[Samsung Infuse 4G] electricpete1:
reflections and recap

I have to say that what I went through in losing my phone for 3 days earlier this week was a somewhat traumatic experience for me, which was entirely-self-inflicted.

Self-inflicted because (among many other mistakes I may have made), I initiated the problem by fiddling with my phone on the way to work first thing Monday morning (I’m in a carpool, not the driver in case you were wondering). Someone like me who is not completely familiar with this stuff should probably never fiddle with things like swapping kernels without carefully planning my changes. And if I’m going to do it at all, do it on Friday (duh).

Traumatic because my work schedule keeps me away from home for 13+ hours a day. When you add in the other required daily stuff like food, shower, family stuff (did I mention my daughter was leaving for college for the first time the end of this week), there is not enough room to fit in a few hours of troubleshooting along with a full nights sleep. That meant that my only choice to get back my phone back in a timely manner was to cut down my sleep each night. By the end of that third day, sleep deprived, no end in sight... I felt like I had a dark cloud following me everywhere that I couldn’t get rid of.

And then the clouds parted, the light shone.... my Infuse was back! (for effect, cue the choir sound).

Probably many here went through similar tough-to-crack soft-brick on their phone but managed it calmly/deliberately without a lot of handringing or drama.

But I imagine I am not the only one who ever felt it traumatic to some degree.

So, why do I come back here to share my tale of woe...other than for entertainment? (my wife found it midly amusing...... not so for me.... until now when it is soundly in my rear view mirror).

It is NOT to complain. Actually the complete opposite. To once again thank you guys... because you were my lifeline in my darkest hours of phone-mucking.

I said everyone who responded to my post helped, and it was not a cliche... it was the honest truth:

Pony express – reminded me about java (which I had checked a week ago and thought it was up to date, but really wasn’t). Told me to get rid of Kies which as far as I’m concerned is good advice (don’t need any extra variables). Focused me on qkster's thread to make sure I was covering those bases stated in the instructions.

Andros – reminded me that checking bootloaders is one of the only things that can brick our phone. A very good thing for me to keep in mind as I was trying all sorts of possibilities in desperate attempt to revive my phone. I think if I would have tried it without driver loaded, I would have been in bigger trouble.

mg2195 – helped me realize that even though my screen didn’t look like normal download mode, it was still capable of downloading. Helped me move on from worrying about anti-virus which was probably an irrelevant detail. Most importantly, helped focus me back on “run as administrator”. I mentioned in the first post that I was never able to get “run as administrator”, but I forgot about that and kept trying all these other things.

qkster – It goes without saying. Laid the path for many others to follow and generously shares his advice on the forums. Has helped me in this thread and several others.

Now that it’s all over with, I’d just like to summarize the two lessons I already mentioned which to me seemed to me extremely subtle (either that or I’m a complete moron... some might say the latter case is not completely out of the question).

First lesson – run as administrator for java file may be very tricky for some computers.

Why is it subtle/tricky? Sure google was there to tell you how to “run as administrator”. But none of those links helped... kept telling me to verify I was administrator (which I was), and how to run an executable program as administrator (which I did.. they didn’t work because no run as admin option appeared). .

The part I didn’t guess was that for some reason both of my computers apparently consider these java files as non-executable for puproses of run-as-administrator, even though these same files were treated as executable when I double clicked them to run without admin purposes (who’d of thunk it is an executable for one purpose but not the other... I can only guess that maybe it is an enhanced security setting that may have been applied by my Norton security program?).

The solution again is found here

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...r-with-administrators-privileges-on-windows-7

and summarized in my posted dated 22nd August 2012, 06:54 PM

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=30585561&highlight=jar#post30585561

Second lesson – if you try everything and can’t get that Samsung driver, look for “Gadget serial” driver and use it.

Discussed in my post 22nd August 2012, 06:54 PM

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=30589468&highlight=success+#post30589468

If there were a third lesson, it would be to use common sense (you know...little things like don’t mess with your phone on Monday morning). But if you are in short supply of this commodity (as my wife would gleefully point out), perhaps you can find ways to compensate (go slowly...write down a plan of what you’re going to do and think about that plan before you do it.)

THANKS!