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Help Phone stuck in boot loop (non-rooted)

A

AceMathias

Well-Known Member
Hi,

My friend has a UK S3 on the 3 network.
The other day when turning it on it it just gets as far as the first screen with the white text "Samsung galaxy S3 GTi9300". It gets no further and remains on that screen until the battery is pulled. If the power button is held it simply powers off and then immediately back on again.

Whilst she has dropped the phone in the past it has only suffered cosmetic damage and the occasional non requested power off and on(yeah the drops may have damaged something internally). However, no further falls/water damage etc was experienced by the phone when the problem above occurred.
I should also stress that the phone was not rooted and she thinks was on 4.3.

In an attempt to fix it (i have a rooted s3 so know a bit about the phone) i was able to get the phone into recovery mode. The below picture is what was displayed and did not look good.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzu9CkxlYC7beEJuSUExSXNmWUE/edit?usp=sharing


We tried wiping the cache and when that was unsuccessful at completing, tried a factory reset. This was also unsuccessful.

I was next thinking of trying to reinstall the firmware manually via sd card (if indeed this is a software issue as i hope...). However i would be unsure of exactly which version to use for the 3 network.

Does anyone have any ideas what to try next or what the issue may be? Thanks
 
AceMathias said:
Hi,

My friend has a UK S3 on the 3 network.
The other day when turning it on it it just gets as far as the first screen with the white text "Samsung galaxy S3 GTi9300". It gets no further and remains on that screen until the battery is pulled. If the power button is held it simply powers off and then immediately back on again.

Whilst she has dropped the phone in the past it has only suffered cosmetic damage and the occasional non requested power off and on(yeah the drops may have damaged something internally). However, no further falls/water damage etc was experienced by the phone when the problem above occurred.
I should also stress that the phone was not rooted and she thinks was on 4.3.

In an attempt to fix it (i have a rooted s3 so know a bit about the phone) i was able to get the phone into recovery mode. The below picture is what was displayed and did not look good.

edit


We tried wiping the cache and when that was unsuccessful at completing, tried a factory reset. This was also unsuccessful.

I was next thinking of trying to reinstall the firmware manually via sd card (if indeed this is a software issue as i hope...). However i would be unsure of exactly which version to use for the 3 network.

Does anyone have any ideas what to try next or what the issue may be? Thanks
Click to expand...

If its not rooted, its defective
 
ITS NOT DEFECTED just because your not rooted,i doubt its bricked beacuse you go to recovery kinda seems like somehow the os got corrupted. you are on the right track about flashing firmware just wrong method. your gonna need to grab odin and the firmware both you can grab off xda....what the problem you have is about the certainty of firmware that was on phone...if she was on 4.3 and you install firmware versions lower than 4.3 you will undoubtly brick phone so safe bet is to grab 4.3 firmware. Now with that being said rooting after words has its disadvantages which is oxymoronic but reasons being is with knox bootloader being installed with 4.3 that hasnt been beat yet by devs so cant reset flash counter ie no warranty. and others help out but isnt you cant flash custom roms???? anyways if you need help with how to use odin just post back and gl
 
dmcjr22 said:
ITS NOT DEFECTED just because your not rooted,i doubt its bricked beacuse you go to recovery kinda seems like somehow the os got corrupted. you are on the right track about flashing firmware just wrong method. your gonna need to grab odin and the firmware both you can grab off xda....what the problem you have is about the certainty of firmware that was on phone...if she was on 4.3 and you install firmware versions lower than 4.3 you will undoubtly brick phone so safe bet is to grab 4.3 firmware. Now with that being said rooting after words has its disadvantages which is oxymoronic but reasons being is with knox bootloader being installed with 4.3 that hasnt been beat yet by devs so cant reset flash counter ie no warranty. and others help out but isnt you cant flash custom roms???? anyways if you need help with how to use odin just post back and gl
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply.
So you saying i can't just install the firmware on sd card and flash directly from there?
Are you implying i need to root first?

Sorry if these are noobish questions, its been six months since i rooted my phone and it was on 4.1.2 and have forgotten a lot of the material.
At the time and i knew i had to root to install custom roms and gain access to su, which is what i wanted to achieve,
but she only needs a reflash of the stock firmware and so i thought you could maybe do this without root.
Warranty shouldn't be a problem as she is out of warranty.

If you could point me to a guide to root a 4.3 phone using odin, that would be great.
Also i'm unsure which stock firmware to use for the 3 network (given i can't check her settings), would it be the BTU one or the H3G?

Thanks.
 
Hi, you need to load Odin on your computer, then download the correct firmware, BTU is for SIM free phones only, I will check to see if I can isolate your firmware. If you follow one of the very good tutorials on XDA it will tell you how to install the firmware with Odin. Phil
 
Thanks very much for that link, should be able to follow that fine.

Any way i can check for 100% that is the right firmware to use for her phone (whilst she did buy from a 3 store, it could be a sim free version. Also she wasn't certain it was on 4.3)?

Note that obviously i can't navigate to the settings menu, where i would normally identify this...
 
Just an update for those that are interested.

Tried flashing the latest 4.3 three network firmware again (I9300XXUGND3_I9300H3GGND1_H3G). Whilst odin said it was successful, it still wouldn't boot past the samsung logo screen (even wiped to factory from recovery).

I then tried the rescue firmware that i found on xda
[ODIN_FIRMWARE] SGSIII I9300 Prerooted Stock Odex/Deodex & Rescue FW - Post #6 - XDA

I used the pit file from the 4.1.2 download, otherwise the remainder of the files from the 4.3 version. Again odin successfully pushed the files to the phone and it seemed to accept it ok. However it made no difference and the phone still gets to the same point.

Recovery mode looks no different to that shown in the picture previously (not sure if it displays) with the same errors of
E: failed to mount /efs (Stale NFS file handle)
E: failed to mount /system (invalid argument)
The android has fallen over with a red triangle too.

Think i'll have to give up on any further fix therefore and tell her it can't be saved. She is looking for a new hone soon so isn't too much of a loss.
Thanks everyone for your help, really appreciate it.
 
If it was me I'd persist but I'm stubborn. Sounds like it's a gonner though. at least sell it for the display spares mate :thumbup:
 
i am using moto e2 (2nd gen)....my device got stuck in twrp 2.8.6.0 boot loops.....all time i turned on it will directly open the twrp homw page....my device bootloader is unlocked but not rooted...plz help me how to get outof boot loops
 
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