[Q] Motherboard trouble - Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

HI there,
recently had my screen replaced and basically i wont be going back there any time soon, had to argue to get the warranty (anyway!)
my phone now is completely unresponsive, no charge no boot no nothing
HOWEVER
on disassembling the phone i noticed that with a little move of the motherboard my device powers up as normal,
sometimes it may boot and die again but i guess this is due to the motherboard moving again.
So my question to you is, is there any advice you may give on how to secure the board? i have tried a thin piece of credit card to no avail yet! with one screw to secure the board i can see this being a bit of a pandoras box!
cheers, much appreciated

Related

Another Hermes problem - White screen to no switch on

Hi there, sorry to burden everyone with another broken hermes thread but I was wondering if I could get pushed in the right direction on something.
I started having the white screen issues that ever so popular around here. Initially I managed to fix it but it always came back. I've taken my phone apart a good few times but I think I've really done it in now. I was trying the fix from user alkizmo with the foam on the D-pad connections but upon putting the phone back together I found that it would not switch on at all. I'd put everything back in the proper place and have now since removed the foam pieces but still to no avail. Even when plugged into the wall it won't switch on. It just sits there with a RED light instead of the usual charging orange light.
I'm not sure what I've done or if it's even fixable but any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated. (Keeping in mind I'm not super tech savvy)
Thank you.
Try to reseat the connectors first. Don't think a bad flex cable or dpad would cause a red light. Sounds like the motherboard is fried. Did you ground yourself with a strap and be extra careful when taking it apart?

Warranty issue...

Hi all,
I have the following issue, my Touch HD won't turn on anymore. I have tried a few tips and tricks that I found on the forum but non worked, so the only option I have now is to send my Touch HD to HTC for repair.
My Touch HD has a costum HardSPL, I can't flash it back to stock because the phone won't turn on anymore.
Will HTC check this if the mobo is the problem?
Or is there a way to flash to stock without turning on the phone?
I don't think there is a way of undoing the customization without powering on, or taking it apart and changing the mobo.
If its truely bricked though how would they know what was on it if they'll have to change the mobo before it powers on anyway?
Thanks for your reply.
Are the rom chips part of the mobo? in that case it might be my way out...
I just want to know how far HTC would go to check for "user-error".
Has anybody been in the situation?
Haven't been in that situation.
All i can speculate is that if the phone is dead because of some sort of defect or damage on the motherboard, then I don't think that HTC are going to catch you out on having a cooked rom, I don't think their RMA dept would take the time needed to run the flash on a new board, and you'd just be successful with the warranty if thats the caste.
If the phone is bad due to something other then the main board then chances are they may reject warranty and expect you to pay to have it fixed, again though, I dont know for sure, this is all just speculation.
oh and yes, the mainboard houses the cpu, ram, gps, wifi, internal flash (rom), even the card reader and sim reader, although there are technically two parts of the mainboard, the part with the flash is the part with the cpu and ram, so i daresay if theres no life in the phone at all (and you've tried another battery or direct off the charger and still get no power) then chances are its that board.
the power button however, is attached to the top flex PCB, so if here is where your problem lies, then your mainboard may not be at fault.

HTC HD2 Not Working!!

I bought the HTC HD2 when it first came out and i absolutely loved it!! however I had to get rid of it because I needed the money for an emergency. however I just came upon someone who was selling the HTC HD2 for a reasonable price. and I bought it in a rush because I have missed the phone and wanted to get started playing on it right away!!
BUTT
It doesnt work.. im guessing its water damaged because whoever sold it to me took out all the water damage stickers. So.. heres what happens. When i plug it into the charger. The Flash comes on for about 5 seconds and either the buttons light up or the phone vibrates until i take out the battery.
I know I was stupid for buying the phone without checking it. So flame flame flame ALL you want. I just want this fixed!!
btw. The guy i bought it for wont answer his phone so just screw it.
thanks
Oh wow. im noob.. I havent been on here for so long that i forgot the rules of the forum!! could someone help me re-title or just delete post? once again. i apologize.
Ok first just click on the edit button at the bottom of any post of yours to edit it. To edit the title just click edit on your first post and then click advanced and then you can edit the title.
As for your problem can you get to the red, blue, green, and white booloader screen by holding the volume down button down and while you power your HD2 on?
If you can get to bootloader then flashing might help buit it really sounds more like a hardware problem.
Check your battery pins and make sure none of them are slightly bent. Also very very lightly wiggle each pin just a little then try to boot the phone.
If you can not get to the bootloader or even get it to the first splash screen, and by that I pretty much mean get it to even light up the sceen showing it did turn on then it is bricked.
Post back with the results as I can put you in touch with someone to JTAG it if it is bricked.
Thank you so much!!
No.. the screen actually doesnt not light on or anything.
I have noticed the the battery pins were slightly bent and when i wiggled it a little and then put the battery back on Its started vibrating but the screen still doesnt light up
I sent you a PM with info on who to talk to about JTAG. Soprry someone sold you a bricked HD2.
if it's really water damage, then i don't think it's jtag fixable.
jtag is being used when you have a corrupt bootloader that cannot start the phone. The bootloader resides at the beginning of the nand memory, after something called steppingstone (a small - about 4kb portion of memory that is loaded into ram memory and then executes the bootloader program).
So when you use jtag, you invoke another thing, called watchdog, a CPU function, that once invoked, will halt loading the steppingstone into ram memory. Once this is done, the phone will remain in "service mode" until the next restart. With jtag, you can load the bootloader back into nand memory at it's corresponding address and then normally flash the phone.
But, jtag requires you have a working cpu, ram and nand memory because basically jtag does at a more "lower level" what you do when you flash the phone. If your hd2 suffered some water damage, i doubt (based on what you say it's been doing since you tried to start it) that it can simply be restored by jtag.
The phone should first be disassembled and it's motherboard be cleaned by a powerful solvent in a ultrasonic cleaner. If the phone was dropped in a salty or sugary kind of liquid, although the water in it will evaporate, the salt/sugar will dry up and remain in crystal state among the pins or connectors of the motherboard. Both salt/sugar are electrically conductors so the phone's normal operations will be affected by various short circuits between pins or such stuff. If you're lucky, cleaning will solve the problem, if not.. the motherboard could be damaged physically because of those short circuits.
facdemol said:
if it's really water damage, then i don't think it's jtag fixable.
jtag is being used when you have a corrupt bootloader that cannot start the phone. The bootloader resides at the beginning of the nand memory, after something called steppingstone (a small - about 4kb portion of memory that is loaded into ram memory and then executes the bootloader program).
So when you use jtag, you invoke another thing, called watchdog, a CPU function, that once invoked, will halt loading the steppingstone into ram memory. Once this is done, the phone will remain in "service mode" until the next restart. With jtag, you can load the bootloader back into nand memory at it's corresponding address and then normally flash the phone.
But, jtag requires you have a working cpu, ram and nand memory because basically jtag does at a more "lower level" what you do when you flash the phone. If your hd2 suffered some water damage, i doubt (based on what you say it's been doing since you tried to start it) that it can simply be restored by jtag.
The phone should first be disassembled and it's motherboard be cleaned by a powerful solvent in a ultrasonic cleaner. If the phone was dropped in a salty or sugary kind of liquid, although the water in it will evaporate, the salt/sugar will dry up and remain in crystal state among the pins or connectors of the motherboard. Both salt/sugar are electrically conductors so the phone's normal operations will be affected by various short circuits between pins or such stuff. If you're lucky, cleaning will solve the problem, if not.. the motherboard could be damaged physically because of those short circuits.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that great explanation facdemol! I have never JTAGed a device before so I did not know about the Watchdog fuction. I also did not know about the Steppingstone I thought the IPL loaded the SPL which is pretty much the what bootloader is, I know it is more to it then that but that is just to generalize it. Or is the IPL what you are callin g Steppingstone?
Anywqay you are probably right about if it is truly from water or some other liquid damage. But since the OP is not 100% sure that is the cause I would suggest trying JTAG first and if that does not work then just replace the the main board cause not everybody is as good at DIY as you are man.

IEMI Number

hi there just a question
i dropped my s4 in for a screen repair, bairing in mind that i had a fault on the phone already where there was no sound in my other posts.
they bought the phone back out to me without a changed screen and said when they swapped the screen it flashed up white and he suspected a fried motherboard
which i find hard to believe since before he swapped the screens it booted in my hand, i told him to replace the screen anyway, i plugged the phone into a charger and nothing, not even an LED indicating charge? how can this be possible when prior to screen change the phone booted? if anything there was still power there
so im looking for any way of identifying the motherboard? im kinda thinking hes changed that out too to get me to pay for a motherboard i dont need
Cheers!
if theres any other advice please dont hesitate!

Note 3 Wont Turn on Since Dropping

Hi everyone, basically the other day I was in a bad mood and didn't think and threw my Note 3 at the ground pretty hard. It hit the top left corner of the phone pretty hard but there are no marks or anything and my external case, the back case and the battery all came out. I got a bit of a fright and put all of the components together but now it wont turn on. I've tried charging the device but the screen wont turn on it wont power on normally. Nothing seems damaged as I pulled it apart and took out the screws and removed the motherboard. Nothing seems broken with any of the components and all the Flex cables are attached and don't appear to be damaged. I'm not sure what to do since nothing is clearly damaged and it wont turn on but the battery connector, as well as the battery etc all seem fine. I have no idea what the problem is, my only guess is that its something under the motherboard (I don't even know what that's called, if there is anything in there) or maybe some of the Flex cabling is damaged or a component is broken inside?
Any ideas or suggestions would be really helpful. Thanks.
PS. this is my first post i don't even know if you guys can help with this or this is the right site/ part of the site to help me.
Sam

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