yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
PM sent to getsaf

---------- Post added at 11:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:52 AM ----------

Good point...let me see what I can do.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] sleevasteve:
When I try to backup in terminal emulator it says "can not create SU. Read only file system." Same if I try to dd without doing the SU command first. It never asked me for root permissions though. I've created data on both SU and terminal and cleared caches in recovery. Also android debugging is selected in developer options. Any ideas?

Sent from my SGH-T999
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Intercrew:
Umm, so can someone answer my previous question. Is it possible to corrupt the IMEI from just rooting? Atm, I can only find incident of corrupting the IMEI through flashing stuff
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
At this point I would say that anything is possible, but I think just by rooting it is unlikely. Hopefully we can figure out what to back up and restore and it will not matter. :)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Maconi:
I believe the directory is /mnt/extSdCard on our phones. I don't have an sdcard handy to check, but last time I used one I was pretty positive that was the path I had to drill down into in Root Explorer to pull stuff of my card.

:highfive:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
lumbu suggested this:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=29033419&postcount=7

Everyone agree that this is the best way to attack this or does someone have a better idea?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lordmorphous:
Really won't know until somebody has a borked IMEI and a unborked one and can try the commands. Ideally, one would pull one img at a time from the new one and dd onto the borked one, boot up, check IMEI, then move on to the next until the IMEI shows up, if it does.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
Dude...that would be me...I have both devices on my laptop ready to go!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] drothenberger:
There is also a 4 MiB section of the internal SD card that is not in any of the partitions. This is where the flash count is kept, for example. It's possible the IMEI is also stored there. (It's also possible it's not stored on the internal SD card at all.)

It can be dumped with this command:

dd ibs=4194303 count=1 if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=mmcblk0_pre.img

It might be interesting to compare that block for a phone with an IMEI and a phone without. It would also be interesting to try backing up the block and restoring it if the IMEI gets wiped (or copying from a phone with an IMEI to a phone without). Of course, any of that could seriously brick your phone, so do that at your own risk.

I've personally backed up all my partitions and that 4 MiB block. If I lose my IMEI, I'll be doing comparisons at the very least, and maybe trying some restores.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] wavrunrx:
you would be a real hero if we can confirm where the imei is located.

i wish you luck, and lets all cross our fingers. :fingers-crossed:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
This will be my first test then...I'll back this up from the good phone and then restore to the bad.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
How's it going man? We could start up a google+ hangout if you want some help.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
Hey bud! Please! That would be great since I'm very green with this!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] wavrunrx:
maybe just jump on #xda-devs on freenode ?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
yahoo messenger, live messenger, etc...lets get this figured out!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
Give me a few min or so to eat (girlfriend just got done cooking) then we'll fire one up.. PM your email address anyone else who can help is free to join as well. Please only ask to join if you're VERY familliar with UNIX and/or the IMEI situation in general.

How's 4:30 sound?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
4:30 ET? I'm on MT.

---------- Post added at 02:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:56 PM ----------

Are you ready? :fingers-crossed:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lordmorphous:
:fingers-crossed::fingers-crossed:I know the rest of us are:fingers-crossed::fingers-crossed:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
I guess he must be on CT. lol
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
I am looking forward to hearing from you guys after this irc, keeping my fingers crossed :fingers-crossed:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] sabre31:
Kudos to zonly1 for willing to work on this and help us all out and to everyone else who helps him.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lumbu:
I'm solid on UNIX (that's the day job) so if you need anything holler

---------- Post added at 04:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:55 PM ----------

/external_sd is a mount point on CM9, stock was /mnt/extSdCard. Adjust paths accordingly.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
Nice to see you here! I'm going through your list now! Did not have any sb11-13..is that a problem?

EDIT: I found it was a typo on my end...
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] :
What the hell? I clicked on the spreadsheet and there was a bunch of racism and profanity. Did someone vandalize it or add a bunch of inappropriate new entries?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
Sorry about the time man, I should've been more specific about the time zone. I'm EST :)

I started a public hangout..

https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/ffcf466617bca97bcd24b71193e3b145b4559f49?authuser=0&hl=en-US

Or you can skype me: getsaf

Anything we can do to get a screen-share really.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
Okay...from the list that I posted earlier, these are the imgs that are different:

*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/boot of=/external_sd/boot_backup.img

new md5 FFE2F8370F1170531E5A3F2C5B89EAB9

old md5 9C47B0FEDE939C908D341B29F602D084

*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modemst1 of=/external_sd/modemst1_backup.img

new md5 9AC0E74550C1E3BCC95AB2DFFEA96028

old md5 E73F593ACE553784FCB14B247954AE56

*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modemst2 of=/external_sd/modemst2_backup.img

new md5 0F3E39E1377A80ABA237E7E5494BD8D0

old md5 AADBB524A34CC42A2D6AA1B5644408A0

*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/param of=/external_sd/param_backup.img

new md5 52BBF8F742FA2077E3C4F695FC06A593

old md5 913E18C160C7A88C1B80CAC9A7E25ED0

*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist of=/external_sd/persist_backup.img

new md5 D4C359472DC8626C09A30DBFBB08D12E

old md5 3F01C0DF1C59FC7AA2A621242388060C

Then I realized that I have CM9 on the new phone and just a stock+root on the pooched phone. I am in the process of making sure they are on the same kernel and ROM's now, but this is food for thought.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] drothenberger:
@zonly1: Can you also grab the first 4 MB of the internal SD card as described here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=29120735#post29120735
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] wavrunrx:
@zonly1

@drothenberger

join up on the google hangouts, im there with getsaf

getsaf's hangout is here:

https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/ffcf466617bca97bcd24b71193e3b145b4559f49?authuser=0&hl=en-US
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modemst1 of=/external_sd/modemst1_backup.img

new md5 9AC0E74550C1E3BCC95AB2DFFEA96028

old md5 E73F593ACE553784FCB14B247954AE56

old1md5 55414BAA8CA958062EED1C35089FE63B

*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modemst2 of=/external_sd/modemst2_backup.img

new md5 0F3E39E1377A80ABA237E7E5494BD8D0

old md5 AADBB524A34CC42A2D6AA1B5644408A0

old1md5 490DBF8A3A4163DDB5FC857ED003E706

*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/param of=/external_sd/param_backup.img

new md5 52BBF8F742FA2077E3C4F695FC06A593

old md5 913E18C160C7A88C1B80CAC9A7E25ED0

old1md5 863B3F7E337BFB5AB2191561A8A8335B

*dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist of=/external_sd/persist_backup.img

new md5 D4C359472DC8626C09A30DBFBB08D12E

old md5 3F01C0DF1C59FC7AA2A621242388060C

old1md5 2362F4636E0736F16E1C42727DE042FA

---------- Post added at 06:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:46 PM ----------

Sure hope this helps!

brokenmmcblk0_pre.rar

LMK if you need anything else please.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
Thanks for doing this.. Also, FYI everyone we have confirmed that replicating an EFS partition from a working phone to a non-working phone DOES NOT work.

Mr. zonly1, if you're feeling really squirly you could flash the working mmcblk0_pre.img onto your broken phone but, this could just bork your phone even worse.. Slight possibility it might work though (very slight).
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
That would make Samsung's engineers freak, wouldn't it. I'm game. :good:

Please provide the proper command...I would assume I would dd it back, but not sure I want to risk my assumption.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] drothenberger:
For those following along, that RAR is the first 4 MB of the internal SD card; the part that is not part of any partitions. It's the one from the borked phone.

I tried comparing it with the block from my phone, but there are a lot of differences. I'm on AT&T, so maybe that explains it. I did pull another copy from my phone and compared it to the one I made a few days ago and there are no differences, so it doesn't seem to change as the phone is operated.

Maybe another TMO user compare zonly1's block with the extract from their phone? Also, if an AT&T user wants to PM me, maybe we could compare the 4 MB blocks from our phones and see how much difference there is.

---------- Post added at 05:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:52 PM ----------

adb push mmcblk0_pre.img /sdcard
adb shell
su
cd /sdcard
dd bs=4194303 count=1 if=/sdcard/mmcblk0_pre.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0

I haven't tried this myself. Maybe someone else should confirm this sounds reasonable before you try it.

And just to be clear, there's a chance this will hard brick your phone. I don't know whether that will make Samsung refuse to service it or not.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
I would be happy to compare with my good phone if you'd be willing to walk me through it.

Also, yours is the voice of reason...I will wait for someone to concur before really screwing up my phone! :)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] wavrunrx:
ive got an AT&T sgs3.

i assume the proper sequence would be: ?

su
cd /sdcard
dd bs=4194303 count=1 if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/mmcblk0_pre.img

**edit

can the owner of the google spreadsheet revert to an earlier state, someone has gone an defaced it... douche bag

looks like its only the broken phone section whom were defaced.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
Hmmm, then why do we have different commands, but I'm on Tmo & the command you provided worked for me? I'm slightly confused, but I guess thats not too out of the ordinary, lol...
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lyriquidperfection:
Its all about hardlinks! ;)
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
Whoops, I quoted the wrong person, and it looks like what I was talking about is not of any importance now.. Ignore this:) ,

.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
I'll concur, that command looks ok to me.. Don't really need to cd /sdcard though but it won't hurt anything.

zonly, good luck, and as usual, this is at your own risk but you already have a brick right :)

Assuming you can get back to a shell afterwards, you can (theoretically) re-dd the original img back to restore the original state.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
Okay boys, I'm goin' in. Will report back.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
15mins, hope phone is alive. If he borks the phone beyond warranty, I say we all donate to bail him out!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
Thanks bro! Just had some fathering to do, but the deed is done.

Very interesting...it did not appear to hurt my phone at all. The good news is this...it brought my serial # back! The bad news is my IMEI is still borked.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Very quiet, are we running out of options?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] drothenberger:
Oh well. It was a long shot at best. This results doesn't entirely rule out that the IMEI is in that block, since he tried restoring a copy from another phone, but it doesn't look good. Maybe GeeK can figure out how to set the IMEI using QDST or PST or whatever those tools are.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=29053884

Thanks again for your fearless efforts zonly1!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Intercrew:
4 words. You Guys Are Genius.

Hope a solution comes out soon :) praying for you guys!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
Hey Zonly1, I've been out of town all day on a very unexpected last minute trip, so I had alot of thread to catch up on but I just want to say THANK YOU so much for all the testing you've been doing here & for putting your trust in these guys that have been using their extensive knowledge & know how to search for the solution to our problem! I ran out of thanks thanking you all over the place, lol, because your really making alot of progress on some of the theories that have been kicked around. I would gladly donate what I can to help alleviate any costs if any of this somehow voids your warranty with Samsung, and I hope others would do the same:). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all will be well, and that your testing will provide us all with a solution and we'll be able to move on to flashing roms & unlocking the true potential of this device without any worries!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
I just went through the data for my header dump... I don't see much more than the standard EFI partition table header :-/ (attached a screenshot of the first few hundred bytes). drothenberger mentioned that the flash count is stored here, but I haven't had time to read up on where it's stored and if there's anything else useful here.

I searched for my IMEI in every conceivable format I could think of but to no avail.

Well gentlemen (and ladies?), back to the drawing board... Any other ideas?

I saw this post http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=29033419&postcount=7 but that's a bit too-brute-force for me.. If anyone else wants to post their data-dumps, I'd take a look though.

Thanks again zonly1, we learned a little from this and every little bit counts.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
Screenshot didn't post.. Trying again..
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Unfortunately, based on his post #3, I think Geek is looking to us for ideas on getting his tool to write the IMEI. I am not at all surprised how difficult this is given the ramifications of being able to overwrite an imei.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
You are very welcome, but I'm just very happy to have the opportunity to maybe give back to this awesome community! I appreciate the offer to help off-set costs, and I hope it does not come to that. I have to ship the broken one back soon, just hope I can help more before that has to happen.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] sabre31:
I wonder if this actually would work. If you had this backup before the imei went corrupt and you restored this from that original backup it may have brought back the serial and imei. But since the backup is from a different phone and imei it didn't restore imei so you don't spoof the imei of another phone maybe some kind of radio security that is build in. Just a brainstorm and thought.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] speedy_11:
It's said that the imei is in encrypted. Maybe the imei is alright and might have been transferred over. But if the key is corrupted, the imei wouldn't be readable. So if we can find something that acts or looks like a key it might lead to something maybe.

Just my 2 cents, Thank you for your hard work everyone.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
I was thinking what he said...
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] zonly1:
I hear you, but this came from my working phone...the serial number is from the broken phone...you'd think it would have brought over the serial number from the new phone. I'm thinking that something is just corrupt and that the data is there, but not readable in its current state.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] s1mpd1ddy:
can we no longer edit the spreadsheet? i just pushed the t-mobile TWRP on my ATT galaxy and am backing it up now, wanted to update my info
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Unfortunately some fool thought it was funny to spam it with profanity, so I think it has been locked down.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] getsaf:
So, I went ahead and dumped all the unmounted partitions I could find with a

cat /proc/partitions

I used the standard variations of dd as below for each..

dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p22 of=p22.img

The missing ones are known partitions so I didn't bother. If anyone cares to check MD5's we can see which ones are unique and which ones are standard across phones..

I searched for every variation of my IMEI (binary-float/double/ascii) I could think of.. Then I read this:

If it's encrypted, I don't know how we'll really ever find it unless we find someone who employed by Samsung (cyanogen?) or has info on exactly where to look for the IMEI so we can at least back it up or fix whatever bugs/processes are killing them. I'm running out of ideas. Hell, I just learned what an IMEI is a couple of days ago so what do I know :P

Here's all the md5's I have...

MD5 (p10.img) = e37a7701b3bf2eec0bdf5c88cf023e19

MD5 (p12.img) = 46efea6591ceb3c9d70b39a05e751090

MD5 (p13.img) = 77fd5878ea096bcfddc4730fca0fd4a1

MD5 (p16.img) = f3f3e067367151fcc10c511750117aaa

MD5 (p18.img) = c69b29fd5034270132abfcea17ac3e88

MD5 (p19.img) = f1c9645dbc14efddc7d8a322685f26eb

MD5 (p2.img) = b947d756499753a2d31bfd5c38df099b

MD5 (p20.img) = da6a0d097e307ac52ed9b4ad551801fc

MD5 (p21.img) = d1dd210d6b1312cb342b56d02bd5e651

MD5 (p22.img) = 0829f71740aab1ab98b33eae21dee122

MD5 (p23.img) = 5f363e0e58a95f06cbe9bbc662c5dfb6

MD5 (p3.img) = c06d8c0b2a125bc3a6a46b41f5c5da78

MD5 (p4.img) = b8a7cdf818de769de668e82719eb9b7e

MD5 (p5.img) = b8edd124d897cdc66911d1077ef3b63a

MD5 (p6.img) = e7fa7bac559463ef49a6617b4a287628

MD5 (p7.img) = 21a2c3bf525a46c99b648233631d18d8

MD5 (p8.img) = 731608a556a72fed34691e0cfff3074f

MD5 (p9.img) = 59071590099d21dd439896592338bf95

total 254736

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 10485760 Jul 21 23:05 p10.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 3145728 Jul 21 23:20 p12.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 3145728 Jul 21 23:20 p13.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 62914560 Jul 21 23:18 p16.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 10485760 Jul 21 23:24 p18.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 10485760 Jul 21 23:24 p19.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 131072 Jul 21 23:04 p2.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 6291456 Jul 21 23:24 p20.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 3145728 Jul 21 23:24 p21.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 8192 Jul 21 23:24 p22.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 5242880 Jul 21 23:24 p23.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 262144 Jul 21 23:04 p3.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 524288 Jul 21 23:04 p4.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 2097152 Jul 21 23:04 p5.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 524288 Jul 21 23:04 p6.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 10485760 Jul 21 23:04 p7.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 524288 Jul 21 23:04 p8.img

-rw-r--r-- 1 saf staff 524288 Jul 21 23:04 p9.img
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
Speaking of twrp, I installed it days ago but still haven't flashed any roms because of all of this. However, I just downloaded FreeGS3 & I'm getting ready to give twrp a go because I just can't take not flashing any longer, lol!! I'm not too disappointed with TW, all things considered, but I need a few changes so here goes hoping lady luck is on my side:). I doubt I'll have an issue with one flash, but none the less, I'll report back to let you know if all went well.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] sabre31:
Which twrp is compatible with att version? I really want to try CM10 will that work with twrp?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] androholic:
To my knowledge there's only one version available for the U.S. gs3 and it works for all models.I did notice I had to move the zip to my external sd because it wasn't showing my internal storage from recovery. After I did a factory reset from twrp and I rebooted the zip was still on my internal storage so I had to move it manually to external, which is kinda weird because twrp stores my backups on internal storage and it finds those and restores okay? Anyhow, I'm on the T-Mobile gs3 and everything flashed well with no issues. Just wipe cache, dalvik, factory reset, wind then flashed....

Also, anyone who hasn't tried frees3, it seems great and looks super fast with all of the jellybean animations!
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Cruiserdude:
I haven't read through all 46 pages, but I had this issue appear last weekend. I'm on Verizon, so this isn't exclusive to the GSM carriers. I wasn't flashing a rom either. I flashed a test of imoseyon's lean kernel (NOT the kernel's fault, it was great) and had no issues. As I'm on VZW, this kernel was designed to be placed on the recovery partition instead of cwm. It had cwm packed into it, but if you wanted to use the kernel you'd create a file telling it to boot the kernel instead of cwm. Worked great on several reboots. But when I flashed back to regular CWM from ROM Manager and made a backup, then dd'ed imoseyon's kernel over it again, this issue appeared. I had 4G LTE, but no cdma (voice, 3g). Factory reset didn't help, Odin restore didn't help. Only after typing the sim initialization code was I able to get voice working at all, but it still thinks its roaming. SMS won't work, Verizon's network sees it as an unknown device, and Play Store won't work.

Again, wanted to make it clear that I have a Verizon version, and I never tried to flash a rom. This only happened after switching to a custom kernel/recovery hybrid, back to a custom recovery with the stock kernel, and back to the hybrid setup. So this either has something to do with how the kernel boots, but more likely it has something to do with messing with the recovery partition. Tonight was the first I've heard of it happening on another carrier, I had previously thought it was an isolated incident, and then possibly something related to the workaround methods we have to use due to the locked bootloader on the VZW version.

I'll be glad to give more specific info, but I replaced the device and will be holding off on flashing things until we can get some more info on how to avoid this, or how to recover.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Fyahstarter:
Lost IMEI

Using the Team Sonic Presents FreeGS3 R4_U1. I've tried to go back to stock to no avail. I've checked my IMEI via the service code and it is, in fact, gone.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] cwalker0906:
How did you try to go back to stock
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] lordmorphous:
Can you fill your information in on the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Arzp20hXNPi4dFg3UUozS2FQaERYNVJRVm1hWmJYQ3c#gid=0

Also, what steps did you take to go back to stock? Was your IMEI intact on the custom ROM you mentioned?