Help Stuck in boot loop - recovering data?

[mjsw]

Please help! My S2 appears to be stuck in a boot loop, but it seems to get much further in the process than many other threads I've read about (where it reboots on the splash screen). Mine initially appears to boot up normally, and the phone is useable for about 5-7 seconds before it reboots itself. It seems to do this once it gets to the 'media scanning complete' message on the notification bar.

I understand that a factory reset may fix the problem, but I believe this process will wipe contacts / SMS / apps etc. I am hoping one of you experts will be able to suggest a way of saving (in order of priority):

1) SMS messages
2) Contacts
3) Progress in apps (games etc)

Photos etc are already backed up, so I'm not concerned about those.

I have done loads of research via Google, and tried several things, but nothing has worked so far. Tried safe mode, tried recovery mode and deleting cache, tried connecting to Kies (but the phone doesn't stay on long enough for it to be recognised), I've managed to change the settings to sync contacts to Google (originally not synced) during the 5-7 second window but again it doesn't seem to have time to sync in the 5-7, and I've managed to turn on USB debugging too which I've seen recommended (although I'm not sure what the benefit of this is).

The phone has never been rooted, and is still running the original stock Samsung software (2.3.4). Haven't changed anything I can think of to cause the boot loop (no new apps installed recently etc).

A am a total newbie when it comes to this sort of stuff, and have seen references to Odin and adb, but don't really understand it. Would either of these programs enable anything to be recovered? If anyone has any ideas, I'd be very grateful!

 

[mjsw]

Update: I've managed to root the phone and take a Nandroid backup. Then done a factory reset. Everything is back to normal with the phone and the boot loop has gone.

However, when I do an Advanced Restore of just the data from the Nandroid backup, I get back to exactly where I was before and the boot loop resumes! So it seems that something in the data itself is corrupt.

As above, I only really want to recover SMS / contacts / game progress. Is there a way of restoring just this part of the data from the backup and ignoring everything else? Could Titanium Backup do this from the Nandroid backup?

 

[ironass]

However, when I do an Advanced Restore of just the data from the Nandroid backup, I get back to exactly where I was before and the boot loop resumes! So it seems that something in the data itself is corrupt.

A nandroid backup is a mirror image, a snapshot in time if you like, of your entire phone, OS, apps, settings and data. Therefore it will contain the reason for your shutdown loop I am afraid.

As above, I only really want to recover SMS / contacts / game progress. Is there a way of restoring just this part of the data from the backup and ignoring everything else? Could Titanium Backup do this from the Nandroid backup?

The problem you have with Titanium is that it requires 4 - 10 minutes of phone on time to complete a backup.

You may find the following thread useful as it is concerned with extracting information from a nandroid backup...

Extract/Restore SMS/MMS, Contacts/Call Log, and Launcher Config. From Nandroid Backup

 

[mjsw]

A nandroid backup is a mirror image, a snapshot in time if you like, of your entire phone, OS, apps, settings and data. Therefore it will contain the reason for your shutdown loop I am afraid.

It seems to have backed it up in about 5 different parts: boot, cache, data, system, sd-ext. I was hoping the the boot loop problem may be caused by say the OS, so I could restore just the data without the system and fix the problem.

The problem you have with Titanium is that it requires 4 - 10 minutes of phone on time to complete a backup.

That would have been a problem originally. But once I do a factory restore, I seem to have a fully functioning phone with no boot loop. I meant using Titanium to restore the required data from the existing Nandoid backup, not to create a new backup. Could I not just install Titanium following a factory reset, and then restore the SMS/Contacts etc with Titanium? Thanks for the link - I'll have a full look through it when I get home from work tonight.

 

[ironass]

It seems to have backed it up in about 5 different parts: boot, cache, data, system, sd-ext. I was hoping the the boot loop problem may be caused by say the OS, so I could restore just the data without the system and fix the problem.

That is dealt with in the link I posted.

That would have been a problem originally. But once I do a factory restore, I seem to have a fully functioning phone with no boot loop. I meant using Titanium to restore the required data from the existing Nandoid backup, not to create a new backup. Could I not just install Titanium following a factory reset, and then restore the SMS/Contacts etc with Titanium? Thanks for the link - I'll have a full look through it when I get home from work tonight.

A CWM, nandroid, backup and a Titanium backup are 2 different entities. See, here.

To restore from a Titanium backup, you will first need to have made a Titanium backup of your old configuration and data which takes 4-10 minutes with phone on.

 

[mjsw]

Right, I'm confused! The feature list on the Pro version of Titanium Backup seems to imply that it can restore from CWM backups too: "Restore individual apps+data from CWM backups!". This is what I hoping to do. As you say, I can't restore from a Titanium backup, because I can't create one due to the boot loop.

It's not entirely clear whether "apps+data" includes SMS/contacts, but someone here seems to have done it xda-developers - View Single Post - [Q] how to retrieve sms from nandroid? and also a few people in the link you posted earlier seem to have restored SMS from a CWM backup using Titanium (e.g post 11 and post 18). Why do you think this wouldn't work?

 

[ironass]

My bad I'm afraid!

I totally forgot about the experimental feature in TB.

 

[hamiltoncharles]

Do what I did, since the only modee you can enter is Download Mode (Odin).
Flash a different recovery using Odin3 ( in my case I had FonePaw Android Data Recovery and I flashed CWM recovery)
phone rebooted and went to recovery normally then to normal boot!

 

[ssanjysh]

Right, I'm confused! The feature list on the Pro version of Titanium Backup seems to imply that it can restore from CWM backups too: "Restore individual apps+data from CWM backups!". This is what I hoping to do. As you say, I can't restore from a Titanium backup, because I can't create one due to the boot loop.

It's not entirely clear whether "apps+data" includes SMS/contacts, but someone here seems to have done it xda-developers - View Single Post - [Q] how to retrieve sms from nandroid? and also a few people in the link you posted earlier seem to have restored SMS from a CWM backup using Titanium (e.g post 11 and post 18). Why do you think this wouldn't work?

In my opinion nandroid backs up everything so it has your messages, contacts, call logs etc.... Titanium backup is great to extract and restore nandroid backups but if it did not work try nandroid manager from play store... It does great job in restoring sms, call logs, contacts, apps+data etc...

 

[Cashew]

My phone is similar, a stock S3, and looks to be having a bootloop problems, maybe something else too. It open just fine in recovery and download modes. I'm hoping to recover some files on it before trying a factory reset which is what brought me to this post.

I'm also just learning about all these CWM and Nandroid backups and have been reading loads of posts. A few things are still unclear to me. If you can explain I'd much appreciate it.

- if my phone is stuck in bootloop, ie to the Samsung splash screen, can I root and then get CWM onto the phone? Or was mjsw only able to do that because he could use the phone briefly? Everything I've found so far on making a Nandroid backup assumes a working phone.

- if I'm reading this correctly then once I have a Nandroid backup I would be able to pick out some files, like sms history, and restore just them to the newly factory reset and hopefully working phone

- is it typical for a phone to turn off and sometime on randomly with bootloop problems? Mine gets to the splash screen and dies. It also will sometimes try to turn on if I jiggle it around

Thanks!