[Q] Rescue files before "wipe data/factory reset"? - Galaxy S 4 Active Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hello all,
I have searched hard for a solution, with no luck.
S4 ATT Active, SGH I537 does not boot past ATT splash screen.
Deleted lots of bloatware. Apparently one or some deletions were not so trivial. (If the damn bus hadnt been so late, none of this woulda happened...)
Was VERY CAUTIOUS. The file "my.att.account" looked harmless, but that is the only culprit I can think of.
Phone will not complete boot process. ATT splash screen appears, blue led blanks, ATT logo completes animation, then screen stays on the ATT spalsh.
Booting into recovery mode, ADB (on Ubuntu) recognizes device but declares it offline.
Starting "apply update from adb", adb declares the device as "sideload usb:2-5"
Because of the glimmer of communication with ADB, I'm looking for the possibility of rescuing some files from the internal mem, before doing a factory reset.
Have also tried KIES on WIN8 but win (and KIES) dont see the device at all.
Thanks,
jd

Related

The phone acts as if there is no operating system

Ok, so my brother got a captivate as well. Well, he dropped it in water, and now the weirdest thing is happening.
When you power on the phone, it hangs on the ATT screen as if there is no operating system. But, sometimes it WILL boot into an operating system.
I looked at the phone once and called it quits when I couldn't extract anything via adb (though I can't remember why, I think I couldn't access recovery mode) and it wouldn't boot even after flashing stock rom from download mode. But now that he says it will sometimes boot into the OS, I have no idea wtf is going on.
What are ways of retrieving data off of his phone? Obviously if it booted, then USB storage, but it's not. IF I can access recovery, I will try adb. Are there any other methods though, minus like a jtag or a uart?
Regards
Smith

Captivate gets stuck with black screen after booting. No response to anything

Phone: Samsung Captivate I-896, with AT&T stock Android 2.2 flashed to it. Rooted and unlocked.
Action: Deleted some *.odex files from Root/Data/App, following a guide to get around the "out of space" message while trying to install software. Cleared Delviks cache directory.
Problem: First restart after above actions(which didn't resolve the out of space message issue), phone shows start-up animations, gets stuck with black screen. Left like this overnight, nothing happens. Vibrates every 50 seconds or so. Respons to hardware Vol+ press with the home/back/menu backlight. Otherwise, no response to anything, black screen(backlight on). Does not receive phone calls. I do not know for sure if the action listed above is the one that caused this situation, but I assume so since it was the last action taken before the issue appeared.
Solutions attempted: Tried every possible permutation/combination of buttons/usb cable/etc/ restarts etc. listed here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=858765&page=1, except Jig. The phone would not go into recovery or DL mode.
Question.
Am I correct in assuming that forcing the phone into recovery mode and reflashing a new system(or reflashing the old one) is the only way to get the phone to work again?
There is no way to "soft-reset" the phone, with all settings reverted back to stock, if it does not boot up completely?
Titerepayaso said:
Phone: Samsung Captivate I-896, with AT&T stock Android 2.2 flashed to it. Rooted and unlocked.
Action: Deleted some *.odex files from Root/Data/App, following a guide to get around the "out of space" message while trying to install software. Cleared Delviks cache directory.
Problem: First restart after above actions(which didn't resolve the out of space message issue), phone shows start-up animations, gets stuck with black screen. Left like this overnight, nothing happens. Vibrates every 50 seconds or so. Respons to hardware Vol+ press with the home/back/menu backlight. Otherwise, no response to anything, black screen(backlight on). Does not receive phone calls. I do not know for sure if the action listed above is the one that caused this situation, but I assume so since it was the last action taken before the issue appeared.
Solutions attempted: Tried every possible permutation/combination of buttons/usb cable/etc/ restarts etc. listed here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=858765&page=1, except Jig. The phone would not go into recovery or DL mode.
Question.
Am I correct in assuming that forcing the phone into recovery mode and reflashing a new system(or reflashing the old one) is the only way to get the phone to work again?
There is no way to "soft-reset" the phone, with all settings reverted back to stock, if it does not boot up completely?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds pretty accurate. You'll have to get a jig to get in download mode, flash stock Odin KK4 to fix w/e happened during your testing.
Thanks Bwolf. I just tried ADB console on a different computer and it connects to the device just fine in spite of black screen. I guess I had one thing right, USB DEBUGGING enabled before this whole deal.
Question: is there any way I can restore the phone using the console without wiping everything?
Titerepayaso said:
Thanks Bwolf. I just tried ADB console on a different computer and it connects to the device just fine in spite of black screen. I guess I had one thing right, USB DEBUGGING enabled before this whole deal.
Question: is there any way I can restore the phone using the console without wiping everything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Make a backup with ADB.
Once that's done, push download mode with it and get Odin KK4 (without bootloaders). You'll have to start from there to fix w/e went wrong.
You don't have to wipe your sd doing so but you will lose your apps and such. If you backed up your phone with your Play Store account, it will re-download your apps as you're done booting up.
To get back up where you were, grab Corn Kernel, flash it with Odin 1.87 and then follow the full instructions of the ROM you wanna use.

[Q] Stuck in bootloader

Hello people, sorry for the long post, but i hope theres sufficient information to help you help me.
So... I come here to ask for your help and opinion. I need your guidance.
History: I was using my Moto G (2nd gen) to control the Smart TV Youtube App when, suddenly, my phone freezed completely. I tried to lock/unlock the screen and to turn off but it reset by himself and i was "oh, ok, good". Well, not so good. When it turned on again it showed the Motorola blue logo screen but turned off. Then turned on again, showed the logo, turned off and stayed is this loop until the battery went dry. After recharging i tried to turn it on again, but the same thing happened. I also tried to enter Recovery and Factory Reset but, again, the same thing happened. It doesn't even shows the screwed android logo upon recovery selection.
I made some research hoping there was a way to access the internal memory, to backup everything i could, before sending it to the technical assistance (i would copy even system files if possible).
I connected via usb to my computer, tried adb, tried fastboot, nothing worked.
Reading about fastboot stuff i found this comments on a website ( lifehacker .com/the-most-useful-things-you-can-do-with-adb-and-fastboot-1590337225 ):
"Another thing that most guides out there seem to miss.... If you need to do something in a custom recovery ROM, you do not need to flash it. You can just directly boot it from a local image on your computer using adb. A lot less destructive.
Something like:
adb boot CMR.img"
"I don't think he means "destructive" in the sense of it harms your phone. But rather, that using one recovery does not mean you have to eliminate the previous one. Say you want to try out some feature of TWRP, but you really like Clockworkmod Recovery. This would allow you to run TWRP temporarily, while still keeping Clockworkmod as the default recovery.
Sort of like using a Live DVD to boot into Ubuntu without destroying your Windows partition."
Now my question(s) is(are): Can I do something to save some data without compromising my warranty, so I can send my phone to Assistance later?
If I can flash the ROM (and access my data), do I need to unlock and/or root the phone? Is this process reversible?
I hope you can help me, thanks.

Stuck on AT&T logo and cannot enter recovery mode

This is my first post, but I've had my phone rooted for a few months now with no problems until today out of the blue. What I've done to root my phone in the first place was flash to 4.4.2 NE3, root it, then upgrade to 5.0.1 OC 7 DeOdexed while keeping the root according to the link below. And then I put Xposed framework on it.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s4-active/general/how-to-update-to-i537oc6-5-0-1-t3089355
And this has worked well for me for a few months since that was back at the end of December. Flash forward to today when my phone was being rather slow to respond to my actions so I decided to restart it. And upon restarting it, it's been stuck on the AT&T logo screen for a very long time. I can power it down with the power button, but think it actually just restarts it because then it boot ups again on its own. I cannot enter recovery mode with power+home+volume up, but I can get to the custom OS screen with power+volume down. My computer cannot see it as an adb device either. I've also tried removing the SIM card and the SD card and it's still gets stuck at the AT&T logo.
I've done nothing different with the OS or Xposed recently. The only new thing was about 2 hours prior to restarting it, I connected it to my computer to transfer some video files to the sd card. While I had it connecting to the computer and looking at the files on it through the phone's My Apps, it was sluggish to respond to my actions. But after disconnecting it, it was fine. I don't know if this is related, but I haven't done anything else different with it. Is there anyway to get my phone to boot up correctly? Or am I going to have to reflash it all over again? Thank you for any help.
Edit: I can enter recovery mode and I tried wiping the cache. It still gets stuck at the AT&T logo screen. I should also note that it no longer shows the Samsung "custom" boot screen anymore like it used to after rooting, now it just has the default Samsung boot screen, so it would certainly seem like my OS has been corrupted.

100% Bone Stock S5 Bootlooping

I do apologise if I give too much information; I try to be thorough in documenting my methods and include as much information as possible so we can maybe skip some of the "what does it do when you ..." and the "did you try this" questions.
So I have been reading through these forums for the past few hours... Earlier today a friend gave me her AT&T Galaxy S5 to try and fix. When I received it, it would boot straight into recovery. She was on version G900AUCS4DQD1. I can say for nearly 100% certain that this lady knows nothing about modding her devices, so I am absolutely confident that this problem doesn't stem from her attempting to root the 6.0.1 firmware she was on, install custom recovery, or anything anywhere close to that. She said she had taken it to an AT&T Store and they were unable to fix the device; although I'm sure all they did was do a factory reset through recovery and when that didn't work they just said "Well, it's broke, come buy a new device." Either way, the information in bootloader mode doesn't show anything outside of what it's supposed to ... Current Binary is Samsung Official, System Status is Official, Reactivation Lock is off, and most importantly the KNOX Warranty Void flag is showing 0x0.
As I said, when I got it, the phone would boot straight to recovery by only person the power button to turn it on; but download mode was accessible via the option in recovery and by holding Vol-Down + Home during boot. Attempting to boot into safe mode, holding Vol-Down during boot results in nothing different than if I don't hold Vol-Down... sometimes it boots all the way to system where it reboots on Optimizing Apps, and sometimes it doesn't even clear the colorful animated Samsung Boot logo. While in recovery, the device is not visible in Windows Explorer. If I open my command line and type "adb devices" the S5 doesn't how up. However, if I select "Apply update from ADB", THEN type adb devices, it shows up as <device serial #> sideload. Attempting to issue the command "adb shell" while visible to adb results in "error: closed" being returned. Now, because I've been using the OnePlus 3T I have become somewhat familiar with bootloader mode and the fastboot command, and I don't know if Samsung devices are SUPPOSED to respond to the command "fastboot devices" while in bootloader/download mode, but I can say for 100% certain this one doesn't.
Remembering everything I learned when I owned the S4 AND after doing research on what firmware versions I could safely flash if my device was on 6.0.1, the first thing I went searching for was Odin and the factory firmware. I used the thread "G900AUCS4DQD1 ** FULL ODIN UPDATE ** v6.0.1 by toutanje to find the firmwares to download. I have also used the method and files in the thread "[Unbrick] Fix All For Samsung S5 AT&T (SM-G900A) Lollipop 5.1.1 by Birkyjon. Whichever method I use, all the files load and flash without incident in Odin. Before I attempt to boot to system, I boot into recovery and wipe cache and do a factory reset. (I have attempted do boot both with and without a factory reset after flashing the firmware in Odin) After doing that, obviously I hit reboot now... the phone passes the initial Galaxy S5 Logo, it goes to the multicolored Samsung Logo, then the AT&T screen, and SOMETIMES it boots into system, where it sits at the "Optimizing Apps, x out of 210." It will count up to around 30-40 or so, then reboot. After that initial boot where it gets to Optimizing Apps, all boots after that are unpredictable... as in, maybe it will make it back to Optimizing Apps, maybe it won't even make it to the AT&T boot screen before it restarts itself. Once it does that, I can boot back to recovery, do another factory reset, and it will make it to Optimizing Apps again every time. About the only thing I haven't tried was to attempt to flash the firmware via the "Apply update from ADB" option, though I honest don't see the point after everything else which has failed.
One last thing I have seen in my research so far but am unable to test: could these issues be caused by a bad battery? Being that I have no idea how the battery life on this particular device has been, I have no reference as to whether it has been draining incredibly fast, acting normal, or even just flat out dropping massive amounts or so at once.. I seem to remember noticing when I placed it on charge this afternoon, the device only had around 6%, and while connected to only a 1A charging brick, the percentage had magically jumped from 6% to upwards of 35% in what seemed like 3-4 minutes. I can't confirm for certain how long it was charging as I was also wrangling my two toddlers at the time and could have possibly just lost track of how much time had actually gone by...
Any ideas as to the issue I am facing? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks guys!
I have this exact game problem with my wife's s5. I never got any type of response, I hope you do. I'm still having this problem as well.

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