Database Users

From Root to Brick

Well, I forgot to read that a kernel was for 2.2 after downgrading from 2.2 and rooting 2.1. I attempted to install the battery baked snacks kernel and now touchscreen is not recognized menu and home buttons etc do not work. The only thing that works is the up and down key and power. I have tried to push adb factory kernel however cmd prompt is giving me the error cannot locate device. >.<

boot into recovery and restore your last backup

Yeah thats the problem. I just got done rooting there is no back ups arrrghhhh.

Woohoo I fixed ! Under the recovery menu there is a mount option loaded the PC image from the root method and now im back to where I was 2 hours ago lol!

Thats much better than bricked

Agreed. Now I know how to always recover from that though lol.

EVO 4G said:
Well, I forgot to read that a kernel was for 2.2 after downgrading from 2.2 and rooting 2.1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess you'll be reading everything before flashing next time. Glad you worked it out.

Once again, can we stop throwing the word "bricked" around so casually? I've never seen any bricks with recovery consoles.

SilverZero said:
Once again, can we stop throwing the word "bricked" around so casually? I've never seen any bricks with recovery consoles.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Quoted For Truth Justice and The XDA Way.

So, Im thinking If I should ROOT my new evo or wait till an easier on/off ROOT!!! Hmm....

SilverZero said:
Once again, can we stop throwing the word "bricked" around so casually? I've never seen any bricks with recovery consoles.
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Click to collapse
Exactly, it's only bricked once you can't get into the bootloader anymore, and even then there is still a small chance of recovery.

donatom3 said:
Exactly, it's only bricked once you can't get into the bootloader anymore, and even then there is still a small chance of recovery.
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Click to collapse
Depending on someone's level of experience, having no functionality other than the bootloader screen is bricked. It goes back to the definition of bricked which is simply a loss of function such that the phone is as useless as a brick. It's all semantics and relative to the users level of experience. It all depends on the user's ability to recover the phone.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Thanks for the back up sombdy. I agree though its not truely bricked, however at that point in time when it happened it might as well have been a "brick," until I learned that I could mount it through the bootloader and adb push the files I needed to fix it.

EVO 4G said:
Thanks for the back up sombdy. I agree though its not truely bricked, however at that point in time when it happened it might as well have been a "brick," until I learned that I could mount it through the bootloader and adb push the files I needed to fix it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just pushing for a little conservatism, that's all. Glad you got things lined up.

sombdy said:
Depending on someone's level of experience, having no functionality other than the bootloader screen is bricked. It goes back to the definition of bricked which is simply a loss of function such that the phone is as useless as a brick. It's all semantics and relative to the users level of experience. It all depends on the user's ability to recover the phone.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess I look as the term bricked = dead. If the heart is still beating and there is a chance to get the brain functioning again then it's not dead aka bricked.
I will say I'm glad the OP wasn't bricked and even more so that he/she was able to figure out the problem on their own and fix it. Always feels better when you do it yourself, and makes you feel more adventurous the next time you have to do something.

If a person can get the bootloader screen, why wouldn't they just be able to flash stock from there as a last resort?

I have to agree. When I bricked my phone it was truly a brick - no power, nada. Just sat there. No lights. No hboot. No white screen.
If you can power on, there's a solution.

Day one and im bricked..

Just jumped ships from sprint and got my facinate. Today rooted with one click and tried installing clock work. Thmanage rom manager. All seems well then suddenly my phone freezes for ten minutes I have to do a battery pull. Phone wont boot in anyway or form now. No lights or signs of life other than if I hold the power button as long as its pressed. A device labeled SEC S5PC110 Test B/D appears in device manager. And that'd all it will do. Thinking about exchanging it tomorrow afternoon. Just letting the community know what happened to me any thoughts as how or what happened might be able to help future mishaps

I'd try doing an odin flash. Just search the forums for the step by step. If u can get the phone into flash mode.

Yeah dude, definitely try Odin. Did you try flashing cwm from within ROM manager? I ask because that doesn't work for our phones yet, and it wouldn't surprise me if that could cause problems. I would use Odin to flash it back to stock, and then use the very thorough guide on here on how to get cwm going.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

hilarious post title.. good luck tho man. my only word of advice (tho it won't help u now) is to run back ups before you do anything major

illtema said:
hilarious post title.. good luck tho man. my only word of advice (tho it won't help u now) is to run back ups before you do anything major
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Click to collapse
Hard for him to do a backup when he got bricked installing CWM LOL

Possibly bootlocked.
Newer Fascinates seem to be locked. Don't know if there is any way to tell which you've got without attempting a modification of the system....which would of course, result in the above nastiness....

I would think that if newer fascinates were boot locked, so would mesmerizes and I first flashed the stock files for Verizon on my phone then went to elements zinc (which is awesome BTW) installed voodoo 1200 kernel and everything is working great for me. Could just be that he got a bunk phone or something

PhoenixPath said:
Possibly bootlocked.
Newer Fascinates seem to be locked. Don't know if there is any way to tell which you've got without attempting a modification of the system....which would of course, result in the above nastiness....
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Click to collapse
I'm thinking it's just Noob users who are bootlocked...

My phone is only a week old everything went fine root,cwm...

wisconsinated said:
I would think that if newer fascinates were boot locked, so would mesmerizes
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why would you think that? Same hardware!=same software...or we'd all be running USC's kernel/ROM.
Could just be that he got a bunk phone or something
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Click to collapse
Could be...which is why I said "possibly" instead of "definitely".

Couldn't get to the flash mode even to use odin, went back today and bestbuy swapped it out for me thinking I just got a bad phone, I could also shake the thing and hear raddling with the usb door shut to so im not really surprised. The new one seems to be working better already, eill try root tonight,

Jwahlg said:
I could also shake the thing and hear raddling with the usb door shut
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Click to collapse
Volume toggle. I bet the new one does it.
good day.

chopper the dog said:
Volume toggle. I bet the new one does it.
good day.
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Click to collapse
He's right, the volume rockers rattle like a sumbitch.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

My Fascinate is just twp weeks old and One Click and CWM worked just fine for me. BTW I am running JTs super clean rom. Lovin this phone!
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

This is why manufacturing companies are locking down phones now. That phone wasn't bricked it could have easily been fixed. OP. Please read and try to learn what u r doing. As well try to have a semi understanding of how u can fix ur phone if u mess it up. I would bet that your phone could have been up and running in 15 minutes.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

ksizzle9 said:
This is why manufacturing companies are locking down phones now. That phone wasn't bricked it could have easily been fixed. OP. Please read and try to learn what u r doing. As well try to have a semi understanding of how u can fix ur phone if u mess it up. I would bet that your phone could have been up and running in 15 minutes.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
x10
This is counter development long term.
I further submit that in the future, all root processes require a ten question exam on the users knowledge to work.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

Mine crashes sometimes. Even with all original OS. I just pull the battery and all is good.
My volume rocker doesn't rattle, so there is that plus.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

Ok.. so bricked for good? Not entering download mode. (UPDATED)

Ok so my phone was bricked and Ive been trying these past few days to fix it with odin. Odin doesnt work on my computer though. Today I connected it and odin started to work and it started to flash, it got to the factoryfs part and then froze, so I disconnected it.
Now my phone won't enter download mode and it won't turn on anymore.. what can I do?
EDITL: So i got into the sprint store and tell them that some update made my screen turn off and it wouldnt turn back on/nor charge. They were working on it for like an hour then they came to me and said that i have to pay 35$ then i can pick up a new one on tuesday. Yay and I was able to ad insurance because I didnt have it before.

I'd try just taking it back to Sprint and tell them that you were performing an OTA update and it just died in the middle of it and you don't know what to do.

Is your battery charged? Because it should at least power on
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

hayabusa1300cc said:
Is your battery charged? Because it should at least power on
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im not sure but it doesnt charge even if I plug it into the wall =( And yeah ill try to go to the sprint store tomorrow, if they question me about rooting should I deny everything? Can they check if the phone is rooted?

Yeah, just play dumb and act like you don't know what happened with it, and it just went blank during an OTA update. They can't see if the phone is rooted or not as far as I'm concerned, but if you bring it to a Sprint repair shop, I'm pretty certain that they won't know.

Actually just try pulling the battery for 3 minutes,then download mode should work,then re-odin...This has happened to me 3 times,really thought it was bricked the first time.
Sent from my Frankenstein FROYO ROM using XDA App

ecooce said:
Actually just try pulling the battery for 3 minutes,then download mode should work,then re-odin...This has happened to me 3 times,really thought it was bricked the first time.
Sent from my Frankenstein FROYO ROM using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
same thing happened to me when i first started flashing roms with this phone.. just give it alittle time, plug it in with the battery to make sure its getting a charge and it should boot back into download mode.

kalico17 said:
same thing happened to me when i first started flashing roms with this phone.. just give it alittle time, plug it in with the battery to make sure its getting a charge and it should boot back into download mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did that and nothing happens, it doesnt charge anymore i think. Im pretty sure its hard bricked now :/

The Sprint store is going to try another battery first before they throw the towel in on the phone. If that doesn't work then yes play dumb and do exactly as previously stated by @brianhuangbh.... "Was doing an OTA and it just froze". Good luck and let us know what they said

sasha101 said:
Ok so my phone was bricked and Ive been trying these past few days to fix it with odin. Odin doesnt work on my computer though. Today I connected it and odin started to work and it started to flash, it got to the factoryfs part and then froze, so I disconnected it.
Now my phone won't enter download mode and it won't turn on anymore.. what can I do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
same thing happened to me, that i ended up getting another phone. anyway i was fooling around with my brick epic when i decided to put in a fully charged battery in. nothing happened but i noticed after a while that the phone was warm. i pulled the battery then waited a couple of minutes then put it back in and held the power and 1 button and what do you know, it went to download mode. i used Odin CORRECTLY this time and now it works. when using odin make sure reboot is the only box checked and that u start Odin first then plug the epic in.

So i went to the sprint store and everything turned out good

Awesome congrats hopefully the new phone doesn't act up on ya if you decide to root lol
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

tphillips78 said:
Awesome congrats hopefully the new phone doesn't act up on ya if you decide to root lol
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im gonna stay away from rooting haha, came too close this time. Plus my computer refuses to co-operate with odin so i cant unbrick it.

Good stuff if u do decide to root feel free to pm me if u have questions. The people of xda were very helpful to me so I'm returning the favor lol.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

[Q] Hard Reset not Resetting

Hello friends,
For reasons I do not even want to bother to understand, as I am on the waiting list for the Evo 3D and will never again buy any Samsung product, though I would like to have at least basic mobile phone capabilities until the end of June, my Epic has died. It got to the point I would have to remove the battery every 10 minutes and restart. I would get all these Touchwiz errors. So I decided to hard reset, at least so I could have a phone. I'll reinstall apps when I get my Evo 3D. So I removed the SD card, and went to Settings-Security and initiated a hard reset. That was four hours ago and the SAMSUNG logo is appearing as when you restart the device, and staying put. Is the hard reset this long? What should I do? This phone, which I've had since last fall, has been the worst experience of my life, and that doesn't even count the Froyo fiasco of a few months ago. Good riddance to Samsung. I bought a Moto Xoom, which has worked flawlessly over the past month on Honeycomb. It's nice to know that there are some Android devices that don't cause so much pain and suffering that you want to scream as does this horrid Samsung phone. But I need a phone for the next 2 and a half weeks before the Evo 3D makes an appearance, so I would dearly love to know what to do at this point! Thanks in advance.

Hard reset shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 minutes.
Is your phone rooted? Are you on a custom ROM? Do you know how to use ODIN?

Thanks.
poit said:
Hard reset shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 minutes.
Is your phone rooted? Are you on a custom ROM? Do you know how to use ODIN?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I am/was rooted. I do have ODIN but need a refresher.

Roots his phone, has issues, incorrectly tries to do a recovery and it's Samsung's fault...

drplaud said:
Thanks. I am/was rooted. I do have ODIN but need a refresher.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Recommend you follow the instructions in this thread.:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1052813
Read it carefully, Do exactly as it says. Do NOT unplug the phone until they tell you to.
Good luck.

Seems like some people like to generate heat and no light...
gjones77 said:
Roots his phone, has issues, incorrectly tries to do a recovery and it's Samsung's fault...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am looking for assistance, not your petty judgment. The root issue had to do with a recommendation from this very forum. Thank you for your non-help. Yet another reason that I wish to leave Samsung forums. I hope Samsung is paying you for your good work.

poit said:
Recommend you follow the instructions in this thread.:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1052813
Read it carefully, Do exactly as it says. Do NOT unplug the phone until they tell you to.
Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much. I will do so, and again thank you for helping rather than criticizing as in that other fellow's reply. Where do those people come from?

The thing is u blame samsung for all of it when it probably was user error. But u don't want to hear that.
"The greatest respect you can earn is self respect" Louie Simmons

drplaud said:
Hello friends,
For reasons I do not even want to bother to understand
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Aka pebcak
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

drplaud said:
Thank you very much. I will do so, and again thank you for helping rather than criticizing as in that other fellow's reply. Where do those people come from?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just need to mention that my first instinct was to criticize too. It comes from the tone and attitude of your original post. Most of us in this group like our Epics, and in my case it has been the best phone I have ever owned. I have found that the few problems I have had with it have come from my mistakes, installing poorly designed ROMS, etc. I'm back on the stock Sprint ROM and have a rock solid well performing phone. Maybe you have a lemon, but without knowing the history I'm not going to judge.
Anyway, best of luck getting the phone revived.

Got it to work.
poit said:
Just need to mention that my first instinct was to criticize too. It comes from the tone and attitude of your original post. Most of us in this group like our Epics, and in my case it has been the best phone I have ever owned. I have found that the few problems I have had with it have come from my mistakes, installing poorly designed ROMS, etc. I'm back on the stock Sprint ROM and have a rock solid well performing phone. Maybe you have a lemon, but without knowing the history I'm not going to judge.
Anyway, best of luck getting the phone revived.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I followed POIT's recommendations, and I have my phone back, worked like a charm, thanks. I understand the issues, but this phone has been a challenge. When I got it I was "promised" a 2.2 upgrade within weeks, quickly ran out of space with no ability to put apps on the SD card, and then what ensued was four months of FROYO chaos. Enough. I hope you all enjoy your Epics, shortly I'll be in Evo 3D land, and I think more content.
Once again, to those who helped, many thanks, especially POIT.

drplaud said:
I am looking for assistance, not your petty judgment. The root issue had to do with a recommendation from this very forum. Thank you for your non-help. Yet another reason that I wish to leave Samsung forums. I hope Samsung is paying you for your good work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off, when a person seems to know enough to go and root their phone yet doesn't bother to go about finding the information to setting it back to stock which is a sticky in the dev section, yes I'm going to make note.
When a person goes and creates problems for themselves and then wants to blame the product for their own inability to follow directions and be ready for a failure, that person needs to learn the hard way, I'm sorry ignorance should be painful.
Now, I wish I was being paid by Samsung, hell, I'd take a free WiThin, but alas I'm not, I actually came over from the EVO because I had too many issues with it.
I'm one of the first people to call a company out for a poor product or poor service, in this case the issue arrived from neither, the issue was your own doing.
I made some of the same mistakes and semi-bricked my Epic, I was able to Odin it back to stock by reading how to on this forum, not by posting a thread bashing the Epic because I was too lazy, impatient and ignorant to educate myself.

gjones77 said:
... not by posting a thread bashing the Epic because I was too lazy, impatient and ignorant to educate myself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your quote above speaks volumes about yourself. You do not spend your time assisting others, instead insulting them, calling them names. Apparently this community should be in reverence to someone of your self-described qualities. I am not lazy, a bit impatient, and not ignorant. Perhaps I don't have your skills in searching through archives, but I think the skill you might want to focus on for yourself in the future concerns developing social skills. Why would you want to contribute or be a member of a forum when instead of assisting you decide to deride? I have had many issues with the Epic these past nine months, and God forbid a little bit of my frustration bubbled to the surface. I am about to leave this forum for good (thanking again those who did assist me), and so there will be one less person for you to insult.

This threads abit useless so I have a question.
How do u do Hard reset? My phone locked up once and I held idk what buttons for like 1min and it rebooted. But now idk what or how I did it =(
Sent from my Epix 4G using XDA

Shoulon said:
This threads abit useless so I have a question.
How do u do Hard reset? My phone locked up once and I held idk what buttons for like 1min and it rebooted. But now idk what or how I did it =(
Sent from my Epix 4G using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Odin. The hard reset wont help /system/ corruption (TW, etc.). You have to odin or flash a rom at this point. Pull battery, hold 1 on keyboard and power, set up odin/heimdall on computer, plug in phone, flash using odin.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

marcusant said:
Use Odin. The hard reset wont help /system/ corruption (TW, etc.). You have to odin or flash a rom at this point. Pull battery, hold 1 on keyboard and power, set up odin/heimdall on computer, plug in phone, flash using odin.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
soo... there are no reboot steps? like original non smartphones had? (Hold power til ur finger hurts?)

Shoulon said:
soo... there are no reboot steps? like original non smartphones had? (Hold power til ur finger hurts?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh... on froyo its power, volume up and camera. On GB, there is nothing but a good old fashion battery pull.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

never mind

poit said:
never mind
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
believe me i know how you feel... =/
you get thanks cause iknow you tried. =)

idea for ya
drplaud said:
Hello friends,
For reasons I do not even want to bother to understand, as I am on the waiting list for the Evo 3D and will never again buy any Samsung product, though I would like to have at least basic mobile phone capabilities until the end of June, my Epic has died. It got to the point I would have to remove the battery every 10 minutes and restart. I would get all these Touchwiz errors. So I decided to hard reset, at least so I could have a phone. I'll reinstall apps when I get my Evo 3D. So I removed the SD card, and went to Settings-Security and initiated a hard reset. That was four hours ago and the SAMSUNG logo is appearing as when you restart the device, and staying put. Is the hard reset this long? What should I do? This phone, which I've had since last fall, has been the worst experience of my life, and that doesn't even count the Froyo fiasco of a few months ago. Good riddance to Samsung. I bought a Moto Xoom, which has worked flawlessly over the past month on Honeycomb. It's nice to know that there are some Android devices that don't cause so much pain and suffering that you want to scream as does this horrid Samsung phone. But I need a phone for the next 2 and a half weeks before the Evo 3D makes an appearance, so I would dearly love to know what to do at this point! Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
later man hope the evo treats you better

[Q] Bricked phone?

I was running Core Droid 1.2. I WASNT flashing a rom, I WASNT flashing anything or messing with anything. I was just watching a youtube video. The phone froze. I didnt want to remove the battery as i thought it was bad. I tried finding a way to emergency shutdown my phone like volume up and down and power or something but it seems there wasnt one. I took out the battery and put it back in. I turned the phone on but all that came up was a black screen. I took it out and put it back in again. It won't turn on period.
Any ideas?

tradejak66 said:
I was running Core Droid 1.2. I WASNT flashing a rom, I WASNT flashing anything or messing with anything. I was just watching a youtube video. The phone froze. I didnt want to remove the battery as i thought it was bad. I tried finding a way to emergency shutdown my phone like volume up and down and power or something but it seems there wasnt one. I took out the battery and put it back in. I turned the phone on but all that came up was a black screen. I took it out and put it back in again. It won't turn on period.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Read my sticky in the general section
Sent from my Infernalized Glacier!
-Team Inferno

saranhai said:
Read my sticky in the general section
Sent from my Infernalized Glacier!
-Team Inferno
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I did. And its funny cause when i read it 2 days ago I got scared that my bad eMMC chip would die any second... now it looks like it just did.
I just posted this anyways cause I was desperate >.> but t-mobile says my warranty hasnt run out yet. And since it cant boot up whatsoever they cant tell its rooted. SO I get a free replacement
I was kind of hoping they'd claim the phone was defective and give me a sensation or something

This doesn't look like eMMC failure at all.

Jack_R1 said:
This doesn't look like eMMC failure at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what would you think it is then? My new phone comes today and i have to ship this one off to tmobile, so its too late. But I still want to know

Most likely - corrupted SBL. It doesn't necessarily mean eMMC failure - though it could be. Pulling the battery out while there is some eMMC activity could have caused it.

sorry im nooby. whats SBL and can it be fixed easily?

SBL is Secondary Bootloader, in our case also known as HBOOT.
Once it was corrupted, it can't be fixed, since the phone won't boot to any state that allows you to work with it.

Jack_R1 said:
SBL is Secondary Bootloader, in our case also known as HBOOT.
Once it was corrupted, it can't be fixed, since the phone won't boot to any state that allows you to work with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think that was it. He obviously could get to HBOOT by flashing PD15IMG.zip and getting failed-pu error. But I may be wrong, feel free to correct.

To flash PD15IMG, he needs HBOOT running - it's the HBOOT that flashes these files, it's the first screen on your phone that you can actually see and interact with. If HBOOT is gone, you don't boot - because you have nothing to boot to. Or actually, the phone boots to some state, but you don't know it - because you can't interact with it anymore.

invasion2 said:
I don't think that was it. He obviously could get to HBOOT by flashing PD15IMG.zip and getting failed-pu error. But I may be wrong, feel free to correct.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. I cant flash PD15 if i cant get to HBOOT. the phone doesnt turn on at all, just a backlight for one second. Which looks like its attempting to turn on but failing.

Jack_R1 said:
SBL is Secondary Bootloader, in our case also known as HBOOT.
Once it was corrupted, it can't be fixed, since the phone won't boot to any state that allows you to work with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hmm. you'd think these phones would have some sort of fail-safe feature when it comes to pulling the battery, cause people obviously do it alot.

tradejak66 said:
Nope. I cant flash PD15 if i cant get to HBOOT. the phone doesnt turn on at all, just a backlight for one second. Which looks like its attempting to turn on but failing.
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Click to collapse
Ahhh my bad, sorry. Didn't read Definitely seems like you are bricked! >.<