Database Develop

[Q] Formatted system partition .. no recovery?

Being stupid and mildly curious, I formatted the system partition and now the phone won't boot passed the model screen, not the galaxy s logo, but the first screen that I would call the manufacture splash screen.
Serves me right for being curious.
Recovery mode is disabled on this phone and cannot use odin since the computer doesn't see the device.
The viable solution is to have it re-flashed at samsung repair center and learn from my mistake, but I was also wondering about the boot process.
In traditional computers, the bios will search for bootable media in the order set in the bios. The question is, does the android boot process do the same? Has anyone tried? I was thinking of making the micro SD bootable with the android system volume on it, hoping that the phone will see the system on the external sd, for which then I can then mount and restore the system on the internal SD.
Is this possible?

you might be able to get the 3buttons working by heating up the phone with a hair dryer trick
remove battery, sim card, and SD card
then heat up the phone, and try to power it up with the 3 button download mode

never heard of such a thing, but what do I have to lose...other than a 560.00 phone.

AllGamer said:
you might be able to get the 3buttons working by heating up the phone with a hair dryer trick
remove battery, sim card, and SD card
then heat up the phone, and try to power it up with the 3 button download mode
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol, would you mind explaining a bit how this is even rational?

it's not rational at all, even i was skeptical about it at first
but many have got it to work that way, and that's more than enough proof
even if it's not logical at all

abd reboot recovery
I've had the same issue with an unsuccesfull lagfix.
No 3 button recovery.
I've connected the phone to my computer (I have the android sdk installed) and I ran "abd reboot recovery". The phone rebooted in recovery and i did a factory restore.
It went great.
Try this. Good luck.

that doesn't work if they are bricked already

[Q] Bell GS wouldn't charge nor turn on—sending it in, 'twas rooted; am I in trouble?

I can't get the thing to turn on or connect to a computer to unroot it. Two questions:
Will they be able to tell it has been rooted given that the phone will not turn on nor charge?
Is there a way to unroot it / maybe wipe the internal sd?
Any thoughts? Thank-you in advance.
Edit: my apologies to the mods for putting this in the wrong category.

If you can get into download mode (volume down + home + power) then you can try to flash on a stock Bell rom with Odin. Even if it fails to boot after you flash (which it probably will given you have fried SD), it will at least wipe whatever you have on there and you'll have a broken stock ROM instead of broken rooted/custom ROM
Other than that I wouldn't worry about it, from what I've heard they've been good about replacing these phones.

Thanks! Actually it does the same thing booting into download mode as it does when I try to charge it or turn it on. It shows the download mode screen for about 4 seconds, turns off and then does it again continuously until I stop holding the buttons.
The exact same infinite loop happens when i try to charge it, except with the little charging screen. This thing is royally ****ed. Pardon my french.

You can transfert an update.zip on the external SD then on the internal SD and reinstall with recovery mode.

Cheers, though I don't think I can boot into recovery mode, nor do I have a method of transferring from the external sd to the internal.
According to chambo622, it's my internal sd that is fried. That leads me to believe that the Bell tech's are not going to have much luck reading that and finding Titanium Backup or something on there to indicate my guilt.
Feel free to correct me on that.

jamwil said:
Cheers, though I don't think I can boot into recovery mode, nor do I have a method of transferring from the external sd to the internal.
According to chambo622, it's my internal sd that is fried. That leads me to believe that the Bell tech's are not going to have much luck reading that and finding Titanium Backup or something on there to indicate my guilt.
Feel free to correct me on that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that's almost certainly the problem. I have two Galaxy S I9000M in the house (one is my dad's). I've flashed mine tons of times...his was just flashed once, and about two weeks later, showed similar systems. I was able to get into download mode and flash stock Eclair but it wouldn't boot no matter what I did to it, was bootlooping, displaying errors, etc. Bad internal SD's are a known problem with SGS and I don't think they will able to tell if you were rooted (or care much, really)

[Q]Nothing will boot from eMMC

Hi all,
I was hoping someone would be able to help me out as I am seemingly in a bad situation. I received my Nook 2 days ago and rooted and tried out a few different ROMS to get a feel for the choices. In any case, for some reason my Nook no longer appears to be booting anything from internal memory. Any ROM I have tried (stock included) has failed to boot, but I can get the Nook to load CWR with the memory card in. When I say failed to boot, I mean a black screen. Like no response from the device at all.
Please if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated, I really dont know what else to do or what the problem is.
Thanks,
Michaelangelo

mad1100 said:
Hi all,
I was hoping someone would be able to help me out as I am seemingly in a bad situation. I received my Nook 2 days ago and rooted and tried out a few different ROMS to get a feel for the choices. In any case, for some reason my Nook no longer appears to be booting anything from internal memory. Any ROM I have tried (stock included) has failed to boot, but I can get the Nook to load CWR with the memory card in. When I say failed to boot, I mean a black screen. Like no response from the device at all.
Please if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated, I really dont know what else to do or what the problem is.
Thanks,
Michaelangelo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Get the nook restore to stock zip and the boot restore zip. Flash those both back to it. Also, make sure you are wiping, System, then Data, then Boot beforehand. And wipe both Dalvik and cache. Nook Color is nearly impossible to hard-brick (in the sense of being unable to recover from it).

mad1100 said:
Hi all,
I was hoping someone would be able to help me out as I am seemingly in a bad situation. I received my Nook 2 days ago and rooted and tried out a few different ROMS to get a feel for the choices. In any case, for some reason my Nook no longer appears to be booting anything from internal memory. Any ROM I have tried (stock included) has failed to boot, but I can get the Nook to load CWR with the memory card in. When I say failed to boot, I mean a black screen. Like no response from the device at all.
Please if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated, I really dont know what else to do or what the problem is.
Thanks,
Michaelangelo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This happens because the boot partition is corrupt. This is usually the result of you formatting the SD card with CM7. Due to a bug, when you try to format the SD card, it will wipe out the boot partion as well. Just restore the boot partion and you will be OK.

neozen21 said:
This happens because the boot partition is corrupt. This is usually the result of you formatting the SD card with CM7. Due to a bug, when you try to format the SD card, it will wipe out the boot partion as well. Just restore the boot partion and you will be OK.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there a way to do that when the screen is not working?
An automated install or do we just push buttons as per the same task on another nook and hope

Okay, so I understand that the problem is that CM7 changed around the boot partition files, that makes sense as that was the last thing I could get running on internal memory. When I was flashing HC v4 to EMMC I also flashed a boot repair, and that still did not work. I cannot seem to find a boot repair file for stock, where do I get that.
Sorry for the noob questions, and I am definitely trying to use search the forums for answers before i ask these questions!

We have life!!! I found a stock boot restore file and it turned out to work, I am back to stock again. Man this is sure a learning experience. I have been flashing my Evo for a while now, but the nook is a different beast all together.
Thanks for your help all, I think I am good from here on out!

chrysilis said:
Is there a way to do that when the screen is not working?
An automated install or do we just push buttons as per the same task on another nook and hope
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You get a microSD card with CWR and the both .zip files for the stock 1.1 and the boot partion, then pick install .zip from SD card and flash both files. When done, take out the microSD card and your NC should be able to boot normally...

neozen21 said:
You get a microSD card with CWR and the both .zip files for the stock 1.1 and the boot partion, then pick install .zip from SD card and flash both files. When done, take out the microSD card and your NC should be able to boot normally...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And if the screen isn't turning on but SD cards seem to boot?
chrysilis said:
Is there a way to do that when the screen is not working?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The solution I am trying now is to leave it for a few days so tonight/tomorrow we'll see if it comes back!

chrysilis said:
And if the screen isn't turning on but SD cards seem to boot?
The solution I am trying now is to leave it for a few days so tonight/tomorrow we'll see if it comes back!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you know it's booting into CWR on the SD if the screen is not working?
If your screen is not working when booting from a SD card, then.. maybe there is something wrong with your nook???

neozen21 said:
How do you know it's booting into CWR on the SD if the screen is not working?
If your screen is not working when booting from a SD card, then.. maybe there is something wrong with your nook???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I boot nooter 0.2 then the USB plug goes green which apparently indicates booting. Oh and OMAP3630 shows up for a second on booting too.
Thing is I didn't do anything to break the screen and there is no physical damage to the unit. so it's just weird

chrysilis said:
If I boot nooter 0.2 then the USB plug goes green which apparently indicates booting. Oh and OMAP3630 shows up for a second on booting too.
Thing is I didn't do anything to break the screen and there is no physical damage to the unit. so it's just weird
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought I had the same issue because of the screen being blank. That said it is highly unlikely your hardware ( ie screen ) is bad. I was able to get mine working correctly last night doing what is mentioned above. However to get it to work right booting into CWR via a bootable sdcard I had to make a new bootable sdcard from the one I had. Not sure if something was corrupted on the card I was trying to use or what. But as soon as I made a new bootable sdcard and put it in the device and powered on it boot right up to CWR off the sdcard like I needed so I could fix it. So my suggestion if you can is take a totally different sdard fro the one you have been using and make a new bootable sdcard and give it a shot.
BTW with no card in the device hold the power key down for about 20 secs to make sure it is fully powered off. Even tho your screen is blank does NOT mean it is fully powered off as I learned real fast last night when I tried working on mine. I thought it was off from the night before but it must not have been because I put a bootable HC sdcard in it and when I plugged it in I got a msg saying battery to low to power on plz try again in 15 mins. About 10 mins later I came back and it was finally powering itself on and booting into HC off the sdcard. So I let it fully charge and then start playing with it to finally get it back up and running again.

Keep phone on long enough to transfer files?

I have had a ATT captivate for almost 2 years now. It falls in the IMEI range specified by ATT. But it wasn't really a problem until very recently.
It got much worse about 3 weeks ago when the phone kept constantly rebooting. It would load the OS, begin media scanning, once that concluded, it would immediately reboot (almost every 20 seconds). Only way to stop the reboot cycle is to take out the battery. No new apps were installed, no system changes were made when this happened.
I am able to get the phone's menu which allows me to wipe and I am able to get the phone into download mode.
I have read (4) of this article regarding sleepdeath and all corresponding articles referenced.
This is what I did...
1) Performed hard reset, cleared storage. This eliminated all third party apps, returned the phone to stock (I think), but the phone is still rebooting.
2) Attempted to install a brand new rom (CM) via CWM = Problem got much worse. Still rebooting but this time, after the ATT logo appears, the screen changes to static (noise) and reboots. Followed instructions and diles from here.
3) Since the phone became useless, I hunted around to return it to stock again and used this. The phone now boots up into the OS, but now it's back to rebooting.
I repeated steps 2 and 3 just to make sure I didn't miss a step, but same problem.
I have 2 goals:
1) Get the phone working, if at all possible!
2) If that's not possible, recover the 300 pictures that are on the device.
My challenge is that since the phone keeps rebooting every 20 seconds, by the time it connects to my PC via USB as external storage, it reboots! This ofcourse is also preventing me from loading a ROM directly on to the SD card.
So if anyone can help me to do the following:
1) Point me in the right direction to how I can keep the phone in a certain mode or setting (download mode doesn't work) where I can transfer files, recover my pics, and perhaps load a custom ROM?
2) Next steps?? Am I even on the right track? Since the stock rom keeps the phone rebooting, will a custom ROM solve the problem (have not been able to get a conclusive answer on this on the threads referring to sleep death (which this is an exaggerated version of) or is the phone a lost cause?
I know I can call ATT and try to haggle a replacement (since the phone is out of warranty), the only benefit being they don't renew my contract, and I don't have to upgrade.
Any help or guidance is much appreciated.

Wow, bummer
Well i don't know if you can mount the sd card in stock recovery (never used it) but if you can't then you could flash one of the stock one click roms with cwm recovery from this thread.... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1300843
In cwm recovery there is an option to mount sd while connected to pc so you can backup your stuff.
For the reboots, could it be your power button? Mine is acting up, and often seems to cause reboots. There are threads about fixing that. Idk just a thought.
Hope that helped a bit
Sent from phone with app

Like the previous post says, maybe try a custom recovery, go to mounts and storage, and mount USB storage. While you're at it, try flashing a compatible ROM through that recovery i.e. GB rom if its a GB kernel with CWM recovery or ICS rom if its an ICS recovery.

Did you try to do a dump of SD card data with adb?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium

The static issue is because you flashed a gingerbread kernel but you don't have gingerbread bootloaders. You can fix this by flashing an AT&T stock one click with bootloaders.
Once there, you can flash corn kernel and use recovery to mount the sd card.
Or I guess you could flash a froyo kernel.. there's a number of ways to do this.
Sent from a jelly bean

Stuck at S screen - tried everything with no results

This is yet another thread on an GT I9000 stuck at boot, but with a twist!
The diference is that it hapened without me doing anything to it. No flashing roms, no rooting, no unlocking, nothing.
One day it turned itself off, turned on again, get pass the initial screen, gets pass the carrier animation, and it is stuck at the big shiny S screen.
I'm not new to XDA or to flashing (old windows mobile), so I decided to come here and look as usually I can find my answers. The thin is it seems no one else has a similar problem! Not here nor the entire web!
I've been searching and experimenting (it doesn't work anyway, so it is ok to test every solution) for 2 consecutive weeks and still nothing!
I am able to get into download mode, into recovery mode, I am able to flash rooted (or rooting) kernels, I can do everything (except update from SD card with Cyanogenmods, it always says the file is BAD).
I've flashed stock roms, following all the procedures, with Odin, with Heimdall, I've tried everything suggested by "Android Solutions" but nothing!
I'm really frustrated, so I'm reaching to see if there's someone that can shine some light on how to solve this... I feel I'm about to smash the thing with a hammer! (but this won't solve the problem, right...)
Thank you in advance
G

GAlves said:
(except update from SD card with Cyanogenmods, it always says the file is BAD).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assume you had rooted and had CWM when trying to flash CM from SD cards? if not, it will not work, using 2e or 3e recovery
First powerdown, pull out Battery, SIM CARD, and EXT.SD card, press power button for a minute, than powerup without SIM and Ext.SD Card....Do remember to backup your contacts, data, images etc and also your EFS folder before flashing a ROM and make sure you have more than 50% battery charge before you attempt any sort of flashing.
Also assume you had tried everything in My Android Solutions did not get you out of bootloops?
so, boot into CWM > mounts and Storage> to copy your entire SD card to PC, after which you should format every partition (you will in-effect lose everything by doing this,) and do not reboot
after this, you must pull out battery and powerup into download mode to flash JVU+Root ROM with 512 PIT (repartition and update boot loader ticked in odin3) from My Android Collections

Hi xsenman,
Thank you for the reply.
in fact, I tried to CM from the SD card after having flashed CWM rooted kernel with Odin, but at this point the phone was not booting anymore. The whole reason I wanted to flash it in the first place was because it started bootlooping by itself while completely stock.
So I came here to xda, and follewed the instructions. I thought it would be a simple matter of flashing with a new rom and everything would be a-ok. It didn't.
I've tried every single trick mentioned in "my android solutions" (great information repository by the way, lots of work there) and still nothing. Today when I get home (forgot the phone at home) I'll flash the stock everything and try to follow the SD format procedure you mention.
I'll post back
Cheers
G

Hi again,
I've tried xsenman's suggestion and still nothing.
I could understand if this was a SD card error (because it was damaged in some way), but I have no indication of a SD card error. It can read everything and I even can see the file structure inside the SD card (and I do not mena the external SD card ofc). I was even able to copy some files to and from it!
I think I'll "fix it" with a big hammer and buy me an iphone! This is soooo frustrating!
anyone has any other ideas? I'll try anything and everything.
Cheers
G

GAlves said:
in fact, I tried to CM from the SD card after having flashed CWM rooted kernel with Odin, but at this point the phone was not booting anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CM needs to be flashed twice, try this method or this
Check Here to chose your forum/Guide by Version of your phone or you will have more problems by using wrong solutions due to different versions of Galaxy S
Use only ROM and solution for your model and Wipe x3
But First powerdown, pull out Battery, SIM CARD, and EXT.SD card, press power button for a minute, than powerup without SIM and Ext.SD Card....
(Do remember to backup your contacts, data, images etc and also your EFS folder before flashing a ROM and make sure you have more than 50% battery charge before you attempt any sort of flashing.)

Hi again,
Tried everything and got always the same result. Nothing.
Maybe the problem was with some piece of hardware (but I find it strange). As I said before I firstly tried to flash it because it had come to a bootloop by itself so maybe it had a deeper problem.
Now I got it solved. I bought me a brand new iPhone 5 (LOL) and flashed a stock rom on the SGS and sent it to the carrier customer support. It had one year guaranty. Lets see what they say about it.
If they can solve it I'll have 2 very nice phones!
Thank you anyway for you help.

Had same problem some time ago.
THIS should help you too

Hi again!
I had tried that too, and the result was the same as all the other things I've tried. Nothing.
Today I had some feedback about the phone (I sent it to repair). The phone is on its way back to my hands, and the repair status says:
"Software update and power circuit repair. Tested OK".
Let's see if it does tests ok when I get it back!
Two weeks ago I got an e-mail from the tech support asking what was wrong with the phone because they could find nothing wrong with it. I asked them to turn it on and try to make a phone call for example, or connect to a wi-fi network. It doesn't really matter, I just wanted them to try to do something that involved turning it completely on and use the device in any way they wanted. Clearly they hadn't even tried to turn it on. Otherwise they would have figured out that there was a problem...
This was the carrier support, not Samsung (I think). Anyway it SUCKS bigtime!
Now I need to figure out what to do with it...
Thanks anyway for your support!
Cheers
G

Just to let people know how this ended up.
My SGS i9000 went to the repair shop for two times. The first they replaced the charger plug, the second they say they replaced nothing (but I don't belive them )
As I still think this was some sort of issue with the samsung firmware, I just flasher CM10 and it's been stable since then.
My girlfriend got it as a present and she's quite happy with it!
Thank you all for the help!