[Q] T999 started acting weird, and is spontaneously shutting down?

scifan · Sep 1, 2014

My wife's SCH-T999 started acting very strangely today - was shutting off intermittently.

Will stay on if it's in recovery, but that's not useful.

I installed TWRP and make a back up to the SD card that was installed. I poked around a little more, and tried to fix permissions and discovered that I couldn't fix a folder's permissions in /data/app.

I tried to remove the folder in question and it failed, I tried to do a factory wipe and that failed as well and the only info in the log was that /data couldn't be unmounted.

I've flashed cwmtouch and tried formatting /data in cwmtouch and the phone spontaneously reboots out of recovery... ?!

Any idea's? (could the internal storage have died?)

What else can I test?

DocHoliday77 · Sep 1, 2014

Got your PM, but figured I'd answer here since more eyes can see it and potentially share any ideas.

These type things seem to be happening a lot more lately. I guess we should expect it at this age, considering how heavily most get used.

Anyway, it may be that the memory is beginning to fail. Seen it several times the last couple of weeks.

But it could also be an issue with your partitions. Try Odin flashing stock firmware, first without 're-partition checked, second with it checked, and third with it checked and the PIT file selected. (Or you could skip to the third I suppose!)

If none of those help, I'm not sure there will be much more to try. Maybe someone else can think of something. I haven't looked at the logs you sent me yet. Will try to look em over tomorrow night. You might consider posting them here too in case anyone else can jump in and try to help. I don't think there will be any specific info in them...

Sorry I don't have a better answer right now. Who knows....maybe I just need some sleep for my brain to continue functioning! Might give that a try!

scifan · Sep 1, 2014

DocHoliday77 said:
Got your PM, but figured I'd answer here since more eyes can see it and potentially share any ideas.

These type things seem to be happening a lot more lately. I guess we should expect it at this age, considering how heavily most get used.

Anyway, it may be that the memory is beginning to fail. Seen it several times the last couple of weeks.

But it could also be an issue with your partitions. Try Odin flashing stock firmware, first without 're-partition checked, second with it checked, and third with it checked and the PIT file selected. (Or you could skip to the third I suppose!)

If none of those help, I'm not sure there will be much more to try. Maybe someone else can think of something. I haven't looked at the logs you sent me yet. Will try to look em over tomorrow night. You might consider posting them here too in case anyone else can jump in and try to help. I don't think there will be any specific info in them...

Sorry I don't have a better answer right now. Who knows....maybe I just need some sleep for my brain to continue functioning! Might give that a try!

I've been running a 4.1.2 image on it, so I'll go ahead and re-flash that...

I was able to make a backup with twrp before I discovered the filesystem corruption. I don't know that the backup is actually usable...

I get this result when I try and flash with repartition checked...

<ID:0/008> SetupConnection..
<ID:0/008> Initialzation..
<ID:0/008> Set PIT file..
<ID:0/008> DO NOT TURN OFF TARGET!!
<ID:0/008> Can't open the specified file. (Line: 1992)
<OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1)

(doesn't seem to matter which image file I choose... though I am using Root66 files...)

Continuing to putz with it - this time without having the re-partition checked, I'm getting somewhere with flashing it... but it hasn't completed as yet...

Flashing completed, and it hung on the Samsung Galaxy SIII boot image...

Then it started shutting down just about everywhere I booted it... (into the download screen, recovery, etc...)

I wonder if my battery is simply dead so I'm going to leave it on the charger while we go to do a family activity...

I expect that it's dead... but I'm still trying to see if I can get some life out of it...

scifan · Sep 1, 2014

So, I let it charge all afternoon, and the symptom's currently are that when you plug in the battery, it automatically turns on/does something... if I hold the volume button down, it will go into flash mode, if I hold it up, it will boot into recovery. about 5 seconds later, the screen turns off...

Not sure what to think of it.

DocHoliday77 · Sep 2, 2014

When you flashed with re-partition, did you use a separate PIT file or without one? Or both?
What you mentioned about the battery almost sounds like the power button problem many have encountered. If you remove the battery, will it try to turn on by itself when you out ut back in?

scifan · Sep 2, 2014

DocHoliday77 said:
When you flashed with re-partition, did you use a separate PIT file or without one? Or both?
What you mentioned about the battery almost sounds like the power button problem many have encountered. If you remove the battery, will it try to turn on by itself when you out ut back in?

I flashed it without the repartition checked, and I didn't have a separate PIT file.

At this point, if I plug in the battery, it will try and boot by it's self...

DocHoliday77 · Sep 2, 2014

The PIT thread is in General. You can get the .pit file from the op or from my post here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=54220131

If the device turns on just from inserting the battery, I am sure the power button is faulty. Its been happening to a lot of these devices for several months now. The part is pretty cheap if you want to try fixing it yourself. Not sure how much a local shop would charge though.

---------- Post added at 10:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:36 PM ----------

Some have had temporary success by jiggling the button around, and just kind of messing with it a bit. Its never a permanent fix and doesn't always help, but might be worth a try. If it does seem to help it would also verify that it is the problem.
As for the partitioning, i have seen it get messed up because of the constant restarts. Could be the root cause of all the problems.

scifan · Sep 2, 2014

My wife had this great idea to post in one of her groups asking if anyone happened to have an old phone they would sell/give/? to her... and well, we had a couple of people come forward with T999's that had cracked screens... going to see if I can use one of those as a main board doaner for her phone... (looks pretty straight forward)

Sent from my TouchPad using Tapatalk

DocHoliday77 · Sep 2, 2014

Yup, its a very easy swap. Lots of videos out there if you're unsure about something though.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-T999 using Tapatalk

scifan · Sep 3, 2014

DocHoliday77 said:
Yup, its a very easy swap. Lots of videos out there if you're unsure about something though.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-T999 using Tapatalk

I've watched at least 2 thus far... actually watched one that described just removing the power button with a workaround for being able to boot the phone afterwards... but I'm 100% certain she'll want a power button...

DocHoliday77 · Sep 3, 2014

Happy wife, happy life!

scifan · Sep 3, 2014

DocHoliday77 said:
Happy wife, happy life!

Exactly...

I need to get her SD card back and try restoring the backup I have of her phone from Sunday...

Gotta say swapping the main board was very easy...

ojhasha · Sep 4, 2014

how much did you get your cracked galaxy for

scifan · Sep 4, 2014

ojhasha said:
how much did you get your cracked galaxy for

I was very lucky and found a friend who was willing to let me have it for ~ $20... was very easy to swap the main board.

Sent from my C6506 using Tapatalk

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[Q] T999 started acting weird, and is spontaneously shutting down?

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