[Galaxy S III Mini General] faria:
As many of you have found out , sometimes after flashing roms or part of roms into the device turns the Device firmware to “Custom”.

What does this mean:

It means you no longer will be able to receive updated from samsung via kies or OTA, you want be able to deal with drm content etc.

When the device reboots its checks for custom binaries,unsigned partitions,custom partitions,mismatching partitions versions etc.

Why does this happens?

There is 4 possible reasons i'm aware of ...

1- You flashed a custom part of the rom,such as: Custom kernel,bad param.tar,custom boot.img, Custom recovery.

2- You flashed a custom rom that was improperly built.

3- Mismatched device country code after flashing a rom that was not builded for you region or carrier.

4 - Deleting or modifying system apps.

Today we will be dealing with 2 and 3..

( if your device has A custom Binary count of more that 0, this will not work for you)

Fix for option 2:

1- Reflash your device with the latest rom from your region/carrier.

But,but, i flashed the original rom and it still says custom?!

If your region/carrier only has lets say a 4.1.1 version of the rom and you already flashed a 4.1.2 .from another region this may wont work.

Why?

Because flashing an older rom does not downgrade all the firmware as expected in some cases, it seems that the device is able to detect newer and i some cases modified parts in the currently loaded firmware and skip the update.

What can i do then?

Wait for an update for you region.

Fix for option 3

Roms are supplied with settings for different regions/carriers often called CSC codes or Sales-code.

When you flash a full rom it also flashes a partition that contains those codes ,once the rom boots for the first time it checks your current Sales-code already set in the device and if the sales-code matches, it copies the appropriate files to the device, if it does not match, it sets the device sales code to “unknown” and therefore setting the device firmware to “Custom”

Another reason that problem 3 is caused by:

My device for instance is from the UK, retail model, the sales code is BTU, the roms for it contains pretty much all the sales codes for all Europe, so its safe to flash in any other European device that have different sales-code.

The problem arises when people starts flashing roms that were made for a specific set of carriers, like for instances the new DBT roms, this roms only contains support for 6 sales codes,so if you are out of germany and flashed this rom chances are that your sales-code ain't there, therefore not matching your current sales code and

setting the firmware to “custom”.

How do i fix this then?

First you need to find your sales code

find it here if you don't know it; http://samsung-updates.com/device/?id=GT-I8190

then you need a rooted rom from your carrier or a rom that contains most of the sales-codes

Install Samsung Galaxy S /S2 /S3 CSC , app from the market/

Launch the app and tick the “Try with root mode” box

Grant superuser Permission,

WARNING! THE NEXT STEP WILL RESET YOUR DEVICE TO FACTORY DEFAULT AND DELETE THE CONTENTS OF THE INTERNAL SD CARD.

In the list of codes that came up, select yours and press install.

Device will reboot and wipe your data.

And thats it your device Sale-code is fixed.

Notes

New additions and corrections to the above are welcome.

This is not a thread about resetting your binary count.

I will not answer question about building roms.

I will not answer pms about any of the above,Unless you have some meaningful contribution.

Tutorials take time to write and research so don't be an ass and if this helped you in any way at least press the thanks button.

Thank you and good luck.

PS. I have holes in my socks:D