Database Users

[Q] Did I just Brick My Phone?

I finally decided to attempt to load a custom ROM on my Samsung Fascinate after a couple of months of owning it. Before I started anything, I backed up my current ROM twice using ROM Manager, then used ROM Manager to do the new ROM download and install.
Things didn't go well. At all.
Once the new ROM was installed, my phone restarted, got back to the puzzle screen (thinking I was in business!) and as soon as I unlocked the screen the force closes just kept on coming. One right after another. Pretty much anything and everything force closes, so much so that it is the only thing you can do on the phone now. I have tried force closing things for as much as 5 minutes thinking I might get to the end of it, but no luck.
So now I have 2 backups on my SD card. I went into my Android System Recovery (+, - volume and power button), selected apply sdcard:update.zip which gets me to ClockworkMod Recovery v. 2.5.1.0. From there I go into Backup and Restore, select Restore and then my restore file. After some time the restore process is complete and the phone asks to reboot. I do the reboot and low and behold nothing seems to have changed in the phone. I still have the custom ROM with all of the force closes.
Am I missing something with this CWM restore process? I have read what seems like dozens of forum entries and nobody else seems to have problems with the restoration.It seems like it is pretty straight forward but I am not having any luck with it at all.
Any help is appreciated!

Try This and see if it helps:
http://forum.androidcentral.com/fascinate-roms-hacks/38029-how-escape-force-close-loop-hell.html

Perfect! I am back in business thanks to you. Sure appreciate your help!

Did you wipe first?

[Q] Is My Atrix Fixable?

My apologies, as I wasn't sure where to post this.
For a long time now I've been running CM7 both the nightlies and the weeklys with no issues. Yesterday I decided I would try Neutrino ROM and installed GT 2.5. After that I noticed I had no data connection so I attempted to patch the ROM using Notorious's recommendations to no avail so I installed 2.2 and the Google addons, Sync, etc..
All was working great, however everyone said 2.5 was better in the forums so I installed it again today and attempted to patch as explained and this time was successful. I had data connection again and all was well. About an hour later I went to use my phone and it was completely black.
I attempted to power it up and nothing happened. I finally had to pull the battery and was able to get it to boot up properly, however my data connection was gone again. I ran the sysctl -p command in terminal again and rebooted it to no avail. I finally decided to go back to 2.2 which worked properly last night, however after installing from the zip and the addon zips it went to the 'Dual Core' screen and then rebooted back to the 'Dual Core' screen and keeps doing that.
I attempted to go into Recovery Mode, however when it says 'Entering Recovery Mode' it just goes black and I can't power it back on. I then have to reseat the battery before I can get it to work.
I guess at this point, is there anything I can do to get my phone back? I've seen the hard brick messages and I don't have that (yet), but I am not sure, because I apparently can't get that far. Thanks for any help you can provide.
-Dave

Sounds like a hardware problem to me. I recommend taking it to a service center ( for me ATT has one I use.) and sometimes they can boot it up. Or they can maybe give you ideas.
Just to confirm you can't boot anything right??
Sent from my Atrix with XDA Premium App

Thanks for the response. I was unable to boot into Android Recovery, however I hadn't tried the others. After numerous searches I found information on how to use moto-fastboot to install RomRacer's Recovery image and after doing that I was able to get into Recovery (phew!). I did a complete wipe on the phone (Dalvik, system, etc) and installed Neutrino 2.2 with Lite gapps, United States (GPS), Sync, and Gtalk (for video) and shockingly it finally booted into the rom. I think at this point I'll leave it alone after restoring my apps via Titanium Backup.
My phone is now working again. Hopefully I can keep it that way.

JeRrYFaR said:
Thanks for the response. I was unable to boot into Android Recovery, however I hadn't tried the others. After numerous searches I found information on how to use moto-fastboot to install RomRacer's Recovery image and after doing that I was able to get into Recovery (phew!). I did a complete wipe on the phone (Dalvik, system, etc) and installed Neutrino 2.2 with Lite gapps, United States (GPS), Sync, and Gtalk (for video) and shockingly it finally booted into the rom. I think at this point I'll leave it alone after restoring my apps via Titanium Backup.
My phone is now working again. Hopefully I can keep it that way.
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Click to collapse
Awesome good to hear. I would change the title or at least add, solved problem
Sent from my Atrix with XDA Premium App

Screwed up my phone looking for help

Hello I have messed up my Sprint S4 quite a bit I am posting in case anybody would be nice enough to shoot me some pointers. I hope I following the guidelines here.
Things I did that screwed up my L720 :
First I installed the hotspot mod via filesystem on the phone. ( this didn't seem to harm anything though but worth mentioning )
Second I took it upon myself to delete some system apps ( this is what seemed to messed me up)
Third I factory reset the phone ( now all is hell)
Notes:
The reason I factory reset the phone is that when I would try to install a new app from the play store that would not work.
Now when the phone boots it optimizes 122 apps then goes on to give me an alert box I believe for each one saying it is busted overlaying the samsung account wizard thing. And it doesn't let me past the boxes.
I never enabled USB Debugging
Attempted Solutions:
I tried to re-root it with the CF Auto Root thread using ODIN but that doesn't seem to help.
Then I wanted to download that Samsung-Updates.com-SPH-L720-SPR-L720VPUAMDC-1365579188.zip file from that thread and follow that tutorial but hotfile lost connection and is now having me wait 30 minutes before I can attempt to download it again.
I figured during this time I would post my problem seeing if anybody had a quick fix. That I am not thinking of, possibly some kind of recovery deal. Not that I have ever backed anything up.
Thank you for any suggestions

Pull the power plug on your router for thirty seconds then plug it back in again. That will give you another ip address. Restart browser and make sure you clean all history and cache and cookies. Now go back to download mdc again or try a mirror. Flash in Odin then reboot back into stock recovery and do a full factory reset wipe. That should put you back to stock. Next time, don't be as careless removing things or you'll be in another mess.

Thanks for the response, I was not able to get back to stock but I flashed cynogen rom so now my phone is functioning. Now I am going to see if I can follow the tutorial of getting stock rom back on.

[Q] Galaxy S4 won't boot past recovery (urgent)

This is somewhat urgent because I am leaving the country for two weeks on Friday, and need a working phone. I am not sure what happened today, but my Sprint Galaxy S4 (SPHL720TBK) wouldn't connect to WIFI at my house. My tablet would, so I know it was a phone issue. I rebooted then was going through settings, and just checking things. The phone rebooted itself, and when it came back up, it went through a couple of screens, one of which asked about activation. It seemed like it was installing an update from Sprint, which it had been trying to do for a week or so. But it kept failing, saying it didn't have enough space for the download, despite there being several GB free internally and on the SD card. (I figured it must be because it was rooted). After a couple of additional screens on which I could only answer OK, the phone rebooted again, and that was it. It would not boot again. I decided to power off the phone and deal with it tonight. I can boot into recovery, and connect with Odin. I can boot to recovery and connect with ADB (in sideload mode). I know I could just do a factory reset, but unfortunately, I do not have a full backup since the end of January, and I would rather not lose everything. The phone was running v 4.4.2. I had rooted the phone several months ago with CF Auto Root using CF-Auto-Root-jfltespr-jfltespr-sphl720.tar.md5, so it was essentially stock, but rooted. Is there anything I can do to get the phone back on its feet that will not lose everything? Or anyway to copy data from the phone with it in this state? Any assistance will be VERY much appreciated! Thanks!

Fixed it myself
andrewt2323 said:
This is somewhat urgent because I am leaving the country for two weeks on Friday, and need a working phone. I am not sure what happened today, but my Sprint Galaxy S4 (SPHL720TBK) wouldn't connect to WIFI at my house. My tablet would, so I know it was a phone issue. I rebooted then was going through settings, and just checking things. The phone rebooted itself, and when it came back up, it went through a couple of screens, one of which asked about activation. It seemed like it was installing an update from Sprint, which it had been trying to do for a week or so. But it kept failing, saying it didn't have enough space for the download, despite there being several GB free internally and on the SD card. (I figured it must be because it was rooted). After a couple of additional screens on which I could only answer OK, the phone rebooted again, and that was it. It would not boot again. I decided to power off the phone and deal with it tonight. I can boot into recovery, and connect with Odin. I can boot to recovery and connect with ADB (in sideload mode). I know I could just do a factory reset, but unfortunately, I do not have a full backup since the end of January, and I would rather not lose everything. The phone was running v 4.4.2. I had rooted the phone several months ago with CF Auto Root using CF-Auto-Root-jfltespr-jfltespr-sphl720.tar.md5, so it was essentially stock, but rooted. Is there anything I can do to get the phone back on its feet that will not lose everything? Or anyway to copy data from the phone with it in this state? Any assistance will be VERY much appreciated! Thanks!
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Click to collapse
Since I didn't spark enough interest for anyone to offer advice, had to spend most of the afternoon/evening fixing these problems myself. Everything seems to be working, so I thought I would pass along key parts of this hard-learned lesson in case anyone else finds himself in such a situation.
First I booted into adb sideload mode, which is all I could do anyway. I installed philz_touch_6.23.9-jflte.zip and the aromafm.zip. I was then able to boot into a "normal" recovery mode. Aromafm was troublesome, and I eventually had to manually put the zip into place for it to work consistently. These are both WONDERFUL , and I highly recommend them both. Thanks very much to the creators! I used the file manager to find the files that I didn't want to lose, and used ADB to pull the files over to my PC. (ADB pull <source> <target>) Then I did a full wipe and factory reset. That did little other than delete all my data, which I had already copied anyway. The phone still would not boot past recovery.
I tried to use ADB to install a new ROM, but got a variety of errors. My phone being an L720T, there are not many ROM's available, at least not for which I could find functioning links. I finally found a TAR, L720TVPUBNG5_L720TSPTBNG5_L720TVPUBNG5_HOME.tar.md5, and used ODIN v3.09 to install that.
I still need to go back and re-root the phone, and install lots of APPS and restore data, but at least I have a functioning phone, and I can do the rest on my plane ride tomorrow.
I found the information I needed in a variety of posts here on xda developers, and would not have been able to get through this without all the helpful advice posted to other threads. So thanks to all of you for the wealth of information available here!

Phone restarts at startup.

Well this is my 1st post so first of all hey everyone
I just spent a week in Amsterdam and my phone restarted twice, different times different days and I dont remember what I was doing with it back then.
But as I landed back home I put the phone back from "Airplane Mode" and went on to toggle "Cellular Data" on.
The second I pressed the cellular data shortcut on my the phone restarted itself but this time whenever it would finish the screen would be on but fully black and sometimes it'll show battery precentage at the top but then will restart again in an infinite loop.
Sometimes it'll pop up the "Optimizing Apps" window and will go through all 24, upon finishing it will restart once more and do the same.
I tried using the bootloader and it worked (the bootloader that is) but the phone would do the same thing even after Rebooting from there or shutting down from there and then turning back on.
I contacted tech support on chat but they couldnt help past telling me to go to bootloader and reboot, said I should factory wipe when it failed.
Also tried wiping cache but to no avail.
I have no backup of my phone (wanted to do one before the flight but got lazy and I suck for not doing one sooner) since probably October and google doesnt backup my contacts properly for some unknown reason.
I already downloaded Android Studio with everything included for me to try using adb to sideload stock without wiping but its my first time and I couldnt get it to do anything at all...
I already got the official stock .gz file from the motorola website.
Anyway here are the specs to my phone:
XT1575
Everything is stock. didn't root or change recovery once in my life.
Was fully updated and had plenty of drive space (I have almost 128GB with the 64GB version + 64GB SD)
I'm really lost here so help will be very appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
-Noam

Start with a full wipe and if that doesn't work flash the stock image. Not sure what your question is though as you never really say. Once fixed I would unlock and make a backup so you don't have to deal with this again.

lafester said:
Start with a full wipe and if that doesn't work flash the stock image. Not sure what your question is though as you never really say. Once fixed I would unlock and make a backup so you don't have to deal with this again.
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Click to collapse
The thing I pretty much want to know is if theres a way to either backup the phone now with it connected to the computer while in bootloader or recovery. or a way to flash the stock rom without wiping which I read someone did with his tablet. I cant post source normally because I'm a new user so here it is but change spaces to dots: schnouki net/posts/2014/08/13/flashing-a-stock-android-image-without-wiping-user-data/
Also while in recovery I noticed 2 options under wipe: 1. userdata only. 2. userdata+(insert something I dont remember here) and I was wondering what gets deleted in both? if I delete only userdata what data will remain? something helpful?

Sure you can try flashing without wiping data but being locked I personally wouldn't risk it. No idea about backing up in your state... somewhere I remember a thread on backing up without root try searching in q&a.

lafester said:
Sure you can try flashing without wiping data but being locked I personally wouldn't risk it. No idea about backing up in your state... somewhere I remember a thread on backing up without root try searching in q&a.
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Click to collapse
Out of curiosity why shouldnt I try flashing with no wipe if ill lose the data anyway? worst case wont I just have to wipe after it fails and flash again?
And I will try thank you
Do you have any knowledge about the 2 wipe options?
Thanks in advance

Well I tried turning the phone on and it took a couple of minutes before loading to a fresh start. It apparently wiped itself on its own. Managed to restore almost everything.
Anyhow the phone takes too long to boot now. Was even stuck at boot and I had to restart it.
Anyway to fix my software? Or at least check for corruption?
Sent from my XT1575 using XDA-Developers mobile app