[Q] SII (Vodafone NL) with "Download mode" only, stuck on NAND Write Start!!

[Q] SII (Vodafone NL) with "Download mode" only, stuck on NAND Write Start!!

Hi all,

I have a SGS II from Vodafone NL that was not vendor locked, unfortunately I don't know more about it as I didn't care about firmware, kernel and the such. The phone is 2y 9m old. It all started with a low battery reboot, battery was at 0% and while plugged in was restarting shortly after boot, some too demanding applications that wanted to do their thing immediately after boot. This happen 2 or 3 times, on one of the boots I saw the android updated (green robot with spinning mesh), it was really short and I recall something about updating one file or so. Didn't pay much attention, the phone booted up properly when the battery reached 1%. After a few hours in which I used the phone a few times I found the phone shutdown and on boot I had the boot logo loop. Not knowing what to do I went into "Recovery mode" (Vol up + Home + Power) and issued a factory reset. It did something and I didn't pay much attention to it. There were a lot of errors related to /system /cache and something else that was not accessible. I was thinking that the on-board emmc might have died or at least part of it is. After the factory reset the phone has only the battery logo and "Download mode" (Vol down + Home + Power) only. I don't know what kernel I had nor what OS version it was on, I've updated via Kies some time ago, autumn 2013 maybe.

I've downloaded from sammobile:
I9100BULPG_I9100VDFLP9_I9100BULP8_HOME.tar.md5 Feb 2013 Ver 4.1.2
I9100BULPG_I9100VDFLP9_I9100BULP8_HOME.tar.md5 Sep 2012 Ver 4.0.3

When trying to upload them with Odin 1.85, 3.04 and 3.07 they fail at "NAND Write Start!!" with no other error message, just the normal succeed 0 / fail 1 which I find kinda dumb. Tell me what the error was, the device surely has said something or it timed out. I've tried this on 2 different computers both with Windows7.

After all this failed I tried flashing:
Siyah-s2-v4.1.5.tar

Same error from Odin but something changed in the "Download mode", now it says "CUSTOM BINARY DOWNLOAD: YES (1 counts)", before it was 0. The current binary is still saying Samsung official. The phone is still not booting and the "recovery mode" is still not there.

My questions:

Is there any way I can connect to it via adb and maybe have a shot at looking at it's disk layer? Saw that dd can be used within the adb shell IIRC. I do have some linux/unix filesystem recovery experience.
I saw that they use the .PIT file to change the sector allocation and avoid the damaged parts of the emmc. In order to do that I need to somehow give it a booting kernel. Is there any way of doing that? Maybe boot another device that can attach the emmc.
Should I try heimdall? Can it connect to the device even in "download mode"? I need to install one linux machine for this as I have only windows and BSDs around.
Is there any way for me to reliably find out the model of phone I have?
Are there any other things I can try to recover it or can I consider it's emmc dead?

Thank you.

doctor_droid said:

Pit files can help ...as u already knw..
No pit file flashing doesn't needs working recovery..
U can flash pit file by odin itself...

Did u tried flashing a pit file?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Haven't tried a pit file as I thought that I need to know which part must be taken out from the sector allocation first. Is it just trial and error?
If yes, which pit files should I try?

Thanks.

MistahBungle said:

Sticker on phone chassis under battery.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

On the sticker I have:

Model: GT-I9100
SSN: -I9100GSMH
FCC ID: A3LGTI9100
IMEI and S/N

Don't know what to make out of these tough.

MistahBungle said:

Why ? It's pretty self explanatory. It says you have an I9100, so you have an I9100. The rest of that stuff on the sticker is irrelevant.

So...if you do decide to flash a PIT, make sure it's an I9100 PIT or you'll definitely end up with a 116gm plastic paperweight.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I found this thread with PIT files http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1667886, but as I said, I'm clueless as which of the I9100 models this is and which archive should I chose, don't really remember if 8GB/16GB/32GB, plus there is a i9110g there. I know this sounds ignorant but I was with my phone, will not happen in the future.

Also there is this link: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1823918, which is supposed to be a partition scanner but I find it confusing. In my case I can't flash anything on the phone so it seems impossible to use the scanner, is that correct? Are there cases in which parts of your emmc can die but you'll still be able to boot a kernel or have/use "recovery mode"?

Status update.

I tried to flash Siyah-s2-v5.0.1.tar with both Odin 3.07 and 1.85.

3.07 said the same error immediately after NAND Write Start!! I had to close Odin, remove battery and upon restart the phone has the triangle present but only download mode works. It incremented the CUSTOM BINARY DOWNLOAD and CURRENT BINARY has changed to CUSTOM.

<ID:0/006> Added!!
<ID:0/006> Odin v.3 engine (ID:6)..
<ID:0/006> File analysis..
<ID:0/006> SetupConnection..
<ID:0/006> Initialzation..
<ID:0/006> Get PIT for mapping..
<ID:0/006> Firmware update start..
<ID:0/006> zImage
<ID:0/006> NAND Write Start!!
<ID:0/006> Complete(Write) operation failed.
<OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1)

1.85 just stayed for ~20 min on "NAND Write" and had to close it myself. Again had to remove battery has phone was not rebooted by Odin. Again the "BINARY DOWNLOAD" counter was increased. The phone still has "download mode" only and the triangle present on normal start.

I don't understand why Odin fails to reboot the phone and returns error upon writing.

I'm still a bit reluctant to use PIT files as I still don't know for sure which one to chose. Keeping it as a last resort tough.

Will try different kernels and I'm still searching for a bootloader to try and write, maybe somehow I can get it to "recovery mode" so I can use adb to see the partitions it has. Can't find any link for this.

I didn't backup EFS partitions and this is my biggest concern in using PIT files. If I understood correctly writing a new PIT file will delete all partitions. Is it possible then to still recover the device?

If anyone has any ideas ...