[Epic 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tydynrain:
*First of all, let me say that this is a repost from here (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1153310&page=27), and I apologize for that fact. I have been severely neglecting food and sleep trying to fix my phone, and I really, really didn't feel like typing the whole damned story up again. Any assistance or insight would be deeply appreciated...

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Well, I did it this time I think. I've hacked, modded, wiped, and flashed my phone since I got it last year, and although I've gotten to places where I thought I had totally fuxored things up beyond recovery, every single time in the past I've been able to bring it back from the brink of oblivion. I am exceedingly resourceful and tenacious, which can be both a good and bad thing. Good thing when I am able to fix things that seem unfixable. Bad when I forget about things like eating or sleeping.

Here's the present situation: 4 days ago I was trying to flash a new modem (FB15)(something I know well how to do as I've done it many, many times before) through Odin, when it stalled out near the beginning of the process. This is not unusual with Odin, so I've gotten into the habit of closing it, pulling the battery, and starting again. This time, however, no matter what I've tried, I cannot get Odin to successfully flash. It fails every single time. Either that or it stalls yet again.

At the moment I can only get into 2 modes on my phone: download mode (which can't actually download anything apparently) and the very unpleasant computer--!--phone screen when I try to boot it up or go into recovery. This is the longest my phone has been unusable. I've been intensely focused on fixing it since it was semi-bricked. The ridiculously frustrating and annoying thing is that the computer I'm using (and I've used multiple to try to fix this across Windows, Linux, and Mac) usually says "USB device not recognized" when I plug my phone in while in download mode, no matter the state of the drivers, and when it does recognize it and it is visible in Odin, it means nothing because Odin fails no matter what file I'm trying to flash. When the computer and Odin DO recognize the phone, and when Odin doesn't hang, very occasionally it will give me some odd error message like "PIT mapping not found" or "cannot open COM port". I've tried so many of the things I've tried in the past that have worked: changing USB ports, rebooting the computer between attempts, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers, going into download mode with the SD-card and battery out and in, loading Odin after or before putting the phone into download mode, trying on different computers with different versions of Windows (I even tried one Mac with iOS 10.4 and a Linux notebook with Ubuntu), trying different USB cables, flashing with the battery and SD card out, trying to flash different files (besides the original modem.bin which stalled), running Odin as administrator, yadda, yadda, yadda...on and on, for days. I even just went out and bought a high-performance, super-short USB cable (6-inches) and a USB 3.0 PCI card so I'd have dedicated USB. Nada.

Basically my phone seems to have a broken download mode with potentially wonky USB (Samsung USB has never been good). I've been seeing if I can get Heimdall to work, though there is a bit of a learning curve with that program, no matter how easy people say it is. I've never even tried flashing it with it yet since I haven't gotten together all of the apparently necessary files. I also just found One-Click Unbrick, and while I was excited originally, it seems that the same outcome is the result. No matter what I do to get everything just right to be able to succeed, it fails. Java is installed, Heimdall is apparently installed, and the One-Click Unbrick drivers have been installed every time I've tried to run it. Nada again.

If my phone is able to get into download mode, yet that seems to be borked, what is my recourse? I'm at the end of my rope...*sinks into a depressed lump on the floor*.

ANY assistance would be immensely appreciated. Thank you all in advance. I'm not incredibly hopeful at this point, but I am (fortunately or unfortunately) still tenacious as hell. :-/

Setup:

Phone: Samsung Epic 4g

ROM: SleeperROM 2.0.04 EL30/MTD (Gingerbread 2.3.6)

Kernel: The last available Samurai kernel

Recovery: ClockworkMod Recovery 5.0.2.7

Filemap/Filesystem: MTD/Yaffs2

Present Computer: Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit/AMD desktop

Modes available on phone: download and computer--!--phone screens

Issue: cannot flash anything in download mode via Odin on present computer