[Q] [Help] Unbrick i747M via SD Card Problem

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dwolder

Member
Apr 21, 2011
13
3
Greater Toronto Area
Background:

I thought I would try to install stock 4.3 leak for i747, forgetting that I had i747M! I totally HARD bricked my phone.. not a whimper, except the familiar recognition of a new device type on windows.. but no charging, booting, or even response.

I turned to the 'Unbrick via SD Card' thread from the Sprint S3 forum:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=43305728

I managed to find a debrick.img for the i747M. With that in hand, first using the method utilizing Cygwin, I was able to boot into Download Mode. Hurray! I downloaded the Stock 4.1.2 i747M Bell Image, and fully restored the phone using ODIN.

All seemed great until I removed the debrick SD card, and rebooted. Dead again. With the SD card in, I can reboot. I have tried restoring multiple times, writing a new PIT from another i747M, reinstalling the bootloader... nothing. If the SD Card isn'tin the phone, it's bricked. I am happy my phone is up and running, but it's nasty not having my 16 Gig SD card available, and also, I really need to ensure the battery doesn't die! Can anyone suggest what might be going wrong? Shouldn't I simply need to flash the stock image, and be good!?!

Thanks!
 
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the.teejster

Senior Member
Aug 14, 2008
373
96
Can you get into Download / recovery mode w/o the SD card ?

Did you try the stock image from this thread ? :
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2363882


Background:

I thought I would try to install stock 4.3 leak for i747, forgetting that I had i747M! I totally HARD bricked my phone.. not a whimper, except the familiar recognition of a new device type on windows.. but no charging, booting, or even response.

I turned to the 'Unbrick via SD Card' thread from the Sprint S3 forum:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=43305728

I managed to find a debrick.img for the i747M. With that in hand, first using the method utilizing Cygwin, I was able to boot into Download Mode. Hurray! I downloaded the Stock 4.1.2 i747M Bell Image, and fully restored the phone using ODIN.

All seemed great until I removed the debrick SD card, and rebooted. Dead again. With the SD card in, I can reboot. I have tried restoring multiple times, writing a new PIT from another i747M, reinstalling the bootloader... nothing. If the SD Card isn'tin the phone, it's bricked. I am happy my phone is up and running, but it's nasty not having my 16 Gig SD card available, and also, I really need to ensure the battery doesn't die! Can anyone suggest what might be going wrong? Shouldn't I simply need to flash the stock image, and be good!?!

Thanks!
 

dwolder

Member
Apr 21, 2011
13
3
Greater Toronto Area
Last edited:

the.teejster

Senior Member
Aug 14, 2008
373
96
Unfortunately, no. Hard Bricked without the SD card



I hadn't tried this one. I used the one from SAMMOBILE. I'll try this one right now.

Thanks!

If you want to maintain ROOT access be sure to grab the root.zip and flash AFTER you flash the image and BEFORE you reboot.
As an FYI, the 16Gig Bell image worked great for me.
 

dwolder

Member
Apr 21, 2011
13
3
Greater Toronto Area
If you want to maintain ROOT access be sure to grab the root.zip and flash AFTER you flash the image and BEFORE you reboot.
As an FYI, the 16Gig Bell image worked great for me.

Tried everything.. flashing the recommended version above from internal disk won't work. Flashes of Odin compatible versions complete, and still need the SD card in. I have rooted, installed Clockwork recovery, tried to install the firmware from internal drive... it would fail. Install from ODIN (Samsung Recovery) it succeeds, but won't boot without the SD Card in. (Familar QD Loader). I just don't get it. I might have to go to ADB level, and see if I can have any success there?
 
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scotteb

Senior Member
Dec 13, 2008
325
134
St. John's
Tried everything.. flashing the recommended version above from internal disk won't work. Flashes of Odin compatible versions complete, and still need the SD card in. I have rooted, installed Clockwork recovery, tried to install the firmware from internal drive... it would fail. Install from ODIN (Samsung Recovery) it succeeds, but won't boot without the SD Card in. (Familar QD Loader). I just don't get it. I might have to go to ADB level, and see if I can have any success there?

You my friend as you said are HardBricked, need to be flashed by jtag. I tried on a friends to use a debrick image to fix, but in the end I have to use the riff box to fix it. You may also have luck with this http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2439367 but remember to replace the file/files with the proper ones for YOUR phone.

Good Luck
 

Bradkirk

Member
Mar 11, 2013
12
3
Halifax
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
Background:

I thought I would try to install stock 4.3 leak for i747, forgetting that I had i747M! I totally HARD bricked my phone.. not a whimper, except the familiar recognition of a new device type on windows.. but no charging, booting, or even response.

I turned to the 'Unbrick via SD Card' thread from the Sprint S3 forum:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=43305728

I managed to find a debrick.img for the i747M. With that in hand, first using the method utilizing Cygwin, I was able to boot into Download Mode. Hurray! I downloaded the Stock 4.1.2 i747M Bell Image, and fully restored the phone using ODIN.

All seemed great until I removed the debrick SD card, and rebooted. Dead again. With the SD card in, I can reboot. I have tried restoring multiple times, writing a new PIT from another i747M, reinstalling the bootloader... nothing. If the SD Card isn'tin the phone, it's bricked. I am happy my phone is up and running, but it's nasty not having my 16 Gig SD card available, and also, I really need to ensure the battery doesn't die! Can anyone suggest what might be going wrong? Shouldn't I simply need to flash the stock image, and be good!?!

Thanks!

I had the exact same issue, took all the same steps you did, and had all the same frustrations. The last thing I tried though was to dd the debrick img to the internal memory of the phone via a terminal session running from my sdcard booted phone. figured I had nothing left to lose. It worked. I got the phone booted to download mode without the card in and restored my phone. I will add that I am no expert so this might be the worst idea ever. but my phone has been running since the 31st.
 

dwolder

Member
Apr 21, 2011
13
3
Greater Toronto Area
I had the exact same issue, took all the same steps you did, and had all the same frustrations. The last thing I tried though was to dd the debrick img to the internal memory of the phone via a terminal session running from my sdcard booted phone. figured I had nothing left to lose. It worked. I got the phone booted to download mode without the card in and restored my phone. I will add that I am no expert so this might be the worst idea ever. but my phone has been running since the 31st.

How did you make the connection to the phone memory.. ADB? I brought mine to the shop. They said two groups tried to fix it and couldn't. I am going to keep trying :) (glutton for punishment).
 

Bradkirk

Member
Mar 11, 2013
12
3
Halifax
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
How did you make the connection to the phone memory.. ADB? I brought mine to the shop. They said two groups tried to fix it and couldn't. I am going to keep trying :) (glutton for punishment).

forgive me, I'm no expert but I'll try to list what I did.

booted the phone via SD card and restored a backup so that I was running a rooted custom 4.3 ROM. I also had the terminal emulator program installed on the phone. so everything worked great at this point except I needed the SD card in the phone to boot.

the image I used for the SD card boot is a 16GB (version not file size) Bell I747M dump of a stock phone, called debrick.img. Sorry I cant remember where I got it but it was here on XDA. To get it on the SD card to begin with I used the terminal emulator on my old i9000(m) and the dd command.

So, to reverse the process I opened the terminal emulator on my SD booted, running I747M. typed: su <enter> to give the app superuser access (allowed root access when prompted) then changed to the directory on the sd card containing the debrick.img file just to save me typing the full path in the command. the internal SD of my phone is found at /dev/block/mmcblk0 as opposed to mmcblk1 for the external SD.

so , moment of truth. I used; dd if=debrick.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0 <enter> This was the part I mentioned could be the worst idea ever because from what I think I understand, you are writing directly to the boot partition of the SD and could completely screw up all the partitions and whatnot.

after that, crossed my fingers and turned the phone off, pulled the SD card out and luckily booted right up into download mode. Used Odin to get back up and running. Hope that helps or at least doesnt make anything worse for you.
 

aisakblack

New member
Nov 16, 2013
1
0
help me please

hey friend, you could climb the debricked.img of i747m to a download server or give me the link where obtubiste, I'm going through a hard brick on the terminal for the same reasons as you, please appreciate what you really so
 

Bradkirk

Member
Mar 11, 2013
12
3
Halifax
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

dravidn125

New member
Dec 2, 2013
3
0
It worked for me

forgive me, I'm no expert but I'll try to list what I did.

booted the phone via SD card and restored a backup so that I was running a rooted custom 4.3 ROM. I also had the terminal emulator program installed on the phone. so everything worked great at this point except I needed the SD card in the phone to boot.

the image I used for the SD card boot is a 16GB (version not file size) Bell I747M dump of a stock phone, called debrick.img. Sorry I cant remember where I got it but it was here on XDA. To get it on the SD card to begin with I used the terminal emulator on my old i9000(m) and the dd command.

So, to reverse the process I opened the terminal emulator on my SD booted, running I747M. typed: su <enter> to give the app superuser access (allowed root access when prompted) then changed to the directory on the sd card containing the debrick.img file just to save me typing the full path in the command. the internal SD of my phone is found at /dev/block/mmcblk0 as opposed to mmcblk1 for the external SD.

so , moment of truth. I used; dd if=debrick.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0 <enter> This was the part I mentioned could be the worst idea ever because from what I think I understand, you are writing directly to the boot partition of the SD and could completely screw up all the partitions and whatnot.

after that, crossed my fingers and turned the phone off, pulled the SD card out and luckily booted right up into download mode. Used Odin to get back up and running. Hope that helps or at least doesnt make anything worse for you.

Your method worked for me. Very clever and thank you. I did have to do some modifications of the partitions to fit the 145MB debrick.img file. I also had to mount it as a 2nd partition from the sdcard. Once, was in dowload mode without original debrick sdcard, I flashed the clockworkmod recovery then restored one of my previous back thus retaining root.
 

tutchthesky7

Senior Member
Feb 24, 2011
200
39
Mind sharing the i747m Debrick.img?

Seems like the link from the post you linkd us to is not working, clicking download does nothing :/ currently have a bricked Bell S3 and need a debrick.img :(
 

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    How did you make the connection to the phone memory.. ADB? I brought mine to the shop. They said two groups tried to fix it and couldn't. I am going to keep trying :) (glutton for punishment).

    forgive me, I'm no expert but I'll try to list what I did.

    booted the phone via SD card and restored a backup so that I was running a rooted custom 4.3 ROM. I also had the terminal emulator program installed on the phone. so everything worked great at this point except I needed the SD card in the phone to boot.

    the image I used for the SD card boot is a 16GB (version not file size) Bell I747M dump of a stock phone, called debrick.img. Sorry I cant remember where I got it but it was here on XDA. To get it on the SD card to begin with I used the terminal emulator on my old i9000(m) and the dd command.

    So, to reverse the process I opened the terminal emulator on my SD booted, running I747M. typed: su <enter> to give the app superuser access (allowed root access when prompted) then changed to the directory on the sd card containing the debrick.img file just to save me typing the full path in the command. the internal SD of my phone is found at /dev/block/mmcblk0 as opposed to mmcblk1 for the external SD.

    so , moment of truth. I used; dd if=debrick.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0 <enter> This was the part I mentioned could be the worst idea ever because from what I think I understand, you are writing directly to the boot partition of the SD and could completely screw up all the partitions and whatnot.

    after that, crossed my fingers and turned the phone off, pulled the SD card out and luckily booted right up into download mode. Used Odin to get back up and running. Hope that helps or at least doesnt make anything worse for you.
    1
    Background:

    I thought I would try to install stock 4.3 leak for i747, forgetting that I had i747M! I totally HARD bricked my phone.. not a whimper, except the familiar recognition of a new device type on windows.. but no charging, booting, or even response.

    I turned to the 'Unbrick via SD Card' thread from the Sprint S3 forum:
    http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=43305728

    I managed to find a debrick.img for the i747M. With that in hand, first using the method utilizing Cygwin, I was able to boot into Download Mode. Hurray! I downloaded the Stock 4.1.2 i747M Bell Image, and fully restored the phone using ODIN.

    All seemed great until I removed the debrick SD card, and rebooted. Dead again. With the SD card in, I can reboot. I have tried restoring multiple times, writing a new PIT from another i747M, reinstalling the bootloader... nothing. If the SD Card isn'tin the phone, it's bricked. I am happy my phone is up and running, but it's nasty not having my 16 Gig SD card available, and also, I really need to ensure the battery doesn't die! Can anyone suggest what might be going wrong? Shouldn't I simply need to flash the stock image, and be good!?!

    Thanks!
    1
    If you want to maintain ROOT access be sure to grab the root.zip and flash AFTER you flash the image and BEFORE you reboot.
    As an FYI, the 16Gig Bell image worked great for me.

    Tried everything.. flashing the recommended version above from internal disk won't work. Flashes of Odin compatible versions complete, and still need the SD card in. I have rooted, installed Clockwork recovery, tried to install the firmware from internal drive... it would fail. Install from ODIN (Samsung Recovery) it succeeds, but won't boot without the SD Card in. (Familar QD Loader). I just don't get it. I might have to go to ADB level, and see if I can have any success there?