Database Users

Restoring from a CW Recovery Backup

I backed up my DI18 stock install using CW Recovery. I then installed a leaked version of DK17. I'd like to return to DI18, but when I try to do a recovery the phone hangs on the Samsung logo (after I finish the recovery and reboot).
Do I need to use Odin to go back to stock DI18 and THEN restore my phone using CW Recovery?

I just did this last night after I noticed Froyo to be too buggy. YOu have to back to stock DI18, root it then install clockwork. Then simply restore, mine works great.

Thanks! That's what I thought. I figured it was a firmware conflict or something that was blocking my boot up to 2.1/DI18.
I'm installing Clockwork now.

Restoreing ROM w/ CWM - What am I missing?

When I first got my epic back in November, and I started playing around with CWM, Odin and different ROMs, I found that when I tried a different ROM, (DK18 at the time), when I tried to restore my original ROM, after restore, the phone wouldn't boot. I had never been able to restore my origial build without first ODINing the original build version back (DI18), root/CWM the load and THEN restore the backup, at which time it would work fine. After that, a friend told me that CWM doesn't wipe the phone whe way ODIN does, and that I needed to wipe everything first. I hadn't done any "playing around" since then.
Fast forward to today, I decided to try Cyanogen's 6.1 pre-beta 11.1. Copied the zip to my SD card, booted into recovery, wiped everything 3x, flashed the Cyanogen ROM and rebooted. It booted fine, but turns out it was totally unusable on my phone, although it looks like it will be really nice once complete and stable. I poked around a bit, looked at what was in the various menus, then decided to go back. Booted into recovery, wiped everything 3x, did full restore, and...... No boot. Hung at "Samsung" screen. Tried it again with the same results.
In the end, I had to do the same thing I had to do in the past: ODIN DI18 back in, One-Click v2.5.5, reboot into recovery, did full restore and now phone is back to "perfect health" right where it was before I flashed the Cyanogen ROM.
Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? I would think it would be possible to backup and restore in the fashion I was trying.
Thanks,
Dave

The kernel and modem dont get backed up with cwm so its not a complete restore.
Sent from my Epic4g using the Inernet

When your flashing a new rom, usually it includes a different kernel. In the case of flashing a froyo rom (assuming you meant DK17 instead of DK18) or Cyanogen, I doubt the kernel is compatible with stock DI18.
When restoring a nandroid backup via CWM, it restores everything but the original kernel (modem only flashable from Odin), which is why your having issues after a restore. You have a froyo kernel + Eclair rom = no boot/bootloop. If you had a flashable zip of the stock kernel on your sdcard, you could flash that before/after the restore (but before rebooting) and it might work then.
Another issue you may have had with Cyanogen, from what I have read, is that you should have updated the modem.bin via Odin (to DK28) before flashing the rom.

Thanks, that would explain a few things. I guess the Cyanogen probably went bonkers due to the DI18 modem. Yes, I meant DK17, not DK18 . I'll dig up a flashable DI18 kernel and give it another go.
Are there any recoveries that will get everything? I'm told Amon Ra does, but it's not available for the Epic, and from reading, probably never will be. IMO, a FULL A to Z backup of the flash would be far better then the way CWM works at this time. Or is it a hardware limitation that prevents anything from getting 100% of the flash?

I'm having similar issues. It's not just the modem as I was on ACS deodexed DK28 with DK28 modem prior to trying Cyanogen. I can restore to any backups I made prior to mods, but anything that includes the Gingerbread theme doesn't work. I'm told it has something to do with the kernel, but even reflashing the ACS stock DK28 ROM prior to restore didn't work. So it looks like a complete flash via Odin is going to be required in many cases prior to restoring from CWM. That's my last hope.

I may try the cyanogen again tonight (and this time, flash the DK28 modem lol) and see what happens... before I do, I'll grab a flashable DI18 kernel, and see if I can restore withou odin (except for the modem). Worst case, can always use odin to recover. Kind of a pain, but it works.
Sent from my Epic 4G

I have a related stupid question, I'm on cm6 but I'm starting to miss being able to use wifi so can I just flash another dk28 rom or do I have to odin it back?

If your sticking with a rom that uses the same modem (DK28) then you should be able to just flash the new rom after wiping the data and cache (assuming the new rom includes a kernel, which I would think it would)

I have a similar question. I've been playing with a whole slew of ROM's (had the epic for about three weeks or so) I keep coming back to Quantom, but my quesiton is, I'm getting really fed up of having to reconfigure all my apps after a reflash of a new ROM (upgrade, tryain a different product, etc) Yeah the google syncing works nice, but configuring mail accounts, signatures, etc, gets old quick. Can you do an advanced restore of just the apps or use a similar method to restore your settings?

Can anyone suggest a good flashable DI18 kernel? The one I found here appears to be an update from DI07, so when I tried to flash it, it errored. Had to ODIN the stock back in again...

My backups are not working....

Ok so first off I was successful in rooting the phone, installing twrp rec., flashing loki files, and then flashing wicked rom with ktweaker tw kernel. I made a backup of the stock rooted rom before wicked was flashed. Then my troubles started when I wanted to go back to my stock backup. The rom booted but has serious issues like black screen with only status bar working and then eventually freezing. I also made a backup of a working wicked and tried restoring that but then I just get stuck in boot loop. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

what twrp version
did you wipe all before restoring
you could try to install Phils cwm recovery, folks say it works great and will restore twrp backups also

thesystem90 said:
Ok so first off I was successful in rooting the phone, installing twrp rec., flashing loki files, and then flashing wicked rom with ktweaker tw kernel. I made a backup of the stock rooted rom before wicked was flashed. Then my troubles started when I wanted to go back to my stock backup. The rom booted but has serious issues like black screen with only status bar working and then eventually freezing. I also made a backup of a working wicked and tried restoring that but then I just get stuck in boot loop. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Follow full wipe procedures, have the same recovery you made the backup with, and try again.

rugmankc said:
what twrp version
did you wipe all before restoring
you could try to install Phils cwm recovery, folks say it works great and will restore twrp backups also
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I flashed the stock firm. Soft brick averted. Did the same goo manager recovery method, but now i'm thinking of flashing that cwm as ppl have reported the same nandroid backup issues with twrp. My version is 2.5.0.2. I will keep trying to get twrp for a while with others users till i get sick of it (semi twrp fan). Any further advice would be cool. Oh and I did a factory twrp wipe the first time this problem occurred.

I wipe data caches and system before flashing. No more advice. Had newest TWRP hang on Team Win screen. Several manual reboots into recovery till it worked. Maybe I better do restore to see if it works.
Sent From My 32gb Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Tapatalk 4 Beta

[H] Flashing issues

about a week ago when 4.4 roms surfaced for mako, i wanted to try one out. when i did it failed, so i read that you had to either update TWRP or use CWM. so i tried to update TWRP with goo, and goo is down i guess, so someone posted a flashable zip of the newest TWRP(2.6.3.2) and CWM(6.0.4.4) so i got them both, and flashed the TWRP, and it flashed the 4.4 roms. and i used my nandroid to go back to 4.3(Carbon ROM) and now it fails when i try to flash a new nightly (i facrtory resetted) and it failed on my backup too, so i flashed CWM, and rebooted and it fails on everything too. (new nightly, and a copuple of roms i had been meaning to try) and i just fastbooted the official image from teamw.in website (2.6.3.3) and its failing on nightlies, but restored my backup.
what can i do to make it flash again?
should i downgrade to TWRP 2.6.3.0, i think that is where i was and it would flash, I THINK. lol.
please help.

soft brick phone flashing rom

I downloaded twrp and CM 10.1 CR2 for my MK2 4.3JB galaxy S4.
I made nandroids on the extra then went in used the wipe feature in twrp then loaded cm and gapps. Worked great and I love the ROM.
Went to put back nandroids. Used the wipe feature again then restored nandroid. Bootleg and stuck on the yellow sprint screen. Tried to flash Odin .tar and it started with a ton of FC then said something about data partition.
I had no choice but to factory wipe and I wanted to keep all my internal stuff. The stock to CM worked fine but just doing general wipe did not work to restore my nandroid.
The CM I noticed is 4.2.2. Is this an issue going back to stock 4.3 nandroid ?
I'm restoring the phone completely so it's fresh out of the box then rooting then using twrp to try to get back my old nandroid.
What did I do wrong in the process that caused it to stall on the yellow sprint screen ?

Now that I think about it I did probably a "dirty" flash since. I did not completely factory wipe the phone just the dalvik cache, cache and the last item on TWRP.

Once you go to 4.3...aka MJA or MK2 you cannot go backwards. So that may have been your issue. Try stayin with 4.3 or up
If you say "Please"... be sure and "Hit Thanks!!!"

OK I tried again after wiping, flashing 4.3, rooting, setting up TWRP.
I wiped everything and when I made my nandroids I checked ALL the boxes. I'm currently on CyanogenMod which works fine but I cant restore my nandroid. I wiped all then used restore from my SD card. I have twrp 2.6.3.0 I think.
I'm still getting stuck on the sprint screen. Help !

Don know about checking everything?? I make sure that SE Linux is checked (i use philz) and then save to SD. Have had zero issues so far and I bounce from 4.3 TW to 4.4 AOSP daily. Sorry I've never used TWRP so I cannot begin to help troubleshoot.
If you say "Please"... be sure and "Hit Thanks!!!"

I just want to make sure you are not wiping before you create the nandroid backup. I reread your post and it was unclear. When creating the backup you should not wipe first. Next, when switching between AOSP and Touchwiz things can get tricky. Usually a failure to boot is after doing a nandroid is caused by the kernel not being correct for the rom installed. It would probably be best to keep an AOSP kernel and a Touchwiz Kernel on your sdcard so you can flash it after you restore the nandroid backup to ensure the proper kernel is in place.
Secondly, it was mentioned above that you can't go back to 4.2.2 after going 4.3. This is actually incorrect. You cannot flash a stock tar of an older 4.2.2 rom through odin if you have the MJA (AKA Knox bootloader). You can however flash a 4.2.2 rom using recovery since it does not attempt to change the bootloader.

cruise350 said:
I just want to make sure you are not wiping before you create the nandroid backup. I reread your post and it was unclear. When creating the backup you should not wipe first. Next, when switching between AOSP and Touchwiz things can get tricky. Usually a failure to boot is after doing a nandroid is caused by the kernel not being correct for the rom installed. It would probably be best to keep an AOSP kernel and a Touchwiz Kernel on your sdcard so you can flash it after you restore the nandroid backup to ensure the proper kernel is in place.
Secondly, it was mentioned above that you can't go back to 4.2.2 after going 4.3. This is actually incorrect. You cannot flash a stock tar of an older 4.2.2 rom through odin if you have the MJA (AKA Knox bootloader). You can however flash a 4.2.2 rom using recovery since it does not attempt to change the bootloader.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think I wiped before making the nandroid, but I'm not sure. I have the Sprint GS4, and the nandroid was a 4.3 (Dec 2013) firmware.
Can you help me out here, I'm really lost. Do I need to flash a Touchwiz kernel on top of the nandroid through TWRP (flashing multiple zips) ? Where do I get the kernel ?

Made a nandroid of my Cyanogen Mod. Wiped phone and restored Cyanogen Mod nandroid. No problem. Worked fine. Just the original that I made is not working.

mikeprius said:
Made a nandroid of my Cyanogen Mod. Wiped phone and restored Cyanogen Mod nandroid. No problem. Worked fine. Just the original that I made is not working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are a lot of people that have had problems switching between Cyanogen Mod and Touchwiz using nandroid restores. It usually is the Touchwiz kernel not being restored when restoring the backup. When you boot up, you won't get past the initial boot screen. If this happens, you should just have to reboot back in to recovery and flash a TW kernel then reboot or after your restore your nandroid backup, just flash the TW kernel before rebooting. Look in the Android Development section for a custom TW kernel or you can try this kernel that unkownforce posted from his Triforce rom: http://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=23321874045862620

cruise350- You are my hero. The nandroid DID come back and is working This has racked my brain all night and I am so so glad that I got my nandroid back.
I do have a few more questions:
1. The Wifi is not working ?
2. It appears that my Sprint is on 3G, and not going to 4G LTE ? Do I need to do something with this ? I also am getting errors trying to update my profile and PRL.
3. Is a custom TW kernel always required to be used, is there a stock Samsung TW kernel ?
Thanks a TON ! I couldn't figure out it for the life of me. Other than that I have been enjoying Cyanogen Mod. Using goomanager it looks like some CM versions are not flashable with TWRP and only by Clockworkmod.

on some roms i know that if you don't use the kernel that comes with it the wifi doesn't work. maybe try stock? in your mobile network settings, is your preferred network type "lte/cdma/evdo'? i'm sure there's a stock kernel on the forum somewhere.

It was set on global, so I switched it thanks for the heads up. Wifi still out of commission though. Once I get this set up, I'm eager to try new ROMs. I'm still on the fence about TWRP though. It's a nice interface vs. Clockwork, but it seems like most files out there cater more to CWM

mikeprius said:
It was set on global, so I switched it thanks for the heads up. Wifi still out of commission though. Once I get this set up, I'm eager to try new ROMs. I'm still on the fence about TWRP though. It's a nice interface vs. Clockwork, but it seems like most files out there cater more to CWM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i can't really give advice on that since all i've used is cwm. idk what kernel that one is, but i think it now comes with kt-sgs4. maybe the one from before? i looked around and i couldn't find a stock kernel by itself for mja or later. if you extract the boot.img from a stock rom the kernel and ram disk are in there. how easily you could screw up your phone doing that is beyond my experience, so maybe try a different custom kernel and wait for somebody else's advice for the boot.img thing?

Wifi AND booting (as @cruise350 mentioned) are almost always a kernel issue.
What ROM are you actaully on?
How did you get there, your nandroid?
What kernel are you now using and how did you flash it?
Have you tried gonig into settings, turning off wifi, wait a moment and then trying to turn back on?
Sounds like you should flash a stock(based) TW ROM and go from there. That often clears up connection issues.
Also might want to set your 'network type' back to automatic.
As for CWM and TWRP both are superb just make sure you follow the ROM developers recommendation as to which to use. (Philz is a CWM based recovery). There are .tars and zips of the latest of each here in these forums.
Please spend some time here reading, searching and then reading some more. You will find all the answers to your questions and it will give you a huge grasp of what is what and how to do things properly.
Good luck.

I am currently on the L720VPUEMK2 ROM 4.3 for Sprint. Android version 4.3 (Dec 2013 update).
I used TWRP 6.2.3.0 to flash Cyanogen Mod 10.2 nightly version (not sure if matters specifically which one).
My kernel was from TriForceKernel on the link above. It says 3.4.0-gb72521e-dirty. I flashed it after I flashed my recovery after wiping the device including internal data, cache, dalvik cache via install .zip in TWRP then rebooted.
The phone has loaded up but does not seem to be toggling between 4G LTE and the wifi is busted. I checked my nandroid and it says there is a boot file in it.
When I created my nandroid, I checked all the boxes, then slide the toggle which was supposed to create a back up for all 6 segments. I'm not sure why the boot.img isn't loading, it's part of the recovery that saved it. The settings seem to be as I left them....there are just some little things that are problematic.
I have a boot.emmc and boot.emmc.win both that are part of the nandroid recovery that has been flashed yet it gets stuck on the splash screen.

Well I'd just wipe and try any one of the FIVE TW ROMs that have been dropped in the last 7 days.
Trying to fix whatever is your issue could take hours or days.
Wiping completely (as per whichever dev's ROM you choose), installing said ROM, and starting from scratch will assure you phone works AND give you the best chance to get stuff working.
I dirty flash, restore and install ROMs all the time.
However When I absolutely want to know I'll have a good working ROM I clean flash. Wipes, setup, let Google restore apps, debloat restored (and stock apps!) then setup each setting and app to my liking. Titanium comes in real handy - after all my apps are re-downloaded I can selectively restore data to those that need it (Kindle, newsreader, SMS, Call Logs etc.)
Try that - installing clean new ROM and see what happens. Then go from there. Or don't and spend another couple days without a completely working phone.