Database Users

[Q] GT-i9500 has no OS installed.

Hi everyone I just recently purchased a used S4 the GT-i9500. Everything seemed fine until I got home. It detected my T-Mobile Sim fine but I could only access 2G data and could not connect to any WiFi network I came across. The rom was stock 4.2.2 and the phone was rooted pre purchase. So after fiddling around for a few minutes I discovered the previous owner had flashed TWRP v2.4.1.0 as his choice for a Custom Recovery. Now at this point I had decided to flash on a Custom Rom and of course I first made a backup before flashing on WanamLite. Now after attempting to flash it I immediately received a failure. I tried turning off the signature verification and it did not flash. Now in my frustration i attempted to wipe everything and tried flashing Omega Rom v14. Now i was able to go through with the installation and choose what I wished to install and when I pressed Install things went along smoothly until I hit the app SecSafetyAssurance.apk where it freezes. This is a bump that I've run into at least 5 times already. I changed certain options I wanted to install and eventually made it past this and I am prompted to reboot. Now when I do this to my dismay I just receive a black screen. Upon pulling out the battery and attempting to reboot I still receive a black screen. when I boot back into the Recovery and attempt to reboot the system from within TWRP it warns me saying No OS Installed Are you sure you want to reboot. Im at a loss of what to do. I have read about other members suggesting to use ODIN but I am very confused about how to access Download Mode in order to flash a stock rom from SamMobile.com. I could use a few tips or maybe a few options that I'm left with in order to obtain the operation of my phone again. I would like to get my phone back and Im sure some users can relate to how Im feeling so any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advanced!

JmastahJay56 said:
Hi everyone I just recently purchased a used S4 the GT-i9500. Everything seemed fine until I got home. It detected my T-Mobile Sim fine but I could only access 2G data and could not connect to any WiFi network I came across. The rom was stock 4.2.2 and the phone was rooted pre purchase. So after fiddling around for a few minutes I discovered the previous owner had flashed TWRP v2.4.1.0 as his choice for a Custom Recovery. Now at this point I had decided to flash on a Custom Rom and of course I first made a backup before flashing on WanamLite. Now after attempting to flash it I immediately received a failure. I tried turning off the signature verification and it did not flash. Now in my frustration i attempted to wipe everything and tried flashing Omega Rom v14. Now i was able to go through with the installation and choose what I wished to install and when I pressed Install things went along smoothly until I hit the app SecSafetyAssurance.apk where it freezes. This is a bump that I've run into at least 5 times already. I changed certain options I wanted to install and eventually made it past this and I am prompted to reboot. Now when I do this to my dismay I just receive a black screen. Upon pulling out the battery and attempting to reboot I still receive a black screen. when I boot back into the Recovery and attempt to reboot the system from within TWRP it warns me saying No OS Installed Are you sure you want to reboot. Im at a loss of what to do. I have read about other members suggesting to use ODIN but I am very confused about how to access Download Mode in order to flash a stock rom from SamMobile.com. I could use a few tips or maybe a few options that I'm left with in order to obtain the operation of my phone again. I would like to get my phone back and Im sure some users can relate to how Im feeling so any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advanced!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well first thing is get the latest stock firmware for your variant from my sign and get odin 3.07
For download mode power off phone unplug,, press volume down home and power all together till something pops up and release then press volume up and connect to pc
Open odin click pda and select that firmware u downloaded start the process
For more info check my sign help thread link it has more options on the same
.

JmastahJay56 said:
Hi everyone I just recently purchased a used S4 the GT-i9500. Everything seemed fine until I got home. It detected my T-Mobile Sim fine but I could only access 2G data and could not connect to any WiFi network I came across. The rom was stock 4.2.2 and the phone was rooted pre purchase. So after fiddling around for a few minutes I discovered the previous owner had flashed TWRP v2.4.1.0 as his choice for a Custom Recovery. Now at this point I had decided to flash on a Custom Rom and of course I first made a backup before flashing on WanamLite. Now after attempting to flash it I immediately received a failure. I tried turning off the signature verification and it did not flash. Now in my frustration i attempted to wipe everything and tried flashing Omega Rom v14. Now i was able to go through with the installation and choose what I wished to install and when I pressed Install things went along smoothly until I hit the app SecSafetyAssurance.apk where it freezes. This is a bump that I've run into at least 5 times already. I changed certain options I wanted to install and eventually made it past this and I am prompted to reboot. Now when I do this to my dismay I just receive a black screen. Upon pulling out the battery and attempting to reboot I still receive a black screen. when I boot back into the Recovery and attempt to reboot the system from within TWRP it warns me saying No OS Installed Are you sure you want to reboot. Im at a loss of what to do. I have read about other members suggesting to use ODIN but I am very confused about how to access Download Mode in order to flash a stock rom from SamMobile.com. I could use a few tips or maybe a few options that I'm left with in order to obtain the operation of my phone again. I would like to get my phone back and Im sure some users can relate to how Im feeling so any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advanced!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Flashing through odin is one option.... some users have reported that there were some hiccups when installing omega 14 because of the aroma script.....try a different rom...there are many others to choose from....or you could flash stock via odin as said on the earlier comment good luck

Feedback
Today I attempted to use ODIN to flash now I am still currently attempting this. When I press the volume down key, power, and home button it takes me to the custom recovery TWRP instead of download mode. The phone did this when I first purchased it. When I still had what appeared to be the stock rom it would always take me to the recovery. When I would use the volume up instead of down it would take me to the factory test mode now mind you this happened when the OS was still installed. When i try that combination now i just receive a blank black screen. Are there any other ways to boot into download mode?

Black screen and "System UI has stopped working" error with XCover 2

So, I'm a total noob with the android phones. Just bought my Xcover 2 after using my old C7 for 3-years. I got curious about the rooting and decided to go on with it. Installed CWM just fine and rooted the phone successfully. Then I decided to try flashing the S4 Accuweather widget right away (I didn't like the stock one at all and I had a trend plus for few weeks which had the S4 widget).
That didn't go so well... I got the "System UI has stopped working error" popping up all the time. Decided to go back to recovery and try another S4 widget install. Didn't work either. Then I decided that doing a "data wipe" would be a good idea. But nope instead I get the same "System UI has stopped working" and a black screen with no apps and no way to access the apps. I was really idiotic to not make backup of my current ROM state before starting to install anything. I just thought that "it's just one small app".
Now I'm currently downloading the stock ROM from Samsung Updates and trying to flash it through Odin. Will that restore my phone back the the original state or am I just simply ******? Gosh, I wish I had never done the rooting, I was fine with the original....

Hi
Yes, Flashing the proper stock firmware should get you back in business.
Some tips going forward...
Don't install or flash anything not made for your exact device, unless you find confirmation that it will work. You could have many issues, including bricking your device.
And, a factory reset won't fix system issues, it will only wipe your cache and data partitions. So system changes, like what you attempted will not be fixed.
And other issues or questions for your device can be asked here,
> Android Development and Hacking > Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting
Good luck!

[Q] Failed recovery of nandroid backup - why???

Hi all,
Some time ago i asked, and received, some support on these forums on how to properly carry out a nandroid backup... following the sound advice i got, i carried out my backup (using TWRP for the record, with all the options checked), and stored it away for a rainy day... said day came yesterday, when i messed up my system and rendered it instable (i tried to manually delete the dalvik cache directory in order to free up the 2,5GB of space it was taking)... since i knew there was i high chance of this ending in disaster, the last thing i did before the delete was carry out another nandroid, so i could easily return to where i had left off... how wrong i turned out to be
as soon as i the system became instable following my experiment of deleting the d. cache directory, i recovered the latest nandroid (i.e. the one i had made just hours before) and everything seemd to go smoothely until the first reboot... when the following happened:
- first reboot after recovery took ages, much like the first reboot following the flashing of a new rom... not the end of the world, but that was the first sign that all was not well
- the status bar disappeared, and there was no way of making it come back (i.e. nothing to do with the launcher, i typically use apex but i i tried switching to both nova and touchwiz which i also kept up to date but the stats bar was nowhere to be seen)
- even if not having a status bar with all the info on it is acceptable (which of course it isn't, but lets just say), the sytem became completely instable after 5minutes of operation... with each app taking turns to shutting down until i kept getting the message "system UI has closed" over and over, to the point that doing a reboot was challenging since i barely had the time to press on the screen between instances of this bloody error message appearing...
...i did of course try and return to my older nandroid backup, but... lo and behold... exactly same behaviour...
so now i have resorted to formatting the internal memory card and flashing a new rom and basically starting over... just what i hope the nandroid would spare me basically :/
question is: does this sort of error sound familiar to anyone? can someone give me a tip maybe on what i may have done wrong?
any opinion, tips& advice much appreciated

I have the exact same problem. It happens on TW Lollipop ROMs. Haven't found a fix. I'm using Philz Touch Recovery and the old no knox bootloader.

Anyone? I have researched this but cannot find any similar problems reported... it can't just be me and pavelcheto...

Maybe it a recovery fault. Faulty backup or faulty restore.

No problems with my older backups. I restored my KitKat TW backup, working fine. Restoring CM12 backups also works fine. I've looked for a new recovery, Philz is discontinued, CWM hasn't been updated for a year and I really don't like TWRP.

I use TWRP 2.8.3.0 and never have (and hopefully never will) encountered any issues with restoring backups.

Considering i recovered 2 separate backups for a total of 3 times (i tried recovering the first backup twice) i doubt the issue was with the recovery itself... however since pavelcheto had no issues with the kk recovery maybe it could be lollipop related?
Anyone successfully recovered a lollipop nandroid backup?

platypus78 said:
Considering i recovered 2 separate backups for a total of 3 times (i tried recovering the first backup twice) i doubt the issue was with the recovery itself... however since pavelcheto had no issues with the kk recovery maybe it could be lollipop related?
Anyone successfully recovered a lollipop nandroid backup?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I recovered my lollipop gpe backup a couple of times without a problem.
Data encryption may cause restoring problems.

I have restored CM12 backups (based on 5.0.2) serveral times, no problem there. I've had issues only with TouchWiz Lollipop ROMs, I have tried different custom roms, all get bugged at restore.

pavelcheto said:
I have tried different custom roms, all get bugged at restore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to make sure I understand correctly : you mean all TW custom roms you've restored have had problems?
Wonder if anyone else has managed a bug-free restore of a 5.x TW?

Yes, but only on Lollipop. KitKat TW roms restore just fine. I am using Philz Touch Recovery. I have tried 3 different TW Lollipop roms and they all fail to restore properly. No wallpaper, black wallpaper and no status bar. And after a minute or two System UI starts crashing. If then I do factory reset from recovery and the rom starts normally (welcome guide and stuff) and works fine.

bumping this thread because i cant seem to find a solution for this anywhere.

TheAwesomeBit said:
bumping this thread because i cant seem to find a solution for this anywhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's no solution for this as per comments above. TW LP is not restorable. You can flash a new lollipop ROM tho'
Sent from my GT-I9505

N910F problems - emmc read fail/ flashing stock no longer boots the phone.

Hello. I had gotten this Note 4 phone which had a custom recovery installed on it but the rom seemed to be official, on 5.1
The first thing I did was go to samfirmware and flash a 6.0.1 rom, it went fine, phone was working properly. Then I got greedy and wanted to test a Note 7 ported rom. Flashed TWRP recovery and from within I flashed RamROM http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4/snapdragon-dev/rom-sm-n910g-ramrom-t3400349 , I downloaded the one from post#2 , the N910F one that my phone is and after it flashed to ROM it simply stopped working. My phone no longer booted, was booting me directly into Download mode with emmc read error. I kept trying to flash the stock rom which I previously flashed and it would fail.
Afterwords I used Smart Switch to reinitialize the phone, writing my phones S/N and that failed as well but at least that made my phone boot into a different recovery where it said to connect to Kies. Once again I used Smart Switch and this time it was successful 100%. My phone even booted into the OS and was working, however, while using it, after 10 minutes the phone restarted into Download mode with emmc read error.
So all in all the phone is functional but it starts to lag and restart. Now I'm kinda stuck again since I've tried to flash the firmware I got from Samfirmware through Odin, it succeded but it just doesn't boot, it goes to Recovery, tries to apply an update and I get an error.
Is there anything I can do? I can't believe the emmc could've broken just from trying to flash that custom rom, especially that afterwards I was even able to boot into the phone.
Thanks for reading and I appreciate the help.

engwee said:
Hello. I had gotten this Note 4 phone which had a custom recovery installed on it but the rom seemed to be official, on 5.1
The first thing I did was go to samfirmware and flash a 6.0.1 rom, it went fine, phone was working properly. Then I got greedy and wanted to test a Note 7 ported rom. Flashed TWRP recovery and from within I flashed RamROM http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4/snapdragon-dev/rom-sm-n910g-ramrom-t3400349 , I downloaded the one from post#2 , the N910F one that my phone is and after it flashed to ROM it simply stopped working. My phone no longer booted, was booting me directly into Download mode with emmc read error. I kept trying to flash the stock rom which I previously flashed and it would fail.
Afterwords I used Smart Switch to reinitialize the phone, writing my phones S/N and that failed as well but at least that made my phone boot into a different recovery where it said to connect to Kies. Once again I used Smart Switch and this time it was successful 100%. My phone even booted into the OS and was working, however, while using it, after 10 minutes the phone restarted into Download mode with emmc read error.
So all in all the phone is functional but it starts to lag and restart. Now I'm kinda stuck again since I've tried to flash the firmware I got from Samfirmware through Odin, it succeded but it just doesn't boot, it goes to Recovery, tries to apply an update and I get an error.
Is there anything I can do? I can't believe the emmc could've broken just from trying to flash that custom rom, especially that afterwards I was even able to boot into the phone.
Thanks for reading and I appreciate the help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
read this - http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4/help/note-4-issues-t3453048
there are links to more threads related to your issue.
Short version though:
it is dying. install wake lock application, add it to start up and set settings to #4.
accept the fact that your phone will eat the battery faster and one day WILL die completely

Thanks for your response. Regarding the Wake lock application, I'm starting to look into it, I asume I'll have to be rooted. I'll try to recover it again using Smart Switch and then I can only hope I can install TWRP and still have it functional.
Previously when I was able to get it working with Smart Switch, entering the recovery messed everything up. It said it was applying an update and that got stuck.

engwee said:
Thanks for your response. Regarding the Wake lock application, I'm starting to look into it, I asume I'll have to be rooted. I'll try to recover it again using Smart Switch and then I can only hope I can install TWRP and still have it functional.
Previously when I was able to get it working with Smart Switch, entering the recovery messed everything up. It said it was applying an update and that got stuck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no need to be rooted, just download, install and set it to autostart

I'll try it if I somehow manage to get the phone working again, Smart Switch just fails now midway through.

golden_m said:
no need to be rooted, just download, install and set it to autostart
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is this the app you're talking about? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.thedarken.wl&hl=en
What exactly does it do?
I managed to restore it eventually with Smart Switch, it took quite a few tries, then I switched to my Macbook when I saw the app was available on it too and the 3rd try succeded. I only did it because I saw the 2nd try had the % much higher than the first.

engwee said:
Is this the app you're talking about? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.thedarken.wl&hl=en
What exactly does it do?
I managed to restore it eventually with Smart Switch, it took quite a few tries, then I switched to my Macbook when I saw the app was available on it too and the 3rd try succeded. I only did it because I saw the 2nd try had the % much higher than the first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, that is the app.
i've read it does not allow your phone to go to sleep mode.
drains the battery faster, but this is the only way to keep note 4 working without swapping its motherboard...

I have a question, my gf recently bought a note 4 and we may swap our phones and if we do, i'll flash CM and tinker with it because i find this phone very interesting, just a question, does this bug affect the N910C (exynos) model? Do i have something to worry about? Because the phone is warrianty protected and if it's the case, i don't want to break it. I hope someone will shed some light on this

Help please! S8 bricked after downgrade attempt following OTA update

I have a Samsung s8 snapdragon 950U, T-mobile, running android 7.0, baseband - G950USQU2BQK5, build - nrd90m.G950USQS2BQL1. A couple weeks ago the mic stopped working so that I could not use speech-to-text which I rely on heavily. Nothing fixed it until I reflashed the phone with the same firmware. Before that I performed a ROM backup using clockworkmod and moved the backup files to my computer. I also used Titanium to backup system data like sms messages. After that, just as I was going to restore data, I get TMobile message that I’ve never seen before about a firmware update. I figured if it’s Oreo the update would fail because I have a custom ROM. Stupidly I chose to update and the next thing I know I have Android 8 – NOT rooted. That prevented me from using Titanium to restore settings.
Stupidly again, I decided to go back to the android 7 firmware and proceeded to root and flash the phone as I did before. This time it failed. I tried the SAMPWN and SAMFAIL methods repeatedly without success. Now I have bricked phone that just loops through a screen that says “Installing system update” followed immediately by another blue screen with a defunct android that says “no command.” I can get to download mode which Odin sees, but not to recovery, or anything that Smart Switch(which isn’t so smart) sees.
I have been downloading the Oreo firmware G950USQU4CRE9_G950UOYN4CRE9 for the past 4 hours hoping that I can maybe flash that. HELP! Can I somehow restore the nandroid backup using my computer? What should I do. I just need a working phone or I’m in big trouble.

frankygoes said:
I have a Samsung s8 snapdragon 950U, T-mobile, running android 7.0, baseband - G950USQU2BQK5, build - nrd90m.G950USQS2BQL1. A couple weeks ago the mic stopped working so that I could not use speech-to-text which I rely on heavily. Nothing fixed it until I reflashed the phone with the same firmware. Before that I performed a ROM backup using clockworkmod and moved the backup files to my computer. I also used Titanium to backup system data like sms messages. After that, just as I was going to restore data, I get TMobile message that I’ve never seen before about a firmware update. I figured if it’s Oreo the update would fail because I have a custom ROM. Stupidly I chose to update and the next thing I know I have Android 8 – NOT rooted. That prevented me from using Titanium to restore settings.
Stupidly again, I decided to go back to the android 7 firmware and proceeded to root and flash the phone as I did before. This time it failed. I tried the SAMPWN and SAMFAIL methods repeatedly without success. Now I have bricked phone that just loops through a screen that says “Installing system update” followed immediately by another blue screen with a defunct android that says “no command.” I can get to download mode which Odin sees, but not to recovery, or anything that Smart Switch(which isn’t so smart) sees.
I have been downloading the Oreo firmware G950USQU4CRE9_G950UOYN4CRE9 for the past 4 hours hoping that I can maybe flash that. HELP! Can I somehow restore the nandroid backup using my computer? What should I do. I just need a working phone or I’m in big trouble.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
update: i was able to flash the oreo firmware basically puts me back at step 2. becasue i backed up when rooted my backups now cannot be restored, or can they, at least in part? Is there any way i can restore some of the data in either the nandroid or titanium backups to my nonrooted oreo s8?