yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
Haha better than nothing :P. Oh I forgot I also did the reprovisionong thing which reset my sim card.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
What concerns me is that slic has confirmed he had 3/4 0's, which implies 1/4 numbers and therefore not a 0 imei. Based on this one could conclude restoring this backup fixes an altered imei. With the wiped IMEI problem, we don't know what else is damaged, so I would be uncomfortable extrapolating that conclusion to the 0 IMEI.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
The 0's made up more than half of the 15 number string... and is there a thing as a true 0 15 number IMEI? Cuz if it starts with 0 you could say that's a 0 imei also. And you can't really alter an imei without losing its function.. so no matter how you put it it's still a broken imei. And it was fixed.

The wiped IMEI you could always just try this method and make sure you do a backup of the EFS before you start flashing crazy... and than if something happens reroll the efs and if it doesn't work than you can return. It's much better than nothing.

Also see here what the OP stated:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
I couldn't agree more and have made this backup myself. I am merely saying that until someone with the 0 IMEI problem restores their IMEI successfully with this method, we cannot conclude it will work. It still may work, and I really hope it works, but we don't know at this point. There are a number of people who have experienced 0 imei here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0Arzp20hXNPi4dFg3UUozS2FQaERYNVJRVm1hWmJYQ3c

Given your experience, I am hoping this method has more of a fighting chance. Thank you for sharing all the data, everyone definitely appreciates it.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
Well ALWAYS backup when it comes to SAMMY products (<-looking at you Fascinate... >__>) Any owner of the fascinate would know that haha. Even to this day when I had to use my fascinate it was a headache... :crying:

Well I get what your saying but the rarity of an IMEI to be a complete 0 string of 15 characters is a small percentage... so meaning the overall majority would get about a 15 string number composed of 3/4 0's instead meaning wether or not it's a complete 0 it is still a broken IMEI/EFS. So with this we can conclude it will work. As EFS is independent of the phones rom (<-i'm pretty sure, as it's relative to the modem..) and since I had a broken imei/efs/network yet I could still have a functional phone (<-without the actual function) and wifi working that meant the hardware was working except the modem/baseband code was borked.

Well from what i've already experienced we can conclude it will work, since the phone itself still worked with wifi... only thing missing was network/data/voice/everything related to EFS/EMEI/BASEBAND/MODEM.

Just saying the least you could do is Backup first->if error->reroll and try it if it doesn't work than send it back to VZW.

And your welcome! Glad I could help if any.. just don't want to be the unofficial guinea pig again :silly: :rolleyes:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Div033:
I'm confused... are you saying an IMEI with 3/4 zeroes is corrupt? Mine has 4 (3 in a row, one at the end) and is a perfectly healthy IMEI.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
No that's healthy... and you'll know when it's corrupt cuz nothing as a phone will work ie voice, data, etc. It's more than 3-4 0's... as in like maybe 8 0's begining with a 0 on teh 15 number string...
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] JoeyBert:
can someone explain the '(exit adb)' text in the middle of the back-up process?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] neyenlives:
Type exit twice. So exit then enter, exit then enter. Then start a new session of adb to do the extraction (pull)
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] ChadHughes:
I'm going to risk it and attempt to bork my imei and restore my efs backup. Even if I kexec 100 times. $80 bucks for s replacement just in case is worth it. Wish me luck!
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
Whaaat???!!!! Good luck!!!" And only $80-don't you mean $100 with asurion?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] ChadHughes:
Or $100, yes, but it's worth it! Then we can have a definitive answer.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] mrmako777:
Awesome. Keep us posted
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] :
I'm still in the window for replacements so I could potentially *TRY* to break mine if Chad's doesn't work.

So far I've done everything that I've listed in the spreadsheet and IN ADDITION:

Flashed CM10- July 25th version (recovery, factory reset, wiped cache, dalvik) and flashed JB-Gapps 25th version(also fixed permissions)

still has not broken. I'm not sure what actually is breaking the IMEI but I'm willing to test tonight if anybody has ideas and Chad can't do it.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] ChadHughes:
Confirmed on paranoid android. Going to try and replicate the imei issue now. Damn this ROM is beautiful.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] MorphiousGX:
OK. I read the whole thread. my question is... what happens if you flash with the sim card out then placing it back after flashing? wouldn't that be similar to activating the phone the first time?

sorry I'm new to Samsung devices and just learning
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] chadamir:
I think it should be noted that after several days of research, many of us are not convinced that this will work. Though that is not to say you shouldn't bother to backup. Just don't expect it to fix anything, for sure.

To begin with, the image that this produces does not contain your imei in any form. I have looked in with a hex editor (It is stored as hex) at both the script back up and the efs pro and could not find how the imei is stored when backed up by other software which I can confirm identifies the imei.

IMEI is stored in the efs in a strange way: Lets say it was 12 34 56 78. It would be stored as 21 43 65 87. This was confirmed using qpst to do a qcn backup and by using cdma workshops nv read/write software. Two programs showed it to be stored this way. We have not found where the imei is in efs explorer, but we have found a lot of files and folders that are not in /efs on your phone. The size of this qcn file is 200k. The size of the nv_data.bin is 1.5-2 megs. While the qcn contains the imei we're not even sure that is enough to restore it. Additionally folders and files show up in efs explorer which we cannot find on the phone. It may be opening a bin file somewhere, but right now we haven't found it.

When you use qpst to backup to a qcn file it can be viewed in a qcn viewer which shows the imei.

This problem is not unique to the gs3, it happens on other samsung phones but usually they have an nv_data.bin file. We do not. If you google "EFS Cyanogen" you will see it comes up for a number of other samsung phones. They have figured out how to fix it on those phones though. What needs to be done is figure out where the phone is loading the IMEI from and work backwards.

Again, a few of us are skeptical, but that's not to say there is no chance that it is not encrypted somehow in /efs. I just doubt it.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] henrys01:
I'm starting to believe there is data stored in /dev/block/mmcblk0p11 that isn't in the ext4 filesystem. I've compared a bad efs vs a good efs. From the ext4 file system point of view the only difference is the file that contains the wifi mac address. However, from a binary comparison there are vast differences. Also, if you look at the disk usage

shell@android:/ # df | grep -E "File|efs"
df | grep -E "File|efs"
Filesystem Size Used Free Blksize
/efs 13M 4M 8M 4096

4Mb consumed, however in the file system only ~500k consumed.

shell@android:/ # du -sh /efs
du -sh /efs
444.0K /efs

There is a lot of data in the partition that is not view-able from the file system.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] chadamir:
you may be on to something.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Budwise:
God-speed sir.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] desantim:
Anyone know why I am getting the error below?

xxxxx-mac-pro:platform-tools xxxxxx$ dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p11 of=/sdcard/efs.sbn

dd: /dev/block/mmcblk0p11: No such file or directory

I followed the directions to a T.

./adb shell

su

dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p11 of=/sdcard/efs.sbn

I get : dd: /dev/block/mmcblk0p11: No such file or directory

I've searched and read, and either missed it or am having issues.

Thank you!

M
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] ChadHughes:
Are you trying to pull the efs?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] desantim:
I am, I thought those were the commands to successfully back the efs file up?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] henrys01:
Execute this command first and wait for the shell to appear before sending the rest of the commands.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] fabzbear:
do they have a version of paraniod android for the sch 710/Sprint version?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] chmodbot:
Tool

Doesn't this do the same thing?

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1308546

[TOOL] Updated! 12/07/12 - EFS Pro v1.8.11 - Advanced '/efs' Backup, Restore, Repair!
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] claribanter:
Sorry guys, I've got bad news. I backed up efs before flashing any roms. Flashed CM10 and began noticing data was weak and unstable. Rebooted and got a prompt asking for SIM network unlock PIN. Tried the sim unlock pins from MyVerizon, and the ones that others have listed from their contract with verizon (00000 and 12345? if i remember correctly). After screwing around with changing the mobile network settings, trying *22890 and rebooting i lost all service completely. Phone wouldn't even call *228. I then Odin flashed back to root66 stock, pushed the efs via adb and reprovisioned with *2767*3855#. This restored my data and the phone seems to be working fine......but it did not restore my IMEI number. I don't thing the adb push of the efs actually solved anything. I think reprovisioning the phone with *2767*3855# just reconnected me to the CDMA network. I can't test if i have 4G because I'm not in a 4G area at the moment. Just to be perfectly clear THIS BACKUP DOES NOT WORK. My IMEI was lost and has not been restored using the backup i made before flashing anything. I'm going to try using a new sim card and see if that changes anything. I may be only 1 case but OP should really put a big warning up that this doesn't work.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
You messed it up entering the pin for sim unlock... sim unlock is a known bug for cm10 so you should've pressed dismissed. So you went from a working radio->spotty radio>to completely borking your radio. Oh and BTW it still works cuz your still connected to network...which means a working imei, a non working imei would be having NO connection WHATSOEVER to either DATA and VOICE. Download phone info app and check to make sure your on LTE/CDMA/GSM option for radio baseband..

Oh and phone doesn't call *228 to begin with cuz its an 4G LTE GSM band... *228 is for cdma prl updating.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] fireboypr:
So does that means that the method works for sure?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
It did for me and op.. but our cases were similar yet different. So not quite "for sure" as you can never be 100% certain.. just try everything, if imei messes up AFTER READING info on what to do.. instead of messing around and breaking it more.

I can say with 100% certain with a ratio of 2-0 were definitely headed in the right direction though. ;)
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] fireboypr:
so no one has got all 0 IMEI and restored yet? Also, any idea what is causing it?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] claribanter:
Alright, thanks for the info. Sorry if I sounded dramatic about it before, just don't want someone else making the same mistakes I did. I'm in the middle of another Odin flash at the moment because i couldn't connect to the play store for some reason while other data was mostly working. If the Play store still doesn't work i'll download and pull the phone info apk from my tablet. If the OS knows the IMEI, shouldn't it show up in the Status Menu?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Peoplearmy:
Shouldn't dialing *228 work for him since he is on Verizon?

Anyways, I know you said that data is working fine but are you able to make any phone calls? Based on others who have lost IMEI they have no data or voice.

DX
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Div033:
Someone in IRC has reported a successful 0 IMEI recovery by restoring a previously backed up EFS partition. That's just one report though, waiting for more.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] claribanter:
I can make calls and I have data, although I can't get on the Play Store for some reason, I just restored the phone again to factory settings. Gmail, and browser are working on 3g or wifi. Google Talk and Play Store are not. I get server error when I open up the play store. Phone Info has LTE/CDMA/EvDo as prefered network. IMEI is still 0. MEID is listed though. Is there anything else I can try with Phone Info? Or anything else in general? Any ideas why Play Store is screwed up? One last interesting thing: On MyVerizon I have this message "Your SIM card is in a device that is not recognized by Verizon Wireless. Some services & features may not perform as expected." and my phone shows up as an unknown phone.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] ElBeaner:
Why hasn't this been posted across on AT&T sub forum and Tmobile sub forum?

I got lucky and saw someone link to this. Backed up mine for future just in case.

File was 13.62mb as well
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Hero:
Just so everyone knows: This DOES NOT work if your IMEI is 0.

Last night, I had a bad experience with K-Exec recovery and an AOSP development build that gave me an IMEI of 0. You cannot restore your IMEI if it is set to 0, even if you retore it to Stock and try restoring your backup from there. Note: I still had signal and everything, but was unable to connect to a network. I could still receive text messages as well (not sure about calls). The phone would stay on "roaming" forever.

K-Exec is experimental and I would advise anyone who is flashing an AOSP ROM or another ROM that uses it to take it with a grain of salt...at least until the bootloader is unlocked. So for now, back to the VZW store.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
Imei of a 15 char string of 0??? And you used the efs backup that you made before on a healthy imei right? I had that happen to me buy I fixed after wiping, and clearing data on he apps my phone than did find network again after reboot. :/
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] claribanter:
Sorry for replying to myself, but looks like my data isn't actually working properly. Something seemed off about the quality of voice calls and the download speed so I ran a speed test. I'm not really getting good 3G. Yesterday when I ran a speedtest I was getting ~3Mbps down and ~1Mbps up and ~80ms latency on 3g. In the same spot in my house today the test is consistently ~140kbps down and ~80kbps up with latencies between 140 and 600ms. I think the signal strength is lower in general. My radio is definitely not acting normally. Does anyone have any ideas? I think I'll probably head to the verizon store in a bit. This doesn't sound very fixable.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Hero:
No, it's an IMEI of 0. Just one 0. I did use the backup from a healthy IMEI, but nothing has changed. It still says the same thing. I'll get a picture of it later if I can, but you should should have a general idea of how it looks.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
Reprovision like i told you, reboot, wipe, reboot, wipe app data, and reboot. Than download phone info and change it to LTE/CDMA/GSM.

---------- Post added at 04:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:05 PM ----------

Oh! :eek: Than that I did not have.. I had an imei string of 3/4 made out of "0's" and the rest of it were random numbers.. but had no network what so ever; with both voice and data broken. Until I repushed the previous efs and wiped everything, including reprovisioning, than changing the setting to LTE/CDMA/GSM after downloading phone info app.

:\ Isn't this your second time??!! :(
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Hero:
Nah this only happened to me once, which was last night while testing out a dev build with K-Exec. Gonna go to the VZW store to try and get/order a replacement. Unless someone figures out how to restore from an IMEI 0 back to normal, I'd say be wary of the K-Exec method (I might be able to figure it out if they let me keep this phone since I have nothing to really be worried about anymore).
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] henrys01:
My IMEI went to one zero as well on cm9. When that happened I actually had data for some weird reason but I could not make any calls or send SMS. After reprovision I could then get 3g and make calls but 4g doesn't work. I'm now on a new phone but still have the borked one for now. I can in fact take my good sim card out and put it back in the bad phone and it comes right up and works except for 4G.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
Oops got you mixed you mixed with the OP of this thread lol.. sorry. And you did make teh EFS backup before you had the 0 imei right? ^ Hope they'll let you keep it. You could keep if ordering from the phone a replacemant/exchange...

^ Oh wow, that's good. download phone info app and check to see if LTE/CDMA/GSM are selected as the phone's baseband. Taht would be extremely useful. And how'd you get a recplacement plus keep the old one?

EDIT: forgot, even after you went to phone info app and changed it to lte/cdma/gsm baseband, or did you? :\
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] harlanjim:
Are you saying that you went into the Phone Info app and set the network type to LTE/CDMA/EvDo and you didn't give you 4G back?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Xyyd:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1777915 This is a known issue on all phones im not sure if kexec has to do with this at all since its happening on all US devices. Had to get up to 10 posts so i could share i have been following this for awhile.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
Really-all?? I've only ever heard of it on verizon, and I thought that was due to it having a locked bootloader.. :confused:. You "had to get up to 10 posts so [you] could share"-Huhh??! :eek:

Thanks for the link, reading it.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Xyyd:
Well i havent heard it happening on international phohes but havent creeped on there threads. But yes it seems to be happening On Tmo and ATT i think sprint as well. SO probably doesnt have to do with kexec or locked bootloader more towards cm9/cm10
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
That's wierd... this is the firs time i've heard that. :\ Damn SGS3... it's like fascinate all over again.. -__-'.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Kipland007:
I believe it's related to custom kernels and something that gets tripped in the phone which erases the IMEI. I also believe it was an issue with the s2, so hopefully there will be a method of solving our issue (as there was with that phone).

Side note: for the two people who had their IMEI erased, were you on the old baseband or newer? Probably not related but I'm curious...
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
3 people to be correct :P. And I was on the newer because I had flashed the ota kernel and newer radio before even trying to flash paranoid android.. :|. Ima roll back to previous band though cuz that radio seems 100 times better.. :victory:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] claribanter:
Alright, so I've Odin Flashed the stock unrooted vzw image, booted into stock recovery, Factory reset/clear cache, booted up and rooted with GS3_debugfs-root_r2, pushed my efs backup, imediately reprovisioned, stock recovery factory reset/clear cache, booted up. Got a warning about roaming on this trip, phone connected to 3g and went through the setup wizard. Nothing has changed. Phone Info shows LTE/CDMA/EvDo. The play store still gets a server error on 3g and wifi. IMEI in status just says "0". There must be some part of the filesystem that we're not reaching, during all this? I just tried flashing the stock kernel. No idea why that would do anything but I want to try something. Is there a stock bootloader or radio or something else i can try flashing?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] neyenlives:
Correct, this has been going on a long time, long before the VZW variant got Kexec or CM. Obviously to pin it on kexec is erroneous at best. We need to be looking at all the IMEI failures and what all the different carrier devices have in common that have the problem. The other carriers don't use kexec at all...... I was one of the first ones to bring this up in the VZW irc channel and all I got was a bunch of strange looks..... until it started happening.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Slic|<:
Yeah there's a stock baseband both original and teh ota that you can flash. Try reflashing those with odin. Your radio might be corrupt.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] David Dee:
Here is the thread where we are tracking it: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1777915

We encourage all to enter their data in the attached spreadsheet, (especially those who have a 0 imei) and participate in the thread as you deem appropriate.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Hero:
I was on the old baseband. I never switched to the newer one.

Entering data now.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] neyenlives:
yeah it's stickied in the VZW IRC channel :)
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Travisimo:
I'm not sure if anyone has already mentioned this, but I just realized that your IMEI number is actually printed on the sticker on the box the phone came in. It's under the UPC code, and it matches exactly what should be shown in your phone's settings. I'm not sure this will actually help out, but it will at least let you know if you have the right IMEI number in your phone. Perhaps eventually someone will find a way to manually enter the IMEI code back into the phone if it gets lost???

EDIT: Also, if you make a Nandroid backup of your phone while your IMEI is present, and then restore back to that Nandroid if you lose your IMEI, does that make it come back? Or is the IMEI independent of what gets backed up during a Nandroid?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] ChadHughes:
Good find, all thoughts help! But we are way past that at this point.

I have good news and bad news.

Bad news is I cannot replicate this error! I've flashed non stop cm10/paranoid/aokp and back. I restored from my nandroid backup - something I haven't done was ODIN back though. One of the common themes of people losing their imei seemed to happen when they Odin back to a stock image..... but that's just one scenario of many.

GOOD NEWS: I bought another sgs3 for development and to study this imei issue! Since this seems like a CM problem, I'm going to really abuse this second phone. Opened up a new BS Verizon line to do so. Let the games begin :beer:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] anrichardson:
I have been trying to follow this thread very closely, but does this seem to happen only on kexec roms?

I am rooted via debugfs PC app and flashed CWM recovery via Rom manager and all is well with me. I have not tried to install any roms yet. Just watching this before install any roms.