[Q] Phone requires reformat from recovery after it shuts off - AT&T Samsung Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshootin

I have a really odd situation. My galaxy s4 will work like a champ until you try to shut it off, reboot it, or the battery dies.
After any of those things happen, the phone will no longer boot. You have to go into recovery (I use twrp) and not only factory reset, I have to wipe the partition, then reboot into recovery a second time, then reinstall the rom. It does not matter what rom is on the phone this happens every time.
As the phone has had a small crack on the screen for eleven months I filed an insurance claim and have the replacement device but it has nf3 on it which I hear is extremely difficult if not impossible to root.
Prior to the software failure at every reboot I was quite happy with my loki phone and hate to give it up but I can't think of how to fix the crash on reboot requiring reformat and reinstall issue. Any ideas?

Related

i9505 black screen after reboot

Hello,
I have a problem with my i9505. The phone had been rooted with stock ROM. I've installed Avast Antivirus and decided to install Anti Theft feature. Installing it requires reboot. After confirming rebooting the phone beeped twice and rebooted. And this is where my problem begins.
After reboot the screen is black. It shows nothing. The phone boots, LED shows charging, connecting and disconnecting charger makes phone beep, but with few seconds delay. Connecting to PC shows content of phone memory.
I have managed to get to recovery. Odin had seen the phone so I've flashed official Samsung ROM. It didn't help.
Surprisingly after few hours with battery removed the phone started to work normally... until the next reboot.
And now it works until the reboot. After reboot the screen is black. After about 30 minutes without battery it works again.
The phone never got dropped or damaged in any way.
Before I get my phone to the service (hoping that they'll fix it under warranty) I'd like to ask you, if somebody had similar problem and knows how to fix it.
Thanks in advance.
Same problem on same phone
Hi,
I too had this problem, and fixing it wasn't difficult, however I used the TWRP recovery which @ingvarr_zaag probably doesn't have installed (seeing as they had stock firmware). Nevertheless I can confirm this identical problem on my own i9505.
I was using a CM10.1 nightly build for my i9505 and attempted to install the AVAST Anti-Theft feature using the root install method. On the first attempt at installation there was a free-space error, in which the amount of free space shown in the /system partition had overflowed and showed negative free space. To work around that error I filled up my /system partition until there was only 100mb free and then the install worked. All went well until I did a reboot; the phone hung at the i9505 screen.
I tried rebooting the phone and removing the battery for a short while, but nothing worked - the phone still hung at the i9505 screen. However, all other functions worked, so I just reflashed CM10.1 after wiping /cache, /data (but not /data/media), /system, and the Dalvik-cache (though that is in /cache AFAIK so pretty redundant). All was fine after that reflash, other than the annoyance of having to set everything up again (didn't make a backup recently).
Obviously the Anti-Theft wasn't very secure if it could be removed by a simple reflash. But to be fair, I highly doubt any software can protect itself from a format!
Anyway, just letting people know that I can confirm this this problem exists, and how I fixed it on my phone.
ingvarr_zaag said:
Hello,
I have a problem with my i9505. The phone had been rooted with stock ROM. I've installed Avast Antivirus and decided to install Anti Theft feature. Installing it requires reboot. After confirming rebooting the phone beeped twice and rebooted. And this is where my problem begins.
After reboot the screen is black. It shows nothing. The phone boots, LED shows charging, connecting and disconnecting charger makes phone beep, but with few seconds delay. Connecting to PC shows content of phone memory.
I have managed to get to recovery. Odin had seen the phone so I've flashed official Samsung ROM. It didn't help.
Surprisingly after few hours with battery removed the phone started to work normally... until the next reboot.
And now it works until the reboot. After reboot the screen is black. After about 30 minutes without battery it works again.
The phone never got dropped or damaged in any way.
Before I get my phone to the service (hoping that they'll fix it under warranty) I'd like to ask you, if somebody had similar problem and knows how to fix it.
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Flash stock firmware using odin
Go to stock recovery there factory reset and wipe
Reboot
Note all data will be lost take backup b4
.
sheomualjy said:
Hi,
I too had this problem, and fixing it wasn't difficult, however I used the TWRP recovery which @ingvarr_zaag probably doesn't have installed (seeing as they had stock firmware). Nevertheless I can confirm this identical problem on my own i9505.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had Clockwork Recovery installed but I couldn't use it, because after reboot the screen was black. I managed to get to android recovery and flashed stock Samsung ROM by Odin. It didn't help.
After 2 weeks in service it's possible that today I get my phone back. Finally, because two weeks with Samsung Galaxy Advance were miserable.
Actual status on service's page says, that they replaced main board in my phone.
BTW: no Avast Anti Theft ever again.

[Q] TMo Note 3 Deciding Rebooting is the Only Solution

Ended up "solving" this by doing a stock restore via Odin, after which TouchWiz would never load an icon (crash loop). Reinstalled TWRP via Odin, then flashed ViSiON X N3 via TWRP.
--
Morning guys,
I've had some reboots lately and a weird situation last week where I had to do operating system surgery to get the thing to boot at all.... HOWEVER things were going quite well for some time, and it's been rooted and non-stock for months.
Nevertheless I woke up this morning and it was off, I figured the battery had died so I swapped batteries... It boots, it gets to the launcher and it loads the app icons then freezes and reboots... over and over again.
edit: to be clear, as soon as the slider bar touches the right-hand side the phone freezes, the vibration holds for several seconds, and then the device reboots. obviously not what one expects from this operation (having done it before). I was able to wipe the Cache separately... trying to wipe the Dalvik cache all by itself in an advanced wipe does this reboot thing.
OK I said, i will just clear and reflash this.
Going into TWRP, attempting to do a factory reset wipe just freezes, buzzes, and reboots immediately (to the not working OS)... in order to make this all stop I pull the battery, because now the button on the side won't seem to do a hardware poweroff for anything. Just ends up resetting the current reboot.
--
Any advice would be helpful now. I was just going to say forget it and grab the tiniest ROM i could find and ride it out until I upgrade the device, but now I'm just concerned with getting it active. The rebooting in recovery when trying to do a wipe does not make me feel too great. First and only problem I've had with android roms.
Thanks,
Chris

I337 extreme lag, random reboots, no recovery

Recently bought a new out-of-the box Galaxy S4 I337 from Amazon. Had i known how much trouble it would give me, i would have picked something else. When i first turned the device on, it was almost totally unusable due to lag and random reboots. Software version was 4.4.2. I used Odin to flash a rootable NB1 onto the device. Still had lag and random reboots. Upgraded to lollipop using this guide: https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s4-att/help/guide-att-samsung-galaxy-s4-sgh-i337-t3383078 and still have lag and random reboots. Also, the first time i upgraded to lollipop, i installed safestrap not knowing it wouldn't work on lollipop. Obviously, my recovery disappeared. When i figured out what was going on, i did a fresh install of lollipop. I got recovery back, but today when i tried to boot into recovery to wipe the cache, i discovered it had mysteriously stopped working again. If i attempt to boot into recovery, it just skips to the Samsung logo. I didn't install safestrap or any other custom recovery this time.
When i turn the phone on, either it hangs at the AT&T white splash logo and refuses to load at all, or advances to the lock screen. I have disabled animations and every widget i could on the lock screen and yet when i attempt to unlock the phone, it usually freezes. If i repeatedly swipe the phone for thirty seconds or so, it unlocks but it is still frozen and i have to continue swiping to prevent it from locking again. Eventually i'm able to navigate the phone normally, until it randomly reboots or freezes. Sometimes i see an error message that Touchwiz home, Process System, or SystemUI has stopped working or is not responding. This is always accompanied by a freeze. Also, choosing an option in the dialogue that comes up when i press the power button (shut down, reboot, etc) invariably causes the device to soft reboot. Other times a soft reboot happens totally at random, even if i'm not doing anything. Anybody have any idea what's going on or did Amazon just sell me a dud? All of these issues have been happening since before i rooted the device or upgraded it, except for the disappearing recovery mode.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Sounds like a data factory reset is in order. First you need recovery back so I would odin the latest firmware for the phone that can be flashed in odin. If it's still messing up then get Amazon to replace it.
Since you have safe strap though, try booting a TW based rom like Thor ROM or Golden eye ROM. That may fix some things.
StoneyJSG said:
Sounds like a data factory reset is in order. First you need recovery back so I would odin the latest firmware for the phone that can be flashed in odin. If it's still messing up then get Amazon to replace it.
Since you have safe strap though, try booting a TW based rom like Thor ROM or Golden eye ROM. That may fix some things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just wanted to bump this to thank you for your reply. Never got the phone to work but i was able to get it back to stock and return it. I got a refurbished S5 instead.

Freezing and rebooting

Classic "my phone keeps freezing and rebooting". I am quite in the know about flashing roms and such.
It started on the stock firmware 6.1.1 (i think it was). I dd factory resets, cache wipes the lot. It would still randomly reboot.
So i flashed Telstra version of 7.0. Still froze every now and then. Did the same things as above.
Flashed TWRP and wiped everything, flashed Renovate Rom and the bootloader for it, Still did it. Numerus factory resets and wipes of everything. It would freeze at any point from startup, to having setup the phone and making phone calls or on facebook or whatever. It would even freeze in twrp, or loading twrp.
I found that the data partition was corrupt so i re partitioned to ext4. Still nothing. I reformatted every partition so the phone was a complete brick with nothing on it and after flashing clean again it would still do it.
Whats the issue that I'm missing, or is there a way to log so i can find where it keeps getting stuck? It gets hot and blue light flashes and i have to hard reset it or sometimes i have to let the battery drain so i can turn it back on again.
pls help?
Hmm i will give you an advice so you dont have to wait for your battery to drain...just press volume down and power button for like 5 secs and phone will force boot. Anyway back to your problem...did you tried flashing latest stock samsung firmware?
raz_il_dio said:
Hmm i will give you an advice so you dont have to wait for your battery to drain...just press volume down and power button for like 5 secs and phone will force boot. Anyway back to your problem...did you tried flashing latest stock samsung firmware?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This advice doesn't work with my phone even with holding the buttons for 30 secs and more. For rebooting I can only wait until the battery is completely drained. With little hope for another way shortening time to the next reboot any help is appreciated.
Same here...experiencing the same prob...
Same problem.
Sent from my Redmi Note 4 using Tapatalk
smallcapsicum said:
Classic "my phone keeps freezing and rebooting". I am quite in the know about flashing roms and such.
It started on the stock firmware 6.1.1 (i think it was). I dd factory resets, cache wipes the lot. It would still randomly reboot.
So i flashed Telstra version of 7.0. Still froze every now and then. Did the same things as above.
Flashed TWRP and wiped everything, flashed Renovate Rom and the bootloader for it, Still did it. Numerus factory resets and wipes of everything. It would freeze at any point from startup, to having setup the phone and making phone calls or on facebook or whatever. It would even freeze in twrp, or loading twrp.
I found that the data partition was corrupt so i re partitioned to ext4. Still nothing. I reformatted every partition so the phone was a complete brick with nothing on it and after flashing clean again it would still do it.
Whats the issue that I'm missing, or is there a way to log so i can find where it keeps getting stuck? It gets hot and blue light flashes and i have to hard reset it or sometimes i have to let the battery drain so i can turn it back on again.
pls help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds like you need your motherboard replaced i had the same issues on marshmallow thought the nougat update would fix it but realized it was a hardware fault not software..left it in store to get fixed and on repair sheet it said faulty motherboard..
Sent from my SM-G935F using XDA-Developers Legacy app
As i know some S7 have motherboard hardware problem, mine has too, what help? warranty and they replaced motherboard. But if you root, you can say good bye to warranty, they look at knox first with this problem.

S4 hung on boot

I restarted my S4 this evening and now it won't boot past the SAMSUNG logo. I have tried a variety of things to get it going but none have worked.
1) Soft boot
2) Pulled battery and let it sit awhile
3) Tried to boot into Safe Mode (stuck on the same spot with no indication of going into safe mode)
4) Wipe cache from CWM recovery mode
5) Reboot from CWM recovery mode
Everything is pretty well backed up but after looking at my sdcard it appears that my camera reverted to internal memory about a month ago so I am after any ideas to get those images.
My phone is rooted and running an old 4.2.2 stock Android OS with USB debugging enabled. I was wondering if by re-flashing the OS it might fix the boot issue and be able to recover the images. Or maybe even flash CM. Or maybe some other thing. I found something about adb but I don't want to do anything else yet until someone more savvy than me weighs in.
Unless it's a hardware issue, then flashing a ROM might work.
The other option is to try a reflow. Reflow means heating your phone up so that the solder becomes liquid and any cracks in the solder (which can cause a bad contact), or any piece that isn't seated right, will be remedied.
did u tried to flash stock firmware using odin?
Deleted
I got it going. I first spent a number of hours getting to know adb which was a dead end because I couldn't get it to see beyond the base directory. I then just flashed the stock rom and everything was there including things that shouldn't be like apps, contacts and texts. The phone is back exactly where it was before it boot locked without having to mess with a single thing. I am grateful but a bit confused.

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