[Q] I think I messed up my old phone - General Questions and Answers

Hello,
Totally new to this Forum, and to the idea of rooting/unlocking phones at home. Hopefully someone can help or provide guidance. I'm sorry, I'm sure this answer comes up somewhere on here, but I have not searched.
Here is my predicament.
I got a new phone, and was going to try to root/unlock my old phone (Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant i9000M) for my GF's daughter.
So...I downloaded Odin 1.3 and ran the instructions as I found them on another site. They supplied the link to a *.tar file that would root the phone. After I ran that, the phone would power on...but not pass the Splash screen. When it boots the i9000M turns to i9000 and the lights on the front of the phone flash..and it stays on that screen.
I downloaded a different version of Odin (1.85), a new tar (CF-Root-XX_XEU_JPY-v1.3-BusyBox-1.17.1) and pit (s1_odin_20100512) files. I've run all of those...and now the phone will not power at all. If I run into Download mode...it works.
Thoughts?
Is this phone able to be saved...or should I just take it with me to hockey tonight and practice shooting with it.

I got it all to work...after much reading and searching, I found the original Stock ROMS to bring me back to factory, then properly flashed and unlocked, got the SIM to work and even figured out how to set up the APN for internet access via the phone service....initially I only had it working on wifi.
A new question. Is an unlocked i900M (Bell) the same as any other i9000? I want to upgrade her past Froyo 2.2, because her app/game selection is rather limited. Everything I am finding references i9000...and doesn't say with it is a Gingerbread upgrade for a stock phone, or unlocked phone.
I apologize if these are noob questions, but I've never done this before.
Any help.guidance would be appreciated.
Matt

Related

[Q] I need help, Please?

Hi, I'm new to these threads. I have a problem with my phone that I need help with. I can't seem to find help any where. Okay, so here is my problem.
My girlfriend has a Samsung Galaxy S I500 (fascinate I guess) and earlier this week, she was looking on a website and the screen just went black. She tried to restart the phone and it went as normal then black again. When it was powered on, it would load like normal then when it was suppose to go to the home screen, it would just go black. I tried to fix it for her and ended up messing it up even more by re-partitioning it and installing the wrong firmwares or something:/ (im an iPhone guy). Now, i have tried and tried all week to find the files i need to restore her phone to 2.1 software which is what it was (i think). But obviously, megaupload.com is down and all the files i think i need are on there. I just need the files to get her phone back to stock. She got the phone from C Spire. Can anyone help, PLEASE? im getting so frustrated.
sounds like you need the stock ruu and need to flash it. I am fairly new to android and I had to do that on my HTC. Try googling for your phone's ruu file (from samsung) and then flash it.

[Q] HELP! samsung captivate stuck while trying to superuse

I was tryin to root my samsung captivate on 2.3.5 gingerbread software when i accidently unplugged the usb chord it was stuck and wouldnt go into download mode when i tryed everything i decided to try and download the root and it finally worked but only a little it goes to world phone atnt and has galaxy startup but one i havnt seen it says samsung 19000 and then continues to go back and forth between the two it will get in download mode and recover mode but i just want my regular software back can anyone help??
First of all, the I9000 is the Galaxy S, not the Captivate. You can't (generally) put firmware from one phone onto another (I've NEVER heard of that, anyway).
You need to go back to the start by flashing a stock ROM and getting your phone back to working order. You can do that by going here...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1300843
I'd strongly recommend that you spend some time reading the sticky threads in the development and Q&A forums as they will have answers to most questions like this.
Good luck
i tryed that and with all the options one im not to sure what to do but regardless it will still go into download mode but now it will only go to a white screen saying atnt world phone i am so screwed i have no clue what to do
hey i figured it all out thanks for the help!
espeyboi said:
hey i figured it all out thanks for the help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you got it sorted mate. Most of the answers you need are already here - you just need to know where and how to find them

[Q] [Root] Messed it up my phone

Okay, I couldn't find an answer I was looking for anywhere else; I'll try and keep it brief:
I am new to android. I rooted my Straight talk Galaxy SII with cyanogen mod 10.1, and everything went fine with it, no problems so far.
I introduced my friends to the wonders of rooting, and feeling unconfident in his own abilities, he gave me his Verizon Galaxy SIII for the night for me to root for him.
In short, I messed it up and now every time I try to turn it on or enter recovery mode, it gives me a yellow triangle, and says "Verizon has identified software on your device that is not approved, please bring it in to your Verizon store for help." or something along those lines.
I am done trying to root it now, because I do not want to mess anything up and just want to get it back to 100% factory stock so I don't have to pay for a new $700 phone....I tried following this ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1840030 ) guide to reset the phone, but the link to the Root66.tar is not available anymore because Mega Share is gone, and when I downloaded the torrent, and tried to extract it with 7-zip, 7zip tells me into can't enter the archive.
I was wondering if anyone knew of that file located somewhere else where I can grab it myself (I already googled it) or if anyone has a better, simpler alternative to get this phone to factory stock?
I can still get into download mode, by the way, I just can't get to the home screen, or boot into recovery mode.
ANY help is greatly appreciated, I have already chewed off all my fingernails and am quite scared I completely trashed the phone. I don't plan on messing with any of this anymore after this.
Lol you'll be fine. You're seeing this warning because you didn't unlock the bootloader depending on how you rooted the phone. Use Droidstyle's guide in the dev section and Odin flash stock image of either VRALG1 or VRBLK3. It formats /sdcard btw.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app

[Q] PLEASE HELP. Soft Bricked My Verizon Galaxy S4.

Someone please please help me. I am in desperate need of a solution. And before I lay out the issue I am having, I would like to thank everyone for taking their time to read through my post and give their input. I truly appreciate it everybody. Much much thanks.
Just as a disclaimer, I've looked all over the internet, everywhere I can possibly find for days on end, and none of what I found worked for me. It feels like I tried everything there could be, and that is why I am coming here. Again, thank you.
So here's a little background information: I have a Verizon Samsung Galaxy S4 (SCH-I545). I got the phone over the summer, and as soon as I received the phone I was updated to the apparently dreadful VRUMAE7 update. There afterwards, I tried rooting the phone. I've had rooting experience before with decent success, and never ran into problems like I did. It took awhile for me root my S4, but after awhile I was able to successfully root it. Although, I'm pretty sure I may have done something wrong. You will see why shortly.
So a week or two back, my S4 prompted me to update to the next update. I believe it was Android 4.3 (VRUEMJ7). I was very excited for the update and tried running it. But every time I accepted the update and tried updating, my phone went into Recovery to download the new update and stalled out with an error. Thereafter I would have to reboot the phone to get it working again. After failing to update multiple times, I realized that it is probably because I messed up my root. So without doing much research, I simply tried flashing the stock firmware that came with my phone thinking it should work pretty flawlessly.
I have a Mac OS, so using VmWare Fusion with Windows 7, I downloaded Odin and booted up my phone on Recovery mode, downloaded the stock VRUMAE7 firmware I found online, and began flashing. But Odin threw me a error, so I tried rebooting my phone thinking it would go back to normal. BUT this time, it kept going into recovery mode with a yellow Triangle saying firmware was installed incorrectly, etc. I was so frustrated at this point, thinking that I truly may have bricked my phone.
I began on this long journey of going through all the sources I could find online possible, downloading every type of Verizon S4 firmware I can find, trying every Odin method possible, and spending long long hours of the night biting my fingers at my dreadful fate. I even tried flashing the stock PIT File along with my stock firmware, to see if that would fix it. But no luck. I also tried using a standard windows machine rather than VMware, still with no luck.
I ask you all to please suggest any ideas, thoughts, or inputs you possibly can. I am willing to try anything and everything at this point. Please do help. I appreciate you guys reading through my lengthy question, sorry for that. Just wanted to lay everything out.
Thank you very very much.
muazra said:
Someone please please help me. I am in desperate need of a solution. And before I lay out the issue I am having, I would like to thank everyone for taking their time to read through my post and give their input. I truly appreciate it everybody. Much much thanks.
Just as a disclaimer, I've looked all over the internet, everywhere I can possibly find for days on end, and none of what I found worked for me. It feels like I tried everything there could be, and that is why I am coming here. Again, thank you.
So here's a little background information: I have a Verizon Samsung Galaxy S4 (SCH-I545). I got the phone over the summer, and as soon as I received the phone I was updated to the apparently dreadful VRUMAE7 update. There afterwards, I tried rooting the phone. I've had rooting experience before with decent success, and never ran into problems like I did. It took awhile for me root my S4, but after awhile I was able to successfully root it. Although, I'm pretty sure I may have done something wrong. You will see why shortly.
So a week or two back, my S4 prompted me to update to the next update. I believe it was Android 4.3 (VRUEMJ7). I was very excited for the update and tried running it. But every time I accepted the update and tried updating, my phone went into Recovery to download the new update and stalled out with an error. Thereafter I would have to reboot the phone to get it working again. After failing to update multiple times, I realized that it is probably because I messed up my root. So without doing much research, I simply tried flashing the stock firmware that came with my phone thinking it should work pretty flawlessly.
I have a Mac OS, so using VmWare Fusion with Windows 7, I downloaded Odin and booted up my phone on Recovery mode, downloaded the stock VRUMAE7 firmware I found online, and began flashing. But Odin threw me a error, so I tried rebooting my phone thinking it would go back to normal. BUT this time, it kept going into recovery mode with a yellow Triangle saying firmware was installed incorrectly, etc. I was so frustrated at this point, thinking that I truly may have bricked my phone.
I began on this long journey of going through all the sources I could find online possible, downloading every type of Verizon S4 firmware I can find, trying every Odin method possible, and spending long long hours of the night biting my fingers at my dreadful fate. I even tried flashing the stock PIT File along with my stock firmware, to see if that would fix it. But no luck. I also tried using a standard windows machine rather than VMware, still with no luck.
I ask you all to please suggest any ideas, thoughts, or inputs you possibly can. I am willing to try anything and everything at this point. Please do help. I appreciate you guys reading through my lengthy question, sorry for that. Just wanted to lay everything out.
Thank you very very much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi there,
it seems an easy problem but do it at your own risk I don't take responsibility of bricked device,etc
so lets go with what you need:
A- Odin [I believe you already have it]
B- stock rom go to this site:
androidayos.com/samsung-galaxy-s4-odin-stock-firmware/
and choose the suitable stock rom based on your Baseband version
C- Drivers installed for your device [if your mac/laptop recognizes your device then skip this step if not google it,download the drivers and install them]
IMPORTANT:Make sure you have 80% or more on battery
after you get these stuff install the device drivers as mentions in C then turn your device off and power it while holding volume up it should take you to download.now open odin and navigate it to the rom which you downloaded from B and flash it .wait for green color to appear and your back to your stock now it should open normally hope that I helped

My (un)pleasant experience rooting the Samsung Galaxy S8 G950U

All links to articles that I tried to follow are at the bottom of this post. Attempt this root at your own risk!
Let me start out by saying I have successfully rooted Android phones before (Motorola Droid from 2009 and LG G3 Vigor from but this phone was not wanting to cooperate from the very start. My intention was to root my Galaxy S8 so that I can install a custom ROM and get rid of unneeded software (i.e. Google, Sprint software, etc...). As it turns out, this is easier said then done. After A LOT of searching on this site and DuckDuckGo, I came across a few articles that seemed like they were legit and would get the job done. So, I prepared by downloading all the necessary files (the new firmware, Odin, adb, etc...) and factory resetting my device. I then tried to follow along with the first tutorial. Everything looked good. I was able to get everything set up just fine. My problem started when I was in the Download mode on the device (the light blue screen that says "Downloading..." in the center).
Before even connecting the device, I had PrinceComsy Odin fired up and ready to go being sure to follow the tutorial steps completely and accurately. Then, I connected my device and hit start.
...It's looking good!...
...Added!...
After a few other very promising log outputs .... nothing happened. I thought to myself, "Okay, no big deal. It said I may have to retry a couple times to get it to work." So, I reset everything back up and rebooted the phone back into Download mode. This time I tried the regular Odin version instead. However, I was presented with an error after hitting start: "SHA256 Invalid". After some searching, I found out that if you get that error in the regular Odin you should try the PrinceComsy Odin. Wow, okay, so I went back to PrinceComsy Odin and tried again to no avail. Still didn't work.
This is when I started to become concerned that I wouldn't be able to root this phone. Note: At this point, the phone still booted back into the OS with no problems. i.e. It was not bricked...yet!
I wasn't even past the Odin part of the root and already I was having problems. What was going on? I did some more searching around the web and these forums and found something interesting. Supposedly having your device plugged into the USB3.0 ports on your computer can sometimes mess Odin up. I tried plugging the phone into the normal USB2.0 ports on the back of my computer and restarted the whole process again.
Now, I was getting some weird errors. Stuff like "odin fail complete(write) operation" and "fail (no pit partition)". I started to sweat a little bit. I can't screw this phone up! I rebooted the phone just to make sure everything was still fine on the device. It booted into OS perfectly fine, again.
Okay, so one more try, and then I'll stop. I did everything again (booted phone into download mode, fired up PrinceComsy Odin, added firmware to appropriate slots, connected the device, and hit start). Once again, everything looked fine until I got another error, "Error SW REV CHECK FAIL : [aboot] Fused 4 > Binary 2". It was at this point I looked more closely at the text on the top left of the Download mode.
My bootloader was locked and for some reason that had something to do with all this failing. After all, I wasn't trying to change the bootloader at all; just trying to gain access to root permissions. Most of the tutorials I looked at said to enable the "OEM Unlocking" option in settings. However, I didn't have this option at all. I didn't think it would matter that much but boy was I wrong. I decided to give up, boot back into the OS, and call it a day.
I rebooted the phone and it took longer than normal. Like way longer. It was stuck at the Samsung splash screen for about an hour before I realized that the device was probably bricked. "Great," I thought. So, I managed to find the stock firmware on Sam Mobile. Once again, I used Odin and tried flashing the stock firmware. This time however, Odin actually completed! I thought I had done it. I successfully restored my phone, right? Nope, turns out the firmware I installed wasn't actually Sprint's original stock firmware. I'm not sure exactly what it was but everything looked fine until I entered the setup device screen. Some settings were greyed out and I was getting some weird error messages (I don't remember what they were). Then, after completing the setup, I noticed that I was no longer on the Sprint network. I also had some of Cricket's and MetroPCS apps installed by default. It was like the phone was in a so called "carrier limbo" and unable to connect to any one carrier. The weird thing is I was still able to send and receive phone calls and receive text messages. It was at this point, I realized I royally screwed up my phone I tried to factory reset (through the Recovery mode) hoping that would fix some issues but nope. Didn't seem to fix anything.
The next day, I took the phone back to the Sprint store to see if they could do anything. Of course, I knew they were just going to try factory resetting it as well. The tech came back and said they could ship it off to Samsung and have them repair it or replace it. I am really crossing my fingers and hoping that they just replace the phone. That would fix all of my issues (including the cracked screen ). Now, I have to wait 5-7 business days before I know if I'm going to be stuck without a Galaxy phone or if I'm going to get a new phone straight from the factory. Who knows? As of now, I am using my old LG G3 Vigor temporarily while Samsung looks at my phone.
TL;DR: If you are on the Sprint network, have a Samsung Galaxy S8, model sm-g950u, US variant, ATTEMPT ROOTING AT YOUR OWN RISK! Sprint apparently has some pretty intense software locks on their phones which is rather unfortunate seeing as I believe Android to be an open-source and modifiable OS. Basically, we have to use the phone as it is from Sprint or we can't use it all. This is unacceptable.
I will update this post with any new information as it becomes available.
Links
LG G3 Vigor: https://support.sprint.com/support/device/LG/LG_G3_Vigortrade-dvc8360002prd
Motorola Droid: https://www.cnet.com/products/motorola-droid-verizon-wireless/review/
1st Root Method: http://www.stechguide.com/root-galaxy-s8-and-s8-plus-snapdragon-variants/
2nd Root Method: https://forum.xda-developers.com/ga...on-sampwnd-t3658911/post73455543#post73455543
3rd Root Method: https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s8/development/root-partcyborgrom-aqi6-deodexed-t3702988
Restoring Stock Firmware: http://rootmygalaxy.net/stock-firmware-on-galaxy-s8-and-galaxy-s8-plus/
Before rooting, flash it with the unbranded "U1" firmware which is much cleaner (bloat free), and also works on all carriers as long as the sim lock is unlocked.
I just use the regular Odin and flash TWRP for the correct Samsung device then find a nice custom ROM you can install using TWRP I wrote several guides for it using Samsung phones, A3(2017, A5(2017, A7(2017, A5(2014, J8(2018 other than the button sequence for DL/recovery it is pretty much works the same, installing a stock ROM I did with Odin but finding a good stock ROM that you can download at a decent pace is harder. The OEM unlock is under Dev option in your phone though combined with USB debugging so you would need to do that before using Odin. But I get where you are coming from most guides are confusing as hell.

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