Database Info

Suddenly I'm going extremely slowly... Help!

Ok, so far I've dumped the ROM and uploaded the kaiser-HardSPL and all was going lovely. However, after most of a day of pretty much inactivity I find the device suddenly goes very slowly. By which, I mean it can take several seconds to draw the screen.
Thinking this might be a rogue application using up all the processor cycles, I poked it up the bottom with the stick. (While doing this the first time, I held in power and camera just to see the boot loader text, but then I did it again with no buttons held.) It's a Vodafone device but it sat on the Vodafone splash screen for about 2-3 minutes then spent longer than that on the Windows Mobile screen before eventually dropping me into normality.
Except it's incredibly slow normality - I clicked on "start" and after a minute, it's not done anything yet.
Next step is a hard reset unless anyone has any better suggestion?
Help!

I assume you've pulled the battery?

Never assume anything... The full answer is, "No, but I have now"... I'm not sure that's going to do anything more than a soft (poke up the bottom) reset though. I'm now just waiting for the splash screen to subside while I'm typing this.
Having left it half an hour, while it went into standby and after noticing that the clock had stopped updating, I'm of the opinion that the already slow device has got slower...
Ok between 1 and 2 minutes to move from the splash screen to the "Windows Mobile" screen.
Now there's a turn up... After a further minute or so, I get a message, which has now cleared and gone back to the "Windows Mobile" screen before I had chance to copy it here. Basically it said that it had failed to boot either because I'd turned it off improperly or I'd installed something that it was opposed to. I should press send (I guess the green button) to reset to manufacturer's defaults.
Since that's my next stage anyway, I'll re-poke it with the pointy stick and press 'send' when it pops the message up. I'll put my trusty old Nokia N73 into flight mode and take a picture of the message so I can transcribe it here for everyone's amusement.
More news as it breaks.

I've now hit the 'send' button so it's doing a hard-reset. Meanwhile, here's the text it showed me:
Code:
The device is unable to boot be-
cause either you have turned off
the device incorrectly or tried to
install an application from untrusted
source. Press SEND to reset your
device or press any other button
to cancel. This operation will delete
all your personal data and restore
the device to its factory default
settings.
Nice. Ok, I'm at the 'tap the screen to set up your device' screen now.
Wonder what triggered all that nonsense then...

If you're like the rest of us and tooling around the all the fun programs in this forum, there's no telling.
I tell folks on computers, "Every piece of software you put on a machine is a liability to the operation of that machine." We can say that applies to this nifty little devices too.
I've had my phone experience the same symptoms you have posted here. Luckly for me a battery pull fixed mine. Sounds like the luck didn't spread much. Sorry.
Keep at it though. And don't fret the crashes. They do happen from time to time when you play hard.

So, a hard reset and a restore of a backup (Yes, I made a backup a few days ago even though I've been in the trade 20 years!) later, I'm back to normality. All I've done that's weird is install pof's loader and I can't see that's anything to do with it. What I was doing at the time of the slowdown was trying to connect to the wifi network at work. I thought the networking had just got itself tied in knots somehow but as the machine was even mega slow to boot, I can't really see that. At least I can still get back to square one at the moment.
I just need to create a .nbh out of the rom parts I dumped yesterday so that I can recover from anything more major...
Meanwhile, if you do a 'boot loader reset', would you expect it to say 'serial' if the USB isn't plugged in?

I'm starting to wonder if there is a major bug in the WiFi of the Tilt. There are some other threads on AT&T's site about this, and my work with WiFi on this unit has been dicey. Hmmmmm...

[Q] Galaxy Nexus Boot Loop (stock)

I have an unlocked HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus imported from the UK to the US. Ordered from Negri Electronics.
It's not rooted or modded in any way.. Mainly because I don't know how to. As far as I know, it's running stock ICS.
I was using it normally, (using the fb messenger app if it makes any difference) when it suddenly rebooted by itself. The Google logo comes up, then the start up animation, and sometimes the home screen will appear but is not touch sensitive (i cannot slide it to unlock), and then it 'hangs' and the screen goes black. Repeat.
I've tried to fix this by myself and there's a video on youtube (sorry, noob here. can't post links. video is by robbidwv and title is "my galaxy nexus won't boot..") of the same problem that I have, but the posted solution doesn't work for me.
So far, I have entered Coin Mode and pressed Start. Entered Fastboot mode and gone into Recovery Mode (no options appear after that. it just starts booting up and the loop begins), and I've also tried Restart Bootloader.
I've almost given up. Now all I want is to extract my SMS, if they're still on my phone. I can't access the folders on my computer because it won't boot up and connect. Is there a way that I can extract my SMS by using DOS in either Coin Mode or Fastboot mode?
Or even better, does anyone have a solution to this boot loop problem? I'll contact Negri Electronics tomorrow and hopefully they can send me a replacement.
Please help!! Thanks

that problem just started happening with me an hour ago!!
i hate this!!
we need a solution please!

Hey guys, sorry about the issue.the major problem I see here is you wanting to retrieve your txt messages, which might be possible with a little Modding, but if yourwilling to lose them to get a working phone back, then this is what your going to have to do. Make sure your phone is completely off. Hold the 2 volume buttons and the power button together. You will get into a mode with an android Guy. Press the volume button up or down until it says reboot recovery at the top. Press the power button. It will rebootand come to a screen with an android. Hold volume up,down and power at the same time. A menu will come up. Go down to wipe data. Click it, and after it is done reboot. Your phone should work now.
If this helped you, or you simply appreciate me taking the time to write this out then please press the thanks button

Hey!
Thanks. Yeah I 'fixed' it already. I was just about to post something similar. After a while I just gave up on trying to recover my data. Good thing that Google syncs everything so the only issue would be recovering my messages, which I decided weren't worth sending it in for a repair which would probably not be able to recover anything anyway.
The thing I didn't know about was to press power + volume up WHILE on the recovery screen. I thought navigating to the recovery screen was it!
Still, this kind of sucks. I love my GNex, but I can't help but be slightly pissed seeing that my crappy iPhone 3GS never did this in the 2 years I had it. Oh well, hope it doesn't happen again!

hey guys! i also did a complete wipe on my phone and got it working again!
but i wonder why this happened in the first place?
last application i installed before the crash was double twist, i dunno why but i feel that it was the reason behind the boot loop!

Sorry for reviving this thread, but I just had this happen to me TWICE!
It happened to me first last Monday, the 23rd - the phone crashed when trying to send an email with an attachment - and went into a boot loop - Google logo would appear, no make it to the animation, and reboot....
I performed a full reset and things worked again. I didn't install all the apps I had before - figuring it must have been due to some app messing with the OS.
Well, it happened again to me yesterday! I was connecting to my bluetooth headset when the phone crashed and went into the boot loop. Full reset worked again, and I've installed even fewer apps - essentially only those that I use on a daily basis.
My phone is still on 4.0.1 and I'm hoping once 4.0.4 is pushed this may get resolved? I have a canadian GNex from Negri. I will call them again (I called the first time, but when the full reset worked I never contacted them again).
I would like to this this is a software issues, and not hardware.

I have the same problem. If you figure it out let me know.

Today my phone also entered a boot loop: [Google logo]->[black screen]->[vibration]->[Repeat]
I tried Recovery Mode, but this is what happens: (sorry for the link but I am not trusted with powerful tools such as outside links apparently, as I have not yet reached the maturity of a person with eight posts... )
dl(dot)dropbox(dot)com/u/53568097/Android.jpg
This is what I see when I navigate to Recovery Mode
For a split second I can see an image of an Android with spinning cogs in his innards, but then this little sad fellow appears. WTF is this?
EDIT:
Oh, and I'm running Android stock 4.0.2, never rooted or unlocked, Swedish. At the time when the phone started doing this, I was using Endomondo, and was about to set off on my bike when it died on me.

Stock ROM galaxy nexus bootlooping after wiping data also.
Hi,
My GNex went into a bootloop so i searched xda and found that factory reseting would be helping my prob. But after wiping the data also its still in going through the loop . Please help .:crying:

[Q] Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive
Hi! I need help with my tablet.
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Tablet, model GT-P5113 TS. This model doesn't have a way to yank out the battery.
What's wrong: Touchscreen is not responding.
Current state: Attempting to drain the battery. Doesn't appear to be turned on. Factory reset apparently performed.
What happened: Sorry, this is long. It is as best as I can remember it. It may be somewhat inaccurate.
Yesterday evening, I was on my Windows laptop and logged into my Google account. I *thought* I used the Google Play Store to install Chrome to the tablet. (I had looked at the html5test website and it said Chrome had a higher HTML5 rating than the Dolphin/Jetpack browser I've been using on my tablet.)
But something went terribly wrong.
After sending Chrome to it, I unlocked the tablet and used both Chrome and Dolphin to go to html5test website. They both scored the same or nearly the same. I don't know if any of that is relevant, but I'm including it just in case.
At some point after that, I woke the tablet with the power key and used my unlock pattern on the dots lock screen.
That's when I saw what I believe was mal-ware in action. The settings menus were scrolling and sub-menus being selected, all by themselves. I couldn't say exactly what was changed because whatever program or script that was running the process was going extremely fast.
When I realized it might be trying to send out data over my Wifi network, I turned off the Wifi router in my home.
I repeatedly held down the power key to turn the system off, but doing so only rebooted back to the useless lock screen which was not responding to anything. The normal method of holding the power button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then tapping the "Power Off" option on that menu refused to power off the system. Nothing on that menu responded to touch.
Entering my pattern on the lock screen did absolutely nothing. I didn't even see any lines traced when I ran my finger over the screen.
At some point, I pulled out the external SD card. I have no idea if whatever hacked the tablet also put a copy of itself on the SD card.
I called a friend who looked up how to restore the tablet to factory settings. I didn't understand the directions exactly, so I ended up on a screen with a Warning!! about installing a Custom OS. (Holding down the Power + Volume Up seems to get me there)
I left it on this screen, and I turned my router back on and using my laptop, contacted Live Chat at Samsung but they didn't understand my problem. They told me to reboot the device and swipe my pattern several times and then after several failed attempts I would have the chance to use my Google credentials to get into it. But the device apparently never registered that my swipe attempts were failing.
So my device was booted up with me locked out, with the WiFi router on for a little while again. I turned off the router as soon as I realized that. That disconnected the chat session, but since Samsung chat wasn't helping me anyway, I didn't bother trying to go back.
I got the device back to the "Warning!!" screen. Then turned the router back on and searched for how to do a factory reset of the device. I found a video on YouTube and followed it.
I pressed the Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously, followed by letting go of the power button. That brought up a menu which contained several options, including an option to do a factory reset. I used the volume buttons to highlight that and pressed Power key. A second screen came up and I used the volume buttons and power button to select "Yes" to confirm the reset.
It appeared to have done a factory reset, rebooting eventually.
However, after that, when I tried to tap on the touch screen to move forward through the selections, the touch screen was still unresponsive!
So I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and ran the battery down until the screen was blank and it wouldn't start when I held the power key.
Then I charged it for about 20 minutes and rebooted it. I think when it came back it was on the Recovery menu. I think I did a second factory reset, but not 100% sure. It eventually rebooted after a lot longer than usual.
When it came up, it was saying battery was low. I tried to tap the OK button, but nothing happened. Behind the battery window was the first setting screen to set up the device for the first time after a factory reset. (I think selecting USA?)
I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and left it on overnight so that the battery would run down.
That was about 8 hours ago. When I woke up, I used clear tape to keep the power button pressed down, to ensure that the battery will continue to run down.
____________________________________________
What do I do next? How do I get the touch screen to start working again? It is not a hardware problem, unless mal-ware can break the hardware. The touchscreen had been working fine until this happened.
Should I take the tablet back to Best Buy where I bought it at least a year (maybe 2 years) ago? I don't know if it's still under warranty.
I have over 20 year of experience as a software developer, but not for Android. I am not very experienced with doing anything to hardware.
Should I try to fix it myself?
I have never rooted any Android device and I'm not sure what that means, either.
I've never re-installed the ______ ? (rom? image? Odin?)
I read on this and/or other forums that there's a way to replace something, but the instructions were beyond my level of understanding. I would need the procedures to be broken down into steps which don't assume too much about what I know.
I understand how to download a file to Windows, given a URL for it. I understand what a zip file is and how to extract it. I understand how to press hardware buttons and plug in cables, and do these steps in the order I'm told.
I don't understand what I'd use to get the downloaded whatever-they-are onto the tablet to replace whatever-the-other-thing-is so that the touchscreen works again.
As far as I know, Odin is a Norse god.
The only firmware updates I've ever done are the ones that the device does on it's own through Samsung's updates.
I'd deeply appreciate getting this device back since I have extremely limited funds and probably won't be able to buy a replacement.
Thank you,
Linda

LMurphy said:
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive
Hi! I need help with my tablet.
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Tablet, model GT-P5113 TS. This model doesn't have a way to yank out the battery.
What's wrong: Touchscreen is not responding.
Current state: Attempting to drain the battery. Doesn't appear to be turned on. Factory reset apparently performed.
What happened: Sorry, this is long. It is as best as I can remember it. It may be somewhat inaccurate.
Yesterday evening, I was on my Windows laptop and logged into my Google account. I *thought* I used the Google Play Store to install Chrome to the tablet. (I had looked at the html5test website and it said Chrome had a higher HTML5 rating than the Dolphin/Jetpack browser I've been using on my tablet.)
But something went terribly wrong.
After sending Chrome to it, I unlocked the tablet and used both Chrome and Dolphin to go to html5test website. They both scored the same or nearly the same. I don't know if any of that is relevant, but I'm including it just in case.
At some point after that, I woke the tablet with the power key and used my unlock pattern on the dots lock screen.
That's when I saw what I believe was mal-ware in action. The settings menus were scrolling and sub-menus being selected, all by themselves. I couldn't say exactly what was changed because whatever program or script that was running the process was going extremely fast.
When I realized it might be trying to send out data over my Wifi network, I turned off the Wifi router in my home.
I repeatedly held down the power key to turn the system off, but doing so only rebooted back to the useless lock screen which was not responding to anything. The normal method of holding the power button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then tapping the "Power Off" option on that menu refused to power off the system. Nothing on that menu responded to touch.
Entering my pattern on the lock screen did absolutely nothing. I didn't even see any lines traced when I ran my finger over the screen.
At some point, I pulled out the external SD card. I have no idea if whatever hacked the tablet also put a copy of itself on the SD card.
I called a friend who looked up how to restore the tablet to factory settings. I didn't understand the directions exactly, so I ended up on a screen with a Warning!! about installing a Custom OS. (Holding down the Power + Volume Up seems to get me there)
I left it on this screen, and I turned my router back on and using my laptop, contacted Live Chat at Samsung but they didn't understand my problem. They told me to reboot the device and swipe my pattern several times and then after several failed attempts I would have the chance to use my Google credentials to get into it. But the device apparently never registered that my swipe attempts were failing.
So my device was booted up with me locked out, with the WiFi router on for a little while again. I turned off the router as soon as I realized that. That disconnected the chat session, but since Samsung chat wasn't helping me anyway, I didn't bother trying to go back.
I got the device back to the "Warning!!" screen. Then turned the router back on and searched for how to do a factory reset of the device. I found a video on YouTube and followed it.
I pressed the Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously, followed by letting go of the power button. That brought up a menu which contained several options, including an option to do a factory reset. I used the volume buttons to highlight that and pressed Power key. A second screen came up and I used the volume buttons and power button to select "Yes" to confirm the reset.
It appeared to have done a factory reset, rebooting eventually.
However, after that, when I tried to tap on the touch screen to move forward through the selections, the touch screen was still unresponsive!
So I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and ran the battery down until the screen was blank and it wouldn't start when I held the power key.
Then I charged it for about 20 minutes and rebooted it. I think when it came back it was on the Recovery menu. I think I did a second factory reset, but not 100% sure. It eventually rebooted after a lot longer than usual.
When it came up, it was saying battery was low. I tried to tap the OK button, but nothing happened. Behind the battery window was the first setting screen to set up the device for the first time after a factory reset. (I think selecting USA?)
I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and left it on overnight so that the battery would run down.
That was about 8 hours ago. When I woke up, I used clear tape to keep the power button pressed down, to ensure that the battery will continue to run down.
____________________________________________
What do I do next? How do I get the touch screen to start working again? It is not a hardware problem, unless mal-ware can break the hardware. The touchscreen had been working fine until this happened.
Should I take the tablet back to Best Buy where I bought it at least a year (maybe 2 years) ago? I don't know if it's still under warranty.
I have over 20 year of experience as a software developer, but not for Android. I am not very experienced with doing anything to hardware.
Should I try to fix it myself?
I have never rooted any Android device and I'm not sure what that means, either.
I've never re-installed the ______ ? (rom? image? Odin?)
I read on this and/or other forums that there's a way to replace something, but the instructions were beyond my level of understanding. I would need the procedures to be broken down into steps which don't assume too much about what I know.
I understand how to download a file to Windows, given a URL for it. I understand what a zip file is and how to extract it. I understand how to press hardware buttons and plug in cables, and do these steps in the order I'm told.
I don't understand what I'd use to get the downloaded whatever-they-are onto the tablet to replace whatever-the-other-thing-is so that the touchscreen works again.
As far as I know, Odin is a Norse god.
The only firmware updates I've ever done are the ones that the device does on it's own through Samsung's updates.
I'd deeply appreciate getting this device back since I have extremely limited funds and probably won't be able to buy a replacement.
Thank you,
Linda
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definitely sounds like malware. You have two choices that I see, either root and custom rom or flash back to stock. Since you are stock you'd just be overwriting your existing install. Read this thread and decide your course of action http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2203309

[Completed] My s4 is soft bricked and I'm trying to do an Emergency Firmware Recovery, have ?s.

So here's the gist. My s4 has been rooted for a while and very recently while removing some apps and bloatware I decided to remove the "Help" app since it seemed useless. I think I messed my phone up by doing that because by then my s4 would randomly give me the black screen of death or get stuck in a boot loop. To fix these problems I would take out the battery and hold the power button for a minute, or clear cache from the boot loader menu or reboot in safe mode which would inexplicably fix my phone normally for some reason. But all these options only temporarily fixed my phone and it would just continue with the same problems (Boot loop, black screen of death, etc).
I eventually resorted to factory resetting my phone, all though not the conventional way At first I tried decrypting my s4 but my stupid usb cord stopped being recognized by my pc and that screwed up the decryption so my phone factory resetted itself on it's own pretty much. Now I'm having trouble getting to the boot loading screen but I can get to the download/odin screen.
I looked up online and different guides told me the last resort is to do something called an emergency firmware recovery. I looked up on youtube what to do, tried using Kies but Kies said it doesn't support the s4. I then tried using Smart Switch but when I get to the screen where it tells me to enter my serial number, I enter it and it tells me that I'm entering the wrong serial number, even though I triple checked what it is! I google searched if other people were having this problem with smart switch and other people are having similar problems as I am. I'm running out of ideas on how to save my phone. I don't think it's a hardware problem because I haven't dropped my phone very recently. Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do next?

XDA Visitor said:
So here's the gist. My s4 has been rooted for a while and very recently while removing some apps and bloatware I decided to remove the "Help" app since it seemed useless. I think I messed my phone up by doing that because by then my s4 would randomly give me the black screen of death or get stuck in a boot loop. To fix these problems I would take out the battery and hold the power button for a minute, or clear cache from the boot loader menu or reboot in safe mode which would inexplicably fix my phone normally for some reason. But all these options only temporarily fixed my phone and it would just continue with the same problems (Boot loop, black screen of death, etc).
I eventually resorted to factory resetting my phone, all though not the conventional way At first I tried decrypting my s4 but my stupid usb cord stopped being recognized by my pc and that screwed up the decryption so my phone factory resetted itself on it's own pretty much. Now I'm having trouble getting to the boot loading screen but I can get to the download/odin screen.
I looked up online and different guides told me the last resort is to do something called an emergency firmware recovery. I looked up on youtube what to do, tried using Kies but Kies said it doesn't support the s4. I then tried using Smart Switch but when I get to the screen where it tells me to enter my serial number, I enter it and it tells me that I'm entering the wrong serial number, even though I triple checked what it is! I google searched if other people were having this problem with smart switch and other people are having similar problems as I am. I'm running out of ideas on how to save my phone. I don't think it's a hardware problem because I haven't dropped my phone very recently. Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do next?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Kindly register yourself at XDA post which you can query in http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s4/help
Experts there may be able to help you

Galaxy S7 Frozen, stuck in Recovery Mode. Strange Android warning screens?

Hey everyone, I'll start by saying I'm new to these forums, so go easy...
I've had an S7 (Verizon SM-G930V) for probably 3 years, recently it randomly glitched/locked up (screen had strange color bars through what I was looking at) phone restarted and then was stuck in a boot loop. It's never been wet or dropped hard and is in really good shape. I shut it off and attempted to re-start with the same results... Got a new S20+ so I at least have a device, but I'm determined to get the lost month on the old S7 back since I had a backup from early Feb.
I tried a new battery since that was mentioned, didn't change anything, however in messing with trying to get the phone to boot have discovered a few strange message screens and behavior...
1. Phone will eventually stop responding to key presses, have to pull battery connector, wait, then it will re-boot, but every time the blue 'Recovery Mode...' is displayed. If I touch nothing, it will boot and start 'installing updates' but eventually lock and restart. At one point it made it as far as the Verizon screen, then died.
2. I can get the phone to to into the recovery menu and it will respond to commands. I've tried restart normally, boot to safe mode, and shut down phone normally, all of which result in the same restart and recovery mode message and then the lock during the update.
3. I have successfully made it to the download mode screen a few times, but don't have the knowledge of what needs to be done there and which files I would need to upload to it to make that work. (phone was totally stock rom) It had recently updated to the latest version available from Verizon which I think was 8.0?
4. Now I have found a new error screen which I have not seen before... The little Android guy has X's in his eyes and a large yellow sign with ! in it says 'No Command' and then the phone restarts? It also during that finally responded to being plugged in via USB charging, however normally it shows no signs of charging other than being warm and actually charging the battery (verified with a meter)
5. When the phone is on, it gets warm quite quickly (it's still split open and the tin covers are warm, but not hot)
Hopefully someone can help out. I wouldn't say there's anything too critical on there, but there are some pics I'd really like to have back :crying:
Thanks everyone!

bigblkyj said:
Hey everyone, I'll start by saying I'm new to these forums, so go easy...
I've had an S7 (Verizon SM-G930V) for probably 3 years, recently it randomly glitched/locked up (screen had strange color bars through what I was looking at) phone restarted and then was stuck in a boot loop. It's never been wet or dropped hard and is in really good shape. I shut it off and attempted to re-start with the same results... Got a new S20+ so I at least have a device, but I'm determined to get the lost month on the old S7 back since I had a backup from early Feb.
I tried a new battery since that was mentioned, didn't change anything, however in messing with trying to get the phone to boot have discovered a few strange message screens and behavior...
1. Phone will eventually stop responding to key presses, have to pull battery connector, wait, then it will re-boot, but every time the blue 'Recovery Mode...' is displayed. If I touch nothing, it will boot and start 'installing updates' but eventually lock and restart. At one point it made it as far as the Verizon screen, then died.
2. I can get the phone to to into the recovery menu and it will respond to commands. I've tried restart normally, boot to safe mode, and shut down phone normally, all of which result in the same restart and recovery mode message and then the lock during the update.
3. I have successfully made it to the download mode screen a few times, but don't have the knowledge of what needs to be done there and which files I would need to upload to it to make that work. (phone was totally stock rom) It had recently updated to the latest version available from Verizon which I think was 8.0?
4. Now I have found a new error screen which I have not seen before... The little Android guy has X's in his eyes and a large yellow sign with ! in it says 'No Command' and then the phone restarts? It also during that finally responded to being plugged in via USB charging, however normally it shows no signs of charging other than being warm and actually charging the battery (verified with a meter)
5. When the phone is on, it gets warm quite quickly (it's still split open and the tin covers are warm, but not hot)
Hopefully someone can help out. I wouldn't say there's anything too critical on there, but there are some pics I'd really like to have back :crying:
Thanks everyone!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If what you've described is correct, all of the solutions involve flashing the stock firmware which will of course wipe the device.
Were your photos not stored in a folder on the SD card?
There is a chance you can recover the device using Samsung Kies with the emergency recover option but if you've encountered the "no command" screen it's not looking good.

Unfortunately I did have an SD card installed, but I normally kept my camera pics on the phone's memory, since I have had an SD card fail as well and lost everything on there.
So this took an unexpected turn yesterday pretty much right after posting this... I've been messing with the phone, unplugging the battery each time, and have managed to get into different menus which kept making me think that something still had to be working if I could do that. Well, after leaving the No Command message on the screen it magically booted into the Recovery menu with (finally) the option to wipe the cache partition, which I did and rebooted normally. Believe it or not, it booted normally and into the OS like nothing ever happened?!
I instantly plugged it into my PC and ran Smart Switch which started taking a backup! About 25% though the device restarted again and was really warm to the touch on the RF covers inside. Bummer...
So I figured heat was now the issue for some reason... I waited for it to cool and then reinstalled the SD card and figured, if I could get it to boot long enough, the SD card is a quicker transfer and I'd just use ES File Explorer to try and do a photo dump to the SD card and see how far it would get. It actually made it all the way through and gave me enough time to grab some other stuff before getting hot and restarting again.
I believe the overheating is being caused by my opening of the device though... Currently I have the antennas removed and the speaker so that I'm able to quickly access the battery connector (which BTW seems to be the trick here to this working) But inadvertently, without the larger wireless charging coil in place, it relieved the pressure on the motherboard and broke the thermal paste connection between the chipset and the copper heatsink (I didn't tear it down further to check, but I can hear the 'sticking and peeling' when you press down on it).
I think what I'm going to do is apply pressure with a chip clip or something similar (non conductive) and see if I can grab a backup again before it restarts. After the cache wipe the phone seems to understand that it's plugged in and charging now which is a new thing as well...
Sorry for the long winded posts, but if this at all helps even one person with the same situation as I have, maybe that'll be worth getting lost in here