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Root [Virgin Mobile] Bricked after 4.4.2 update

SgtMacabre

SgtMacabre

Member
My s3 was running jdsingles 4.3. My Knox flag was tripped because I had my phone warranty replaced three months ago and it was delivered with 4.3 and Knox..I promptly rooted and used for months...no issues...Everything was cool.. I was rooted on tweaked stick 4.3. Two days ago I downloaded and installed the new 4.4.2 from jdsingle. It Installed and booted fine...I noticed that I had no data signal...so I figured I would reboot.. I pulled the battery and put it back in.. NOW....The phone will not turn on..I get nothing..no splash screen...no error screen...nothing.. No response...anyone know anything about this??
 
SgtMacabre said:
My s3 was running jdsingles 4.3. My Knox flag was tripped because I had my phone warranty replaced three months ago and it was delivered with 4.3 and Knox..I promptly rooted and used for months...no issues...Everything was cool.. I was rooted on tweaked stick 4.3. Two days ago I downloaded and installed the new 4.4.2 from jdsingle. It Installed and booted fine...I noticed that I had no data signal...so I figured I would reboot.. I pulled the battery and put it back in.. NOW....The phone will not turn on..I get nothing..no splash screen...no error screen...nothing.. No response...anyone know anything about this??
Click to expand...

Are you able to get into recovery.. Do you have philz touch recovery?
 
Darien153 said:
Are you able to get into recovery.. Do you have philz touch recovery?
Click to expand...

No recovery..no download mode..nothing...tried different batteries..its not that... Led indicator light only lights up with batt out and plugged in to ac charger..will not light with batt in and plugged in. Tried recovery.. Tried download mode ..even tried master reset( same as getting into recovery mode without the home key)

I get no response to anything ..any combo of buttons yields continued black screen.. No response what so ever
 
SgtMacabre said:
No recovery..no download mode..nothing...tried different batteries..its not that... Led indicator light only lights up with batt out and plugged in to ac charger..will not light with batt in and plugged in. Tried recovery.. Tried download mode ..even tried master reset( same as getting into recovery mode without the home key)
Click to expand...

What keys did you press to get into recovery
 
Darien153 said:
What keys did you press to get into recovery
Click to expand...

I'm well versed in android and Linux. I understand how to initiate recovery mode.. There's nothing in the flash process I omitted or did incorrectly. ( recovery mode is power+vol up+ hone key....download mode is vol down+home+power .master reset is vol up+ power
 
Darien153 said:
Hmm so weird. No Samsung screen?
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Absolutely nothing...that's why I assumed it wasn't bricked...just dead...just such a coincidence that it happened on the first reboot after the kit Kat update..I started thinking maybe knox bricked it even though I'm not downgrading... I dunno..virgin is replacing it for me..thankfully I'm still in warranty...was just curious if anyone experienced this ... I'm going to continue to assume that the phone just died coincidentally after the kit Kat flash unless someone has experienced similar..
 
SgtMacabre said:
Absolutely nothing...that's why I assumed it wasn't bricked...just dead...just such a coincidence that it happened on the first reboot after the kit Kat update..I started thinking maybe knox bricked it even though I'm not downgrading... I dunno..virgin is replacing it for me..thankfully I'm still in warranty...was just curious if anyone experienced this ... I'm going to continue to assume that the phone just died coincidentally after the kit Kat flash unless someone has experienced similar..
Click to expand...

Lol virgin mobile did the same when my phone was "bricked" lol it started working at the last second. But I might ask for another since I have severe screen burn in...
 
SgtMacabre said:
My s3 was running jdsingles 4.3. My Knox flag was tripped because I had my phone warranty replaced three months ago and it was delivered with 4.3 and Knox..I promptly rooted and used for months...no issues...Everything was cool.. I was rooted on tweaked stick 4.3. Two days ago I downloaded and installed the new 4.4.2 from jdsingle. It Installed and booted fine...I noticed that I had no data signal...so I figured I would reboot.. I pulled the battery and put it back in.. NOW....The phone will not turn on..I get nothing..no splash screen...no error screen...nothing.. No response...anyone know anything about this??
Click to expand...

Why did you pull the batt to reboot? Your phone may have been doing something update-wise and you interrupted the update. Also, I don't believe the 4.4.2 zip from jdsingle installs the new NDC or ND8 fw necessary to run it. So as far as your ROM is concerned, it does not recognize the bootloader or the modem FW you have.

The proper procedure is to install the available ND8 (Sprint version) or NDC (Virgin Mobile version) recovery tar balls before trying to install any 4.4 TW Roms.

1) Install NDC tar ball via Odin from a PC (the mobile Odin apparently can and regularly does brick phones) The ND8 tar ball usually requires a custom recovery and the APN fix. NDC can just be installed and rebooted.
***Everything beyond this point is completely optional. Depends if you want custom Recovery and or a custom ROM installed***
2) Immediately install Philz LTE tar ball via Odin on PC.
3) Reboot into recovery and use Philz reroot options.
4) Install what ever ROM you want.
4a) Optional: If you install anything other than the TW 4.4.2 rom you will likely need to run the APN fix found in another thread.
5) Reboot
 
Hatchasaurus said:
Why did you pull the batt to reboot? Your phone may have been doing something update-wise and you interrupted the update. Also, I don't believe the 4.4.2 zip from jdsingle installs the new NDC or ND8 fw necessary to run it. So as far as your ROM is concerned, it does not recognize the bootloader or the modem FW you have.

The proper procedure is to install the available ND8 (Sprint version) or NDC (Virgin Mobile version) recovery tar balls before trying to install any 4.4 TW Roms.

1) Install NDC tar ball via Odin from a PC (the mobile Odin apparently can and regularly does brick phones) The ND8 tar ball usually requires a custom recovery and the APN fix. NDC can just be installed and rebooted.
***Everything beyond this point is completely optional. Depends if you want custom Recovery and or a custom ROM installed***
2) Immediately install Philz LTE tar ball via Odin on PC.
3) Reboot into recovery and use Philz reroot options.
4) Install what ever ROM you want.
4a) Optional: If you install anything other than the TW 4.4.2 rom you will likely need to run the APN fix found in another thread.
5) Reboot
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that's not possible as I can't get the phone to be seen by PC in any mode.. I can't get into any mode.. The phone doesn't turn on...I did flash the modem fw with the 4.4 update but that's all.. I flashed jdsingles 4.4 stock and the modem fw..
 
What I was saying was that you have to install the NDC tar ball through Odin before you even attempt to install jdsingle's rom. If you do not do that it will brick your phone, as the ROM is looking for the NDC bootloader and your phone will still be on whatever bootloader 4.3 was on. There may be ways of recovering it, maybe through Jtag? Other than that I think you are boned.
Here is a link to the recovery you should have installed first through Odin.
If you did not install the recovery from the link above, then you did not install the NDC bootloader and that is why your phone bricked when you tried to install jdsingles ROM.
Basically, 4.4 moved a bunch of file structure stuff around, so 4.3 bootloader won't know where to find the proper start up files.
 
SgtMacabre said:
Unfortunately that's not possible as I can't get the phone to be seen by PC in any mode.. I can't get into any mode.. The phone doesn't turn on...I did flash the modem fw with the 4.4 update but that's all.. I flashed jdsingles 4.4 stock and the modem fw..
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Well... I believe you would need to have the Knox boot loader. Sorry if I did not read through this. I'm not sure. Again sorry this happened to you. Hopefully ppl will as stop bricking their phone.. I'm starting to wonder if Virgin Mobile can figure out if we are rooting our phones (if asked) and deny our claim for a replacement phone....
 
I don't think that will ever happen, or if it does it will be part of a pre-screen questionnaire. "What were you doing when the defect occurred?" type of stuff. (If you answer, "Rooting my phone" to that question, you are an idiot and deserve to pay full price for a replacement)
They could possibly try to retroactively charge you for a new phone if they recover yours and see the Knox bit is tripped. But I doubt that would happen and they would likely spell something like that out in the TOS.
It is likely just more cost effective to replace a phone as defective and keep a paying customer than it is to attempt to charge them then have them just switch services and never pay anyways.
 
My phone has a blank screen also. I too am very smart when it comes to rooting and installing custom roms. I have been rooting phones for over 4 years now with success. This phone is my first fail. Just as the OP described there is no recovery mode, download mode, or even any sign of any kind of a boot attempt. The only indication of anything happening is if you pull the battery and plug it in to the charger the red LED comes on. My phone HAD an exception when it first started doing this. it would vibrate for a second but has stopped since. also when i plug it in to my computer and try to boot the phone in any mode, my computer makes the mount sound for the usb for a brief second but does nothing.. other than that nothing has worked for me. I tried booting into download mode via home+volume down+power (keeping in mind that the screen might be the only thing not working.) so after giving it some time, i then hit the volume up button to continue into download mode, which at that point odin should have picked up the com port, but it didn't. So I feel pretty safe to say that our phones are beyond repair without hooking them up to a sophisticated Samsung computer to reprogram the motherboard. Unless someone else has any clever ideas...?
 
I read into the debrick method above a little more. We do not need a debrick img for the most current NDC, but the modem/bootloader we were upgrading from (MK5 in my case, if you bricked coming from ND8 I think you might be out of luck). All the IMG files I found were for sprint, and I dont think those will work because they are based on the sprint bootloader. Can any one point me in the right direction for info on how to make one of these img files based on the mk5 bootloader?
 
hatredg0d said:
I read into the debrick method above a little more. We do not need a debrick img for the most current NDC, but the modem/bootloader we were upgrading from (MK5 in my case, if you bricked coming from ND8 I think you might be out of luck). All the IMG files I found were for sprint, and I dont think those will work because they are based on the sprint bootloader. Can any one point me in the right direction for info on how to make one of these img files based on the mk5 bootloader?
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Check this thread out: http://androidforums.com/boost-mobile-galaxy-s3-all-things-root/771877-how-truly-unbrick-your-sgs3-boost-sgs3.html

It's for Boost, but we use the same Odin tar and stuff so I would think it would be the same. Maybe ask in that thread if it hasn't been already I didn't read the whole thing.
http://androidforums.com/boost-mobi...7-how-truly-unbrick-your-sgs3-boost-sgs3.html
 
mydian said:
It's for Boost, but we use the same Odin tar and stuff so I would think it would be the same.
Click to expand...
I will look into that more tomorrow if i have time. I read that we now use the same (NDC) but I was under the impression that was different for MK5. I also found a script for making the recovery img's, I might try that tomorrow too if i can find the stock mk5 tar.
 
Well I found out why I was bricked... the very first thing you jab to do is flash the KK boot loader in Odin.. before you flash the Rom and modem... if you flash the rom without using Odin to put the KK boot loader this hard brick occurs...according to jdsingles there is NO fix for this..even a Jtag repair will not fix it.. sorry to bring the bad news..I've since received my new phone and its all good now..

Good luck
 
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