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Reviving the Samsung Galaxy S 4G

I wanted to share my knowledge and experience from the past 2 days. Most of the help came from guides and posts on this forum so I wanted to give that back.
We were trying to root the SGS4G and because we're noobs we made the mistake of thinking it was a Vibrant. Got a Vibrant ROM and tried to flash it though Odin WITH re-partition checked. Everything we read said if you do either one of these things, you will brick your phone.
Sure enough we bricked the phone. It was trying to boot into the Vibrant ROM but was getting stuck on the word 'Vibrant' and then showing a whole lot of weird colored pixels. We then learned we'd made a massive mistake and that the phone wasn't a Vibrant after all.
We got a stock ROM for SGS4G and started trying to push them through Odin. Faced countless FAILS and freezes and finally it took us to the Recovery Mode and we tried the Restore option. It booted into a crippled SGS4G ROM. When it booted, it vibrated every 10 seconds or so and it had a null IMEI and unknown baseband.
We tried following a guide that wanted to change some text in the nv_data.bin but the numbers we were meant to be editing (0018810?) didn't exist in our nv_data.bin. So that didn't work for us.
In the meantime we tried to flash the stock ROM in Odin but kept getting FAILs and Freezes. With this step we lost even the crippled operating system and couldn't reach anything except the 'phone --!-- computer' screen. Luckily, this acts the same as download mode, so not bricked. We kept trying to push the stock SGS4G stock ROM (Froyo 2.2) several times and failing.
At one point we got a completely black screen, wouldn't turn on. Bricked again. We found this post on RootzWiki and it worked for us that time and brought it back from the black screen to download mode http://rootzwiki.com/topic/1820-how-to-unbrick-your-sgs4g/
Somehow we ended up at this guide here on XDA for fixing the "null/null" IMEI http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1142829
We followed that guide. When you add the PIT file it automatically checks 'Re-Partition' in Odin, we didn't uncheck it. Bricked again. It was stuck on the Samsung logo and when we tried to get to download mode it got stuck on a black screen with the loading circle/lines and 2 computers were giving 'The USB device has malfunctioned' when we plugged it in. The unbrick guide above (RootzWiki) didn't help this time. We tried restarting the computer, let the phone rest without battery for half an hour, held power button for a minute without battery, still nothing.
Finally I accidentally pressed the power button (rather than the volume buttons to get into download mode) and it went to the samsung logo (as expected) and after that I was able to get into download mode. The key to this I think is to keep on trying powering on normally then try download mode over and over and eventually it should get unstuck and the computer should recognize it again.
Once I had it back in download mode, I followed this guide again BUT!!! I made sure to un-check re-partition and I did not check "Phone EFS Clear" (because I had tried that already before it was bricked and wanted to see if a straight ROM would work first). Everything worked perfectly, I got my IMEI and Baseband back, without modifying anything.
I don't know if this was a miracle, or if any of it will work for anyone else, but the moral of the story is don't give up even if you've done the absolute worst possible thing. I don't even think hardbrick exists on this phone after everything we were able to save it from.
Cheers

Hardbricks do exist on this phone but you have to try really hard to do it. A few people have managed it. Way to stick with it and recover your phone. I've done that more times than I can count.

hechoen said:
Hardbricks do exist on this phone but you have to try really hard to do it. A few people have managed it. Way to stick with it and recover your phone. I've done that more times than I can count.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't feel like i really hard bricked it until i saw the USB computer connection error "device pluged in malfunctioned" in more than one PC.
Then i really felt like its a hardware BIOS chipset level problem now but man...

That story cracked me up. That is exactly why I spend days reading before I even root my phone. I made the mistake one time on my old G1 and it could not be revived.
Congrats on getting it working. (especially without flooding the q&a with redundant questions that have been described in detail several places )

hani1400 said:
I wanted to share my knowledge and experience from the past 2 days. Most of the help came from guides and posts on this forum so I wanted to give that back.
We were trying to root the SGS4G and because we're noobs we made the mistake of thinking it was a Vibrant. Got a Vibrant ROM and tried to flash it though Odin WITH re-partition checked. Everything we read said if you do either one of these things, you will brick your phone.
Sure enough we bricked the phone. It was trying to boot into the Vibrant ROM but was getting stuck on the word 'Vibrant' and then showing a whole lot of weird colored pixels. We then learned we'd made a massive mistake and that the phone wasn't a Vibrant after all.
We got a stock ROM for SGS4G and started trying to push them through Odin. Faced countless FAILS and freezes and finally it took us to the Recovery Mode and we tried the Restore option. It booted into a crippled SGS4G ROM. When it booted, it vibrated every 10 seconds or so and it had a null IMEI and unknown baseband.
We tried following a guide that wanted to change some text in the nv_data.bin but the numbers we were meant to be editing (0018810?) didn't exist in our nv_data.bin. So that didn't work for us.
In the meantime we tried to flash the stock ROM in Odin but kept getting FAILs and Freezes. With this step we lost even the crippled operating system and couldn't reach anything except the 'phone --!-- computer' screen. Luckily, this acts the same as download mode, so not bricked. We kept trying to push the stock SGS4G stock ROM (Froyo 2.2) several times and failing.
At one point we got a completely black screen, wouldn't turn on. Bricked again. We found this post on RootzWiki and it worked for us that time and brought it back from the black screen to download mode http://rootzwiki.com/topic/1820-how-to-unbrick-your-sgs4g/
Somehow we ended up at this guide here on XDA for fixing the "null/null" IMEI http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1142829
We followed that guide. When you add the PIT file it automatically checks 'Re-Partition' in Odin, we didn't uncheck it. Bricked again. It was stuck on the Samsung logo and when we tried to get to download mode it got stuck on a black screen with the loading circle/lines and 2 computers were giving 'The USB device has malfunctioned' when we plugged it in. The unbrick guide above (RootzWiki) didn't help this time. We tried restarting the computer, let the phone rest without battery for half an hour, held power button for a minute without battery, still nothing.
Finally I accidentally pressed the power button (rather than the volume buttons to get into download mode) and it went to the samsung logo (as expected) and after that I was able to get into download mode. The key to this I think is to keep on trying powering on normally then try download mode over and over and eventually it should get unstuck and the computer should recognize it again.
Once I had it back in download mode, I followed this guide again BUT!!! I made sure to un-check re-partition and I did not check "Phone EFS Clear" (because I had tried that already before it was bricked and wanted to see if a straight ROM would work first). Everything worked perfectly, I got my IMEI and Baseband back, without modifying anything.
I don't know if this was a miracle, or if any of it will work for anyone else, but the moral of the story is don't give up even if you've done the absolute worst possible thing. I don't even think hardbrick exists on this phone after everything we were able to save it from.
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wheooooooooowwww,..you just UNBRICKED mine, I know of the Battery pull etc...but the post you referenced
is MAGIC
This was not my first Rom nor Root on this phone, it weirdly happened while doing the GB starter....via ODIN, which i also used before..no clue what went wrong, oh well...
Thank you, thank you "i did"....Yohoooo

Yup i agree i like to read, reread then read as i do. This way i got a pretty good understanding of what I'm doing. Btw i have just started using one click and it is sooooo simple. I love it.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App

The link for fixing null/null IMEI is not working.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1142829

diavel said:
The link for fixing null/null IMEI is not working.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1142829
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=881162

Im still carrying this phone, stupid baseband unlock for iphone won't come out now I am carrying 2 phones, one as an ipod touch and the galaxy s! Good story, hope it can help others, but I am prepared to jump off of this bandwagon anytime now!

[Q] Failed Valhalla Final flash

Hello all, any help would be greatly appreciated.
My wife's phone has been rather buggy so I decided to root and rom it. Rooted the phone with the oneclick method. Moved on to getting CWM up and running (it is what I'm familiar with from my G2x). I liked what I was seeing with the Valhalla Final rom OP and decided to give it a try. Read the instructions to install but things have steadily gone down hill.
I am comming from stock. I did a NANDROID backup. Wiped, wiped, wiped and then flashed the ROM. I do believe that I just didn't read carefully enough where it says I "must have pre-installed kernel" . When I rebooted I got a pixelated screen unreadable screen. There was a voice in the background describing what was going on but I plugged along and waited the 5-7 minutes. Figured if it didn't work correctly I would just go back into CWM and restore my nandroid backup. However I can no longer get back into CWM or the recovery prompt that comes before CWM. I just get the Galaxy S 4g screen which then goes to the weird pixelated screen and then it continues in a boot loop.
I tried to follow this debricking thread but got stuck a couple of times. First, that I can't find the boot.bin and sbl.bin files. I google around and found this but the download link no longer works. Does anyone have the boot.bin and sbl.bin files handy?
Also, the Zadig program to install the Heimdall driver doesn't show me any driver options. I suspect that this is because Heimdall or Zadig had not run on the computer before I had the phone properly connected. I saw that it was the Samsung Composite driver that was being asked for. Not sure if I found the correct one but either way it didn't work. I was unable to get the computer to recognize the phone (also phone would continue on its boot loop, also it doesn't change anything whether I am holding down the volume buttons when I turn the phone on or not).
I have stayed up half the night looking for something but am wondering if I just straight up bricked the phone and need to send it to someone with JTAG experience. Let me know if there is something I am missing or some suggestions you have.

Go here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=21953878&postcount=2
The problem is that you tried flashing a gingerbread rom even though your phone still had Froyo bootloaders. If you flash a gingerbread rom using one of the one click files mentioned in the guide, you'll be able to flash more GB custom roms.
Don't worry your phone is fine, you just need to read a little more and you'll be good to go.

Thank you very much for the link, the post is very through. I am getting stuck because my phone appears to not want to go into "Download Mode." Every time I press the up + down vol buttons and plug in the usb I just get the attached images and they go in an infinite boot loop.
I have tried every usb port on the computer and followed the instructions near the first of the post and uninstalled all ports which had Android or Samsung associated with them. I also tried all the different ways I could to get into download mode based on this link.
I am currently in the process of uploading a clip of the infinite boot loop I am in on Youtube and will post it if it helps.
Again thank you all for your help. The XDA community is the best!

That is the rainbow screen indicating you need GB bootloaders. Just pull your battery. You need to flash twice - second time checking the 'flash bootloaders'.
For the driver issue/phone not recognized by the computer - There is a tool in the guide called USBDeview (in the notes). Use it to make sure you have uninstalled all android related/unknown drivers. Go into uninstall programs and make sure you uninstall Samsung drivers. Restart your computer. I also run the CCleanner reg cleaner. Then restart computer again.
For Download Mode - Pull battery. Plug your USB into your computer only. Make sure you are pushing both the volume up and down buttons simultaneously. Without putting battery back in, plug your USB cable into your phone while continuing to hold volume up and volume down buttons. Keep holding volume buttons with USB plugged into phone and computer and put the battery back in.
Start guide over and read thoroughly.

Fb that's the screen I got coming back from nand back up!!! I had to flash a diff kernel with Odin to fix it

Thanks for all your help. Ironically I was doing everything correctly, but my usb cable had gone bad on me the night that it all happened. So thanks all, espicially lumin30 for the excellent guide and for FBis251 pointing me to it. After switching to a working cable and completing lumin30's guide all is now working great!
As a random side note the driver section showed up slightly differently for me (the device I had to pick was [usb composite] but once I figured that out everything went well).

Glad you figured it out

[Q] Blue logo screen on g2x PLEASE HELP

This is my first thread that i ever needed to start on anything on phones so please understand that i'm REALLY DESPERATE i have looked in a ton of places for this fix and i tried to use clockworkmod and ended up doing that correctly but when i tried to restore it it say i dont have any backups nor recovery files and i tried putting cynagenmod on my sd card but it couldnt find the file and then i tried to use NFFLASH and make it stock android again but nothing happened and ended up stuck on the blue logo screen again. please i dont know what to do

Which version of Cyanogenmod is it? Put it on the root of your SD card. Is it already on the internal storage? I believe when you click "install from .zip" or something of the equivalent there's an option to select "choose from internal storage".
You can boot back into clockwork mod by turning the phone off, holding down the power and volume down buttons until the lg logo with the BLUE background appears, then release.

I was trying to install cynagen mod 7.01 from Rom manager but it froze in the logo screen and so i took out the battery and put it back on and it still continued to do that. After that i used CWM but i didnt have any ROMS to restore it and before it didnt correctly make my backup so i just want to restore it like the way it used to but i dont know where to put it in my sd card

crazian425 said:
This is my first thread that i ever needed to start on anything on phones so please understand that i'm REALLY DESPERATE i have looked in a ton of places for this fix and i tried to use clockworkmod and ended up doing that correctly but when i tried to restore it it say i dont have any backups nor recovery files and i tried putting cynagenmod on my sd card but it couldnt find the file and then i tried to use NFFLASH and make it stock android again but nothing happened and ended up stuck on the blue logo screen again. please i dont know what to do
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your sentence is incredibly long. Gave up after the desperate grab for attention. You may have wiped your backups by mistake. It happens. I did it not once, but twice. Give us more info so we can help. ROM, kernel, etc. A list of apps you run on a daily basis would be helpful.

crazian425 said:
I was trying to install cynagen mod 7.01 from Rom manager but it froze in the logo screen and so i took out the battery and put it back on and it still continued to do that. After that i used CWM but i didnt have any ROMS to restore it and before it didnt correctly make my backup so i just want to restore it like the way it used to but i dont know where to put it in my sd card
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never use rom manager to install on this phone, you'll continue to run into this problem.
Can you access your phone storage when it's plugged into your computer? If you can, drop CM onto it at the root directory, put it back into your phone, boot into CWM and install the zip.

i think my rom was stock rom 2.3.4 before i tried flashing cynagenmod the apps arent very important to me and i only had this phone for a week because i got too excited about the dual core.

Follow the instructions HERE to the letter. You'll go back to stock and you'll have to root your phone again (if that's what you want to do) but it should get you up and running again.
In future, search, search, and search some more. I assure you, most problems people have had have been discussed and probably solved on these forums.
Welcome to XDA!

What is the name for this process of trying to restore my device from blue logo screen? If i know the name of the issue im trying to fix maybe i can start searching for the guides. I can't really access my internal or sd card when i plug in my usb and i don't really understand what the problem i ran into if its even fixable or not. The link you've sent me for the guide i'm trying right now but i can't just sit here and wait for an hour. Feedback is really appreciated

crazian425 said:
What is the name for this process of trying to restore my device from blue logo screen? If i know the name of the issue im trying to fix maybe i can start searching for the guides. I can't really access my internal or sd card when i plug in my usb and i don't really understand what the problem i ran into if its even fixable or not. The link you've sent me for the guide i'm trying right now but i can't just sit here and wait for an hour. Feedback is really appreciated
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The whole process (if done correctly) should take but about 15 minutes give or take. What you'll be doing is Flashing Stock Recovery. Download the file provided in the link I gave, and then follow each instruction exactly as it says. Shouldn't be a need to Google any guides as this spell it out for you. Just have read and execute.
If you used NvFlash/One Click Recovery to flash Clockwork Mod to your device then you should already have the APX driver installed on your computer. In that case, half of the battle is already done.
But, if you installed your recovery using Rom Manager, then I would download the APX driver and go through the whole process in the guide I've linked from start to finish.

Help! I think I got a brick?

Hi, I'm a super newbie with a nice gs3 who have been toying around with rooting and roms for a bit.
recently, I noticed that my clockworkmod folder was taking up great amount of space in my phone memory (approx. 4 gigs)
so I decided to delete the folder and re-root my phone.
After re-rooting, all my phone now does is stay on for a bit, freeze, go to a black screen, and then turn back on.
It has repeated this cycle for infinite times now.
I've tried the to reboot into recovery mode by pressing vol.up+power+home, but all it does is stay on the samsung reboot logo.
I've also tried to soft un-brick the phone with odin, but the process always fails and it doesn't even seem to be able to start the process.
It seems to be able to recognize the device, but won't do anything else further and keeps telling me it has failed.
My decision to delete the clockworkmod folder was a super stupid decision.
Have I hard bricked my phone? Is it soft brick? Or have I just completely sabotaged my phone to a whole new degree?
I have no idea what has happened and desperate for a fix while crying in the corner of my room.
Please help!!!

Sounds like you just deleted a nandroid by deleting the clockwordmod folder. That shouldn't effect the phone functioning at all. What do you mean by "re-rooting?" Deleting that folder wouldn't effect root not sure why you tried to re-root. It sounds like something went wrong during the "re-root" process. What method did you use when trying to do that?

You soft brick your phone. I believe You didn't have to root an already rooted phone. In Odin you must click PDA(must be checked also) and choose your stock ROM. Your phone must be in download mode for you to even start the process. I will also like more details like root method and what version android your running.

I made a goof rooting my phone, please help

So, I followed all the basic instructions of getting ADB, downloading and flashing twrp, and my goal was solely to root my phone so I went ahead and got SuperSU as well and installed it through twrp. Everything went fine until I went to reboot my phone and it wouldn't work, it would only boot into twrp no matter what I did. In a moment of foolishness, I decided to go to the reset section of twerp, and switched to partition A (it was on partition B, where everything had been installed). Now my phone only has a black screen, and no amount of trying to soft reset or anything is turning it on. The only indication I have that my phone is doing anything, is that when I plug it in to my pc I can hear the connection sound. I can't access any files on the phone, and ADB doesn't recognize that the phone is plugged in. It's a Moto g7 power phone, and I used the latest versions of the programs. Also, I did do something of a ****ty backup before I started the process, but since my phone wasn't rooted I don't know how much that'll help me. All the stuff I find online says to just install a stock rom or whatever; but I can't even access my phone to do that. Is there ANYTHING I can do or am I ****ed?
Thanks so much for any and all help

Zacigator said:
So, I followed all the basic instructions of getting ADB, downloading and flashing twrp, and my goal was solely to root my phone so I went ahead and got SuperSU as well and installed it through twrp. Everything went fine until I went to reboot my phone and it wouldn't work, it would only boot into twrp no matter what I did. In a moment of foolishness, I decided to go to the reset section of twerp, and switched to partition A (it was on partition B, where everything had been installed). Now my phone only has a black screen, and no amount of trying to soft reset or anything is turning it on. The only indication I have that my phone is doing anything, is that when I plug it in to my pc I can hear the connection sound. I can't access any files on the phone, and ADB doesn't recognize that the phone is plugged in. It's a Moto g7 power phone, and I used the latest versions of the programs. Also, I did do something of a ****ty backup before I started the process, but since my phone wasn't rooted I don't know how much that'll help me. All the stuff I find online says to just install a stock rom or whatever; but I can't even access my phone to do that. Is there ANYTHING I can do or am I ****ed?
Thanks so much for any and all help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
U are in edl mode u need to search for blank flash it should get u back up and running

Zacigator said:
So, I followed all the basic instructions of getting ADB, downloading and flashing twrp, and my goal was solely to root my phone so I went ahead and got SuperSU as well and installed it through twrp. Everything went fine until I went to reboot my phone and it wouldn't work, it would only boot into twrp no matter what I did. In a moment of foolishness, I decided to go to the reset section of twerp, and switched to partition A (it was on partition B, where everything had been installed). Now my phone only has a black screen, and no amount of trying to soft reset or anything is turning it on. The only indication I have that my phone is doing anything, is that when I plug it in to my pc I can hear the connection sound. I can't access any files on the phone, and ADB doesn't recognize that the phone is plugged in. It's a Moto g7 power phone, and I used the latest versions of the programs. Also, I did do something of a ****ty backup before I started the process, but since my phone wasn't rooted I don't know how much that'll help me. All the stuff I find online says to just install a stock rom or whatever; but I can't even access my phone to do that. Is there ANYTHING I can do or am I ****ed?
Thanks so much for any and all help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you get it running