[Vibrant Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pbeaumont:
Here is the problem:

My phone is stuck on the screen you see immediately after pressing the power button, which has a big "Vibrant" and a smaller "Samsung" both white on black. Whatever I do, it won't get past that.

Here is what happened:

- I had Eclair on it for a long while, and updated to Froyo via Kies, also a long while ago. Then, tired of bad performances, I followed a tutorial to install ICS on it. It worked fine for a month and I was very pleased of the newly gained performances. However this week, (while I was on vacation away from my computer and even internet in fact) it started giving me messages saying something about "Memory low, close some applications" (paraphrasing), even thought my memory indicator said that I was using around 160 MB, which should not be that bad. Then, after a couple of hours like that, applications started to crash (because of low memory I assume). I killed applications not that useful, but it did not change the message. Then, the core application also started to crash, whatever I did. I rebooted several times to get it to start fresh, but as soon as I booted, I got the low memory message and the core crashing. At one point, it would get stuck on the ICS 3D flying boot scene, and not past that.

- So, I rebooted in recovery mode and tried to see if I had an option to just restore part of the ROM so I could use my phone anew. I wanted to avoid restoring it completely since I did not have the information about my APN (I have the T-Mobile Vibrant, but I live in Canada and I'm on Videotron's network), and performances before ICS where really bad (lagging, freezing, name it). Also, I figured it was only a booting problem, so (biggest mistake is here I believe) I tried to restore the boot only. I found somewhere in the advanced options of Clockwork an option to restore parts of the backed-up ROM. So I did it, but I got an error saying something about the checksum I think. There I realized that I was trying to restore an Eclair boot backup to an ICS ROM, so the checksum error probably came from that. I try it a second time... same result. Then, when I rebooted it stopped at the Vibrant screen I described above.

What I tried to resolve it:

- Tried to go back to recovery mode by holding the three buttons as usual. Cannot get in. The only thing that "works" is that if I hold the power button for 6-8 second, it will reboot. And get stuck at the same place.

- Search intensively on the web to see if anyone had the same kind of issue. Saw a lot of the "Exclamation mark bricked" type, resolved by going in recovery mode. Not useful to me.

- Tried to connect it to my computer and see where I could go from there. I am unable to mount the device. If the phone is powered down, as soon as I connect it, it starts to boot (and get stuck you know where). Windows does not recognizes the device, and gives me the message "This device cannot start. (Code 10)". I tried to use the drivers from ADB and those from Kies with the same results.

- I tried to install Android Debug Bridge, but without the phone mounted, it doesn't work.

- I tried to see if Odin would detect it, with the same results

- I tried to pray, but there is no answer there yet. :crying:

So here I am, with the following things still untried:

- I would try the "resistor" way of booting in download mode it that could help. However, I don't have soldering iron, don't know how to solder and don't have the parts required, so that would take me a lot of time just the try this option, without any clue that I would resolve my problem with this. I am willing to go that way if I am pretty sure it will work

- I haven't tried using the Riff Box, and I have no idea what it is and where it would get me. I would not even know where to get access to that.

On a final note, this is my only phone in the house, and to make the matter worse, I changed providers with this phone, so my older cell phones don't work with Videotron's SIM card... I would rather have the issue resolved fast if possible, because otherwise, I'll have to buy a new phone. Let's say that I would have better uses for that cash, so I hope it does not come to that.

So that concludes my sad story for today.

Any clues welcome. If the answer is "get a new phone", I would rather do it that trying stuff for two weeks and having to buy a new phone anyway.