re-partition)
You can find an alternative of odin http://glassechidna.com.au/heimdall/ . I remember there are many other options in heimdall, maybe you can find usefull error messages.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello,
Sorry for the late response. I got around to trying most of that. First off the PIT File was something that I was looking forward to since it seemed the most likely solution. However it didn't work, giving out a similar message as everything else. The OneClick also failed with a similar message. As for heimdall I couldn't get the drivers to work but even if I had it wouldn't have helped anymore most likely.
I am out of ideas. I highly doubt this phone is recoverable at this point.
Thank you for all the help so far!
Anyone got any other ideas? I think it's safe to call it dead at this point, but I am willing to try anything to fix it!
Thanks.
Hi Guys,
As the title says my S20 Ultra has managed to get itself stuck in a boot loop as of last night. I can boot into recovery mode, download mode and safe mode. When booted into safe mode it will stay on the home screen fine. However if i try to unlock the phone to use it, it crashes and reboots into a bootloop.
If I just plug in a usb to access the files via usb in safe mode before the phone is unlocked the phone is not detected (device manager detects a samsung device but nothing in file explorer most likely because the usb services haven't started up yet and won't until the phone is unlocked).
Im sure a factory reset will solve the bootloop issue but I don't want to lose the date on the phone until it's backed up (recently renovated our house and I have pictures on there of before and afters I would like to keep).
Is there a method I could use to get the data back other then sending the phone off to a recovery service? Maybe something that doesn't void the warranty of the phone but if there is no other choice I would consider voiding the warranty. I used to install custom roms on all my old android phones but never felt the need to on this one. I'm fairly tech savvy so am Just looking for ideas.
Cheers
Coddeh said:
Hi Guys,
As the title says my S20 Ultra has managed to get itself stuck in a boot loop as of last night. I can boot into recovery mode, download mode and safe mode. When booted into safe mode it will stay on the home screen fine. However if i try to unlock the phone to use it, it crashes and reboots into a bootloop.
If I just plug in a usb to access the files via usb in safe mode before the phone is unlocked the phone is not detected (device manager detects a samsung device but nothing in file explorer most likely because the usb services haven't started up yet and won't until the phone is unlocked).
Im sure a factory reset will solve the bootloop issue but I don't want to lose the date on the phone until it's backed up (recently renovated our house and I have pictures on there of before and afters I would like to keep).
Is there a method I could use to get the data back other then sending the phone off to a recovery service? Maybe something that doesn't void the warranty of the phone but if there is no other choice I would consider voiding the warranty. I used to install custom roms on all my old android phones but never felt the need to on this one. I'm fairly tech savvy so am Just looking for ideas.
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try flashing the same firmware you're currently running using Odin and HOME_CSC to keep your data, possible it will replace and fix the corrupted files causing the bootloop
So last night I tried what you have mentioned. It didn't change anything unfortunately.
I then thought it might be worth trying an older firmware. I tried rolling back to the previous firmware and then to android 10. Both of these ended up making things worse and it would boot loop at the android startup screen.
Luckily I managed to get back into Odin mode and put the current firmware back on and I'm now back to square one.
OK so I have had a thought. I've seen that some people have managed to establish a USB connection to thier device through TWRP and managed to backup their data through that. I've also seen that on older phones you can use odin to only flash TWRP and then boot into it. I'm not sure if things have changed drastically and you are unable to do that on the S20 ultra now. After my data (pictures and videos) was backed up I could then reflash the recovery back to stock and do a factory reset to fix the bootloop.
Does this seem plausible?