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Root [International] ROM help?

B

bigross86

Newbie
I'm really new at this, so please bear with me.

Recently I've noticed that my S3 has been running slowly, frequently freezing and requiring a "10-second power button hold" restart. After doing some research I discovered that this was most likely due to Touchwiz causing problems.

After consulting with some folks that know what they're talking about, we reached the conclusion that I'm better off just flashing and installing a custom ROM, instead of going through all the hassle of messing with Touchwiz, which might not even work in the end.

I found a site with a guide and links to the programs that showed me how to root, and I've successfully rooted the phone and installed SuperUser. My questions are:

1) Which ROM is the most stable one out there, and can anyone post links, please?
2) Can anyone direct me to a guide that will provide me with step by step instructions on how to go about flashing my phone and installing the new ROM without bricking the phone?
3) When I flash and install a new ROM, what happens to the apps and data I already have on my phone? Do the apps stay and are transferred to the new ROM, or will I need to download them again? Same with my media files, pics, vids, songs, etc.... Will they stay on the phone and show up on the new ROM, or will I need to copy everything to the phone again?

Thankx in advance for all your help!
 
First things first, did the root method you used install a custom recovery? If it did then before you do anything boot into recovery and run a full nandroid backup. If you run into problems restoring this will get you back to a working phone.

Next download Titanium Backup from Play store, I'd recommend you pay for pro version as it's money well spent for any rooted user. Use TB to backup user apps + system data, you will loose your app installs when flashing a custom ROM, and restoring from TB saves time plus restores the app data as well so you keep settings, game data etc. Recommend you set both custom recovery and TB backup locations to your SD card.

For ROMs I'd stick to xda developers forum, just make sure you pick a ROM built for your phone. On Tapatalk so can't see what device you have but popular ROMs for international gt9300 S3 include Wanamlite, Neatrom, Omega all Touch wiz based, or you can go with pure AOSP or AOKP but these don't have the Samsung features being pure Android.

The sticky at the top in here has links to various useful guides.
 
Next download Titanium Backup from Play store, I'd recommend you pay for pro version as it's money well spent for any rooted user.
Click to expand...

+1, TB is definitely money well spent and will become invaluable if you go through a lot of ROMs.

As for ROMs, it depends what you're after really. You can go for Touchwiz based ROMs (which are the most stable) which will usually run a lot better than the stock ROM, or you can go for AOSP based such as Cyanogenmod, AOKP, Paranoid Android etc which operate and look like Nexus devices. These aren't the most stable at times - battery life is not as good, lots of random reboots, graphic glitches etc but they are still pretty good.

Basically take a look through these two sub forums in XDA -

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1566

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1685

and see what takes your fancy.

3) When I flash and install a new ROM, what happens to the apps and data I already have on my phone? Do the apps stay and are transferred to the new ROM, or will I need to download them again? Same with my media files, pics, vids, songs, etc.... Will they stay on the phone and show up on the new ROM, or will I need to copy everything to the phone again?
Click to expand...

As Saltire has said, you will lose all your apps when you wipe and flash a new ROM (this won't be the case if you are upgrading ROM versions usually) Titanium Backup will make sure you don't lose any :D I should mention that wiping your phone in a custom recovery will not wipe your photos, music, videos etc. All that will be kept on the phone. If you do a reset in the stock recovery (which is in the phone settings), everything will be gone (but you don't need to do that! :))

The installation process will be different depending on what ROM you choose, so when you find one you like let us know and we can guide you through it :)
 
First of all, thanks for the help. How would I be able to check (and if necessary, install) a custom recovery? The root I used was CF-Auto-Root-m0-m0xx-gti9300.tar and Odin3_v3.07, which installed SuperUser on my phone.

One of my friends told me about SentinelROM, which apparently is a decent, stable ROM for the Galaxy S3. How would I go about finding/downloading it?
 
To backup your apps, go to the main screen and there should be a little box with a tick at the top right hand corner, which will take you to the Batch Actions page. You want to go with 'Backup all user apps' and press Run. Select the ones you want to backup (or all of them) and run it. Depending how many apps you have it could take 10+ minutes.

I would advise not to backup system data (anything in red) but if you do, don't restore it on a new ROM otherwise it will cause lots of force closes and errors and is generally a bit of a pain :)
 
bigross86 said:
First of all, thanks for the help. How would I be able to check (and if necessary, install) a custom recovery? The root I used was CF-Auto-Root-m0-m0xx-gti9300.tar and Odin3_v3.07, which installed SuperUser on my phone.
Click to expand...

Sorry I missed this one. To boot into recovery you hold down the Power, Home and Volume Up buttons for a few seconds. I think you can do this when the phone is on and it will turn off then boot to recovery. You can also do this whilst powering the phone on.
 
CDPlant said:
Sorry I missed this one. To boot into recovery you hold down the Power, Home and Volume Up buttons for a few seconds. I think you can do this when the phone is on and it will turn off then boot to recovery. You can also do this whilst powering the phone on.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm running Titanium now to backup all my apps

What does booting into recovery do? Does this effect the files and data I have on my phone, in any way? How does this create/install a custom recovery?

Sorry for all the questions, but like I said, I'm new at this, and I don't wanna screw anything up....
 
bigross86 said:
First of all, thanks for the help. How would I be able to check (and if necessary, install) a custom recovery? The root I used was CF-Auto-Root-m0-m0xx-gti9300.tar and Odin3_v3.07, which installed SuperUser on my phone.

One of my friends told me about SentinelROM, which apparently is a decent, stable ROM for the Galaxy S3. How would I go about finding/downloading it?
Click to expand...

Here you go Download
 
1. Download appropriate rom onto sd card
2. Go into recovery
3. Factory reset/wipe data
4. Wipe cache
5. Wipe Dalvich (IDK how to spell) cache
6. Install from sd card.
7. Install the zip file
8. Go back and click Reboot

IF you have any questions, look here since there are tons of questions from me when i was worried. :D http://androidforums.com/internatio...726718-questions-flashing-now-im-bricked.html
You wont get bricked unless you download the wrong version which i did. :P
 
bigross86 said:
Thanks, I'm running Titanium now to backup all my apps

What does booting into recovery do? Does this effect the files and data I have on my phone, in any way? How does this create/install a custom recovery?
Click to expand...

A custom recovery is where you flash new ROMs, kernels etc. This is also where you need to wipe data, cache, dalvik cache etc (but we'll get to that later ;))

This is also where you do Nandroid backups, to backup your entire system just in case something goes wrong. It takes a complete snapshot image of your current ROM, so if you restore it everything will be exactly as it was. This is absolutely essential - every time you want to flash a new ROM you need to make a backup of the previous one.

If you boot into your recovery, you'll find either the stock or custom recovery. The stock recovery will look like this (notice the 3e at the top.) If this comes up, you'll need to flash a custom recovery. I'm afraid my knowledge of this stops here as I don't use Odin so I don't exactly know the process :( I'm pretty sure you use Odin though.

A custom recovery will look more like this (notice the 'CWM' at the top.) This is where you would take the ROM in a .zip format and flash it.

If you have the stock one, just don't press anything like wipe data ;) You should be able to just 'reboot system now' to take you back and nothing will change.

bigross86 said:
Sorry for all the questions, but like I said, I'm new at this, and I don't wanna screw anything up....
Click to expand...

No worries mate :) That's what we're here for! I was doing the exact same thing when I started :)
 
Sorry it's taken me so long to reply...

I booted into recovery and this is what showed up:

Reboot system now
Apply update from ADB
Apply update from external storage
Wipe data/factory reset
Wipe cache partition
Apply update from cache


# Manual Mode #
--Appling Multi-CSC...
Applied the CSC-code : TTT
Successfully applied multi-CSC.
Click to expand...

From this I'm assuming that I do have a custom ROM...

I downloaded sentinel from the link that was posted here to the sentinel website. What do I do now?
 
That's the stock recovery. You'll need a custom recovery to flash ROM's. Flash the i9300 .tar version of this with Odin
Philz Recovery

To flash put the .tar in pda, put your phone in download mode, connect to your pc and press start.
 
Okay, so I downloaded and used Odin and that Philz thing, now when I go into recovery it shows me the Philz screen. So now how do I install Sentinel?
 
MAKE SURE TO NANDROID BACKUP. I like rommanager.

1. Download appropriate rom onto sd card (Plug phone onto windows open files and put it in anywhere in the sdcard. MAKE SURE YOU DOWNLOAD THE RIGHT VERSION. Or else you can brick your phone.
2. Go into recovery
3. Factory reset/wipe data
4. Wipe cache
5. Wipe Dalvich (IDK how to spell) cache
6. Install from sd card.
7. Install the zip file
8. Go back and click Reboot

Actual instructions here. http://www.sentinelit.com.au/sentinelrom/installation/
 
So, two more quick questions:

1) What exactly am I copying to the SD card? The entire contents of the "sentinelrom_v4_60_i9300" .zip file, or do I need to unzip everything into a separate folder?

2) What is a nandroid backup, and should or shouldn't I do it? One fella says yes, one fella says no, and I really don't wanna brick me phone.....
 
You copy the whole zip file over, don't unzip it.

A nandroid is a full backup of your phone, you do this from your custom recovery. Shotgun just meant don't use ROM manager to do this. So boot into Philz recovery and under "backup and restore" menu there's various options, I use the "backup to external SD card" option. Do this first before you wipe or flash anything.
 
Okay, cool, thanks! I'm going on vacation over the weekend and I'm gonna try and do this Sunday night when I get home. I'll update with whatever happens.

One more thing, what do I do if the whole process doesn't work? How do I get my phone back to the way it was before? I used Titanium, and I do the nandroid backup. Let's say my phone stops working, how do I restore it?

Thanks a whole bunch, guys!
 
It's unlikely if you follow the instructions to the letter but if something does go wrong you should still be able to get into recovery mode. So just restore the nandroid from there.
 
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