[Debricking] Hang at samsung animated logo - Galaxy S III Mini Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi everyone, I spent all day trying figuring this out, even if probably the solution was really stupid, so I thought of doing a little post for future reference. If you have no time for my babbling, feel free to go to the short version (I wanted to put a link here, but I still have to learn how to do it and it's almost dinner-time...). If this post happens to be a duplicate feel free to remove it.
=== Whole story ===​A week ago I got a Galaxy SIII mini N (GT-I8190N) and just kept it that way because I didn't had a win pc to use Odin. Yesterday I finally came back to my parents, powered up the win machine and followed an awful lot of different guides to manage to install the Macław CM 10.1. So, for short: installed CWM touch trough Odin, installed the root zip trough CWM and finally installed CM 10.1 & Gapps trough CWM. Here I did my first mistake: the first thing I did after installing CM was formatting internal and external SDs. Where the Nandroid backups of the working Samsung firmware were.
After some experiments I decided to go back to Samsung stock (reason 1: no gtalk, only hangouts, reason 2: NFC support still in development, reason 3: trying to restore SMS from a SmsContactsBackup I (luckily) had I messed up the SMS DB so much the app couldn't start). NOTE: Macław's ROM is amazing, I'm surely going to try it again when NFC support comes up. Sadly, I am an idiot who thinks he knows better so I ignored all the warnings of doing a wipe of data/cache and restoring the Samsung original recovery. I just went to Kies for a "Firmware upgrade and initialization" instead.
The result was a disaster. The phone rebooted but hanged at the Samsung animated logo. After a lot of hanging I decided to redo a Kies firmware upgrade. Obviously I had no luck. So I switched to Odin, took the image Kies downloaded (since I didn't want to wait an hour and an half to the download from unofficial sites) and flashed. And flashed. And flashed. Always without success. After a little bit I decided to try changing Odin options (repartition, NAND erase etc). Still nothing. So I started trying all the guides out there (here?): repartitioned with a PIT file, reflashed a CWM, reflashed stock recovery, various combinations in different orders of all the "solutions" above... You guessed right: nothing worked.
Since I read somewhere that there are Galaxy have 25 partitions (what the ****???) and saw that Odin was flashing only 8 or so I decided that something some the other partitions was missing, so I switched to Heimdall. Since the Win version didn't want to start, I did a fresh Ubuntu 13.04 install (lucky for me I happened to have an empty HD waiting to be installed on the server that I could use for an afternoon ), installed Heimdall, started figuring out how it works, realized I needed a custom-made package (nowhere to be found, apparently), started looking into the partition scheme to understand where the problem could have been... Finally I realized my skills are a tiny little bit inadequate for that and found a reference somewhere to a "hard reset".
In all this it never occurred to me to try and enter Samsung recovery. The first thing I noticed was that it didn't start right away with VolUP + Home + Power, but I had to keep them pressed a lot longer than what it's needed to go in download mode. In practice the SIII mini logo went up two times before showing the android with the open belly. Then finally the recovery appeared, I navigated to wipe data and cache with the volume buttons, accepted with the power button and rebooted. Thus I finally had a Samsung animated logo that was followed shortly by an "installing applications" loading bar and the first start configuration tool.
So, what I learned today:
1) Samsung tools are not necessary evil
2) if you don't understand what you're doing and you're doing it anyway, be prepared to suffer
3) we probably need a unified guide/troubleshoot the whole community can edit (wiki-like). Threads are great, but it's really easy to miss the obvious (for the whole time I was sure it was a bootloader problem, never occurred to me that there could have been some data left... also because I did a NAND wipe through Odin and I thought that was supposed to wipe personal data...) and often propose a solution without explaining the rationale behind it. I'm sorry if there's something like that out there somewhere, I wasn't able to find it
Thanks to you that bore my babbling
And now it's time for:
=== The short version ===​
Problem: I messed up doing a Kies reset after installing a custom rom (CM10.1) without the dues precautions; the result was a phone caught in an endless loop at the Samsung logo. Installing firmware with Odin didn't solve a thing.
Solution: I booted in recovery (volume up + home + power) and wiped data and cache. After that I rebooted and waited a little bit, a progress bar appeared and everything was fine (well phone was at factory default but at least now it's working ).
I hope all of this could be useful to someone

Related

USB/Charger reboot the phone, download mode lost, vibrant rom on i9000

OK guys I really badly need some help. My phone is in a non-workable state and I am starting to run out of options.
I did some mistakes but I will try to take out the details to list mostly the fact, hoping someone will take the time to give me directions.
- I have a galaxy s I9000 (switzerland/orange)
- I had upgraded to 2.2 via Kies.
- I got tired of the phone becoming increasingly slow. I found out about voodoo lag fix. I read 3000 forum posts, documentation and stuff, and when everything seemd easy enough, I installed voodoo via Odin.
- Here problems started. After installing voodoo, the phone booted, but the robot voice said "convert data partition. Not enough space on partition". Then again. And again. It was stuck in a boot loop. This problem doesn't seem to be documented anywhere i could find. The only instructions I could find on how to disable voodoo were to create some files on the disk, not very helpful when you can't boot the phone.
- I found a couple of threads with people who had the same message, and the advice their were given was to flash another rom.
- So I went to samfirmware.com and downloaded 2.2.1 for I9000 (JS8). I installed it through Odin. The phone booted, showed me the Galaxy S screen, then went black. Then it would vibrate every 20 seconds or so. Once, then 3 times in a row. I waited 30 minutes because in some places it said that may take long, but the situation didn't change. I rebooted, tried again after taking about the battery, wiped data, reset factory settings etc. The phone state wouldn't change, and I started to get a little desperate, because this was a stock rom, and if that didn't work...
- I read 3000 more threads, and phone a guy who had been in this situation, and got out of it by first installing "Eugene's JK2 froyo that never bricks" and then after wards reinstalling the stock rom.
- So I installed Eugene's rom. I knew it was trouble that it was a vibrant's rom, but I figured, I had read everywhere that as long as your phone supported download mode you could still always re-flash a new rom, so I decided give it a try.
- And the phone booted. Asked my pin, loaded stock android and all. I was happy at first, but then new trouble came. Now, whenever I plug in the USB, the phone's screen goes black after 4-5 seconds. When I unplug it, phone reboots. No charging battery appears when I plug the turned off phone on the charger.
- And worst of all, the buttons got mixed up. Vol up is vol down now. But more of a problem, 3 button recovery and 3 button download mode don't work anymore. I couldn't find a way to get them back. So I can't flash a new rom with Odin :-/.
- My latest was to install rom manager since I can access the market. I downloaded the tedgy rom. Installed the "clockwork recovery mode" from Rom Manager. It asked me if I had I9000 or vibrant, wasn't sure what it expected since I have now a vibrant rom on an I9000, but I put in I9000. Then I reboot telling rom manager to install Tedgy. I get a recovery mode screen which offers to reboot/reinstall packages/wipe data, then does a couple of operations, and finally gets stuck on :
can't open /cache/update.zip
(bad)
installation aborted
So there I go, with a vibrant rom on my I9000 (rooted, at least), a phone that can boot a half-functionnal android, but with a useless cable plug, an unchargeable battery, and a download mode I couldn't find... And waiting for my wife to get back with her phone so I can charge my battery again...
Any help or lead to help me get another rom installed on this phone again would be *greatly* appreciated. What other ways do I have to access download mode ? Or is there a way to get to it despite my buttons being messed up ? Maybe the rom manager issue can be fixed ?
OK well I got out of it somehow.
In case someone else had this same issue, here's how I got out of it :
1) Install ADB.
2) launch Odin
3) go to adb folder in command line and type "adb reboot download" but no enter just yet.
4) plug the usb cable on the phone.
5) type enter in the adb shell in the small window of opportunity you have before the screen goes blank. This reboots the download mode and allows new flashing via odin.
Any answer for this thread?
Did you fix the problem?
I'm stuck with the same case...

[Q][GT-I9001] Ivendor CM10 plus CastagnaIT Kernel (from Softreboot to Hardbrick)

Hello everyone,
I just hardbricked my SGS+ and now I'm a bit curious how this could happen.
This is what I did:
I used to run CM9 RC5 from arco68 along with the Kernel for ICS from Christopher83 and CWM 6.0.1.2.
Because my phone always lost the wifi-connection and also had some freezes I decided to try out CM10 Beta 3 from ivendor.
I backuped my phone, downloaded the zips and even verified the MD5sums. Next I flashed CWM 6.0.1.9 as recommended in the thread from ivendor.
After exporting the nandroid backup and other stuff like photos to my computer I wiped everything as mentioned in the thread, flashed the two zips and rebooted. Everything went fine and I was almost ready with setting up my phone again when I got my first softreboot.
Suddenly it showed the CM-bootlogo and after maybe 10 seconds I was back on my homescreen. I got another two or three softreboots until I decided to flash the Kernel 3.x from CastagnaIT.
I rebooted into recovery, wiped cache and dalvik cache, flashed the zip and rebooted.
Now I wanted to reboot into recovery again to fix permissions but instead I got a softreboot and my phone stuck at the CM10 bootlogo.
I waited for around 5 minutes and then I just turned the phone off and booted into the recovery mode.
Because I wanted a clean install without any problems like softreboots I decided to wipe my phone again (data, cache, system) and just reflash the zip for CM10. And at this point everything went wrong.
I flashed CM10 but when I tried to flash gapps my phone just turned off. And no, the battery was not empty. In fact the battery was at around 50-60% and my phone was also connected to my computer.
I tried to turn on my phone but now it stuck at the Samsung bootlogo.
The next thing I did was probably a horrible mistake. I tried to un-brick my phone but I did not realize that I could boot into download mode without problems so I guess my phone wasn't softbricked at all.
Well, after that I still stuck at the Samsung bootlogo and couldn't enter recovery mode. I got into download mode somehow and maybe this was my second mistake. I tried to flash the "i9001Reset.zip" via Odin. Everything went fine but when Odin said "Close serial port and wait until rebooting" my phone was completely dead. I think it was while I tried to flash the reset-file when I got a message like "MBR: read failed". So somehow I managed to destroy my master boot record.
Now I can't turn on my phone or enter download nor recovery mode. I already removed the battery for about 45 minutes but this didn't work either.
My phone is dead but at least I saved the important data and maybe I'll get a new one through warranty. Or I just buy a Nexus 4.
My questions are:
What did I do wrong especially when I tried to save my phone?
How can I prevent such things from happening?
And at which point I should have got help here in the forum or elsewhere?
I would really appreciate some tips for the future because I already flashed and used a lot of different ROMs but this is the first time something really went wrong.
Thanks for reading and thanks for your help in advance.
(Please excuse my non-perfect englisch.)
Greetings,
Mangoniter

Galaxy S plus I9001 problem

Hello. I am currently in hold of a soft-bricked Galaxy S Plus smartphone, and i've been encountering several problems during my 'Rom' expedition. I'm not quite sure if there is any thread out there that presents a similar issue such as mine, and if it is, i couldn't find it, therefore i apologize in advance for any misunderstanding. My smartphone currently won't boot and gets stuck on the Samsung Logo - Along the way i have managed to make the recovery mode work, somewhat, and the download mode works flawlessly.
It all started when i first acquired my Galaxy S plus and stumbled upon an article on how i could simply upgrade my android version to Android 4.0.4 ICS via CyanogenMod 9, aka Ice Cream Sandwich and to be honest, it startled me and i was eager to try it out. After spending a couple of hours into informing myself on this procedure, because yes, i was pretty scared to even consider it. Clockworkmod gave me several headaches during the way, and so did Odin, before i got used to it, but in the end i made a Nadroid backup and i successfully installed the rom and could gladly enjoy my new Ice Cream Sandwich. However, the rom had it's issues(Other than that, it worked amazingly), and some people pointed them out( I'm not the brightest man when it comes to phone performance ), so i decided to look further into it. I found the xda forums, and browsed them for a couple of hours, in search for the perfect rom and decided to try out the CM10. I thought it would be a piece of cake, since the last installation went briefly, but i was oh-so-wrong.
I backed up my Sms, contact history and such, and simply turned on the recovery mode, with the intention of wiping the data and cache -- And boom! Clockworkmod froze and the phone shut down, just for me to realise that it was now impossible to go past the logo. I panicked and spent most of my time into searching for a solution, but there were couple of things which i simply couldn't do! First, the clockworkmod (I used CWM 5 when installing the first rom) wouldn't allow me to wipe the data and cache; Second, odin would simply get stuck when trying to install a stock rom (I tried a couple of gingerbread roms before that); I even let the PC open the whole night, just to let odin do it's work, but it still couldn't work. A stock rom that /worked/, though, was the I9001BUKP2 / CNXKP1 - Romania(Vodafone) Android 2.3.5 which i came across on another forum post. After installing the gingerbread rom, i booted into the recovery mode(original one) and tried wiping the data - But it would only freeze and shut down.
- I must add, that the clockworkmod gives me errors on mount cache (Command) and whenever i try to restore my original firmware(backup) it would just freeze on the data restore. (I had issues with several other roms when using Odin multidownloader, since they simply wouldn't get past the "System.img.ext4")
I honestly don't know if i missed out on anything, and/or if i missed out on any thread that could simply smack the answer right in my face, but once again, i'm sorry. If anyone could provide help to my issues, i would be grateful - Thank you very much !
edit: I have just now tried to install a firmware[ I9001 XEN I9001XXKF8 ], and after odin did it's job, and the SGS+ booted into recovery mode to finish the installation, i have noticed something very interesting - It gets stuck at "Formating /data..." - I can only assume this is perhaps a primary issue.

[Q] Custom Rom -> Tried to put in Stock. Now Soft Bricked [FIXED!]

I'm completely stumped on this. I'm new to Custom Roms.
So a long time (a little over year aprox) I bought an GT-N7000 from an at-the-time friend (no longer friends)
He factory reset and installed a custom rom (Paranoid Android) on it. (Such a nice gesture..)
Now, speed forth Christmas last year, I bought a Galaxy Note 3 for myself, and I then sold off the N7000 to my older brother.
Now my brother comes to me and tells me that his phone is acting weird.
I take a look and notice that the phone has apparently partitioned itself into several drives, making the phone run incredibly slow and he keeps getting an annotation going "There's way too little space left!"
Now, as I mentioned I'm new to custom roms and that kind of stuff, but my initial "brilliant" idea was to simply factory reset it, and install the Stock Rom on it.
I grabbed a Stock rom from Sammobile that had a country that at least was english in nature (UK) I unfortunately live in Denmark, and so therefor it was impossible to find a Stock rom that fits it.
I grabbed it, loaded it onto ODIN3 and went into Recovery Download Mode. And I started installing it. Everything went smoothly.
Then when the phone restarted it started boot looping.
I looked and searched everywhere for fixes. Problem was, looking at the first few fixes I've seen include links to .PIT files that are either dated or ancient in nature.
androidayos.com and android.gs both had a fix, but their links was either out dated or not helpful for my specific case.
And so I beseech thee oh mighty XDA Developers.
Have you a solution/help that might be what I need.
I've read that I should go into a recovery mode that allows me to look at the files. (Read that I could do so by holding the Home Button + Power button when it turned on. But such a function didn't seem to work on the N7000.)
I've also tried looking at installing Paranoid Android again, but that requires access into the Recovery Mode. Which I, again, do not have.
PIT files are dated because they never change. They have been the same since device manufacturing date.
So did you reset before odin install? Recovery mode is by pressing the power + vol up + home together.
nokiamodeln91 said:
PIT files are dated because they never change. They have been the same since device manufacturing date.
So did you reset before odin install? Recovery mode is by pressing the power + vol up + home together.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I had to flash in phillz to actually get a recovery mode to work.
But I managed to do just that, and then whipe the caches and I could then get the stock rom flashed onto it.
Which then got the phone to work properly.
No failures to report yet.
So for the moment a full-on success story!

Infinite bootloop on Cyanogen modded S3 Mini... help!

I'm a complete newbie to android phone modding, and I was really proud of myself when I was able to install the Cyanogen 12.1 and Google Apps onto my Samsung S3 Mini. However, I made the mistake of trying to put my work email on it, which requires that my phone be encrypted. Well, I guess the encryption and rooted phone didn't want to play nice together, so I got the error message that my phone would be factory reset. Boo! Well, it got worse. Instead of a factory reset, my rooted phone now is stuck in what I have now learned is called a bootloop. Basically I turn my phone on, and the Cyanogen start screen (with the text "TEAMWIN") just infinitely flashes on the screen until I pull the battery.
I have tried using Odin 3.07 and cm12.1_golden.nova.20160210.ODIN_TWRP.tar.md5. I do the three button system boot, connect the usb, run Odin, get the phone recognized, and then install the .md5 in the PDA section of Odin. It tells me that it succeeded, but when I restart my phone it's still the same bootloop. I also tried swearing, but that didn't help either.
Has anyone else out there had experience with Cyanogen and this particular error? I would love to get this phone working again... preferably with either a Lollipop version of android or back to Cyanogen 12.1.
Any info would be greatly appreciated! Thanks everyone.
So I've got an update if anyone's interested... I can't call it progress, but it's a different problem now.
I was able to download and use Odin to do what was shown on this link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2122548&highlight=root
Everything worked in Odin, the phone rebooted, and went to the Team Win Recovery Project diagnostics screen, rebooted again, and then to the samsung logo. However, it immediately goes to the "Encryption Failed" error screen, and the only option is to 'reset device'. Of course, doing this just reboots the phone and it then has the Team Win loading screen, Team Win Recovery Project diags screen, Samsung logo, and back to the 'Encryption Failed' screen again. So now I have a new infinite loop to solve. *sigh*
any thoughts?
Have you been able to get into TWRP? If you are, maybe you could wipe everything from there and flash the recovery version of your ROM.
I was able to put the stock bootloader onto the phone using Odin, download the original tar from here: http://live.samsung-updates.com/index.php?device=GT-I8190, then used the stock bootloader to install it from the sd card. Everything went fine, but now when I boot the phone it just hangs on the Samsung Galaxy S3 mini GT-i18190 start screen indefinitely. Is this progress, or have I created a new problem now?
You're playing around with heavy stuff. I won't recommend using an upgrade flash (CM over Odin) as an full flash. Please try flashing a stock image.
If you did something wrong to the partitioning, then it's likely to not allow you to do a successfull factory reset. Maybe you can try re-flashing a stock Odin image with PIT repartitioning.
Remember to try to backup the EFS folder, doing that kind of flash might wipe it.

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