[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] leenukes:
Hello all,

please forgive me first of all because I've had very little sleep due to this issue. And its a long thread, but more detail is better generally I believe.

First, some background, and unfortunately, it starts with my wifes phone.

My wife has a Galaxy S GT-i9000 on Orange in the UK. She has had it, probably about a year maybe at most. She has a few apps that she has downloaded but nothing major and on first looks when I got it nothing I expect would cause this issue, just facebook etc.

My wife came home and said, my phone keeps coming up with a message saying force close. Ahh, I thought, some apps gone nuts, but alas, it appeared to be many apps including Maps, Google Upload (I assume this is a system process), Facebook Katana and many more, probably about 20 Force Close messages pop up one after the other and it lags whilst trying.

Odd, I thought, I also noticed the icon for one of the apps on her homescreen had changed to the default White and Green one with the android on it.

I suspected something had gone wrong (obviously), I asked if she had rebooted it and she said she had. So, I rebooted it again, just incase. Same problem.

I then thought it might need an update, it was running official Kies 2.3.3 (or was it 2.3.4, I forget) so I plugged it into my netbook and ran Kies, had to update that as it didn't have the latest application update. I then started the firmware update, after backing up the phone using Kies.

Halfway through the update, Kies popped up a message saying something went wrong and that I had to unplug the phone, take out the battery and reboot. Odd, I thought as the phone was telling me to not doing anything. I waited a minute, nothing further happened, so I did this. Then I got the Black Screen of Death with the phone, the dots and the computer screen.

Crap!!! I thought, I managed to get into Download mode, and reflash it using what I believe was an official ROM using Odin. I then rebooted, and found that it STILL had the data on it and it STILL was doing the force close. At least I had it back to "working" though so I was mildly happy.

I then did a factory reset using the menu system, erased the USB storage (there is no external SD card in her phone) and rebooted, still force closing but prompting me to setup again. Weird. I went through the setup slowly, as every second or so a force close would popup, then when I completed the setup (which still had the wifi settings, account settings etc in it) the System Setup crashed with Force Close. I then rebooted and got to the Home Screen, but still crashing.

I rebooted and used the recovery screen to clear the cache and factory reset, despite the warnings I will lose everything, nothing was wiped.

I tried to update using Kies again but it tells me that the firmware/device is not supported. I am now trying to see if I can use Odin to install a Kies supported firmware. So that I can then try an update using that again.

Anyone got any suggestions, at present, my thoughts are, I was going well within the realms of warranty up until I reflashed it using Odin to try and get back in as I'd only used Kies to update and the issue "just started happening" without my missus doing anything.

There are no signs of damage on the phone and she tells me it was just sat on her desk all day.

So, my question is, what now? I'm of the opinion based on the above that if I can't reflash a warranty supported Kies update, then maybe a custom ROM will be worth a shot to see if its a hardware failure or if its software. I just have never had an issue like this with my HTC Desire and I've ran many custom ROMs and standard ROMs on it.

I do have the .tmp file of the update Kies downloaded, and I also have a Binary folder which has some file inside a couple more folders but its not a .tar or a .zip because when I try renaming it (after a copy) it won't open.

So, suggestions on a postcard, thanks if you got this far through this nightmare. All help massively appreciated.

Edit: it appears to be the same issue as this: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=822238

I'll try some of their suggestions. Today I also did the *2767*3855# today which I found after a bit more searching. Same problem after a reboot. Force close and data still there.