Help - Did I soft-brick my i9305???

Looki75 · Jan 11, 2014

Hello knowledgeable people!

I did a very stupid thing!... I took an official Samsung ROM package .tar.md5, remove the .md5 extension, extracted it, replaced boot.img with a custom kernel boot.img and re-compressed into a .tar package.

Then I took this .tar package and flashed it on the phone with Odin on my PC.

That didn't work, as expected.
The process blocked at one point.

I thought I will then just have to flash the Samsung official ROM to get everything back.

Well... not! I can flash the Samsung official ROM with Odin on my PC, but when the phone starts, it get stucked on bootloop on the glowing samsung logo.

I tried many things, including:
* wipe cache
* wipe data
but nothing worked...

At this point, I think I need to repartition/format everything and start from scratch but I don't know how to do this...
I tried to flash the Partition Identification Table kindly uploaded by @lyriquidperfection, but it didn't work (see here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1950591) and it gets stuck in Odin as @narcarsiss mentions here: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=33145970&postcount=2

Anyone has an idea?
> How to re-partition/re-format properly?
> Any other method to solve the bootloop?

Thanks for your help!

Hbohd · Jan 11, 2014

Why not to flash stock Sammy rom through Odin? This time - not modified?

toeterbaas · Jan 11, 2014

Flash stock Sammy latest ROM .
Wipe everything in recovery and it should work.
I always have to wipe **** when installing official Sammy ROM.
Else it will stay at Samsung screen with flashing letters

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda app-developers app

Looki75 · Jan 11, 2014

Hbohd said:
Why not to flash stock Sammy rom through Odin? This time - not modified?

This is what I tried... but it still get stuck at glowing samsung logo...

Looki75 · Jan 11, 2014

toeterbaas said:
Flash stock Sammy latest ROM .
Wipe everything in recovery and it should work.
I always have to wipe **** when installing official Sammy ROM.
Else it will stay at Samsung screen with flashing letters

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda app-developers app

Thanks for the answer.

What do you mean "wipe ****"?
Could you detail the steps?

1. Flash official sammy ROM through odin
2... enter recovery? (please confirm)
3... wipe what?

Thanks!

thu001 · Jan 12, 2014

Have you tried flashing another kernel?Boeffla Etc then use KIES or Odin to flash back to stock

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda app-developers app

toeterbaas · Jan 12, 2014

Yes enter recovery after flashing with Odin.
When u power on hold volume up home key and power all at the same time release them when u see Samsung gt i9305 then wipe cach and wipe the other one. There are 2 wipe options.
Your phone should boot now it takes some time the first time around a minute.
Let me know if it worked

- flash stock Samsung ROM for your country with Odin

- go to recovery wipe the 2 options When u power on hold volume up home key and power all at the same time release them when u see Samsung gt i9305

-phone should boot takes a minute before he goes trough the flashing Samsung screen.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda app-developers app

---------- Post added at 09:51 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:47 AM ----------

All you have to do is follow my steps.
It should work now

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda app-developers app

narcarsiss · Jan 12, 2014

Looki75 said:
Hello knowledgeable people!

I did a very stupid thing!... I took an official Samsung ROM package .tar.md5, remove the .md5 extension, extracted it, replaced boot.img with a custom kernel boot.img and re-compressed into a .tar package.

Then I took this .tar package and flashed it on the phone with Odin on my PC.

That didn't work, as expected.
The process blocked at one point.

I thought I will then just have to flash the Samsung official ROM to get everything back.

Well... not! I can flash the Samsung official ROM with Odin on my PC, but when the phone starts, it get stucked on bootloop on the glowing samsung logo.

I tried many things, including:
* wipe cache
* wipe data
but nothing worked...

At this point, I think I need to repartition/format everything and start from scratch but I don't know how to do this...
I tried to flash the Partition Identification Table kindly uploaded by @lyriquidperfection, but it didn't work (see here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1950591) and it gets stuck in Odin as @narcarsiss mentions here: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=33145970&postcount=2

Anyone has an idea?
> How to re-partition/re-format properly?
> Any other method to solve the bootloop?

Thanks for your help!

Tnx for the mention, but i heade bad news. I had to send my phone away to fix the issue.

This was a long time ago that this happened and better methods may of been discovered. Good luck:good:

Looki75 · Jan 12, 2014

narcarsiss said:
Tnx for the mention, but i heade bad news. I had to send my phone away to fix the issue.

This was a long time ago that this happened and better methods may of been discovered. Good luck:good:

Thanks for your answer!
I fear sending S3 to Samsung for repair is the only way, unfortunately... This is what I will do tomorrow (in 10hrs from now) unless a white knight arrives on this thread and gives me the golden solution!

tissot · Jan 13, 2014

You havent mentioned what rom version you tried.
I guess you used 4.3 official?

I could only guess but ther is probably more then just boot.img containing Knox code.
Knox is hindering users from downgrading bootloader and that maight be your problem now.
You did not mention wich version you try to recover to either.
So if you try with the old 4.1.2 it may be impossible.
Perhaps you need the newest official rom to get it working.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Looki75 · Jan 13, 2014

tissot said:
You havent mentioned what rom version you tried.
I guess you used 4.3 official?

I could only guess but ther is probably more then just boot.img containing Knox code.
Knox is hindering users from downgrading bootloader and that maight be your problem now.
You did not mention wich version you try to recover to either.
So if you try with the old 4.1.2 it may be impossible.
Perhaps you need the newest official rom to get it working.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Thanks for your answer.

The home made package was on 4.3 base.

Then I tried to reflash official 4.3.
I will give a try with 4.1.2...

Looki75 · Jan 13, 2014

Well... didn't work either... since I already had knox bootloader...
It shows "unsupported version".

Oh well...

toeterbaas · Jan 13, 2014

tissot said:
You havent mentioned what rom version you tried.
I guess you used 4.3 official?

I could only guess but ther is probably more then just boot.img containing Knox code.
Knox is hindering users from downgrading bootloader and that maight be your problem now.
You did not mention wich version you try to recover to either.
So if you try with the old 4.1.2 it may be impossible.
Perhaps you need the newest official rom to get it working.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

You can't flash the old version. Odin will revert it back while installing.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda app-developers app

tissot · Jan 13, 2014

Looki75 said:
Thanks for your answer.

The home made package was on 4.3 base.

Then I tried to reflash official 4.3.
I will give a try with 4.1.2...

Okey

A bit far feched but is it possible your download is broken? Try DL again.

And either it is or not you could try installing 4.3 from different region as yours. Just to try every possability.

It shouldnt be impossible to fix this stupid phone

You dont have any nandroid backup some where.

Last option. Throw it on a brick wall to release som aggrevation and then you buy a Nexus 5. Problem solved.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Looki75 · Jan 13, 2014

tissot said:
Okey

A bit far feched but is it possible your download is broken? Try DL again.

And either it is or not you could try installing 4.3 from different region as yours. Just to try every possability.

It shouldnt be impossible to fix this stupid phone

You dont have any nandroid backup some where.

Last option. Throw it on a brick wall to release som aggrevation and then you buy a Nexus 5. Problem solved.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

You made me laugh!

Seriously: DL is OK (I flashed this very official ROM many times in the past) and I do have a nandroid, but result is the same (stuck at glowing samsung logo).

The issue is way deeper.

Thanks for your help! Before trying the brick wall, I will try to make it repaired by Samsung!

shucrut · Jan 15, 2014

Looki75 said:
You made me laugh!

Seriously: DL is OK (I flashed this very official ROM many times in the past) and I do have a nandroid, but result is the same (stuck at glowing samsung logo).

The issue is way deeper.

Thanks for your help! Before trying the brick wall, I will try to make it repaired by Samsung!

I had a brick once, butthe situation was a bit different. I have knox bootloader and tried to downgrade to a 4.1.2 rom without the bootloader package. The flash went ok, but my phone was stucked on Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9305 screen. After that, i was quite desperate and tried to reflash stock 4.3 via odin, but it failed :S

Then i tried to flash official Germany's 4.3 again, this time with the ODIN version inside CF-Root package (http://download.chainfire.eu/232/CF-Root1/CF-Auto-Root-m3-m3zh-gti9305.zip?retrieve_file=1), put the cable in another USB port, killed every kies proccess and rebooted phone in dowwnload mode. This time the flash went ok, i rebooted the phone into recovery (got bootloop) and wipe cache and factory reset. After this the phone booted up normally. Hope you can fix your phone

Looki75 · Jan 15, 2014

shucrut said:
I had a brick once, butthe situation was a bit different. I have knox bootloader and tried to downgrade to a 4.1.2 rom without the bootloader package. The flash went ok, but my phone was stucked on Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9305 screen. After that, i was quite desperate and tried to reflash stock 4.3 via odin, but it failed :S

Then i tried to flash official Germany's 4.3 again, this time with the ODIN version inside CF-Root package (http://download.chainfire.eu/232/CF-Root1/CF-Auto-Root-m3-m3zh-gti9305.zip?retrieve_file=1), put the cable in another USB port, killed every kies proccess and rebooted phone in dowwnload mode. This time the flash went ok, i rebooted the phone into recovery (got bootloop) and wipe cache and factory reset. After this the phone booted up normally. Hope you can fix your phone

Thanks! Any idea is valuable!
How did you create the ball pack of "4.1.2 rom without the bootloader" - in other words: how did you remove the bootloader from there?

shucrut · Jan 16, 2014

Looki75 said:
Thanks! Any idea is valuable!
How did you create the ball pack of "4.1.2 rom without the bootloader" - in other words: how did you remove the bootloader from there?

I'd used this tutotial (just the part of commands, added everything that the original ".md5" has, removing just the "sboot.img", i'm not 100% sure if this is the only file to be off the new package, as i said, didnt work for me

), the only difference is that i'm using cygwin instead of linux itself, it worked like a charm

Basically all u need to do is unpack a original .md5 firmware (use winrar or so) and move the files (except sboot.img) to your home directory of linux or, in my case, cygwin (originally C:\cygwin\home\user-name), start the console and type the command bellow, switching the ".imgs" to match yours, of course:

Code:

cd $HOME
tar -H ustar -c image_1 image_2 > your_odin_package.tar

After this you must have a 1Gb+ .tar file (considering you will make a stock samsung flashable), now you will add md5 checksum to that, just to avoid troubles:

Code:

md5sum -t your_odin_package.tar >> your_odin_package.tar

mv your_odin_package.tar your_odin_package.tar.md5

and voilà, you have your flashable odin package. Of course you can try making one with just the system.img, boot.img and modem.img. If the phone boots up, do a factory reset. I have no idea if this will work in any occasion having knox bootloader trying to flash official 4.1.x, but you can also try with a samsung 4.3 rom.

In the last scenario, try to CF auto-root your phone, then flash an official CWM recovery via odin using this method i told u, boot into recovery and flash a custom rom, do a factory reset and wiping cache and dalvik cache. I hope one of the options work for you.

I'd recommend trying to flash a custom recovery and then a custom rom. If phone boots up and is functional, try to flash samsung official 4.3 again (if your desire is having the stock of course), not forgeting to factory reset via cwm first to avoid troubles.

AMoizK · Jan 16, 2014

Been in maybe like pratically the same situation

1st flash philz touch recovery ( install latest version)
2nd backup ur efs in external sd and copy it to a pc just in case (important if u mess up imei )
3rd Copy and rom in the external sd
4th Wipe data,cache,dilvik
5th In mount and storage Format everything except external sd ( u can backup ur internal sd card with 3rd step)
6th Flash Rom and reboot
7th If no imei then try a newer modem
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2572432
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2607279
Notice I only could get to run 4.3 to run after formating everything through philz touch recovery

Help - Did I soft-brick my i9305???

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