I've soft bricked a few Sammys and one of the resurrection methods I had a lot of success with, Odin the full stock ROM in PDA and stock pit file in PIT It saved me on a few occasions, that and my usb dongle jig to get me back to download mode. Do we have a stock pit for for the S3 ? And has anyone used a usb dongle jig on it yet?
Here are some tidbits you may find usefull when using Odin:
With great power comes even greater responsibility. If you check the wrong box, load the wrong file, get a power blip, pull out early, stick it in the wrong port....sorry lost focus on the last one........you can and will most likely bork your phone.* I am not responcable for anything you do to your
If you are not able to Boot into download or recovery ie Softbrick
Open Odin*Remove the battery
Connect the phone to your computer without inserting battery (use the cable that came with the phone and use the USB ports in the back of the computer, front ports for some reason can give you trouble) laptops can also give you trouble so use a desktop PC
Hold Vol Down + Home +Power on then while holding insert the battery (its takes a little dexterity and big hands)
If that doesnt help you can try the same procedure with different key combinations
If none of them work then you can try a USB jig (dongle)*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YRPW...feature=fvwrel*Do some searching there are quite a few places selling them, and they're relatively cheap.
I had the exact same issue last night. I had a mini-heart attack when it happened. I rooted my phone, installed k-ex, and the CM10 JB rom. Then because I wasn't satisfied, I tried to add system apps from the stock rom (the file explorer, keyboard, and a couple other things). I set the permissions correctly and moved them to the correct folder, but for whatever reason, when I restarted my phone, it was stuck in a bootloop; the little android with 3d figure inside him (i think it's the root installer thing); it'd load like 20% and restart phone. I then went to Odin mode and flashed the Original Stock rom, thought I was safe, and got stuck in another loop, now with the Verizon Boot Screen. Somehow I managed to get into recovery mode by holding volume up + power + home buttons and I decided to clear and delete anything and everything I could from there. It magically fixed my phone and now it's in factory condition.
i'm going to try redoing everything tonight, since i'll have more time.
Related
I was playing around last night with updating my phone with a different and everything was fine. Today, I installed the proper kernel and it installed and ran fine. I decided I would install a different kernel, one that has audio via USB for the dock and after I selected the file with Odin, I started the install and then I noticed Odin said something about it being finished and removed. Now I started my phone and it just sits at the screen that says Galaxy S. The phone will not start and I cannot get into recovery or download mode. I have tried every button combination I could find online. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get into either download mode to install the kernel again, or recovery so I can just install the zip to reload the software.
Have you tried a jig or adb to get into download mode?
Sent from 234 Elm Street
I have never been able to properly get adb working, I know I am doing something wrong, but I actually just finally got it working. I was able to use One Click Root to have it restart my phone into recovery mode and I was able to reinstall the software and kernel. Everything is going good now, except I can't use the kernel I wanted to use because I don't know if it has CWM3.
This is the kernel that I actually wanna install.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=916233
You have SOFT bricked it which means you can get it out of it without JTAG at this point. Go to YouTube and search ODIN 1 Click and watch the video I made to help flash stock firmware.
Any updates OP?
Have you tried taking out and reinserting the battery then volume up, volume down while inserting your USB cable? That saved me one time. Then I bought a JIG.
Thanks for all the help, but I actually figured it out. I had forgotten I installed bootloaders and it changed the button combinations for Continuum.
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
I've spent weeks surfing the forums trying to get past the common recovery file rename and replacement with a system manager that is in super user mode etc. I don't know if it's the particular version of the recovery file that I've replaced being bad, but the first time I was soft bricked I was able to physically reset with a guitar wire in that whole ( was weird cuz it seemed like the button wasn't going to work cuz after minutes of turning the phone on and off it just randomly worked) Let me explain better because after chosing a different recovery file it soft bricked again however the reset isnt working. Ok so if I have USB cable in it brings up charging battery logo (showing the battery as dead which isnt true because the time it did reset... when it worked, the icon illuminated green suddenly. If the USB isnt connected upon turn on the samsung comes on indefinitely (forever)... tried with sim in & out etc. If I reset into download mode it just says downloading (let it go for three hours before stopping it once). Ive installed odin and tried to fix it that way... I made a Jig with 3X100k resistors and 1 1ohm 1watt ..( attempting to get the 301k resistance between the 4th and 5th pin in the micro usb connection... Didn't work ( used a voltmeter to test the jig but I didn't know what the reading should be but I saw a difference ( thougt the 1 watt addition was messing it up so I omitted that resistor. Still didnt work.... guess I could splurge and buy a jig online as a back up if I cant beat it differently. Lastly and more promising was downloading ADB and getting it running correctly... at first because of the inability to adjust bugging or not the device wasnt recognized... miraculously I left it alone andcame back and tried it... device is recognized... tried to adb pull recovery.orig file to C: to rename and push back but I didn't see it on the PC to rename after Adb says the pull file command was done. Thanks for your patience with all this info on first message. Im new to this. Im sad that I have to get into this just to take control bake but there is a user and or group that is runing in my background and changing my permissions and running so many processes its like slow motion. doing this so I can run the roms to control my traffic and get some Ram back... I wish I could just ask him to please stop. Thank you for any help.
If I reset into download mode it just says downloading (let it go for three hours before stopping it once)
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What exactly are you doing with it when you have it in download mode? If you can get into DL mode already, what's the point of the jig?
What was the exact procedure you used with Odin, and at what point did the flash fail? Maybe I'm missing something in that wall of text, but it seems like, if Odin isn't working for you, you could always try to Heimdall back to stock and then flash a kernel & CWM one-click installer.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1629079&highlight=uclb3
BTW, please separate your paragraphs. One big block of text is kind of a pain in the ass to read through.
Odin
ApexPredatorBoids said:
What exactly are you doing with it when you have it in download mode? If you can get into DL mode already, what's the point of the jig?
What was the exact procedure you used with Odin, and at what point did the flash fail? Maybe I'm missing something in that wall of text, but it seems like, if Odin isn't working for you, you could always try to Heimdall back to stock and then flash a kernel & CWM one-click installer.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1629079&highlight=uclb3
BTW, please separate your paragraphs. One big block of text is kind of a pain in the ass to read through.
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Click to collapse
Odin wasn't recognizing the device before at all, but since I set up ADB and ran the adb sync comand, now when I run Odin it recognizes the device as com5 not com++ (not sure if that matters). I'll try and start a pit and see what happens.
If I went back to stock what kernel do you recomend I flash and do you know a good recovery file to replace the original one to get past the signature verification when reinstalling packets.
Flash entropy's dd kernel. There is no need to replace any recovery file in GB (that's only on froyo).
Sent from my sweet & buttery Infuse
Hi I want to know how can I unbrick my Samsung galaxy s 4g. I believe I bricked because now when I turned on only stock in the logo. Please can you help me with this. I'm leontx's wife. Thanks
If it's just showing the logo and it's there for over 15 minutes, you'll probably need to reflash something.
I'd suggest using one of the one-clicks from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=19601810&postcount=2 and I'd probably suggest the second (Basic with a Twist) choice.
First, you need to get the phone into download mode. Easiest way to do that is to unplug USB cable, pull the battery out, plug the battery back in, and plug the phone back to the computer. Hold the volume buttons on the left and turn on the phone (while holding down the buttons). It should ask you if you want to go into download mode. Press volume+ to confirm, then unplug the phone from your computer and plug it back in (to make the computer realize that there's a device there). Now run the one-click to reflash your phone. If the flash fails, restart the phone and try again. If the phone reboots to a screen showing a little phone and a yellow warning sign, perfect... just flash it again. That's the alternate download screen, and I get it everytime I use Heimdall/Odin/Kies to flash it.
couldn't get into download mode
Hello,thanks for you help,I'm trying to fix my wife's galaxy s after she wiped and factory reset the phone when tried to recovery by herself.Now the phone is stock in the galaxy s 4g logo forever,I tried to get into recovery or download mode but i couldn't.She told me that the phone was giving her a error message about the keyboard app,then she removed the batt and put it back, the battery showed her almost dead like 1% when was like 79% few seconds before,then she called t-mobile and the person told her to do the recovery mode with the bottoms, she did it and the person ask how much batt the phone had, she said 79%.then the person sugested to full charge the batt,and call them(tmobile) back.So here we go... lol:laugh:.She tried to fix it and got into recovery mode and wiped and factory reset the phone,I dont know what she was doing and removed the batt to reboot the phone.and here we are now.When try to get into download mode the pc not recognize it say USB device not reconognized and the phone just show a loading logo but nothing happen.I just want to know if is possible to fix this or toss it,the phone is rooted with a custom rom,I tried with another batt but the same results.Im realy want to recover this phone to give it to my mother in law thank you so much
Leontx said:
Hi I want to know how can I unbrick my Samsung galaxy s 4g. I believe I bricked because now when I turned on only stock in the logo. Please can you help me with this. I'm leontx's wife. Thanks
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i soft brick may phone yesterday, i use to flash my current rom and then reflash it again [clean flash] i just reflash it to save my game replay..
if you can boot into recovery mode, reflash your current rom and then backup and wipe everything exept sdcard then flash again.
Sounds like the battery crapping out on you & crashing while it was doing something important. Usually, a factory reset and new battery can fix. But, If the reset failed, it's not a biggie. find any of the one clicks that you might like to try (lumin30 has a awesome guide/thread w/ links). Batteries are cheap. Sometimes they will swell up when they die. If it spins easy when placed on flat surface is an easy check. There are a couple threads with links to 10 buck replacements around too.
Sent from my NookTablet using xda app-developers app
eureka !!!
my phone is alive.I could put it in download mode by removing the batt,put it back then holding both volumes bottoms,then connecting the phone to my pc(USB),no power bottom.and voila after putting this in download move everything else is piece of cake thank yall.
Hi,
Apologies if this has been asked before, but I've done a relatively thorough search and I can't find a solution to this problem.
I have an S6 (SM-G920F), It was playing up for a few weeks before this, not charging well, and what not, thought it was a cable/hardware issue. Then it stopped working entirely. Initially when it was plugged into the wall it would say it was 91% charged, but if you tried to turn it on it would turn off, and reboot into the charging screen.
I've done quite alot of reading and I've ended up flashing it with Odin (I have a single .md5 file, which i've loaded onto the phone via AP) using the most recent FIrmware UK EE for the SM-G20F. This was successful, however now it only loads the Black screen with white text Samsung S6 powered by android screen and then goes blank and back to the white text screen.
I downloaded an alternative firmware (the one previous version), but this has had the same effect. I've tried to repartition with odin, but this fails.
1.) Is there anyway I can fix this?
2.) If not Is there anyway to remove files whilst in downlod mode?
3.) If I cannot fix it or recover my data, is there anyway to wipe the data securely from my phone so I can sell it for parts?
At present, I can't access recovery mode, only download mode. But whilst Odin communicates with the phone in download mode, I can't seem to access my files from explorer?
1. I would say you'd have to clear cache, immediately after flashing the firmware with Odin, but to do that, you'd have to get to Recovery Mode first...
Why can't you get to it? Does it just start trying to boot nornally? Because if so, it's just a matter of timing it. What I do is... hold power+home+voldown to get to the screen that asks me if I want to get into Download Mode, I press cancel, and immediately start holding power+home+volup until I see the bootsplash screen, and release the power button but keep holding home+volup, and it gets me to Recovery every time, even when I have difficulties such as this.
2. Not that I'm aware of. BUT you could flash TWRP with Odin, and if you then can manage to get to Recovery, you just need to plug your phone into a computer, and your phone will show up in the computer as a device/disk and you can freely remove stuff from it.
If... IF this were to work, I would suggest downloading a stock-based ROM and flashing it. It's far more likely to work properly and bootup without issue than the firmwares you can get, and it's far less much of a headache to do.
3. Nope. There are apps that can wipe data securely (such as Shreddit which does it according to military standards), but it can't be done from Download Mode. There may be some script that could do it in Recovery Mode, but I doubt it.
I mean... technically... you could flash TWRP, go to Recovery, move to your PC all the stuff you want to keep, select the wipe option in TWRP and then transfer randomly generated data from your PC to your phone until it's full - there are many apps that can generate such data. It's not something you could pass off as very very secure, but it should suffice.
I seem to always keep going to trying TWRP - so, you know, give it a shot.
King-V said:
1. I would say you'd have to clear cache, immediately after flashing the firmware with Odin, but to do that, you'd have to get to Recovery Mode first...
Why can't you get to it? Does it just start trying to boot nornally? Because if so, it's just a matter of timing it. What I do is... hold power+home+voldown to get to the screen that asks me if I want to get into Download Mode, I press cancel, and immediately start holding power+home+volup until I see the bootsplash screen, and release the power button but keep holding home+volup, and it gets me to Recovery every time, even when I have difficulties such as this.
2. Not that I'm aware of. BUT you could flash TWRP with Odin, and if you then can manage to get to Recovery, you just need to plug your phone into a computer, and your phone will show up in the computer as a device/disk and you can freely remove stuff from it.
If... IF this were to work, I would suggest downloading a stock-based ROM and flashing it. It's far more likely to work properly and bootup without issue than the firmwares you can get, and it's far less much of a headache to do.
3. Nope. There are apps that can wipe data securely (such as Shreddit which does it according to military standards), but it can't be done from Download Mode. There may be some script that could do it in Recovery Mode, but I doubt it.
I mean... technically... you could flash TWRP, go to Recovery, move to your PC all the stuff you want to keep, select the wipe option in TWRP and then transfer randomly generated data from your PC to your phone until it's full - there are many apps that can generate such data. It's not something you could pass off as very very secure, but it should suffice.
I seem to always keep going to trying TWRP - so, you know, give it a shot.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for your reply! So after flashing it goes straight back into the boot loop. Weirdly if its plugged into my laptop it spend about a second or two on the "Samsung Galaxy S6: Powered by Android" screen before plunging into darkness and shortly after repeating the same message. However if I plug it into the wall it spend over twice as long on that screen before repeating the cycle. It never goes any further.
I've tried your suggestion about perhaps its timing for recovery mode, but even if I go straight from cancelling download mode to trying the power, up and home key it doesn't go to recovery. I've tried a variety of timings both plugged into my laptop and plugged into the wall to no avail. If the phone isn't plugged in, it literally won't do anything whatsoever, won't even hint at turning on.
So Next I tried flashing it with TWRP via Odin and nothings changed, exactly the same bootloop and I still can't get into recovery mode.
I'm starting to think that sadly this phone my be beyond repair! Thanks for your help though, much appreciated.
Hi! I usually run out of my bootloops like this:
try this:
1: go to download mode, and press Power + home + volume —
2: As soon as the screen turns black, continue pressing Power and home, quickly release "volume —" and press "volume +". This will get you into recovery mode.
It always worked for me, so I wish the same for you. Good luck! (And sorry for my bad english)
vinicius_guerra said:
Hi! I usually run out of my bootloops like this:
try this:
1: go to download mode, and press Power + home + volume —
2: As soon as the screen turns black, continue pressing Power and home, quickly release "volume —" and press "volume +". This will get you into recovery mode.
It always worked for me, so I wish the same for you. Good luck! (And sorry for my bad english)
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Hi Vinicius,
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it didn't work, I even tried flashing it back to a standard ROM from TWRP, but it still didn't do anything, just back to the Samsung logo and the loop continues ever more!
Hi, I have this problem as well.
Originally I had TWRP and root flashed into my phone but for reasons I needed to remove root.
So I followed the Odin route stated here "Mobikin how to remove root from android" (I can't post links but this should be the top result when googling)
However I didn't know if the recovery/boot should have went into AP or BL on the Odin menu and googling didn't give me any answers so I may have tried both....
Right now I tried flashing TWRP and I can't seem to boot into TWRP as well.
I was able to get into recovery mode but clearing data/cache didn't fix it for me.
EDIT: I managed to flash in another stock rom and it boots into the SAMSUNG logo but gets stuck there. I already went into recovery mode to delete data and cache partition but it still doesn't boot.
Melioetta Zyguard said:
Hi, I have this problem as well.
Originally I had TWRP and root flashed into my phone but for reasons I needed to remove root.
So I followed the Odin route stated here "Mobikin how to remove root from android" (I can't post links but this should be the top result when googling)
However I didn't know if the recovery/boot should have went into AP or BL on the Odin menu and googling didn't give me any answers so I may have tried both....
Right now I tried flashing TWRP and I can't seem to boot into TWRP as well.
I was able to get into recovery mode but clearing data/cache didn't fix it for me.
EDIT: I managed to flash in another stock rom and it boots into the SAMSUNG logo but gets stuck there. I already went into recovery mode to delete data and cache partition but it still doesn't boot.
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Click to collapse
Same experience. For all those 6 years that I used this device, the wifi was okay until now. It (wifi) is very buggy (turning on and off, and sometimes won't turn on at all) so I restarted the device, then bootloop happens. I flashed the stock rom via odin and clear data and cache. But it is still bootlooping. I think this is the sign that I need to replace my phone IF I couldn't find a fix to this.