1. Install all required drivers and prerequisites listed above.
a. Use Wug’s toolkit or whatever method gets your drivers installed for your OS.
b. If you are not familiar with this process, then please research!
2. Power off your phone and connect via USB to your PC.
3. Power your phone into the bootloader by holding the PWR+VOLDN keys
4. In a Terminal, browse to the location of your fastboot binaries. (See prerequisite note for Wug’s)
a. Enter ‘fastboot devices’ to verify that your phone is detected. If it returns a “<serialnumberofdevice> fastboot” then you may proceed. If it does not, please check your driver installation and start over.
5. Flash and boot to Philz recovery:
a. Extract the ‘recovery.img’ file from Philz Recovery ZIP and place in the same location that fastboot and adb binaries are located.
b. Enter ‘fastboot flash recovery recovery.img’ (without quotes) in the Terminal. This will write the new recovery.
c. Once complete (takes a brief second usually), use the VOLUP/DN keys until the Bootloader shows “Recovery Mode” and press the power key. Your phone should now be booting into Philz recovery.
6. Use ADB to launch a root shell from within Philz recovery
a. Ensure that the drivers are now detecting your device as an ADB ready device by entering: ‘adb devices’. If it returns “<serialnumberofdevice> recovery” then you are ready to proceed. If it does not, please verify your ADB driver installation and check again.
b. Enter: ‘adb shell’ to gain full root shell access to the Android file system. (You should see a “~#” prompt to show that you’re now in a root shell)
7. Attempt repair of /data partition. This partition includes /sdcard and dalvik. (/sdcard is linked to /data/media) At the ~# prompt:
a. Enter: ‘e2fsck /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/userdata’
b. You should now be prompted to repair or fix errors. Press [Enter] key to use the default answer of
for yes. If you are not, then this fix may not apply to you.
c. Continue pressing [Enter] until the process completes.
d. Proceed to next step if you have gotten this far.
8. Attempt to manually mount the data partition.
a. We are going to mount /data as read-only for now. To do this, enter: ‘mount /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/userdata /data’
b. If mount is successful, it will simply drop down to the next blank shell prompt. If it fails, you will receive an error. If you receive an error, then the repair has failed.
c. If you did not receive an error, you can now browse to your /data and /sdcard partitions. This is accomplished by entering: ‘cd /data’ for /data, and ‘cd /data/media/0’ OR ‘cd /sdcard’ for your /sdcard (/sdcard is a link that will drop you directly to /data/media/0)
9. BACKUP YOUR ENTIRE SDCARD TO YOUR COMPUTER!!! (Optional, but highly recommended)
a. Enter: ‘adb pull /data/media <path_on_computer>’
b. <path_on_computer> will be a folder you created in the prerequisites.
c. Wait for this process to complete.
