[Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking] Nodesurfer:
Need Guidance before proceeding With My S3.

Hi Samuel, or anybody else that can help. I've been lurking here for quite a while and have learned much. I've never needed any help until now, but didn't really feel like I knew enough to PROVIDE it. Not as well as some of you guys do. Anyway, if you want to help again, this is your chance to help me and I would surely appreciate it.

My situation, as brief as I can make it so you have the whole picture:

1) I have a Samsung SCH-I535 US VZW GS3 (D2VZW) which I rooted and installed CyanogenMod on at least a year ago. I have been running that and playing with the new versions, until I finally decided I liked CM10.2 Stable, JB4.3.1, the best. My setup was perfect and I had a good CWM backup that I could flash at will and return to my favorite state.

2) One day, all of a sudden, without having changed anything in a while, I lost the ability to SEND SMS messages. I could receive them, but not send or reply to them. It would say "Sending" for a couple of minutes and then say it couldn't be sent. Strangely, if I rebooted, I could send ONE SMS, after that, "Sending..." but no send. MMS messages, data, internet, calls, and Wi-Fi were all working fine. Trying alternative text apps yielded the same results.

3) I restored my CM10.2 backup, but the problems remained. So I wiped it and flashed a stock but rooted JB 4.1.2 ROM from Scott's ROM's. It worked and I was back with everything working as it should. After getting all my apps and data set back up, all was well.

4) After running with that for a few days, I decided I liked running a stock rooted ROM pretty well, and missed a few features about JB4.3. So I downloaded the stock Samsung 4.3 ROM for US VZW S3 direct from Samsung, flashed it, and it worked great. I even still had root access.

5) That's where my problem started. I wanted to make a CWM backup, so I told the CWM GUI to reboot into Recovery Mode. Upon reboot, instead of the familiar Clockwork Mod Touch recovery console, I got the dreaded "unauthorized software detected, take your phone to your carrier..." error screen. That's all I got when booted with the Volume up-Home-Power button combo. Apparently, I had wiped out my CWM Touch boot recovery. Now though, I was not able to boot my phone beyond the error.

6) I WAS able to launch stock recovery with the Volume down-Home-Power combo, so what I did was to re-flash the same stock Samsung 4.3 ROM, this time from my Windows 7 laptop, with ODIN, and all was good again. So I tried sending the CWM Touch .tar with Odin and dorked it. AGAIN. :(

7) After a little research, I learned what the problem was. The fact that my system status was Custom: Yes, Flash (Knox) counter: 1, and boot-loader: I535VRUCML1. So I put it in stock recovery, pushed the Samsung 4.3 ROM again, used Safe-Root to re-root, gave root access back to all my apps that needed it in Super SU, used Triangle Away to reset the counters, and all was perfect. Again.

8) Now the problem/question: The phone is rooted again. The phone status is showing Counter: 0, Binary: Official, Device: SCH-I535, System: Official, and the I535VRUCML1 boot-loader. All I want to do is to flash the CWM Touch recovery. Is the fact that the boot-loader is not unlocked going to result in the same thing happening, or has resetting the Custom and Knox items going to let it work? Also, my phone now seems to be able to do OTA's (It says my phone is up to date, when i check) I have used Titanium Backup pro (already had that before all this) to freeze SDM 1.0, so now it says "Unfortunately settings has stopped" when I check for updates. Unfreeze that, and it seems to be happy again. I really just want to run the stock rooted 4.3 and have my CWM touch. I may or may not ever go to Kit-Kat, as I didn't care for the CM version of it. So...can I flash the Touch Recovery now with ODIN and will it work, or do I need to unlock the boot-loader, and if so, what method is best? I have the SDM and the Knox notification frozen, along with some other bloatware items, and will probably leave them that way...at least until I see what the released Kit-Kat looks like on my wife's stock S3. It's not out on Verizon yet, at least not in my area.

Thanks in advance for any help. Sorry for the "manifesto", and thanks for reading if you made it this far. I figured giving all the information up front would be better than playing "20 questions" after a less complete explanation.

Thanks,

Mike