[Q] Messed up big time, need help (soft brick?) - AT&T Samsung Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshootin

I'm stuck on the samsung boot screen and can't do anything to get past it.Let me tell you how I got here..
So I earlier was having TWRP problems, for some reason it wouldn't get past the samsung boot screen whenever I flashed a new cm10.2 nightly, unless I did a restore and did it again and a bunch of other stuff.
So I tried switching to CWM 1.0.3.4, kinda stupid of me to use this older version, it was an accident.
Anyways I did a wipe and installed cm 10.2, it worked the first time around and I restored everything via Titanium (THIS IS WHERE I MESSED UP) apparently you shouldn't do that, after I rebooted I couldn't get back the samsung boot screen. So I tried doing what I usually did, which was reformatting/doing a full wipe before I reflash a rom. Here is the issue, I can no longer reformat on my phone. I get an issue "error mounting /data", it says error mounting sd_card as well. I can't wipe my dalvik cache either. Even though it says error mounting sd_card I can still attempt to install .zip files from the sd card, and see all my files. But I can't do a full wipe so the rom won't flash correctly I guess, which won't let me get past the samsung boot screen.
I can't access my phone via USB either, my computer doesn't remotely detect it unless I boot using volume down+home+boot which gets me to some "Downloading, Do not turn off target" screen. If I plug in my usb here my computer at least detects something but just something it recognizes as "Samsung Mobile USB Modem". Kies just times out trying to load the phone.
Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? I've been wracking my brain at this for the past 4 hours and I'm freaking out..
Crux of issue:
-Stuck at boot screen (can boot into recovery or "odin mode" not sure what that is though can't seem to do anything here)
-Can't do a full wipe
-Can't flash a rom because of bad wipe

Odin back to stock and if you have force closes and stuff when you do that in stock recovery do a factory reset. Make sure u try to pull ur files you want to keep on your SD before you factory reset after odining to stock because ur SD card will be wiped.
But wait for someone else to respond maybe they know a less time consuming way.
Sent from my SGH-M919G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

goobieracing said:
Odin back to stock and if you have force closes and stuff when you do that in stock recovery do a factory reset. Make sure u try to pull ur files you want to keep on your SD before you factory reset after odining to stock because ur SD card will be wiped.
But wait for someone else to respond maybe they know a less time consuming way. But you said you can't do anything like factory reset in recovery right?
Sent from my SGH-M919G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ehh I feel like an idiot, i just realized what I can do..
Yeah I'm going to odin back to stock.. downloading the stock .tar right now..

I had to odin back to stock the other day and didn't think nothing of doing a factory reset on a stock recovery. You'll delete everything off your internal SD. I wish someone told me twice lol. Hope everything works for you.
Sent from my SGH-M919G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Related

[Q] Need Help With Recovery

So this is what happened...
I was helping my buddy install a Rom on his Droid X, and after wiping everything and installing the rom, i rebooted the phone and it got stuck on the "M" screen.
So i figured i would go into recovery and either restore a back-uped session or just wipe everything and reboot again.
But in recovery, he doesnt have an option to restore sessions or anything. and when i try to wipe data and clear cache partitions, he still gets stuck at the "M" screen when i reboot.
Also, in recovery, it gives me a message that says,
"E:cant open /cache/recovery/command"
and after googling this and looking for solutions, none have helped. It says try pulling battery for 5 minutes, or deleting the "update.zip" file (which i cant because i cant boot the phone up), and even pulling the SD card (which doesnt make sense, but nonetheless didnt work anyway).
Any help would be appreciated. I feel real bad for putting his phone on a soft brick haha so please help a brotha out.
Thanks in advance
ejeetguy said:
So this is what happened...
I was helping my buddy install a Rom on his Droid X, and after wiping everything and installing the rom, i rebooted the phone and it got stuck on the "M" screen.
So i figured i would go into recovery and either restore a back-uped session or just wipe everything and reboot again.
But in recovery, he doesnt have an option to restore sessions or anything. and when i try to wipe data and clear cache partitions, he still gets stuck at the "M" screen when i reboot.
Also, in recovery, it gives me a message that says,
"E:cant open /cache/recovery/command"
and after googling this and looking for solutions, none have helped. It says try pulling battery for 5 minutes, or deleting the "update.zip" file (which i cant because i cant boot the phone up), and even pulling the SD card (which doesnt make sense, but nonetheless didnt work anyway).
Any help would be appreciated. I feel real bad for putting his phone on a soft brick haha so please help a brotha out.
Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What ROM? What was the Android version before hand? At this point it's not going to matter, you're going to need to SBF (factory restore). Check google for guides, or look @ the site in my signature.
Yeah, seems from you described you got your hands on a bad file; maybe the file didn't get downloaded completely. In any case, your best bet is to sbf your phone (restoring to stock using software). There is a ton of info on that, do you shouldn't have a problem on how to do that. If you need help or direction, please let us know.
Sent from my DROIDX using XDA Premium App
you have encountered my one gripe about my X. You can't get to recovery if you get stuck in a boot loop.
Your only option is to sbf back to stock and go again. I just had this happen today while I was at work. I decided I want to run Apex 2.0 alpha 3 and messed up. I was stuck at work all day without my toy.
im having the exact same problem and i tried to sdf back to stock using rsd lite as explained in another section and it goes thru the whole process reboots itself, says 100% done and tells me to "power up this phone" only i cant because when it rebooted it got stuck on the M screen ands stays there and i cant power it up.....Any suggestions appreciated THANX
Get into stock recovery and wipe
Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[Q] MyTouch 4g: Multiple problems... PLEASE help.

Okay, I've searched and searched and no one seems to have the specific problem that I'm having with my phone, so I'm taking to the forums myself. I've been rooting since the G1, I know how to adb push things, I have used google and multiple forums to try to fix this problem. So here goes, anyone that can help I thank you in advance.
1-My phone, like some other MT4G users, reboots itself each time it's plugged in. Initially I thought this was because I was using a Kindle cord to plug it into the pc, so I bought an MT4G usb cable from tmobile, and still it boot loops (just the first white screen for maybe 4 seconds, then black then again and again). The only way to charge it is to let it start boot looping, take the battery out, turn it on, and if I'm lucky enough that it begins to boot up correctly I plug it in mid boot. If I wait til it's fulled loaded it just starts rebooting again.
2-It will not at all from any angle go into Recovery mode. If I try to go to recovery from Rom Manager, or from the screen you get when holding power and lower volume key or by flashing a rom through Rom Manager, it just boot loops just like mentioned above, until I pull the battery for a while (it is currently sitting next to me with the battery out) and then put it back in.
3-If by chance it's on, and plugged into the computer, it is not at all recognized. Ever. While it's booting up my computer finds something, but doesn't know what it is, and doesn't allow me to view any folders on the SD card. Yes I've installed the HTC drivers file. I've adb'ed things to this phone before, now it says device not found. I don't know when it stopped being recognized...
4-I've even tried to fastboot something over to it, but to no avail, still not found.
If I try to do a factory reset, it boot loops. If I sneeze it boot loops.... I don't know what to do, and if I trade it in under warranty, I have to reset it to stock rom, or they're going to charge me for a new phone. Any ideas!?
I have Cyanogen mod 7 on here.
have you tried a fastboot wipe? or have you tried to reboot to recovery from adb?
First, I don't trust using the actual ROM Manager app to do the flashing/installing.
Since you've been flashing since the G1 days why not use Clockwork Recovery? Just go into recovery and do the necessary wipes.
So I suggest to do a complete full wipe in Clockwork, meaning wipe data, cache, and dalvik cache. Install the newest CM nightly (Which is working wonderfully BTW) and see if your problems still persists.
Edit: I didn't realize you tried to enter recovery, oops. But yeah try what the buy above me said. Try re-installing the latest CWM recovery, if that still fails then try heading into there via ADB.
mackster248 said:
First, I don't trust using the actual ROM Manager app to do the flashing/installing.
Since you've been flashing since the G1 days why not use Clockwork Recovery? Just go into recovery and do the necessary wipes.
So I suggest to do a complete full wipe in Clockwork, meaning wipe data, cache, and dalvik cache. Install the newest CM nightly (Which is working wonderfully BTW) and see if your problems still persists.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I second that, flashing ROMs from ROM Manager a terrible idea.
Well...if all else fails and if you are really thinking about returning it and still under warranty...few seconds in the microwave method should work just fine. They wont be able to see that its rooted if the phone wouldn't turn on, would they???
glimmer of hope...
So by the grace of god I did get it flashed back to unrooted, stock 2.2 by putting it as pd15img.zip on my sd card and going into bootloader. Once that was done I thought I would be out of the woods... I even plugged it in last night and no boot loop!! but this morning I unpllugged it (and I'm using a tmobile cable for the phone attached to my pc) and here it sits, next to me again with the battery out of it because everytime I try to turn it on (for over 40 minutes now) it boot loops to that stupid white screen (that is honestly driving me insane at this point). I know that it isn't rooted (because I dl'ed rom manager and it won't let me do anything without being rooted) so do we think that I'm safe to go to the store today to request a new one be sent? Thoughts? And thanks for the help thus far!
yeah I would send that back
Bad emmc chip? I'm sorry man, that's a terrible story.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

help(resolved)

Hey I just seriously screwed my self over bassicly I tried to get miui to boot from the samsung fascinate however when I installed it in cmr it spassed out then powered of then went to the bootloader and I get a red error message saying can't mount data or something so then I tried to reinstall Eco 3 Odin using Odin and it worked it booted but it says I have zero data on my phone and I can't install anything. I also tried the oneclick soft unbricker but it fails saying adb divers are not installed when they are. I'm doing this on my phones browser witch is the only thing that seems to be working right now I also tried a band restore but I got the same data error message.
Have you tried restoring to DL17 and then re-upgrading to 2.2?
And how about a good old odin flash?
In worst case, I would ask imnuts for the full odin package, or use a fascinate full odin package to get you off your feet, then reflash the modem, and recovery, then wipe In recovery cyan cwm... Then flash ec03
Sent from my SCH-I400 using XDA Premium App
wait wait, is this on a Continuum or Fascinate?
Nuckin said:
wait wait, is this on a Continuum or Fascinate?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He is on a Continuum, but you can use a fascinate Odin package to reformat partitions if they get messed up, then just reflash recovery and start fresh if you can get in then... That wasn't a really good thing though to suggest to a newcomer necessarily, so thank you for pointing that out
okay heres what happened firts i wanted to see if i could get the miui rom for the samsung fascinate to boot on the continuum there pretty much the same phone minus the ticker and screen size so i went into clockwork mod and wiped everything then went to install zip from sd card and clicked on the miui rom witch was the process we always used on the hero. then after i clicked on it, it started to install then my screen started shacking and my phone turned off. when i turned it back on it when to the bootloader and a red error message poped up saying
e:cant mount /dev/blockstill(invalid argument
and when i go to recovery it says the same thing when i try to wipe/restore nand it says the same thing. so at that point i powered off and went to download mode and reinstalled eco3 odin using pda mode on odin and it worked then it rebooted and i got to the set up screen and i got 2 force closes daily brefeing and something else i went ahead and skipped all that stuff and it loaded fine after that. however now for some reason it says i have zero system memory so i cant install any apps or save data however it does recognize my sd card but i cant install to sd card. so bassicly the phone functions just no internal memory. at this point i honestly dont know what to do everything on the hero was simple and straight forward and we never ran into these kind of problems. ive also tried to restore my nands and reinstall clockwork mod but still no dice. what i need to do now i guess is get the necessary files to go completely stock and see if that helps. and if someone could point me in the direction to those files i would really aprechiate it. oh and i tried the one click unbricker it sayed success but didnt really do anything.
oh and i know trying to install miui was stupid but i was just wanting to see if it would boot lol.
Download the PIT file in the Development forum, as well as the DL17 Odin package from the FAQ of the EC03 post I made. Flash the DL17 in PDA, with the PIT, and re-partition selected. After that, you should be back on DL17, and can do whatever you want from there.
huzzza!!!
thank god that worked thank yall so much i still cant believe that just happened but restoring the stock odin image worked and all is well. so i guess tommorow i can reroot and restore my nand.
once again thank yall for the help.

Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Recovery Post Mortem

A story you might find some useful morsels in . If you are impatient, yes, a happy ending.
Monday night I opened the case on my tablet and it was booting. I figured that was strange and after a few minutes realized it was just stuck booting. So I rebooted it. Came up... and then suddenly during the everything loading up phase, rebooted. This repeated several more times.
Uh oh. Working quickly between boots I unset the default on Apex launcher (since it updates frequently) and turned off the live wallpaper. I also shut off Wifi. No effect.
Next stop recovery. Cleared caches, etc. Nope. I had a fairly recent backup but took another one and it worked (whew). Decided that I would do a data wipe from recovery. Uh oh. Any attempt to format /data causes a crash.
I go to Odin to see if I can repartition flash. I can't find a PIT file for the P5113 but did find one for a 16K 7 inch model. Odin repartitioned it but still no joy. Wiping data causes a reboot. So does trying to restore a backup to /data.
Next stop Kies. You can tell it to reload firmware but you need your serial number which is written on the back of your tab (yes it is, it is about the height of a carbon atom). However, it asks you to enter "recovery" mode by pressing buttons that aren't on the tablet. I tried Odin mode but it couldn't connect. Using CWM recovery didn't work either.
So I decided I needed stock recovery. I could not find a P5113 stock recovery that wasn't bundled with an entire update package. So I unpacked an update package to get recovery.img. Flash_image didn't work (seems like it never works on this tablet, and now that I think about it, I think I wrote a thread on how to do it with dd that I forgot about last night! Duh: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=31293383&postcount=32). Instead, I repacked just recovery.img with tar. Odin was able to flash this and I was back in the ugly stock recovery.
I never did try Kies though because I asked the stock recovery to reformat /data and it worked! Back to Odin to reflash CWM and then the backup I made Monday night rolled back on and I was back in business.
Restore my screen saver, redefault (is that a word?) Apex, and turn Wifi back on. Oh yeah, and run Triangle Away
So I'm not sure what to make of all this. Open questions:
1) Did I need to repartition? What's the right PIT file to use? I sure wish Odin could dump a clean image, but if it can, I don't know how.
2) What mode does Kies want? This could have been a VirtualBox problem but I got it to work before I got Kies installed on my wife's real Windows box (man Kies is slow!).
3) Why could stock recovery reformat /data but CWM could not?
4) Would it have been sufficient to just reflash the stock recovery, do the data wipe? I suspect so, but don't know.
Anyway.... things are back to normal. Love the tab, but sure wish these big companies wouldn't assume we don't know how to fix our own stuff and muck things up with "simplified" tools. By the way, this is the "touch" CWM that seemed to fail to fix /data. I did not try the normal one.
wd5gnr said:
A story you might find some useful morsels in . If you are impatient, yes, a happy ending.
Monday night I opened the case on my tablet and it was booting. I figured that was strange and after a few minutes realized it was just stuck booting. So I rebooted it. Came up... and then suddenly during the everything loading up phase, rebooted. This repeated several more times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here we go again. Same problem but I'm not even getting into the boot. Does anyone know how to actually reformat and rescan flash for bad blocks? I have a feeling I have a bad flash block that is doing something evil.
Sigh.
Tried a different approach this time.
Booted to recovery and did an fsck on /data since it seemed to have the problem.
It did a lot of clean up and now I'm back up. Not sure what got damaged if anything though. Time will tell.
Good to hear that it is a happy ending, bro!
Sent from my AT1S0 using xda app-developers app

[Q] Wiping didn't work, messed up restore - now can't boot into TWRP

First time flashing CM, and I may have messed up.
I rooted, installed TWRP, everything went perfect. I made a backup, and then tried to do a factory wipe. The wipe ended with the messages "unable to mount /system", "... /cache" and another one. I still tried to flash, and it just immediately got stuck, nothing happened. I rebooted, and everything worked fine. It was the Samsung stock image and all my apps were still there. I'm assuming it just didn't wipe at all.
I then went full retard mode, and tried to do a restore. I wanted to be sure my phone wouldn't fail on me in the recent future because some random stuff may have been partially wiped or something. Feel free to tell me I have the IQ of a chimp.
This completely messed things up, as it just got stuck at "Restoring System...". Eventually I restarted it with the power button. Now it can't boot normally, it can't boot into recovery mode, which just leaves download mode.
Any way I can fix this and subsequently install CM properly? I'm using TWRP 2.6.3.0. I've been told it's recommended to use 2.5, as the other version may have some issues (including not being able to recognize partitions). Only download mode still seems to work, so maybe there's a way to flash my phone back into the living world?
Versions:
Team Win Recovery Project 2.6.3.0
CyanogenMod 10.1.3 (RC2 jfltexx)
Thanks!
No idea really but maybe try to flash default rom/recovery etc with odin?
I've had this problem. Seeing as you only have download mode you have to flash a stock Rom and start again. Recoveries for our phone are still I development. Use official CMW to install CM, using links in Op.
Sent from my GT-I9505 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
HANDSY said:
I've had this problem. Seeing as you only have download mode you have to flash a stock Rom and start again. Recoveries for our phone are still I development. Use official CMW to install CM, using links in Op.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got the Samsung stock ROM of july, flashed it using download mode, and everything was back! I then rooted it again, and installed CMW (see versions below). I went into recovery, and tried to do a backup. It told me it failed: "Error while making a backup image of /data!". I then wondered if it may have been due to a lack of storage (which could very well be, as that was the issue before and the old backup by Teamwin was probably still on it somewhere), so I rebooted my phone. That's when it just failed and kept showing the Samsung logo at boot. I tried flashing my ROM again, again the logo. Then I did a factory reset using the regular recovery (cache and data reset), which fixed it. Now all my apps and data are gone, but that's no problem.
I'm back at the unrooted Samsung stock image now. Any ideas what I did wrong? These were the versions I used:
CF-Auto-Root-jflte-jfltexx-gti9505
i9505-cwm-recovery-6.0.3.2(0611)
Odin3 v3.07
I did nothing more than root, install CMW, try a backup and then it all went to ****. I'm surprised a backup can even do that.
Mmm I'm not too familiar with the internal workings of backups. Perhaps something was corrupted during flashing? Glad to hear that you have got your phone working again. There is an updated version of CMW somewhere in the original development thread.
Sent from my GT-I9505 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
i've had the exact same issue.
I did go back to stock firmware and recovery, rerooted(chainfire) and installed the latest CWM 6.0.3.6.
Then, i did download Jamals Google play 4.3 rom, placed it on my SDcard and did follow the instructions. Works like a charm, and i've got noe clue what happened to my phone. however, it works now.
Chillzone said:
i've had the exact same issue.
I did go back to stock firmware and recovery, rerooted(chainfire) and installed the latest CWM 6.0.3.6.
Then, i did download Jamals Google play 4.3 rom, placed it on my SDcard and did follow the instructions. Works like a charm, and i've got noe clue what happened to my phone. however, it works now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried CMW 6.0.3.6 and the Google Play 4.3 ROM as you said, and it works perfectly! I didn't try a backup this time, as it didn't exactly have anything to back up anymore.
Finally my precious vanilla Android again, I missed it since I switched from my Galaxy Nexus to my S4. Thanks a lot guys!
Edit: I do seem to be having one issue. Quite frequently after it's booted, and I enter the SIM pin, the message "Unlocking SIM card..." stays there indefinitely. I can use the phone but the message covers everything up. This doesn't always happen, but quite often. I've read some ROMs can't handle SIM lock, like CM. This is a Google Play edition, however. Is it normal that this doesn't work?
I can seem to fix it by holding the power button, and choosing "Unlock SIM" from the menu. I guess it's not that bad as I don't often reboot my phone.

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