[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] LockeG:
Hi there!

I'm wondering if you guys can help me brainstorm, or at least get to the root of the problem. Alright, so to preface... I'm using an ATT Galaxy S Captivate [i897]

I was updating my version of MIUI from the miui.us version 2.3 to version 4.0 [ICS.] This worked fine, and I had backed up my data with TitaniumBackup. However, I made a mistake: I chose one of the backup all options, where it backed up all my system data and app data. Little did I know, restoring the system data would completely own my phone. So I did a restore, rebooted, and my Captivate sits at the boot animation indefinitely. It won't get past it.

Somewhere along the line, my download mode and recovery mode 3-button combo got borked. They no longer work [trust me, I've tried every one.] When I try to enter recovery by pressing and holding a number of volume and power button combinations, it goes straight to the boot animation after the AT&T screen. When I try to enter download mode by pressing and holding volume/power, battery in, cable in, and every other possible combination [including switching the cable to different ports on my computer,] I simply get a "stuck" circular loading icon which flickers every few seconds. When I let go, it shows me a grey battery icon with that stuck loading circle overlaid.

So, moving on, I decided to disassemble my phone and try to reset it by shorting the TP contact in the back against the SD card slot. I wish I could find the thread; it's supposed to reset the device. It definitely causes my captivate to reboot [while it was stuck in the boot animation] but it didn't fix the problem. So I decided to make my own jig.

I built it out of three 100k ohm resistors, was super careful not to contact the metal parts of them while I plugged it into my phone. I tried plugging the micro B cable in first, then touching the resistor leads to pins 4 and 5 on the back end of the USB jig, but to no avail. I tried slightly different resistances, but no go. I tried connecting every pin to every other pin just for the hell of it, and no luck there either.

I don't have a soldering gun, so J-tagging is not an option [before I just buy a new phone, anyway,] and I'd rather not buy a USB jig because I'm not convinced it'll work. I know there are a lot of factors, and everyone says to try it 400 times, but I tried it more than I have patience for already. There's got to be something else wrong.

I'm wondering if TitaniumBackup has the capability to mess up the boot loader? If I accidentally overwrote system files with older ones, why would that cause it to get stuck in a bootloop? And where did my download mode go?

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know! I've done a massive amount of research on this. And I found some pretty brilliant ideas along the way, but none of them seemed to work for me. I'm to the point where I literally can't find any more references to problems similar to mine, so I figured I'd ask you guys!

TL;DR: I think by [accidentally] restoring system files with TitaniumBackup from MIUI 2.3 to 4.0, I may have completely owned the boot loader. Can this happen? And is there any fix? I can't get into download or recovery with button combination, jigs, or short-circuiting my phone in fun new ways.

Thanks :)