help getting pointed in the right direction to save my phone

[shampoup]

Started with a bone stock unrooted phone running gingerbread. Over the last few months a few processes started regularly crashing, a few days ago out of nowhere everything started crashing and force closing including basic text messaging. I tried a few versions of hard resetting and it didn't work, constant force close messages and didn't delete everything. I ended up in frustration trying to root my phone using the odin program. I can now at will go between a boot loop, a soft brick, and download mode.

I just want my phone to work again. I don't care about any mods, I just want to figure out a way to do the android equivalent of formatting your hard drive and reinstalling windows. Where should I start looking?

 

[kafepuya]

First of all, you cannot use Odin to root your phone. You use Odin to flash a ROM. You don't seem to be the person who likes to tinker with your phone too much (maybe it flashing bug will bite you in the future). Since you can put your phone in Download Mode, you should have no problem flashing a stable ROM.

I suggest you read Trusselo's Guide to flashing any ROM. It is absolutely a life saver, and will point you in the right direction.

As far which ROM you should flash, I could give you the standard cliche "Only you can know which ROM you like, flash one and see how you like it". However, I still remember what it felt like to be totally lost, with a dead phone on my desk, and just wanting an answer. So here goes: Install Cognition v4.5.3

Anyone can give you 5 different ROM recommendations, backed by a ton of reason. Bottom line is, Cognition works, and it'll get your phone working again. Later on if you want to dabble in GB, or even ICS, just soak up all the knowlege in the Dev forum.

tl;dr

Read TRusselo's thread
Download Cognition
Get your phone working again.

Good luck!

 

[b-eock]

And you can root your phone with ODIN, (kernel swapping method) So maybe the user above me doesn't seem like a person to tinker with their phone too much, or read. So yes I would use TRusello's thread.