after data wipe, phone boots to black screen, rooted but no CWM recovery - confused

I've spent a couple days searching, but there doesn't appear to be a relevant enough thread to help me here, so I've resorted to asking for help, hopefully you guys can help me figure this out.

I got my girlfriend a used Telus SGH-T959D (same thing as the T-mobile version pretty well) several months back. It was on stock 2.1 and worked fine but was very laggy compared to my rooted HTC Desire on oxygen 2.3.2. So I rooted it and installed a 2.2 rom with Voodoo sound control (but no lagfix), and she's been using it this way for months now. It was better than stock but still laggy. I can't remember what rom it was but it was based on Samsuck firmware, hence why it's still laggy I guess.

For some reason, when I originally rooted it I had trouble with CWM recovery not installing, I can't even remember now what exactly was happening, but I managed to get the rom installed without a proper custom recovery, so when I go into recovery it's just the stock Samsung recovery, with no options for nandroid backup, restore, flash zip from sd card, etc. Basically I can't do anything useful in recovery.

Anyways lately, worse and worse she has been getting the Android text message to wrong recipient bug. If you aren't aware of it, it causes messages you sent to go to a different person in your text message message list. No it is not user error.

So I decided to try and data wipe. After this there is basically no launcher when it boots up. The notification pulldown is there and working, and it shows the phone has a signal and wifi is turning on and working, capacitive buttons light up when you press them, but you can't do anything except grab the pulldown.

It won't connect to USB when booted up, phone shows a message that you must close running processes first, or something like that. But I cannot flash a rom from recovery anyways, since it only brings up a stock recovery.

I can get it into download mode, if I hold my tongue just right and try several times, but not sure what to try to flash with Odin. I already downloaded an ICS Passion rom, but then reading the tutorial saw that I must first download CM7 and install that, then upgrade the bootloaders to the GB ones, then flash the ICS rom. I would really like to at least upgrade to 2.3 and something not based on Samsung fw, but the main priority is to get it working again.

Anyways, whatever you guys can suggest to try would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks for the reply. As far as I thought the only similarity between this and the at t fascinate was the name fascinate. There's is the i5000 and mine is the t959d? Should this post be moved over there? I found a thread there with someone having partly. the same issue as mine not being able to install cwm but its been there for days and likely will not be replied to.

Well I was about to go ahead and download stock JFD and try flashing that but it appears that Mega upload has been shutdown by the FBI for fraudulent activity, and Rapid share is not working either. Maybe they're too busy because of the mega Upload shutdown or they were owned by the same people and have also been shut down. So now I'm not sure where to even find files that are safe to flash.

I just spent another hour on here and Android forums, and basically all the the threads are one or two posts, with no resolution to the OP, and none of the downloads links anywhere are working. I'm pretty patient but I'm ready to give up. Does anyone want to trade a soft bricked T959D in mint condition for any old beatup HTC that works? I've had my fill of Samsung's now.

Thanks Woodrube, I will definitely wait patiently as long as I know I'm going to be able to sort it out eventually. I'm busy with schoolwork so even though I enjoy this kind of thing I hate spending hours upon hours on it just trying to get the phone operational again.

I've been spoiled by my htc desire, it's been almost foolproof to do anything after spending a short time reading a few FAQ's and there have been no close calls. Soon I'll probably try an ICS rom once they get a bit more stable.

I will definitely do a donate if you can help me get it going with a decent rom. I would love to have lag fix on it since my girlfriend is a bit annoyed at the lag.

Since I got my first Android phone in August 2010, I've rooted and rom'd an LG Shine Plus, LG Optimus One, HTC Desire, the T959D and Galaxy S2 T989D (sold after I got it on an early renewal). I also had to fix my sisters I9000M after a failed 2.3 update operation. So I'm no expert on this, but I've got a little bit of experience messing around with stuff. Just they all require different processes, different programs to do the job, so you have to relearn it for every new phone.

The Samsung's have been the biggest pain compared to the others, but I think it's mostly because the Canadian versions are always slightly different than the Tmobile version, but besides that Samsung always has several different versions of the same.

If I get this thing up and running again I will probably check out your GPS fix thread, cause the GPS on this phone would lock on but it was way out to lunch. Like 6 streets away from us out to lunch.

It definitely has a sim card and it's HSPA, I pulled the Sim card out and put it in my HTC Desire for her to use, and put my SIM card in this crappy little LG Optimus One that's too small for me to type on. So I guarantee it has a sim card and is nothing like the Verizon phones which will not work on any of the Canadian carriers AFAIK. I think nobody understands what the phone is, and that's why almost every thread with a problem like this ends in 0 replies. I think from now on I will stay away from Samsung's abortion phones that they sell in Canada. Or at least I will research community support before getting one.

Ours is called the Fascinate, but its completely different model # than theirs, it is the T959D. Just like how the new Telus galaxy S2x is the T989D, same phone as the T mobile T989_.

For some reason there seems to be a few posts in the Fascinate section, for Telus only, I think that only started because of confusion about what the phone was, but the phone has nothing in common with the Verizon CDMA version. Actually I think if you look up, just about every phone that Telus or Bell (same network basically) gets, is a phone that T mobile got first. HTC Amaze being another one. HTC Desire Z is the same as the Tmobile G2.

Sorry I misunderstood you about donating the phone itself. My last effort will be the JFD file that Citidin sent me a link to. Hopefully that gets it going. If not I will stash it away until I have extra time to try again.

Well once I got the JFD file downloaded and put phone in download mode, turned on Odin, realized the PC recognizes the device attached and being malfunctioned, so I cannot flash with Odin.
I tried Heimdall which I downloaded yesterday, but the program won't load as it says I'm missing a DLL file.
I tried Android flasher which I downloaded who knows when, and tried to just install a recovery image with it, but it gets stuck while pushing recovery image and the program locks up.

I decided to try my girlfriends Laptop instead of mine after maybe 40 failed attempts to get Odin to communicate on mine, and to my surprise it recognized it right away. I transferred my files, with the JFD to this computer and then flashed with Odin. It took about 2 minutes and it was up and running. I checked about phone and it said 2.3.3 firmware. Really confused I looked back at odin and realized I flashed the I9000M stock 2.3.3 firmware (KG3) that I flashed on my sisters phone back around xmas. I forgot I did that on this laptop.

Anyways it is working as it should except for the home button not working (which I had already read about in a thread about using I9000M or Vibrant roms on the T959D).

While it is unfortunately stock again, the 2.3.3 should fix the original problem of sending to texts to the wrong recipient, and it also seems a lot less laggy. I think I'll just let her try it as is and hope she is happy.

If it was a Bell phone than it should be the I9000M. It sounds like your problem is a bit different than mine was. I was able to get into recovery mode and download mode just fine. I just didn't know which files to flash with.

I intended to flash the JFD that citidin sent me, but I accidentally use the KJ3 (latest I9000M 2.3.3 firmware). The I9000 and Vibrant roms are compatible with the T959D Telus Fascinate though, only problem being no home or search button.

It sounds like the Eugene thing (whatever that is, I'm not familiar) gets you into stock recovery. Like my original issue, you cannot flash or mount the sd card, or much of anything with the stock recovery.

Do you know that the file your flashing is compatible with your phone (the I9000M I assume)? More info that would probably help, is what firmware did you have on it before, was it JFD? What update did you try on it? Bootloader version - there are gingerbread bootloaders, and froyo bootloaders I think?

Have you tried different files other than the one that doesn't seem to boot up for you? I think most of the tutorials I've looked at, said not to check repartition. When i finally got this T959D working with the I9000 rom I did not check repartition and did not select a pit file, just the PDA, phone, CSC.