Database Develop

Help, partially bricked phone

I’m hoping someone can help me out with my phone. I have been searching the forums but it’s all getting a little much and i just need some advice please.
The background
I flashed my UK sgs (i9000 i think) with a darky modded ROM which has worked fine for about 6 months my phone has become more and more unstable. Seeing as i can work Odin i thought i would flash it again and fix my issues. Then my phone crashed and wouldn’t boot up, it was stuck on the Samsung Galaxy screen, before the flashing S. I then downloaded the official 2.3.3 ROM’s from the link of official Samsung ROM’s from the thread in the General forum and flashed it. This all went fine until i rebooted my phone, it went into recovery mode fine, although i got some error messages about being unable to mount the SD cards (i can add the proper error message tomorrow for you) i cleared user data and cache, rebooted and my phone came up with a new Gingerbread ROM. This was fine until i realised it had not mounted either my Internal or External SD cards. The operating system worked fine but i could not format or mount my SD cards. I then decided to reimage the phone using the same image i had downloaded in case something had gone wrong but i got the same error messages and now i couldn’t boot into the OS. Since this has happened i have downloaded a 2.2.x ROM and flashed that but i still have the same problem. I have also downloaded and flashed the Darky Resurrection ROM but that doesn’t seem to have helped. I have asked Odin to repartition, i have used PIT 512 and a couple of others, 1 and 3 file ROM’s and if i am honest, i have got nowhere apart from a headache.
I think i have some how corrupted the internal SD card and need to reimage all the right folders and stuff but with the huge amount of official ROM’s, custom ROM’s, recovery tools and tips and tricks, my head is just swimming. Can someone please just point me in the right directions and hopefully i can have a working phone in the morning.
Many thanks in advance,
Simon

do you have any lagfix before you flash to the official 2.3.3 ROM’s ?

I'm having a similar issue w/ mine. The external sd wouldn't mount and i had kind of already started the process to update the rom. It was a dumb mistake. i knew the sd wasn't mounting so i used a different phone to mount put the updates on. Nevertheless i can't use my phone, other than to get on clockwork.

I think i may have had a lag fix on it but as i was unable to get my phone to start there was no chance of removing it before i reflashed the phone. Now i just need to get the damn internal SD working again so i can have a working phone, can you help?
Also, sorry if my main post is a little rambling, i wrote it when i got home from the pub drowning my sorrorws and may have been a little drunk...

Ok, now i've had a coffee and my headache is dying down i can add a little more info which will hopefully help.
I just downloaded GT_I9000_XWJS7_XXJPY_XEEJS1 from Darky rom user guides page on restoring a SGS to a stock ROM and followed all of the instructions. the flash in Odin goes just fine, no errors or anything, my phone the reboots, gets to the Samsung Galaxy screen and i get into the recovery mode with the following messages :
Update media. please wait
E:Can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p1
(no such file or directory)
E:copy_dbdata_media: Can't mount SDCARD
Your storage not prepared yet, please use UI menu for format and reboot actions
copy default media content failed.
This is where i then get stuck, my phone will just get stuck in a boot loop and there seems to be no way to get into the phone. This is starting to drive me to dispair now as everything i have tried has failed badly! Does anyone have any idea how i go about recovering from this?

ok so,
-flash froyo firmware (2.2.1 might be better) then flash speedmod kernel
-get into recovery mode and check your phone's file system in lagfix option
-if it is rfs change it to ext4
-if it is ext4 change it to rfs
im not sure about this method but i ever had this preblem after i converted system to rfs (ext4 before)
hope it helps you and tell me that it works or not,thanks.
edit:wrong word

FLash darky's resurrection Rom ...that error caused by you forget disable lagfix before...
or try Flashing a full rom (3files) with .pit to repartitioning your phone... thick repartition...and thats not "Brick" if you can go download mode...
Come on lets see

I once had the same problem. Same error.message. I searched a lot in xda n finally read something which says to flash Rom with 812 pit and eclair (2.1) with 3 files. After flashing the error message came again so I relished using only pda file. Next time it rebooted normally into home screen. Hope it helps
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

OK, we're getting somewhere now but not there yet. Flashing the speedmod kernel lets me boot the phone which is further than i have got for a day so thats good, but it still won't recognisse any internal or external SD cards, if you look in the settings section it just shows options to format the sd cards.
I tried changing the filesystem to ex4 as recommended but once it reboots when it says it will go to the recovery menu to debug it just presents me with the option to convert it again as it says the filesystem for /data is RFS still.
Any ideas why it would be doing this and why it won't recognise any of the memory cards? I have also noticed that when i connect the phone to my PC now and tell it to go into Mass storage mode, it shows the drives but says there is no media there! I'm very confused by the whole thing now but at least i do have a phone again of sorts!

So i flashed Darky's resurrection ROM and this is now booting up much as the phone was with the speedmod kernel flashed but i still have the same issue where it won't recognise either the external or internal SD cards so i have no storage space at all. Is it possible i have broken them? I assume at least a bit of the internal card is working or the OS wouldn't be there but why can it not see the other half of the card?

Right, after messing about for far too long i have bitten the bulit and sending it in for repairs, i've read through a couple of posts that seem to say it's the only way to fix it so will see how good the Samsung techicians are!
Thanks for all the help though, you've got me a working phone again, even if i can't save anything on it!

[Q] Encryption unsuccessful and boot loop

Hello all.
I got my hands on very interesting phone, if I flash any GB ROM including stock, phone may or may not start boot looping (can't get past first screen). Now the interesting thing is that after 3-20 attempts it boots and then works perfectly (app install, taking pictures etc.) until it again gets rebooted or turned off.
If I install ICS ROM's on start-up I get Encryption unsuccessful screen and then again it takes 3-20 reboots to get the phone working. No need to do factory resets etc. Now I am no guru on Samsung HW and Android but my guess is that on boot android fails to mount /data and /emmc partition. Now I understand that this can be caused by either Corrupted partition or hardware failure. The interesting thing is that I cannot call my partitions corrupt - as I don't loose any data and I cannot call it a hardware failure - as after phone boots I can access all storage space. Tired repartitioning using Odin/Heimdall and only trick that seems to work is using External SD card as "internal".
Any ideas what this wonder is?

just search encryption unsuccessful bug on vibrant....and you will find TONS of information about it.....take your time and read it.....and btw you will be unable to access your internal sd( 16gb mem) anymore...

[Q] Galaxy S (GT-I9000) SDCard Problem

Hello,
I've owned a Samsung Galaxy S for about 2 years and it recently started to give me problems. Before having the problems I'm going to describe I never rooted or flashed this phone.
It started a few months ago when I restarted my phone, it went to the initial screen with the "Galaxy S / GT-I9000" white text and instead of going to the next screen it just went black and returned to the same screen. I was afraid it would endlessly loop like this, but it didn't. After around 5 minutes it was able to start the phone like usual (I did nothing that could have fixed it, I just kept watching it while it looped and suddenly it didn't loop). After that, with the phone turned on, everything worked just fine.
This problem didn't go away, everytime I restarted my phone it would just sit there looping for what seemed to be a random amount of time (from 4-5 minutes to about an hour) until it was able to turn on. So I decided to try to fix this problem.
I don't know much about smartphones so my first idea was to try and reset the phone to factory settings (In Settings->Privacy if I recall correctly). I did this a few days ago and I guess it didn't help much, since when it restarted after the reset it kept trying to boot for more than an hour before I just removed the battery and came online looking for solutions.
The first solution I encoutered (on this forums) was this one: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2247484
I followed it and flashed the Semaphore .tar file in my phone. After that, booting in recovery mode would lead me to the CWM Recovery v6.0.1 menu where I was supposed to Partition the SD Card (That's what I understood from that thread).but the problem was that i couldnt even mount the /sdcard folder. (Nor the /data and /emmc folders). At this time I was only following the instructions and didn't really understand much of what was happening so I skipped to the next step, Install the firmware (I9000XXJVU_I9000OXAJVU_OXA.zip).
So this time I placed the pit file and the 3 other files that were inside the .zip I mentioned above in Odin and flashed my phone. This proccess went OK and after the phone rebooted it seemed to be installing something and gave me an error: "Failed to mount /sdcard (File exists)" (I actually found a picture in this forum with the exact same screen.
Now I was totally lost and "without" a phone, and it was actually really late and I needed to sleep. So I tried to repeat the previous steps, I returned to CWM but it still couldn't mount the /sdcard so I couldnt format or partition it. I cleared the cache and tried to install the firmware again. This time, surprisingly, it worked! After the flash the phone rebooted and was able to boot into android in the first try.
I used the phone for about a day thinking all the problems were gone but they weren't. The following day I rebooted the phone and found myself back in the boot loop. It went eventually turned on after around 15 mins but I realized I was back at the starting point.
So this time I tried another solution, since I thought the problem was in the sdcard i used SDFormatter (in Windows) and, with the phone USB connected to my laptop, I formatted the internal sd_card (I found this solution in another topic, also in this forums). After this I turned the phone off and when I tried to boot it I was back to the loop, I didn't feel like waiting so I just went back to the first solution (this time with the internal sdcard formated) and it made a difference, this time I was able to mount the /sdcard in the CWM recovery menu and was also able to partition it (according to the instructions from the solution I posted). When the partition was done I tried to flash the firmware and it worked perfectly, It booted and I was able to use it, but it wasn't detecting the internal storage, it only had the system storage (In Settings->SD card...). I found this really weird and was about to reboot the phone when it simply crashed and rebooted (It happened when i tried to turn on Wi-fi). Obviously I ended up on the boot loop again.
So now I've returned to the CWM Recovery and I can't mount /sdcard, /data and /emmc. I tried to flash the firmware I was using but now I get the same error I was getting before and trying it again doesn't seem to work (I guess I was really lucky before). I've checked the log and this is what happens when i try to mount those folders (I don't know much about Android so I don't know if this is useful):
W:failed to mount /dev/block/mmvblk0p1 (No such file or directory)
Error mounting /sdcard!
W:failed to mount /dev/block/mmvblk0p2 (No such file or directory)
Error mounting /data!
W:failed to mount /dev/block/mmvblk1p1 (No such file or directory)
Error mounting /emmc!
I've been searching for another people with similar problems and it has led me to believe that the internal sdcard is dead, but I don't know. If it was dead it probably wouldnt boot at all but in my case it just takes a while (sometimes a "long while") to boot, I can't confirm if it boots now since I can't even install the new firmware. The solution I found for these people was to use an external sdcard and divide it into 2 partitions etc, I can try to do that but first I wanted to know if there is another way to come back from this problem? Is the internal sdcard the problem?
Thanks for reading
TL;DR: Phone used to be stuck at boot loop before turning on (took from 5 minutes to 1 hour), I tried to fix it, Formated internal sdcard using SDFormatter, seemed to be working fine but phone crashed and was back on boot loop, now I am on CWM Recovery and can't mount /sdcard,/data,/emmc. I don't know what is the problem.
EDIT: I just turned my phone off and started it again in recovery mode and surprise! now I can mount the /sdcard, I dont know why this happens. One moment I am in CWM Recovery and can't mount it, I turn it off and back on and now I can.

shams94 said:
I turn it off and back on and now I can.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
basically, your internal SD card may need some re soldering, and only professional technicians can do it or internal SD card may be failing look here about embedded SD card
Check this out! Links to useful Guides and " Banned " Documentaries ​

Thanks for the reply!
I followed the links on your signature and followed some guides to partition my external sdcard and use it to run the phone and it worked! I got my Galaxy S back, atleast for now (even upgraded from 2.3.6 to 4.0.3).
If anyone finds this and has the same problem my solution was this post. It even has a video showing some of the steps.
Again, thanks for your reply, without it i probably wouldn't have found the solution

Can't mount internal SD Card after installing Albinoman887's 1/12/14 KitKat Rom

So I have installed several versions of this ROM since it began, however when I upgraded to 1-12-14, all went well except my internal SDcard will not be recognized. This means I can't use the camera or Titanium Backup, etc. However, I can see and use the external sd card w/o any issue. Upon every boot I get the icon saying that I need to format SDcard0, but it never completes, only soft reboots and the icon is gone until the next full reboot. I flashbooted boot.img twice after doing a FULL wipe. I have tried reinstalling 3 times doing FULL wipes every time, still get the same. When I boot into recovery and try to wipe SDcard, I get an error saying
can't mount /dev/block/mmcb1k0p36 (Invalid argument)
Error mounting /internal_sdcard/!
Skipping format
I have also just tried the new 1-15-14 build and get the same results. I have fastbooted the boot.img each time. Please help. I have installed many ROMs on this device before w/o ever an issue. What did I do wrong and how do I fix it? TIA!

Reboot recovery
Mount USB storage...
Plug phone into computer...
Let windows format corrupt partition...
Profit
Sent from my Vivid 4G using Tapatalk

Just putting another method which worked for me (one time issue and fix, so it's a crap-shoot). I don't have the luxury of connecting to a computer via usb for anything except charging.
-properly flash a sufficiently different ROM (I had kitkat, so I flashed ICS)
-start ROM up, check if fixed (mine was not)
IF NOT FIXED, CONTINUE
-mount the SD card in your recovery (mine is WCX recovery)
-reboot your phone into the ROM
This method worked for me. I saw in a different forum that when this happens it's usually because a file that describes the partitions gets corrupted and that because ICS and GB partition the SD cards and internal storage in a different way than Jellybean or Kitkat, that flashing a different ROM (if problem is on ICS/GB, then flash KK/JB, and vice versa) will force an overwrite of the file in question.
This is not as easy as rignfool's method, and once my charge port arrives in the post, I will abandon this method and use Windows to repair the partition like a sane person
Also, it seems like all my media on the internal storage has been wiped, but wutevr :/

Might want to try a newer build where that bug is fixed.
http://www.chronic-buildbox.com/nightly/holiday/

Yuskow said:
Might want to try a newer build where that bug is fixed.
http://www.chronic-buildbox.com/nightly/holiday/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If this is directed at me, this happened after I installed the March 17th or 18th nightly (put a new one on every once and a while). And to be completely fair, I had accidentally selected factory reset in hboot (thought it was highlighting recovery, boy was I pissed).
The problem (or so I've read) with installing another kitkat/jellybean ROM is that the SD card is mounted the same (/storage/sdcard0, and external SD is only /storage/sdcard1) as opposed to ICS/GB (I only remember that you access external SD through /sdcard/ext_sdcard or something to that extent). Only when the SD cards will be mounted at differing locations will the system re-write the files specifying mount points.

[Q] Internal/ External Storage cannot be read

Hi all
For days I've been flashing all different kinds of things in hope to get my phone fixed, but I just can't find the answer.
So for those of you most kind enough to help, here's what's going on with my captivate (at&t)
I took it out of my pocket last week and the phone was frozen. Sometimes it happens... a quick pull out of the battery and re-insert fixes it in most cases... but not this time.
After restarting the phone was hanging on boot screen (CyanFox bootscreen).
I restarted... 15 minutes on that bootscreen still. I had no idea what was going on.
So I decided to reflash. It was a big decision, seeing as this ROM has been working absolutely fine for weeks, but I needed to get it working.
Soon after getting it into recovery, CWM was saying that it couldn't mount /sdcard
I tried even flashing using Odin to go back to stock following the guide here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1300843 still not working.
Most of them ended up showing that little android loading bar for a second or two, but then get stuck in a boot loop.
I tried flashing many different kernels, and different recoveries, but everything all pointed towards: Unable to mount /sdcard
But alas, finally I found something that more or less works. I flashed the Initial Kernal for Cognition: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1127578
And I finally got back into a working device... or so I thought.
The phone is still unable to access the internal SDCARD. Just says 'unavailable'. I tried putting in an external 2GB sdcard, but that reads as Total Space: 00, and Available Space: 00
The external sdcard I know works, because my wife's samsung mini2 reads it just fine.
Multiple formats and it still can't be read.
I tried plugging in the device into my pc and select mass storage, but although the computer detects that the phone is plugged in (in device manager) the 2 drives for internal and external both remain hidden, and cannot be accessed.
I have absolutely no idea what to do next. I've used Odin and Heimdall, Repartitioned, and followed every stickied guide here, but I still can't find what to do.
I really appreciate any help anyone can give me on this.
Just for the record, ADB works just fine from my PC. I can send the commands to the device, but mounting the sdcard still proves impossible at this stage (no file exists).
Thanks again, I look forward to any advice anyone can spare.

flapsy said:
Hi all
For days I've been flashing all different kinds of things in hope to get my phone fixed, but I just can't find the answer.
So for those of you most kind enough to help, here's what's going on with my captivate (at&t)
I took it out of my pocket last week and the phone was frozen. Sometimes it happens... a quick pull out of the battery and re-insert fixes it in most cases... but not this time.
After restarting the phone was hanging on boot screen (CyanFox bootscreen).
I restarted... 15 minutes on that bootscreen still. I had no idea what was going on.
So I decided to reflash. It was a big decision, seeing as this ROM has been working absolutely fine for weeks, but I needed to get it working.
Soon after getting it into recovery, CWM was saying that it couldn't mount /sdcard
I tried even flashing using Odin to go back to stock following the guide here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1300843 still not working.
Most of them ended up showing that little android loading bar for a second or two, but then get stuck in a boot loop.
I tried flashing many different kernels, and different recoveries, but everything all pointed towards: Unable to mount /sdcard
But alas, finally I found something that more or less works. I flashed the Initial Kernal for Cognition: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1127578
And I finally got back into a working device... or so I thought.
The phone is still unable to access the internal SDCARD. Just says 'unavailable'. I tried putting in an external 2GB sdcard, but that reads as Total Space: 00, and Available Space: 00
The external sdcard I know works, because my wife's samsung mini2 reads it just fine.
Multiple formats and it still can't be read.
I tried plugging in the device into my pc and select mass storage, but although the computer detects that the phone is plugged in (in device manager) the 2 drives for internal and external both remain hidden, and cannot be accessed.
I have absolutely no idea what to do next. I've used Odin and Heimdall, Repartitioned, and followed every stickied guide here, but I still can't find what to do.
I really appreciate any help anyone can give me on this.
Just for the record, ADB works just fine from my PC. I can send the commands to the device, but mounting the sdcard still proves impossible at this stage (no file exists).
Thanks again, I look forward to any advice anyone can spare.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i had the same problem a couple of weeks ago...
you internal sd card is dead...
you can do nothing about it for now...
if you want to confirm open your camera app and see if you can take any pictures...
if no, then follow the things as i say..
this requires you to do a partition of your external SD card and to that it should be formatted, so take the neccessary backups..
1) download this http://www.mediafire.com/download/sbjd049x4m36pb6/I897UCKI2_noBL_BoogsKernel.rar
2) after flashing this stock firmare with cwm, open up the recovery.
3)follow this guide http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1447303
4)i couldn't get ICS to work..
5)so you can now use kitkat roms only on the captivate as we have the kernel for 4.4 only with swap sd
6)so after you follow the guide and boot into ICS, copy the rom.zip which you want to flash and the neat kernel swap sd, which can be found here http://www.mediafire.com/download/s34o69u39u66x8n/NeatKernel_v1.03-[02-08]-cma-swap-captivate.zip, be sure to thank the developer here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2548081
7)so flash the kitkat om which you want to use,and then flash the neat kernel after flashing the rom after that you can flash the gapps and reboot..
if you do everything like i said, your cappy will be up and working again..

Sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar
Although it didn't go exactly as planned step by step, with your instructions I finally managed to get it working on my 2GB external card.
Here was the process I did
1) Downloaded CM11, Gapps, Stock Kernal and the SwapSD kernal you linked
2) Flashed the stock kernal, the phone just went on a rebooting spree.. but after a few attempts I got it into recovery using the 3 finger combo
2) Followed the instructions on http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1447303 to partition the external SD card. (Since I have only a 2GB card, I partitioned 1GB for data, and 0MB for swap)
3) Done the classic wipe sys/ cache/ data
4) (Here is where things changed a bit for me, as I couldn't boot into ICS either. And no other rom would work at this point) I installed the new SwapSD kernal to get a newer version of CWM by mounting USB storage via CWM and copying the files to there.
5) The device rebooted a couple of times during install, but it automatically went straight back into the newer CWM.
6) Installed CM11, let that finished and installed Gapps straight after.
7) Rebooted and the phone is now reading my external sd card as its internal storage, which is fantastic
Although with it's limited storage and broken internal storage, it still needs replacing, but at least I now have a device from which I can still run a few apps on regardless.
So thank you again dude
*edit* just need to figure out why the adb drivers decided to not work anymore.
Sometimes I hate having windows 8...