soft brick phone flashing rom

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mikeprius

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2014
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Orange County, California
I downloaded twrp and CM 10.1 CR2 for my MK2 4.3JB galaxy S4.

I made nandroids on the extra then went in used the wipe feature in twrp then loaded cm and gapps. Worked great and I love the ROM.

Went to put back nandroids. Used the wipe feature again then restored nandroid. Bootleg and stuck on the yellow sprint screen. Tried to flash Odin .tar and it started with a ton of FC then said something about data partition.

I had no choice but to factory wipe and I wanted to keep all my internal stuff. The stock to CM worked fine but just doing general wipe did not work to restore my nandroid.

The CM I noticed is 4.2.2. Is this an issue going back to stock 4.3 nandroid ?

I'm restoring the phone completely so it's fresh out of the box then rooting then using twrp to try to get back my old nandroid.


What did I do wrong in the process that caused it to stall on the yellow sprint screen ?
 

btoddweber

Senior Member
Jan 10, 2013
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Knoxville
Once you go to 4.3...aka MJA or MK2 you cannot go backwards. So that may have been your issue. Try stayin with 4.3 or up

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mikeprius

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2014
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Orange County, California
OK I tried again after wiping, flashing 4.3, rooting, setting up TWRP.

I wiped everything and when I made my nandroids I checked ALL the boxes. I'm currently on CyanogenMod which works fine but I cant restore my nandroid. I wiped all then used restore from my SD card. I have twrp 2.6.3.0 I think.


I'm still getting stuck on the sprint screen. Help !
 

btoddweber

Senior Member
Jan 10, 2013
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Knoxville
Don know about checking everything?? I make sure that SE Linux is checked (i use philz) and then save to SD. Have had zero issues so far and I bounce from 4.3 TW to 4.4 AOSP daily. Sorry I've never used TWRP so I cannot begin to help troubleshoot.

If you say "Please"... be sure and "Hit Thanks!!!"
 

cruise350

Senior Member
Dec 11, 2007
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Memphis, TN
I just want to make sure you are not wiping before you create the nandroid backup. I reread your post and it was unclear. When creating the backup you should not wipe first. Next, when switching between AOSP and Touchwiz things can get tricky. Usually a failure to boot is after doing a nandroid is caused by the kernel not being correct for the rom installed. It would probably be best to keep an AOSP kernel and a Touchwiz Kernel on your sdcard so you can flash it after you restore the nandroid backup to ensure the proper kernel is in place.

Secondly, it was mentioned above that you can't go back to 4.2.2 after going 4.3. This is actually incorrect. You cannot flash a stock tar of an older 4.2.2 rom through odin if you have the MJA (AKA Knox bootloader). You can however flash a 4.2.2 rom using recovery since it does not attempt to change the bootloader.
 

mikeprius

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2014
1,741
489
Orange County, California
I just want to make sure you are not wiping before you create the nandroid backup. I reread your post and it was unclear. When creating the backup you should not wipe first. Next, when switching between AOSP and Touchwiz things can get tricky. Usually a failure to boot is after doing a nandroid is caused by the kernel not being correct for the rom installed. It would probably be best to keep an AOSP kernel and a Touchwiz Kernel on your sdcard so you can flash it after you restore the nandroid backup to ensure the proper kernel is in place.

Secondly, it was mentioned above that you can't go back to 4.2.2 after going 4.3. This is actually incorrect. You cannot flash a stock tar of an older 4.2.2 rom through odin if you have the MJA (AKA Knox bootloader). You can however flash a 4.2.2 rom using recovery since it does not attempt to change the bootloader.

I don't think I wiped before making the nandroid, but I'm not sure. I have the Sprint GS4, and the nandroid was a 4.3 (Dec 2013) firmware.

Can you help me out here, I'm really lost. Do I need to flash a Touchwiz kernel on top of the nandroid through TWRP (flashing multiple zips) ? Where do I get the kernel ?
 

cruise350

Senior Member
Dec 11, 2007
1,962
625
Memphis, TN
Made a nandroid of my Cyanogen Mod. Wiped phone and restored Cyanogen Mod nandroid. No problem. Worked fine. Just the original that I made is not working.

There are a lot of people that have had problems switching between Cyanogen Mod and Touchwiz using nandroid restores. It usually is the Touchwiz kernel not being restored when restoring the backup. When you boot up, you won't get past the initial boot screen. If this happens, you should just have to reboot back in to recovery and flash a TW kernel then reboot or after your restore your nandroid backup, just flash the TW kernel before rebooting. Look in the Android Development section for a custom TW kernel or you can try this kernel that unkownforce posted from his Triforce rom: http://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=23321874045862620
 
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mikeprius

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2014
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Orange County, California
cruise350- You are my hero. The nandroid DID come back and is working This has racked my brain all night and I am so so glad that I got my nandroid back.


I do have a few more questions:

1. The Wifi is not working ?
2. It appears that my Sprint is on 3G, and not going to 4G LTE ? Do I need to do something with this ? I also am getting errors trying to update my profile and PRL.
3. Is a custom TW kernel always required to be used, is there a stock Samsung TW kernel ?


Thanks a TON ! I couldn't figure out it for the life of me. Other than that I have been enjoying Cyanogen Mod. Using goomanager it looks like some CM versions are not flashable with TWRP and only by Clockworkmod.
 

ymf331

Member
Jan 5, 2014
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17
on some roms i know that if you don't use the kernel that comes with it the wifi doesn't work. maybe try stock? in your mobile network settings, is your preferred network type "lte/cdma/evdo'? i'm sure there's a stock kernel on the forum somewhere.
 

mikeprius

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2014
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489
Orange County, California
It was set on global, so I switched it thanks for the heads up. Wifi still out of commission though. Once I get this set up, I'm eager to try new ROMs. I'm still on the fence about TWRP though. It's a nice interface vs. Clockwork, but it seems like most files out there cater more to CWM
 

ymf331

Member
Jan 5, 2014
44
17
It was set on global, so I switched it thanks for the heads up. Wifi still out of commission though. Once I get this set up, I'm eager to try new ROMs. I'm still on the fence about TWRP though. It's a nice interface vs. Clockwork, but it seems like most files out there cater more to CWM

i can't really give advice on that since all i've used is cwm. idk what kernel that one is, but i think it now comes with kt-sgs4. maybe the one from before? i looked around and i couldn't find a stock kernel by itself for mja or later. if you extract the boot.img from a stock rom the kernel and ram disk are in there. how easily you could screw up your phone doing that is beyond my experience, so maybe try a different custom kernel and wait for somebody else's advice for the boot.img thing?
 
Last edited:

leaderbuilder

Senior Member
Wifi AND booting (as @cruise350 mentioned) are almost always a kernel issue.
What ROM are you actaully on?
How did you get there, your nandroid?
What kernel are you now using and how did you flash it?
Have you tried gonig into settings, turning off wifi, wait a moment and then trying to turn back on?
Sounds like you should flash a stock(based) TW ROM and go from there. That often clears up connection issues.
Also might want to set your 'network type' back to automatic.
As for CWM and TWRP both are superb just make sure you follow the ROM developers recommendation as to which to use. (Philz is a CWM based recovery). There are .tars and zips of the latest of each here in these forums.
Please spend some time here reading, searching and then reading some more. You will find all the answers to your questions and it will give you a huge grasp of what is what and how to do things properly.
Good luck.
 

mikeprius

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2014
1,741
489
Orange County, California
I am currently on the L720VPUEMK2 ROM 4.3 for Sprint. Android version 4.3 (Dec 2013 update).

I used TWRP 6.2.3.0 to flash Cyanogen Mod 10.2 nightly version (not sure if matters specifically which one).

My kernel was from TriForceKernel on the link above. It says 3.4.0-gb72521e-dirty. I flashed it after I flashed my recovery after wiping the device including internal data, cache, dalvik cache via install .zip in TWRP then rebooted.

The phone has loaded up but does not seem to be toggling between 4G LTE and the wifi is busted. I checked my nandroid and it says there is a boot file in it.


When I created my nandroid, I checked all the boxes, then slide the toggle which was supposed to create a back up for all 6 segments. I'm not sure why the boot.img isn't loading, it's part of the recovery that saved it. The settings seem to be as I left them....there are just some little things that are problematic.

I have a boot.emmc and boot.emmc.win both that are part of the nandroid recovery that has been flashed yet it gets stuck on the splash screen.
 

leaderbuilder

Senior Member
Well I'd just wipe and try any one of the FIVE TW ROMs that have been dropped in the last 7 days.
Trying to fix whatever is your issue could take hours or days.
Wiping completely (as per whichever dev's ROM you choose), installing said ROM, and starting from scratch will assure you phone works AND give you the best chance to get stuff working.
I dirty flash, restore and install ROMs all the time.
However When I absolutely want to know I'll have a good working ROM I clean flash. Wipes, setup, let Google restore apps, debloat restored (and stock apps!) then setup each setting and app to my liking. Titanium comes in real handy - after all my apps are re-downloaded I can selectively restore data to those that need it (Kindle, newsreader, SMS, Call Logs etc.)
Try that - installing clean new ROM and see what happens. Then go from there. Or don't and spend another couple days without a completely working phone.
 

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    Made a nandroid of my Cyanogen Mod. Wiped phone and restored Cyanogen Mod nandroid. No problem. Worked fine. Just the original that I made is not working.

    There are a lot of people that have had problems switching between Cyanogen Mod and Touchwiz using nandroid restores. It usually is the Touchwiz kernel not being restored when restoring the backup. When you boot up, you won't get past the initial boot screen. If this happens, you should just have to reboot back in to recovery and flash a TW kernel then reboot or after your restore your nandroid backup, just flash the TW kernel before rebooting. Look in the Android Development section for a custom TW kernel or you can try this kernel that unkownforce posted from his Triforce rom: http://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=23321874045862620