Possible SGH-I337 Brick? - AT&T Samsung Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshootin

So I was given a Samsung I337 from a friend and upon Kingrooting it I noticed the stability started to degrade.
So I performed a factory reset, and then jumped back in. Noticing google no longer allowed access to the play store.
So I rooted again in an attempt to sort out my Host file, with the intention of "Unrooting" later on.
Everything seemed to work fine, then my phone reset, and stopped at the AT&T logo.
Is it salvageable, or should I just toss it in the bin?
I would love to be able to get to a point where I could just use it, my intention was to eventually put Cyanogen on it.
It's running Android 5.0.1 that was the last thing I remembered while in my About Phone settings. I do not believe USB Debugging is enabled, considering how many times I've factory reset it trying to solve the problem.
I also for some reason can't get MTP Device drivers to install on my PC. 64-bit Windows 7.

ToastyOats said:
So I was given a Samsung I337 from a friend and upon Kingrooting it I noticed the stability started to degrade.
So I performed a factory reset, and then jumped back in. Noticing google no longer allowed access to the play store.
So I rooted again in an attempt to sort out my Host file, with the intention of "Unrooting" later on.
Everything seemed to work fine, then my phone reset, and stopped at the AT&T logo.
Is it salvageable, or should I just toss it in the bin?
I would love to be able to get to a point where I could just use it, my intention was to eventually put Cyanogen on it.
It's running Android 5.0.1 that was the last thing I remembered while in my About Phone settings. I do not believe USB Debugging is enabled, considering how many times I've factory reset it trying to solve the problem.
I also for some reason can't get MTP Device drivers to install on my PC. 64-bit Windows 7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is salvageable.
You can find your answers in here and here.

Related

[Q] N7 4.4 update issues?

Not sure if I'm the only one, and if I am that really sucks, but I got tired of waiting for the OTA and decided to install the update via the fastboot method, unlocked my bootloader installed without a problem.
However the issue now seems to stem from transferring media files to my tablet, which I never had a problem doing, a pop up window will tell me that android.media.storage has stopped, giving me an option to report and to simply tap okay.
Not sure reporting ever does anything, and if it does I've never seen it change a single thing at all, but after I tap okay or send the report, any files transferring will just exit out, then if I unplug my usb and plug it back in, it doesn't seem to recognize the tablet at all.
I've so far remedied this, not sure if it's a permanent fix or temporary, by going into settings>apps>all, then from there tapping the app, clearing data and cache, restarting my tablet with a hard reset and it seems to be working for the moment.
However transferring files since the update are sluggish at best, and taking a 356MB folder of images used to take maybe a few minutes, 5 or 7 at the most, now it's hanging there at times with the transfer time increasing.
As a matter of fact I'm transferring said 356MB folder right now and it's stuck at 10 minutes to finish and hasn't moved for about 10 minutes.
If anybody else is having these problems, can you suggest ways you've fixed it? Or do I simply need to either do a factory reset or straight up flash it again to fix the problem?
Also, I made another article detailing my problems with updating, which I've since fixed obviously, but Recovery Mode isn't anywhere to be found, I do the regular method and before it showed the android with the red triangle and below him it would say no command, now it just shows the android with the same triangle with no wording underneath at all.
I've also re-downloaded the official factory image 4.4 from google's developer site and tried to manually flash recovery onto it, and it says that it succeeded but then when it goes back to fastboot and I choose recovery it loads then shows me the android with the red triangle.
I've even tried downgrading back to 4.3 but it tells me during the rewrite of the bootloader that there's a signature mismatch.
In addition, this should be the last revision to my issue, I've even tried re-flashing 4.4 and now that's kicking back an error saying there's a signature mismatch, so I can't go into recovery, I can't downgrade, I can't flash a recovery image to my tablet, I think I screwed up in ever updating to 4.4.
Im having the same problem with Media Storage when transferring pictures via Android File Transfer on Mac, tried it on Windows also, same problem.
It happens with my Nexus 4 on KitKat also!!
I still havent found a way to fix it, did you (OP) ever find a fix?
Cheers
Stewart
StuMcBill said:
Im having the same problem with Media Storage when transferring pictures via Android File Transfer on Mac, tried it on Windows also, same problem.
It happens with my Nexus 4 on KitKat also!!
I still havent found a way to fix it, did you (OP) ever find a fix?
Cheers
Stewart
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope no fix yet, I haven't tried transferring a large number of files since, oddly enough, I finally did get the OTA update and it installed 4.4 again.
It didn't take long and the file size was puny, only about 32MB, I assume it installed what was missing, but I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary since the official updated kicked in.
Yeah I have the latest OTA also, but I am still having the same issue!!
StuMcBill said:
Yeah I have the latest OTA also, but I am still having the same issue!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not really sure why it's different for you, like I said I got tired of waiting for the OTA and manually flashed the factory image, that's when the problems started, but after a few days I got a notification that the new update was ready which really confused me.
But I installed the downloaded update without a hitch, booted like normal and I just finished transferring a 100MB folder of images to my N7 without an error popping up on my tablet saying something crashed, so I can only assume for the moment until I transfer a larger folder, that the DL'd update fixed the problem.
I've also heard people flashing it again, or side loading it, or even a factory reset would fix the problem, but there weren't many replies as to this actually fixing the data transfer problem.
Problem with downloading ota update kitkat 4.4
I have stock rom and waited for the ota update. It came this morning and while downloading twice the verification failed.i rebooted and the screen came up download failed and had a retry button which i tried to activate and does nothing, The screen has been stuck on the return download for over 12 hours. My wifi connection is strong. Any ideas?
manow91 said:
I have stock rom and waited for the ota update. It came this morning and while downloading twice the verification failed.i rebooted and the screen came up download failed and had a retry button which i tried to activate and does nothing, The screen has been stuck on the return download for over 12 hours. My wifi connection is strong. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Take anything I say with a grain of salt as I'm not the greatest guy to ask for help, I only really ask questions here and I'm just going to suggest what to do, if you do it is up to you and I take no responsibility for your device having further issues.
1. Hard reset your device and upon it rebooting, check for the update again and try downloading it again
2. If that doesn't work then back up your data
3. After backing up your data do a factory reset on your device and once you've booted back up to Android, check for the update again and install
4. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure what else to suggest, this is what I would do to try and fix the problem, but for my situation it was unique in that I tried fixing it various ways that seemed to make it worse before it got somehow better.
I hope issuing a factory reset works for you, if not then that hard reset does when you try to redownload the update.
JohnathanKatz said:
Take anything I say with a grain of salt as I'm not the greatest guy to ask for help, I only really ask questions here and I'm just going to suggest what to do, if you do it is up to you and I take no responsibility for your device having further issues.
1. Hard reset your device and upon it rebooting, check for the update again and try downloading it again
2. If that doesn't work then back up your data
3. After backing up your data do a factory reset on your device and once you've booted back up to Android, check for the update again and install
4. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure what else to suggest, this is what I would do to try and fix the problem, but for my situation it was unique in that I tried fixing it various ways that seemed to make it worse before it got somehow better.
I hope issuing a factory reset works for you, if not then that hard reset does when you try to redownload the update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your reply back. Yep i also thought of the same 4 step solution as yourself but i also heard from 2 people that had the same thing happen to them and they thought it could be a goggle server problem, So i am going to wait to see if it sorts itself out over the next few days
manow91 said:
Thanks for your reply back. Yep i also thought of the same 4 step solution as yourself but i also heard from 2 people that had the same thing happen to them and they thought it could be a goggle server problem, So i am going to wait to see if it sorts itself out over the next few days
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That could be too, just thought I'd take a shot, hope it works out for you.:good:

[Q] Galaxy S4 won't boot past recovery (urgent)

This is somewhat urgent because I am leaving the country for two weeks on Friday, and need a working phone. I am not sure what happened today, but my Sprint Galaxy S4 (SPHL720TBK) wouldn't connect to WIFI at my house. My tablet would, so I know it was a phone issue. I rebooted then was going through settings, and just checking things. The phone rebooted itself, and when it came back up, it went through a couple of screens, one of which asked about activation. It seemed like it was installing an update from Sprint, which it had been trying to do for a week or so. But it kept failing, saying it didn't have enough space for the download, despite there being several GB free internally and on the SD card. (I figured it must be because it was rooted). After a couple of additional screens on which I could only answer OK, the phone rebooted again, and that was it. It would not boot again. I decided to power off the phone and deal with it tonight. I can boot into recovery, and connect with Odin. I can boot to recovery and connect with ADB (in sideload mode). I know I could just do a factory reset, but unfortunately, I do not have a full backup since the end of January, and I would rather not lose everything. The phone was running v 4.4.2. I had rooted the phone several months ago with CF Auto Root using CF-Auto-Root-jfltespr-jfltespr-sphl720.tar.md5, so it was essentially stock, but rooted. Is there anything I can do to get the phone back on its feet that will not lose everything? Or anyway to copy data from the phone with it in this state? Any assistance will be VERY much appreciated! Thanks!
Fixed it myself
andrewt2323 said:
This is somewhat urgent because I am leaving the country for two weeks on Friday, and need a working phone. I am not sure what happened today, but my Sprint Galaxy S4 (SPHL720TBK) wouldn't connect to WIFI at my house. My tablet would, so I know it was a phone issue. I rebooted then was going through settings, and just checking things. The phone rebooted itself, and when it came back up, it went through a couple of screens, one of which asked about activation. It seemed like it was installing an update from Sprint, which it had been trying to do for a week or so. But it kept failing, saying it didn't have enough space for the download, despite there being several GB free internally and on the SD card. (I figured it must be because it was rooted). After a couple of additional screens on which I could only answer OK, the phone rebooted again, and that was it. It would not boot again. I decided to power off the phone and deal with it tonight. I can boot into recovery, and connect with Odin. I can boot to recovery and connect with ADB (in sideload mode). I know I could just do a factory reset, but unfortunately, I do not have a full backup since the end of January, and I would rather not lose everything. The phone was running v 4.4.2. I had rooted the phone several months ago with CF Auto Root using CF-Auto-Root-jfltespr-jfltespr-sphl720.tar.md5, so it was essentially stock, but rooted. Is there anything I can do to get the phone back on its feet that will not lose everything? Or anyway to copy data from the phone with it in this state? Any assistance will be VERY much appreciated! Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since I didn't spark enough interest for anyone to offer advice, had to spend most of the afternoon/evening fixing these problems myself. Everything seems to be working, so I thought I would pass along key parts of this hard-learned lesson in case anyone else finds himself in such a situation.
First I booted into adb sideload mode, which is all I could do anyway. I installed philz_touch_6.23.9-jflte.zip and the aromafm.zip. I was then able to boot into a "normal" recovery mode. Aromafm was troublesome, and I eventually had to manually put the zip into place for it to work consistently. These are both WONDERFUL , and I highly recommend them both. Thanks very much to the creators! I used the file manager to find the files that I didn't want to lose, and used ADB to pull the files over to my PC. (ADB pull <source> <target>) Then I did a full wipe and factory reset. That did little other than delete all my data, which I had already copied anyway. The phone still would not boot past recovery.
I tried to use ADB to install a new ROM, but got a variety of errors. My phone being an L720T, there are not many ROM's available, at least not for which I could find functioning links. I finally found a TAR, L720TVPUBNG5_L720TSPTBNG5_L720TVPUBNG5_HOME.tar.md5, and used ODIN v3.09 to install that.
I still need to go back and re-root the phone, and install lots of APPS and restore data, but at least I have a functioning phone, and I can do the rest on my plane ride tomorrow.
I found the information I needed in a variety of posts here on xda developers, and would not have been able to get through this without all the helpful advice posted to other threads. So thanks to all of you for the wealth of information available here!

Might have soft-bricked my Exy S7 Edge for good. Need help/confirmation.

So... let's get this straight, i am an idiot. I played with fire and lost to it. I did some things i should not have done with my basic Android/root experience.
Here's what happened: Rooted my Exy S7 Edge today and everything went fine. I had hopes of somehow fixing SD-Card write permissions, which annoy the hell out of me in Marshmallow, but nothing really worked. I then stumbled upon a tutorial to modify the platform.xml located in /system/etc/permissions/ adding permissions. I made a backup of the file and started adding things suggested by the tutorial, restarting my phone several times. Nothing changed anything about the SD-Card permissions, so i gave up, didn't go back to the backed up platform.xml though.
Shortly after, i wanted to copy some files onto my device via usb and my Windows machine suddenly saw no files on the device. Nothing in the "phone" directory, and nothing in the "card" directory. I managed to copy the files via the FX file explorer web access feature and went on to connect a bluetooth device to my phone. I wasn't able to turn bluetooth on.
Rebooted the device and still had the exact same issue with bluetooth. I fired up FX with root access and went back to the backed up platform.xml, because it started dawning to me that something went majorly wrong there. I deleted the modified one, renamed the backup back to platform.xml and rebooted.
After the reboot, nothing worked anymore. I was able to get past the lockscreen and see the launcher (Apex Launcher) but i kept getting crash popups from basically every single app and service on the device. I wasnt able to run a single app, except for the "my files" app from samsung which showed nothing on the device and, and nothing on the sd card and the settings app. I then factory resetted the device in recovery mode (data wipe; cache wipe), because factory resetting it from settings just gave me a samsung service crash popup.
Rebooted the device and still have the exact same problems. It gives me the samsung startup wizard, but i cant get past accepting the license, because as soon as i agree, i get multiple crash popups and it goes back to the license page.
I assume this must mean that i somehow disabled read (and/or write?) accesss to pretty much every partition on the phone, is that right? Is there anything i can do, or have i softbricked the device for good? I don't really know a lot about using adb, and also enabling usb debug mode in the settings is pretty much impossible right now.
I am very thankful for any help saving my baby.
I would try downloading a stock image for your specific decice and flashing through odin.
I soft bricked my phone trying to flash the UK firmware. I fixed it with Kies, under Tools > Firmware Upgrade. It gave me a warning but I ignored it.
Just flash a new rom, u'd be fine !
Phew, thanks a lot guys Just reflashing stock worked perfectly fine. Didn't think it would be that simple.
Point to note - soft brick is usually something you can come back from providing you can get in to download and recovery modes. It also implies a device won't boot to the OS at all. So saying you ate soft brick permanently would imply a hard brick.
Hard brick is a non bootable device with no access to download our recovery mode without the use of a jig.

[Q] sgh 1337 UN stuck on Samsung splash screen (safe strap broken)

So, I have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle I however think I can get out of it by sideloading using EXT. SD, Im not sure what to flash to solve the dillemma however. So this is the situation. I have a (had) a rooted Galaxy s4 (sgh-i337 ucufnc1) with 4.4.2 android. It had safestrap installed and back ups of everything else in sd card and other locations just in case. The phone was acting buggy, so I formatted the phone with safestrap, the problem persisted, ill get into the issue a bit further down. So I booted back into safestrap, and did a complete wipe, however my sd card must've bumped out, because it didnt delete any media files or so it said, and then after the wipe it crashed. and refuses to boot into safestrap or even past the splash logo. I can get into download mode, but usb debugging isnt on anymore since i wiped it, I can get into the other mode as well ( cant for the life of me remember the name of it atm although i use it frequently) with some luck. I also happen to have all .md5 files from a backup i did about 4 months ago in tact, I cannot for the life of me get them to convert properly to apply them to the phone without safestrap however, if anyone has any insight to this please let me know also.
I can/will list any other information I have if anyone needs it, and if anyone can help it would safe a life!
The reason i reformatted it to begin with, was because media would stall, and when i plugged in the audio jack it'd freeze the entire app using it, then the whole phone would freeze. I believe it was due to lucky patcher but im unsure. The issue began when I altered the auto update file, and even after i rectified it, it persisted. At this time i have a phone soft bricked because it didnt delete all the media files and I assume something bugged onto the kernel image but Im not sure. If I can simply try to restore it to stock kernel then im fine with that.
Ghujii said:
So, I have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle I however think I can get out of it by sideloading using EXT. SD, Im not sure what to flash to solve the dillemma however. So this is the situation. I have a (had) a rooted Galaxy s4 (sgh-i337 ucufnc1) with 4.4.2 android. It had safestrap installed and back ups of everything else in sd card and other locations just in case. The phone was acting buggy, so I formatted the phone with safestrap, the problem persisted, ill get into the issue a bit further down. So I booted back into safestrap, and did a complete wipe, however my sd card must've bumped out, because it didnt delete any media files or so it said, and then after the wipe it crashed. and refuses to boot into safestrap or even past the splash logo. I can get into download mode, but usb debugging isnt on anymore since i wiped it, I can get into the other mode as well ( cant for the life of me remember the name of it atm although i use it frequently) with some luck. I also happen to have all .md5 files from a backup i did about 4 months ago in tact, I cannot for the life of me get them to convert properly to apply them to the phone without safestrap however, if anyone has any insight to this please let me know also.
I can/will list any other information I have if anyone needs it, and if anyone can help it would safe a life!
The reason i reformatted it to begin with, was because media would stall, and when i plugged in the audio jack it'd freeze the entire app using it, then the whole phone would freeze. I believe it was due to lucky patcher but im unsure. The issue began when I altered the auto update file, and even after i rectified it, it persisted. At this time i have a phone soft bricked because it didnt delete all the media files and I assume something bugged onto the kernel image but Im not sure. If I can simply try to restore it to stock kernel then im fine with that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
UPDATE: I resolved the issue, by rooting, safestrapping, ripping the image files, from another galaxy s4 with alike descriptions. then i managed to side load it, then it booted properly, i then reformatted it completely back to 100% factory everything. Now my original problem persists, and i cant help feel that google services is causing it. (examnples of issues" proccess.gapps has stopped. anotrher process error code. phone calls can be made, but not recieved as it seems the server is too busy to n otice it, massive battery drain, audio takes several seconds to play, while video continues to play fine, audiojack is mostly unresponsive, phone calls that are made cannot recieve or send audio during call session, phone may freeze at unlock screen, or any time during operation, may even reboot from process overloading" now keep in mind. i removed every system file and app that the natural reformat will allow. so nothing applied by the user is on the phone, other than natural factory applications. Im digging a bit into the phone as i can but its a slow process whenit starts freezing. if anyone has any idea of what can be causing this, or how to fix this please inform me lol.
Ghujii said:
UPDATE: I resolved the issue, by rooting, safestrapping, ripping the image files, from another galaxy s4 with alike descriptions. then i managed to side load it, then it booted properly, i then reformatted it completely back to 100% factory everything. Now my original problem persists, and i cant help feel that google services is causing it. (examnples of issues" proccess.gapps has stopped. anotrher process error code. phone calls can be made, but not recieved as it seems the server is too busy to n otice it, massive battery drain, audio takes several seconds to play, while video continues to play fine, audiojack is mostly unresponsive, phone calls that are made cannot recieve or send audio during call session, phone may freeze at unlock screen, or any time during operation, may even reboot from process overloading" now keep in mind. i removed every system file and app that the natural reformat will allow. so nothing applied by the user is on the phone, other than natural factory applications. Im digging a bit into the phone as i can but its a slow process whenit starts freezing. if anyone has any idea of what can be causing this, or how to fix this please inform me lol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The best solution must be installing the stock firmware via odin. Since you are on NC1 , You can installed the stock NB1.
Here is guide explaining you using odin, installing NB1, root with towel root, updated NC1, install the safestrap. The guide was not specifically written for that but you can find those steps in the guide.
I will attempt to do this, since nothing since has work. I am about to get a new logic board for the system in the next 2 weeks. Towel root DOES typically work on this system, however the last time I attmpted it it failed to work outright. Im not sure what has changed with the device, but i believe reflashing stock is the best method. The phone now, will boot up, then skip the lock screen and go straight to the home screen, which is black with no pull down bar, or with no signal and there is no way to rectify it. Even if there were, it boots back down and launches back up and becomes locked at the ATT logo.
After a fair bit of messing with it, and recovery mode it will sometimes boot normally where it tells me that processes has failed and askes me to cancel the ''app''. This is the best option to update the phone and attempt root, but getting it here is so difficult because it reboots itself and the mode is rare to acquire. This problem either is due to the kernel, or the rom i believe. I also am to believe the powercell may have some issue, as i replaced the battery a few weeks back and it worked fine for about 1 week.
Booting into safemode doesnt work either as it skips over the lock screen straight to the home screen. Outsidce of replacing the logic board, or attempting another flash im at the end of the short rope i was already on in terms of options.
sway8966 said:
The best solution must be installing the stock firmware via odin. Since you are on NC1 , You can installed the stock NB1.
Here is guide explaining you using odin, installing NB1, root with towel root, updated NC1, install the safestrap. The guide was not specifically written for that but you can find those steps in the guide.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
UPDATE: I found therein two methods to flashback to stock. I did so, then proceeded to attempt to flash from nb1 to nj4. Progress stopped there when it flung an error 7 at me. So this means either something in my phone is corrupted or the file i downloaded from the above mentioned forum is corrupted. I also attempted flashfire, but seen as it STILL crashes at random due to process errors thats almost impossible to attempt.

Recover data from softbricked, unrooted VS980 G2 stuck on LG screen?

One of my friends was having me try to fix or at least recover data from her Verizon G2- it's been stuck on the LG screen for about a week, can still go to recovery/download/other basic screens but that's it, all she did was put it in her pocket and it stopped working. Unfortunately I'm REALLY new to anything Android (please forgive me if I'm using terminology incorrectly!) so I've been lost trying to work this out.
I found out today that she went ahead and got a new phone altogether but she asked me to pull the data from this one. Before this I've tried using LGFlashTool to reset the phone without removing the data, but every way I've gone about doing that has told me that "there was an error connecting to the device" or something along those lines, same in Alligator Toolkit 3.1 and even Windows Device Manager.
At this point I just need to get the data from it, but it's not rooted so I can't install TWRP (not sure about any alternative recoveries), and I can't root it because it hasn't been able to get past the aforementioned screens.
Is there a way to basically just copy all the data on the phone to a computer without a recovery, rooting it, or anything like that? Or is there any way I can install a recovery like TWRP?
Another thing is that strangely last night I managed to make it turn on and work properly, but when I finally decided that it did work and went to unplug it and put it away, it went straight back to the LG screen. I'm not really sure what I did to get it to work that time but I haven't been able to make it happen again.
Sorry if any of this is unclear, I'll be up late available for any clarifications. Thanks in advance for the help!

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