Epic Firmware - Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Anyone managed to flash this epic 4 firmware on his SGS: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=767604
I tried and I survived a heartattack As a flashaholic I put everything in my flashpipe I can get my hands on, so also this one. First I tried only the a tar-ed factory.fs ... that worked out partially well. The device booted up and I managed to see a whole new lockscreen and some nice goodies.. But it was to buggy.
Excited as I was, I decided to flash the whole sjabang... That caused almost a heartattach. I got a Odin fail after flasing the boot, sbl and recovery bin and after that the device was completely dead... I thought. I did the 3 finger pray and nothing turned up, no little yellow, guy nothing.. So I thought, hell yes, first the HD2 and now the SGS . Nevertheless, I decided to connect the dead thing to my computer with Odin running. And yes... got a connection. So the bootloader did start (but the little yellow guy decided to stay home). Reflashed JM1 and now I'm back in business.
But, after the little excitement of seeing a flash of the new epic firmware, I really want this on my SGS. So, any ideas? I tried flashing the factory.fs and the zImage kernel. But also a no-go.
Should a pit 513 be used for this firmware? Other kernels? (again the factory.fs seemed to like the SGS also)

You're brave, my friend, a true soldier
This sounds really interesting, would love to know if someone got this working (even partially)

What's so great about the epic firmware?

Related

Keeps rebooting after Darky 8.1 update

Now just had a little problem. I updated to Darky's 8.1 no wipe version. It updated fine but the first time it booted, it froze. Now it keeps doing a boot cycle over and over again. I see the i9000m screen but I do not get to the S logo screen or in this case the transformer screen because it reboots. Can you help me plz? Thanks.
Zink6 said:
Now just had a little problem. I updated to Darky's 8.1 no wipe version. It updated fine but the first time it booted, it froze. Now it keeps doing a boot cycle over and over again. I see the i9000m screen but I do not get to the S logo screen or in this case the transformer screen because it reboots. Can you help me plz? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try a re flash of another ROM preferably a stock ROM then start all over again, similar thing happened to me earlier, i am quite new to all this but i dont know if its the kernel or lagfix i had what caused this...
i re flashed back to froyo and then installed darkys ROM then re installed my kernel last.. all is good (for now)
worked for me first time but when i went to sgs tools to upgrade your apps ie gallery, camera, it said no busybox installed but went ahead and done fine in v8.0 and i see that cwm changed from red to green too went to market for busybox to download it but when it goes to install phone just reboots all the time mmmm...
Easiest way out of cycling boot:
pull battery
place it in
bring phone in download mode (not recovery!)
prepare Odin with a stock ROM
connect the phone to your PC and give it a kick thru Odin
When done feel free to switch again to Darkys (8.0) with wipe (you will loose data) and afterwards upgrade to 8.1.
stepsch said:
Easiest way out of cycling boot:
pull battery
place it in
bring phone in download mode (not recovery!)
prepare Odin with a stock ROM
connect the phone to your PC and give it a kick thru Odin
When done feel free to switch again to Darkys (8.0) with wipe (you will loose data) and afterwards upgrade to 8.1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YES !!! i agree, it is a pain.. but we love our phones and we would do anything for them its always best to flash back to standard FW if you ever get a problem...
I myself experienced this. Whenever I installed a new software, it would just boot. I got fed up because darky's forums are also down and there is no discussion. flashed doc's rom. Now everything is fine.
...mh... but it's not caused by Darkys ROM. This cycling boot feature may appear at all ROM, at all lag fix actions and so on. It depends how proper you interact with phone- and ROM-features while configuring. A lil disturbance during your session (by you or battery issue or whatelse) or a not so well prepared basic from where you start and your unlimited-feature-wishlist-and-paint-it-golden-one-click-action is enough to interrupt the whole thing and run into trouble.
It was and is all the same - since DOS or C64. And it will be the same, even when iPhone is on level 12.x or Android will be able to beam you elsewhere thru the barcode scanner.
It's a game. Nothing more. And game means lot of fun - and in the beginning a certain thrill when your phone stuck first time and you are thinking: "... f*ck... bricked..."
yup same for me
cycle boot thing
didnt enable download mode before that....
can get into debug screen thou but wiping it doesnt help
anyone with a suggestion on what i can try? warrenty = off so im screwed otherwise
anyone with a suggestion on what i can try? warrenty = off so im screwed otherwise
Just tell the warranty guy darky screwed it .
OR
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=853950
jje
cant even boot the phone mate
so ehm i dont get it....how can odin help me ?
is there any way of getting it into download mode still when it doesnt boot up? i heard about that JIG thing they made themself...isnt that just like the microusb cable that comes with it to the pc? i dont get it sorry if im trippin but im maddd at myself for even trying this lockscreen thing
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=819551
jje
Thanks guys for all the replies. Now I did try flashing a stock rom but with no results. Was still having the same thing happening to me. If you guys can give me the link to the files you used to solve this problem, that would be great. Also just for your information I have a Bell i9000m unlocked running on fido. And NO its not an sd card failure lol.
As for DarelSteilz85, I did make one of those JIG usb for myself. It easy, just get the micro usb and strip it bare to the point you can see the pins on the usb which usually are connected to the wires and get a resister to connect one pin to another. Now for which pins, I remember it was 4 and 5 that you had to connect through the resistor but double check as I am not sure. Also the resistor has to be a certain level which I forgot so double check that also. Good luck.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=853950
What i use for problems .
jje

[Q] Galaxy S stuck in boot-loop

Hi guys,
Gone through about 100 threads these last couple of days, but nothing helps, so have to start a new one.
What happened was that the other day my phone started ringing.
The screen however was black, so I could neither see who was calling nor answer the call.
I let it ring out, then I held the power button so it would shutdown.
Tried to restart it, and that's when the fun started.
The phone got stuck in a boot-loop, only showing the Galaxy S logo (not getting to the animated one).
Left it in this loop for several hours, since I've had problems recently with the phone needing to do this cycle 5-10 times before booting up.
This time it wouldn't boot, however.
I've tried putting the phone in a bag of rice for 18 hours, in case of any moisture inside, not helping.
Then I tried recovery-mode, formatting the whole thing, but I got the following error:
"E:format_volume: rfs format failed on /dev/block/mmcblk0p2"
Found this thread to try to fix the format error.
Got into download mode, but Odin does not recognize the phone, and I started believing all hope for fixing it without sending it in was gone.
I've also tried applying a couple of update.zip's from the SD-card, just to have tried it, but every package got Signature verifcation-error.
Anyway, when I headed to bed last night I left the phone in the boot-loop, and to my surprice, 8 hours later it had booted into first-time configuration.
YES!!!
Configured the phone with language etc., then all of a sudden the animated Galaxy S logo appeared...
And it appeared again, and again, and again for about 15 min., until I unplugged the battery.
And now I'm back at square one, stuck in the boot-loop (not getting to the animated logo)...
I have the latest versjon of KIES, not that it probably matters.
Does anyone have an idea of what the problem might be?
What rom were you using? stock or custom? Maybe it has something to do with lagfix if it was activated... im guesing, im not dev just normal user... Maybe try to reinstal usb drivers.
Just use odin 1.3 reflash official rom , everything would be OK.
Not sure about the ROM, bought the phone used... But pretty sure it's stock..
Since Odin didn't recognize the phone, reflashing it with official ROM would be hard...
However, as for the Odin problem, that was caused by a faulty USB-cable...
Used another one, and Odin worked like a charm.
The phone won't start after running through the steps in the thread I mentioned before, but I will try to reflash it with offical ROM now and see how that works.
mortenlm said:
Not sure about the ROM, bought the phone used... But pretty sure it's stock..
Since Odin didn't recognize the phone, reflashing it with official ROM would be hard...
However, as for the Odin problem, that was caused by a faulty USB-cable...
Used another one, and Odin worked like a charm.
The phone won't start after running through the steps in the thread I mentioned before, but I will try to reflash it with offical ROM now and see how that works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure about used phone, But if I bought the phone used, I would reflash rom first. Because I do not even know what they done before , reflash offical rom would be fix some problem.
porkapple said:
Not sure about used phone, But if I bought the phone used, I would reflash rom first. Because I do not even know what they done before , reflash offical rom would be fix some problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I would have if I knew... But stupid me thought that a phone was a phone.
How wrong was I?
Anyway, a little update here (the problem is kind of solved now):
Flashed the phone with 2.3.3 Gingerbread I found on dkszone, after running the steps in the previous mentioned thread.
And the phone started like a charm.
But after a few hours of configuring etc, I managed to insert the SD-card again, and all hell broke loose again...
Come to think about it, thats what I did yesterday too, so I've come to the conclusion that the SD-card is the main problem...
However, now the phone is slow... REAL slow... Kind of like my 1.5 year old HTC Touch Diamond 2 with WP6.5...
It takes up to 2 seconds to open menu items, keyboard etc.
Is there any way to fix that?
Or should I flash it with another ROM?
You mean the external sdcard? Maybe try to format it...
OK, so this is what I've now figured out:
The phone is damaged...
It seems that the internal SD has gone AWAL, and internal storage has somehow created itself on the external SD-card, thus the phone crashed when I switched cards...
When trying to format the USB-storage, I receive error: SD-card has been removed
So I guess I have to ship the phone off to Samsung ASAP...

[Q] Problem flashing back to stock rom

I have a samsung captivate on the rogers network, and custom roms have been nothing short of a nightmare, with cyanogenmod being the only custom rom that correctly worked on my phone, and everything else either not booting at all, or booting and not letting me do much, and I've had it. I want to go back to the stock rom (which I downloaded off a megaupload link from a thread on this site), and I've already done it before, to repair my phone after it got so broken it wouldn't boot anymore, but this time it won't let me.
I noticed something odd. Normally, when a captivate with a stock rogers rom is booted, it shows the phone model number, then the animated rogers boot screen for about one second, and then the samsung galaxy s animated boot screenshows up, with the boot jingle, and then you use the phone.
Now, the phone inverts the boot screens, with the galaxy s animated screen showing up before the rogers one, and then the screen goes black where it should let me use the phone as usual. Only once was I able to see the regular lock screen and even then I couldn't use the touch screen at all.
I also often get stl10 errors after flashing the stock rom, and using the captivate pit file doesn't help either.
I tried flashing with both heimdall and odin and I have no idea what to do anymore. the stock rom is much more stable for my phone, and I miss it badly. it might be slower and also android 2.2, but at least it wouldn't self-corrupt like cyanogenmod does with my phone every 1-2 weeks.
I need your help with this. I obviously can't do it alone.
everett1911 said:
I have a samsung captivate on the rogers network, and custom roms have been nothing short of a nightmare, with cyanogenmod being the only custom rom that correctly worked on my phone, and everything else either not booting at all, or booting and not letting me do much, and I've had it. I want to go back to the stock rom (which I downloaded off a megaupload link from a thread on this site), and I've already done it before, to repair my phone after it got so broken it wouldn't boot anymore, but this time it won't let me.
I noticed something odd. Normally, when a captivate with a stock rogers rom is booted, it shows the phone model number, then the animated rogers boot screen for about one second, and then the samsung galaxy s animated boot screenshows up, with the boot jingle, and then you use the phone.
Now, the phone inverts the boot screens, with the galaxy s animated screen showing up before the rogers one, and then the screen goes black where it should let me use the phone as usual. Only once was I able to see the regular lock screen and even then I couldn't use the touch screen at all.
I also often get stl10 errors after flashing the stock rom, and using the captivate pit file doesn't help either.
I tried flashing with both heimdall and odin and I have no idea what to do anymore. the stock rom is much more stable for my phone, and I miss it badly. it might be slower and also android 2.2, but at least it wouldn't self-corrupt like cyanogenmod does with my phone every 1-2 weeks.
I need your help with this. I obviously can't do it alone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lets be clear you where on CM7 then tried other roms? then moved to stock? what roms wich stock and whats your build number?
prbassplayer said:
Lets be clear you where on CM7 then tried other roms? then moved to stock? what roms wich stock and whats your build number?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
last time I had bothered to update cyanogen, it was a week ago. I don't remember the exact nightly build. The other roms I tried were miui, apex and something else that wouldn't boot and which I deleted quickly (apex wouldn't boot either but I spent a couple hours trying to make it work). I wiped everything prior to flashing.
as for the stock rom, it's a stock rom for the SGH-I896 (I896UXJI2), my phone model. before, the stock rom worked fine. I just can't figure out why it's suddenly not working now.
anyone? I really want to put the stock rom back into my phone.
Are you using a PIT file when flashing? If not try using this one with that package then report back.
I've already did that with odin.
and just out of curiousity, what are pit files for?
everett1911 said:
I've already did that with odin.
and just out of curiousity, what are pit files for?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont know what it exacly does BUT I know if you want to repartition your phone and you are on a AOSP like CM7 or MIUI you need a pit.
P.i.t.
Partitioning
Information
Table
Lol makes sense now
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using xda premium
studacris said:
P.i.t.
Partitioning
Information
Table
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*windows user* so it's a bit like a batch fdisk?
if so, is the internal sd card itself supposed to be wiped clean? because it didn't happen when I used mine.
Ok so using the PIT file didn't work for you. I've seen several Samsung devices suffer from a problematic internal OneNAND in the past but never one a Captivate. It's always been a TAB, i9000 or Vibrant. Can you try flashing the base files used in the Serendipity ROM? It's the stock Gingerbread installed before flashing the Serendipity ROM itself. You can find them in that thread. It will help distinguish whether you have an actual issue or whether you just need some in depth CSC scripts to help clean it up. In general that ROM has a very nicely built CSC cleanup script that is able to correct what I call "partition bricking" on the Captivate, i9000 and Vibrant. Give it a shot and report back...
Also, if that won't work, I have been able to correct this via JTAG. PM me if it comes to that. If JTAG won't correct it, then it is indeed a case of a partially dead OneNAND. It's rare but does happen.
I'll give that CSC script thing a try. What's JTAG, by the way?
nevermind, I figured out what jtag is.
Now, I'd like to know what the stl10 partition is for, since it's the one I get errors from the most when trying to flash back to the stock rom.
anyone, please?
everett1911 said:
nevermind, I figured out what jtag is.
Now, I'd like to know what the stl10 partition is for, since it's the one I get errors from the most when trying to flash back to the stock rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
See here and here
dbdata.rfs ( /dbdata RFS Partition) /dev/block/stl10
cache.rfs ( /cache RFS Partition) /dev/block/stl11
I know these explanations r from i9000 threads, but hopefully it will give u the answer.
The "stl10" error was because the i896uxji2 firmware package that u were trying to flash, with the Repartition selected, does not contain the dbdata.rfs. But the i896uxjl1 firmware (Froyo) has the dbdata.rfs that u need to have when u select repartition. So, just use the link in my signature below to get to the Heimdall i896uxjl1. Select repartition and the other files, etc. and flash. U should be good to go. Then afterwards, u can go to uxji2 without the repartition, if u desire.
Thanks to hardcore for this explanation and solution.
For2ndtwin said:
See here and here
dbdata.rfs ( /dbdata RFS Partition) /dev/block/stl10
cache.rfs ( /cache RFS Partition) /dev/block/stl11
I know these explanations r from i9000 threads, but hopefully it will give u the answer.
The "stl10" error was because the i896uxji2 firmware package that u were trying to flash, with the Repartition selected, does not contain the dbdata.rfs. But the i896uxjl1 firmware (Froyo) has the dbdata.rfs that u need to have when u select repartition. So, just use the link in my signature below to get to the Heimdall i896uxjl1. Select repartition and the other files, etc. and flash. U should be good to go. Then afterwards, u can go to uxji2 without the repartition, if u desire.
Thanks to hardcore for this explanation and solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks but I think it's too late. while trying to flash serendipity two days ago, I used the odin flasher that site linked to, and it flashed my phone with at&t's firmware, which somehow completely ruined my phone. now, the phone won't boot, and I can't enter download mode at all. I'm not sure even a usb jig would help, and right now I don't have money for that, so I'll have to wait till I do.
And if this doesn't work, then what? All the phone does is show a spinning little circle, immobile for 3 seconds, and the phone turns off. when I insert the battery (after pulling it out), the phone automatically starts with the same screen, same result. if I plug in the usb cable, it shows the charging battery indicator, freezes, and reboots. This repeats over and over, with no end at all, and since I can't enter download mode in any way so far, I can't do anything about that. It's so bad that not even windows detect my phone, and I've plugged it into two separate computers, so I know it's not just my pc pulling a trick on me.
The worst part is that since I was using wifi tether on my phone (hello, pdanet), now I'm without any internet (right now I'm typing this on my little sister's laptop, from my dad's place.)
So... yeah.
By the way, the heimdall link is for i897 phones, even in the post for i896 phones. Is there any risks my phone will react as badly as it did with the at&t firmware?
^ I've read good things about Heimdall. Btw, if ur phone has any signs of life, then a Jig should get u back into download mode.
The fact that it was at&t firmware has nothing to do with it. Running I897 firmware on an I896 is fine. **** you can run I9000 firmware...
so many days after, I still can't get it into download mode at all. all it shows is a spinning circle, a spinning circle and then the charging battery image for a second when the usb cable is plugged in, and the AT&T world logo when the battery is low.
I could go for a solderless usb jig but even then I don't have cash for that right now (next week.), so until then I'm screwed.
I tried everything minus the usb jig, looked for many threads on the topic, and nothing works. nothing.
no matter how many times I do the battery trick or the three finger salute or the odin stuff, and it still doesn't work.
so... yeah. that usb jig better damn work.
I'll call it magic
First, I'd like to thank 4-2ndtwin for providing a complete stock rogers rom.
Second: how does a usb jig work, really? my thing's computers, software and hardware in general but not to the point of knowing how capacitors, resistors and all that stuff works, so for me the usb jig bringing back my phone from firmware limbo... that's magic. seriously.

[Q] Very bad brick situation

Hi everyone,
I have in the past switched roms on my Galaxy S before, therefore the issue of bricking my phone is something that doesn't intimidate me too much. However, this time i'm really stumped, and I turn to the gurus here at the forums, hoping a solution can be found.
I had just gotten my phone back from getting its screen repaired (which makes this especially irritating), and my carriers had flashed my phone back to their stock version of android, meaning gingerbread with a lot of bloatware. I decided straight away that I wanted to root my phone today, although I was away from my PC. I had my laptop with me (Macbook Air), but I had never done any flashing from it before, not to mention ever using Heimdall before (I had always flashed with Odin). I downloaded everything, and then I made my first mistake: I flashed a speed mod kernel (I believe it was a froyo kernel), and after reboot my phone wouldn't go past the splash screen. I could still get into recovery and download mode. Then I decided to try playing it safe, and I downloaded stock firmware packages for Heimdall fro the forums here. I tried flashing JVS on my phone, going exactly by the instructions written in that same thread that I found the packages, but the flash didn't succeed. Instead, I got an error message saying the PIT file didn't reach the end of the transfer (or something like that...) and the phone rebooted. After that attempt, the phone went black. Nothing works anymore except for download mode. Now I thought that as long as download mode works, I'll be ok, so I tried flashing different packages through Heimdall, and eventually when I got home I tried using Odin on my PC. The problem is, my PC doesn't recognize my phone anymore (even though the drivers are installed and I never had an issue with that before), so I'm pretty much stuck with a brick for now.
I really don't want to go back to my carrier again, and hope to get my phone back in working order without paying too much. I still think there's hope as long as download mode works.
Does anybody have any suggestions what I might be able to do? Since my PC doesn't recognize my phone (and therefore Odin doesn't either), the only semi-working option left is using Heimdall somehow, but as to how to use it, I'm in the dark.
I would really appreciate any help you guys can give me. Thanks a lot!
Aaron
first try reinstalling the drivers and try again. if you can get download mode, should be repaired.
Thank you very much!!!
I knew that download mode was a good sign, but I started freaking out as soon as Odin wouldn't recognize my phone, since it never has had that problem. Reinstalling the drivers did the trick, and flashing worked.
Sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Again, thanks a lot!
commandozzz said:
Thank you very much!!!
I knew that download mode was a good sign, but I started freaking out as soon as Odin wouldn't recognize my phone, since it never has had that problem. Reinstalling the drivers did the trick, and flashing worked.
Sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Again, thanks a lot!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We are here to help.

[Q] Can't downgrade to GB so I can unlock phone, gets stuck at boot screen (RESOLVED)

EDIT: I FINALLY GOT ADAM OUTLERS HEIMDALL 2.2 ROM TO INSTALL.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
So I was running 4.2.2 SlimBean on my Girlfriends phone.
But found out the phone needs to be unlocked.
Then found out you can't unlock a 4.2.2 phone based on AOSP.
So I've been trying like crazy to downgrade to a Froyo or GB ROM so I can unlock phone.
But NOTHING is working.
The odin-one-click's don't work.
The Adam Outler Heimdall just keeps saying there are no drivers for Heimdall, then installs drivers succesfully, then says there are no drivers...
Any Froyo or GB ROM I flash in CWM 6.x.x or older, just gets to boot screen and won't go any further.
I'm flipping annoyed here. Help!
My googling has worn my fingers numb and I gotta have someone take pity on me and tell me what the frack to do.
I've soft bricked this phone about fifteen times so far. The dang "computer & phone" screen thing has been kicking my butt over and over. Glad I finally got a fix for that. But, I keep bricking the phone again afterwards. ugh...
HOW THE HECK DO I GO ABOUT DOWNGRADING THIS PHONE ?!?
CZ Eddie said:
The odin-one-click's don't work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use Win 7 computer, original Samsung USB cable, correct drivers + run Odin one-click as Administrator and it works perfectly every time. Had to go back to stock GB a few times, no issues.
Well I don't know what combo of driver & kernel & other stuff worked, but I finally got the Odin One Click thing working. Not all of them work, but I found one that did (I897UCKF1_withBL). Even then, it only works about 1/2 of the time.
Flashed a 2.3.3
But after rooting it, I lost WiFi ability.
And so couldn't unlock it.
And this forum is full of DEAD links for everything I need that is old enough to unlock a phone.
awwrrghhh I'm ready to throw this phone against the wall.
AT&T already gave me the code to unlock it. And I have a new unused AT&T SIM installed, though it sounds like that may be a problem also. I might need a non-AT&T SIM to unlock.

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