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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.

[Q] Unable to restore using Twrp or Cwm

Need some help guys. Havent been on here in some time. So I have the Telus variant s4. I updated to the ota kitkat when it launched but found that the battery life was terrible after the update. I thought I'd try out a couple custom r8ms and see if I found a better result in battery life. I rooted the phone and decided to try gummy 4.4.2. Prior to that I installed twrp recovery which I have used with other phones in the past, which I used to dona backup of the stock rom in case something went wrong. I then flashed the rom no issues and played with it for a couple hours. I didnt like it much and decided to restore using my backup. Twrp would not do the restore, when I selected the file and dragged the slider Twrp would just reboot. I tried a bunch of times with the same results. Ni downloaded and tried Cwm but that wouldn't even recognize the backup file. I read somewhere that I could use mobile Odin which would recognize the file if I renamed it to recovery.tar. Tried that and it didnt work. Now Twrp wont recognize the renamed file and dont remember the original name. The phone works with the gummy build but I want to get the stock or something close to it. I also noticed that when I poweres if off to charge it says kernel is not seandroid enforcing. Set warranty bit kernel. I need some help here. I havent a clue what I should try next. Ive been reading all night till 4am couldn't come with anything. Help!

It sounds like the twrp nandroid was corrupted. Fyi, it's a zip file so if you rename the tar to zip twrp should recognize it. Twrp and cwm nandroids are not compatible so a nandroid made in one will not work in the other.
At this point I would make a nandroid of your current rom in twrp and restore it just to confirm you have twrp working correctly. Then I'm afraid you're going to have to recreate your stock from scratch.
Sent from my Nexus 5

[Q] TWRP restore hung at "Restoring system" on G2/D800-20y

Hi,
This is the first time I rooted and installed a custom ROM.
I wanted Android 5.x on my new LG G2 AT&T (D800 20y) which came with 4.x.
So I
- rooted using ioroot10
- installed ROM Manager, TWRP Manager, AutoRec, (SuperSU,...)
- reboot to restore
- created a backup (checked all check boxes) using TWRP Backup, it created 2.5-3GB backup.
- reboot system, downloaded latest CM12.2 nightly from cyanogenmod dot org and put the zip file in /sdcard.
- from ROM Manager GUI -> Install ROM from SD Card and followed all prompts (reboot to restore, ...)
- rebooted a couple of times and finally booted up in CM12
- things were bad, Play Store didn't work (I tried installing GApps, it was still crashing), browser was crashing and so on. So I decided to go back.
- Rebooted to restore
- TWRP restore -> Selected the backup I had created earlier.
It started restoring but it's stuck at "Restoring system" since 3+ hours.
I'm scared of stopping it in between by hardbooting for obvious reasons, so for now I'm leaving it connected to charger.
Only screwup I think I might've done is there is no SD card on the phone, so I don't know if it's trying to restore the backup onto the backup file itself or something.
Thanks
Using TWRP 2.7.0.0
See attached screen shot.

thekashyap1 said:
Hi,
This is the first time I rooted and installed a custom ROM.
I wanted Android 5.x on my new LG G2 AT&T (D800 20y) which came with 4.x.
So I
- rooted using ioroot10
- installed ROM Manager, TWRP Manager, AutoRec, (SuperSU,...)
- reboot to restore
- created a backup (checked all check boxes) using TWRP Backup, it created 2.5-3GB backup.
- reboot system, downloaded latest CM12.2 nightly from cyanogenmod dot org and put the zip file in /sdcard.
- from ROM Manager GUI -> Install ROM from SD Card and followed all prompts (reboot to restore, ...)
- rebooted a couple of times and finally booted up in CM12
- things were bad, Play Store didn't work (I tried installing GApps, it was still crashing), browser was crashing and so on. So I decided to go back.
- Rebooted to restore
- TWRP restore -> Selected the backup I had created earlier.
It started restoring but it's stuck at "Restoring system" since 3+ hours.
I'm scared of stopping it in between by hardbooting for obvious reasons, so for now I'm leaving it connected to charger.
Only screwup I think I might've done is there is no SD card on the phone, so I don't know if it's trying to restore the backup onto the backup file itself or something.
Thanks
Using TWRP 2.7.0.0
See attached screen shot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So... you did all of this on a recovery dated before the release of lollipop?

Choristav said:
So... you did all of this on a recovery dated before the release of lollipop?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course. That's why I come here for help.
I could've added that I [thought I] had clicked on stable before taking the latest ROM in the last, but just because I thought I was not making a mistake is not an excuse.
Anyway, I hard booted, and restored to D80010o using tot method. Of course it was a horror story, me being a noob at this, I spent solid 10-12 hours on my laptop.
But thanks for your help!
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Restoring backup - what went wrong?

Hello,
today I managed to brick my device and restore it to working state, and I wonder at what point I made an error.
So here's what I did:
Had stock lollipop 30b
Rooted using oneclick root+recovery
Installed twrp using autorec
Xposed etc. and used it for a while without problem
Decided to flash something new
AOSPA 5.1.1 seemed like a good choice
Flashed bootstack, that was mentioned in aospa thread, system and gapps
Wow, that was smooth, but I needed my apps next day so I decided to restore my stock backup
Restored backup and ended up with phone in 9006 mode
Later I did some stupid moves that made whole situation worse, but that's not the point.
I backed up and restored everything that twrp allowed me to, so not only system and data, but also boot, efs, modem, recovery, sns etc. Could this be the cause? I didn't change bootstack, because I thought, that I had the needed one (autorec puts kk bootstack, right? and aosp roms also require this).
What should I do to avoid such problems in the future? I'll probably flash a lot, trying to find best possible rom for me, so it's neccesary to now whatto avoid.
And tip for future newbies like I was: if you can enter download mode, then use it, flash tool won't wipe your device data when you're using normal flash. When you've got normal working system to begin with then you can tinker further.
(Also there seems to be no way to recover from demigod critical error, even though it says it enters recovery. Then it's only this method with shorting capacitors on motherboard (fix real hardbrick)).
Cheers,
Marmelada

You can flash the patch (go back to LP from Sombons), flash, reboot recovery, restore stock rom and reboot.

[Q] N910G won't boot after TWRP restore?

Hi All,
Just wondering what's going on with my phone - it's a Galaxy Note 4 SM-N910G with Optus Australia.
Here's the situation:
I rooted my phone using Chainfire method from 5.1.1 Optus firmware.
Then, I installed TWRP, backed up all partitions (INCLUDING EFS).
After that, installed Cyanogenmod. Holy damn, I need to go back to stock...
so...
I booted back into TWRP
I reset phone as usually would to restore/install ROM.
I restored firmware backup in TWRP.
Reboot to system
-- BOOTLOOP --
happens every time i try to restore, and the only way I can use my phone right now is to reflash Cyanogenmod 12.1 nightlies onto it - which have problems (such as I cannot reboot with CM12.1 because if I do after installing it, the phone app breaks and I cannot get past anything because of toast message "com.android.phone" has stopped..., so then only way to get it to work again is to reflash CM12.1 again - this happens about twice daily...)
-- -- PLEASE HELP!
What happens to TWRP backups that mean i cannot restore my stock backup without it bootlooping? and why can devs not post a clean stock flashable ZIP copy of stock firmwares? Its great having all these mods, but how about something that doesn't require umpteen thousand bloody applications to reflash your phone with? Whatever happened to a simple ZIP? when I see ZIPs, devs see thanks buttons being pushed!
-- THANKS

MrDhark32 said:
Hi All,
Just wondering what's going on with my phone - it's a Galaxy Note 4 SM-N910G with Optus Australia.
Here's the situation:
I rooted my phone using Chainfire method from 5.1.1 Optus firmware.
Then, I installed TWRP, backed up all partitions (INCLUDING EFS).
After that, installed Cyanogenmod. Holy damn, I need to go back to stock...
so...
I booted back into TWRP
I reset phone as usually would to restore/install ROM.
I restored firmware backup in TWRP.
Reboot to system
-- BOOTLOOP --
happens every time i try to restore, and the only way I can use my phone right now is to reflash Cyanogenmod 12.1 nightlies onto it - which have problems (such as I cannot reboot with CM12.1 because if I do after installing it, the phone app breaks and I cannot get past anything because of toast message "com.android.phone" has stopped..., so then only way to get it to work again is to reflash CM12.1 again - this happens about twice daily...)
-- -- PLEASE HELP!
What happens to TWRP backups that mean i cannot restore my stock backup without it bootlooping? and why can devs not post a clean stock flashable ZIP copy of stock firmwares? Its great having all these mods, but how about something that doesn't require umpteen thousand bloody applications to reflash your phone with? Whatever happened to a simple ZIP? when I see ZIPs, devs see thanks buttons being pushed!
-- THANKS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4/help/n910c-to-stock-rom-cm13-t3321132 :good:

One possible solution is to flash the appropriate stock rom via odin. After booting, install twrp and root your phone. After this you can restore your previously saved stock rom via twrp.

MrDhark32 said:
Hi All,
Just wondering what's going on with my phone - it's a Galaxy Note 4 SM-N910G with Optus Australia.
Here's the situation:
I rooted my phone using Chainfire method from 5.1.1 Optus firmware.
Then, I installed TWRP, backed up all partitions (INCLUDING EFS).
After that, installed Cyanogenmod. Holy damn, I need to go back to stock...
so...
I booted back into TWRP
I reset phone as usually would to restore/install ROM.
I restored firmware backup in TWRP.
Reboot to system
-- BOOTLOOP --
happens every time i try to restore, and the only way I can use my phone right now is to reflash Cyanogenmod 12.1 nightlies onto it - which have problems (such as I cannot reboot with CM12.1 because if I do after installing it, the phone app breaks and I cannot get past anything because of toast message "com.android.phone" has stopped..., so then only way to get it to work again is to reflash CM12.1 again - this happens about twice daily...)
-- -- PLEASE HELP!
What happens to TWRP backups that mean i cannot restore my stock backup without it bootlooping? and why can devs not post a clean stock flashable ZIP copy of stock firmwares? Its great having all these mods, but how about something that doesn't require umpteen thousand bloody applications to reflash your phone with? Whatever happened to a simple ZIP? when I see ZIPs, devs see thanks buttons being pushed!
-- THANKS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry no help from me but I have a similar problem. At some point mine quit booting to TWRP and I got a huge OTA update a few days ago and every time I try to boot into recovery it ends up in Stock Recovery only after going to little android saying installing updates(it fails & eventually goes to stock recovery.) I did a reset and still have 5.1.1 installed and still have the same behavior.
I have the professional version of the unified toolkit and it says if it is still booting into stock recovery select options 7, 3 which I did but it didn't fix the problem. I think what's getting me is it thinks there are still system updates to install.