[AT&T Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-I777] Extreme9936:
Went through similar motions and had very odd result!

Thank you very much for posting this! I found it extremely helpful and I decided to create an account just to post my results. I too had an issue with my sgh i777's power button. However, this only started occurring when I updated it to 4.0.4 through my carrier's over the air update. I thought at first that it was a hardware related problem, as I've had it almost exactly one year. But after researching I decided to try flashing it back to 4.0.3. Sure enough after flashing it back, my power button started working. Although I had to master reset aka factory wipe for it to function. I thought it odd that the approved update would cause such a thing, so about a week later I decided to update it again. My button worked for about a week before it started acting up again. Finally it stopped working altogether and seemed to be "stuck" as though being pressed down as every time I popped the battery out and back in, it would start up automatically as though I manually pressed the power button myself. The frustrating thing was since it was completely non-responsive I had to find another way to put it in download mode ( Take the battery out, hold both up and down volume buttons as you insert the usb cable into the phone while it's plugged into your computer, let go of the volume buttons the second you see the download mode menu, pop the battery back in, then hit volume up key to go into download mode..I KNOW FRUSTRATING) but after finally flashing it back to 4.0.3 the button was still not working. I figured that it actually had to be a hardware problem, so following a youtube video on how to disassemble the i9100, basically the same phone, I was able to examine my power button. I popped my battery in while it was disassembled to no avail. I came to the conclusion that it needed to be replaced, which sucked for me as my warranty had just expired not 2 days prior. So I thought as long as my warranty is expired I might as well and root and flash another ROM. SOOOOO, after finally trying about 3 different ways to root my sgh i777 using ODIN, I find one that would put a rooted kernal UCHK7(or something like that) on my phone. Fortunately this didn't work, (fortunately is the key word) and after "unrooting" my phone back to 4.0.3 I realized that I needed to factory reset my phone as it kept "force closing" Touchwiz due to the conflict of the two kernals. It took me a good 20 mins of navigating to the "Factory Rest" option as the phone would "force close" every 5 seconds or so. Finally I was able to Factory Reset, and POOF! I turned my phone back on..and guess what was working again!?!?! My power button hasn't had a problem since and it's working like the day I first bought it. This made me ecstatic until I realized that the update had to have been the culprit for my hardware "malfunction", which in itself is an oxymoron as how can a software cause a "hardware" problem? Well, after searching some more it appears that companies are not only committing Planned Obsolescence, but they are hiding programs in the ROM/OS or creating code that make it appear that you have a hardware related problem. A similar issue is going on with the Iphone's "Home" key, and it's slowly coming to light that something fishy is going on. I am Network Administrator by trade so I know that 80% of the problems arise after something different has occurred, either software or hardware wise. I plan on researching some more and possibly getting a lawyer as I feel could be a big fat lawsuit. In the meantime, I figure I would post my experience on here so anyone else experiencing a similar problem could try to resolve the problem themselves, as opposed to doing a warranty exchange and getting a refurbished phone with more problems than the original. Thanks again for your post!:laugh: