Root Last nights terrible experience

[ChiweN]

Okay, bear with me. It's been a long night. In another thread I told someone they can get rid if root by doing a factory reset. Okay, stupid of me, I know. Moving on..

I did start to think.. wait a minute.. that won't work.. so I tried it myself. Apparently my reset is corrupt. I did the factory reset, restarted and the metro wallpaper was back on the lockscreen. However, setup force closed and once you slide over to unlock the screen was black. No way too access anything. I think.. awesome! Zzz. I restart the phone. Boot loop. Great!

I go into Odin, re-odin with the pre root package. Eureka! It works. I learn soon after though, if I restart the phone, the screen won't respond. I do another factory reset, I figured.. hell why not, its messed up anyways. It only does a partial reset.. restored maybe half of the apps I deleted, and no system apps.

As soon as it reboots, my 4g drops out. 3g watch dog. Notifies me my sim card was pulled out. Settings/about phone tells me my lte radio is unknown (if you owned an indulge, you know this is a DAMNIT!! moment.)

Seconds after checking my lte status, FOTA message pops up, tells me enhancements are being made to my phone, and it will be inoperable during this time. There's a 10 second countdown. Timer hits zero, message says FOTA failed the update, to go to a MetroPCS store. 4g icon suddenly pops up again, 3g watch dog says my sim has been replaced. Lte radio is no longer unknown.

I restart my phone, screen is unresponsive to any input. Message pops up, launcher pro isn't responding, force close or wait. I wait. It finally works. Phone is fine today, rooted, bloat removed back to normal.

I'm really REALLY baffled at all of this. What a night.. any insight as to what actually happened last night shabby? K0nane?

Did metro do a radio update last night also, or was this my phone acting crazy during this process.

I was messing with this to begin with last night to further my understanding, yes it was stupid, but I feel you can't learn unless you risk it and get a little dirty. Irregardless, I don't think what happened is normal lol.

Fair warning guys, learn from this lol. I don't recommend doing a factory reset after you have rooted.

 

[Shabbypenguin]

lol, a factory reset wont touch anything that the rooted tar covers. aka all your bloat will still be gone. you need to understand that a factory reset works when you are unrooted, cuz then you havent altered system at all... thus taking you back to factory... but since you have removed crap it just wipes data and cache

 

[ChiweN]

lol, a factory reset wont touch anything that the rooted tar covers. aka all your bloat will still be gone. you need to understand that a factory reset works when you are unrooted, cuz then you havent altered system at all... thus taking you back to factory... but since you have removed crap it just wipes data and cache

OK, but why did it do everything else that it did? If it just cleared data and cache, wouldn't it have just removed the changes I made such as my installed apps and settings? It should have still worked after the reset then, just missing my apps and data, but instead it became unresponsive, then boot looped. And the FOTA crap.

I'm not doubting what you are saying, I guess I just don't understand why what happened, happened.

Re-odining put everything back on the phone, including system apps (for obvious reasons, I'm just pointing this out because this is how I had to fix it)

 

[ChiweN]

OK shabby I'm gonna have a go at this, I'm using my head now, lol I think I know what happened.

Based on what you say, a factory reset is misleading. People think factory reset is equivalent to a windows reformat, complete wipe and restore. But in reality it only removes user data and what not. It doesn't touch system files. And why would it.. by logic they would assume system files are protected from us making changes, so they should remain the same, intact, therefore should not ever need to be restored. We circumvent that by rooting.

Now what I think happened is this. When I removed bloat, I removed touchwiz and installed launcher pro. When I did a 'factory restore', it removed my data, including launcher pro. However, it did not restore touchwiz, as its function is not to alter/restore system files.

With both gone, when I rebooted .. guess what.. I had no launcher lol. And there folks, was the beginning of my issues, that's why I had a black screen and no icons/dock.

I still don't know why I boot looped when I restarted.

Still don't know why FOTA activated.


Am I understanding this right shabby?

Edit : apologies for the double post.

 

[Shabbypenguin]

absolutly correct, wasnt sure of teh issues but now knowing what you removed, yea it explains 90% of your story

and your correct on teh factory reset, the best way i can describe it to people is odin is a windows install disc, factory reset is just sending my documents to the trash bin, doesnt mean crsp if you deleted cmd.exe ;P

 

[ChiweN]

absolutly correct, wasnt sure of teh issues but now knowing what you removed, yea it explains 90% of your story

and your correct on teh factory reset, the best way i can describe it to people is odin is a windows install disc, factory reset is just sending my documents to the trash bin, doesnt mean crsp if you deleted cmd.exe ;P

Good stuff. I feel some what accomplished lol. Thanks for clearing it up shabby