[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] tanminivan:
Hi all, I’m having some trouble with my SGS2. I’ve searched for the better part of several days and read a lot of threads with similar but slightly different issues and I haven’t seen any definite solutions so I want to ask the experts before I do something stupid. Sorry for the long post but I want to include as many details as I can so no one has to use their crystal ball to figure out what is going on. :)

The other day my Sprint (really it is through Ting but it is branded as Sprint) SGS2 would not wake up from sleep after charging all night. It was running a GB27 rooted, full restore stock ROM I flashed through Odin (downloaded via rwilco’s very nice site). The flashing was done over a month ago and I didn’t have any troubles until this. Pressing and holding the power button did nothing, so I removed the battery to restart the phone. It was stuck in a boot loop at the “Samsung Galaxy S2” boot screen. Removed the battery for over an hour, tried again, same thing. I can boot into Odin download mode by using power+vol down. I don’t have CWM so I can’t try any other recovery options.

I tried using Odin to reflash the same ROM--GB27, rooted, full restore. This is Odin v1.81 one-click from rwilco’s site. I made sure all Kies processes were killed and started the reflash process and it got stuck trying to write cache.img. I left it for well over an hour and it never progressed past this point. Usually I’d see the blue progress bar on the phone during the flash process but it never appeared. This is the log from odin:

<ID:0/003> Added!!
<OSM> Enter CS for MD5..
<OSM> Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..
<OSM> Please wait..
<OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..
<OSM> Leave CS..
<ID:0/003> Odin v.3 engine (ID:3)..
<ID:0/003> File analysis..
<ID:0/003> SetupConnection..
<ID:0/003> Initialzation..
<ID:0/003> Get PIT for mapping..
<ID:0/003> Firmware update start..
<ID:0/003> boot.bin
<ID:0/003> cache.img

The log stopped here and after an hour, I unplugged the phone. I can still get to odin download mode, but instead of the “Samsung Galaxy SII” boot screen, I just get the “Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again.” I gather that a flag is set during the flash process, then is removed once the flash process completes successfully. Tried to flash again many times with different USB cable/port etc, but no luck.

The next step, I read through the FAQ on this forum and decided to try flashing EL29 via odin one-click (downloaded from here: http://www.rwilco12.com/downloads.p...-D710)/Stock ROMs/GB/EL29/Full Restore/Rooted). This used Odin v1.85. I left all options as the default and selected the PDA file but got these messages:

<ID:0/003> Added!!
<OSM> Enter CS for MD5..
<OSM> Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..
<OSM> Please wait..
<OSM> SPH-D710.EL29_CL852097_ROOTED_PDA.tar.md5 is valid.
<OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..
<OSM> Leave CS..
<ID:0/003> Odin v.3 engine (ID:3)..
<ID:0/003> File analysis..
<ID:0/003> SetupConnection..
<ID:0/003> Initialzation..
<ID:0/003> Get PIT for mapping..
<ID:0/003> Firmware update start..
<ID:0/003> recovery.bin
<ID:0/003> NAND Write Start!!

However, it never seems to progress from here even after an hour. I never see any blue progress bar. Also tried again using different USB cable and port, but no luck.

My phone isn’t viewable from Kies.

I’m at a loss for what to do next. I’d try to flash more versions, but I don’t know enough about this emmc bug and don’t want to trigger it. Reading around, I see suggestions about repartitioning and flashing PIT files, but this seems risky. I am also looking if there is any danger flashing from jellybean to non-jellybean builds.

I read about flashing just the kernel, modem and ROM separately but which files should I use? I also read about flashing a CWM kernel so I can get into recovery mode but I’m still not certain which files I should be using. I will also admit I don’t know how to flash only a kernel through odin. It looks like you use the PDA box like what I did above, but I thought that was for full ROMs? Do you use the PDA box for both kernels and ROMs?

I did find this thread http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2289007 which is very similar to my issue, but I’m not sure if I messed something up by trying to reflash the same ROM.

What should I try next?

Sorry for the simple questions but I want to learn! Thanks for the help!