[Epic 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] timepilot:
Issue: Flashing back to stock on odin fails, with solid color phone screen.. (help the search engines out a little bit here)

I bricked my E4G while trying to odin back to BML stock FC09 gingerbread. I searched the threads for help, and got sparse information like "after failed odin, wouldn't go back to download mode so I left it overnight"

I don't have that kind of time.

Here's how it all began, with maybe more backstory than you wanted, and what I did to fix it. This solution may be no great revelation to the pros around here, but I'm a 45 year old IT manager that just started playing with android phones and admit to being a rank amateur so I'm proud of myself today :D

H/W version: SPD-700.0.5

Carrier: Boost

A couple months ago I bought an E4G for $40 off of CL. It was a good ESN sprint phone. I Boosted it using the Incognito method since I was already down to the $35/month shrinkage. Flashing it to Boost left me on the vanilla stock FC09 Gingerbread ROM so it was easy to get mms working using the dialer codes and my spl to edit the settings and change the URL from sprint to boost.

Then I got really bored with Gingerbread so I rooted with the deodexed pre-rooted BML version of GB that's floating around here, flashed CWM 5 recovery and stepped up to the April 23rd Carbon JB rom because I thought it looked cool. I was very pleased with it except that after fiddling for a long time, I could never get the MMS to work right. Every time I would enter DATA code in the dialer and then my SPL, I'd get that damned MODEM EXCEPTION error when I tried to edit the MMSC URL. A little more research led me to believe this was an android permissions issue new to ICS and JB. I gave up because I didn't really use MMS that much and everything else was working great.

THen... All of a sudden I needed to use MMS for work, so my interest in fixing it was renewed. I noticed that after I flashed the (mtd) Carbon ROM over my stock FC09, the MMSC URL changed from boost to another carrier (not even Sprint! Something like mobipcs.com, I dont' remember). I'm just smart enough to figure out that the change came over with whatever configuration was in the phone used to build that release of Carbon, but that's really irrelevant; I discovered this same phenomenon (with variations on the carrier) with every ICS or JB rom I've tried on the E4G. Sorry, I'm getting off topic. Only tweak was that I switched from CWM to TW for recovery.

Anyway, not having the time to fiddle with this MMS issue any more right now, I needed to odin back to stock. SO... I found my trusty copies of SPH-D700-FC09-8Gb-REL.tar.md5 and the victory_8G_100528,pit (since I was on an MTD rom, I knew I'd have to repartition)

I wasn't concerned because I feel pretty comfortable with Odin so I make the appropriate selections (leave repartition, uncheck everything else, pick the right files, blah blah), put my phone in download mode and connect. I hit start.

Looks like things are going swimmingly until I look down at my phone, which is blazing a full-screen bright magenta back at me, instead of the download progress bar I expected. No errors in Odin, just hanging there. CRAP! Softbricked.

I disconnect, try to boot the phone, NOTHING. No power. So I pop the battery, push buttons, wait about a minute, try again. Nothing. Lather.Rinse. Repeat, finally it comes back to life in download mode. I retry everything, double checking all odin choices. Looks good, hit start -- Same thing (now it's lime green - a little less traumatic). Just to be to object lesson in insanity, I retry three more times, all the same result where odin hangs on flashing factoryfs,

So I go for broke, what the hell, it's only $40, right? This time, I reset everything, restart odin, and this time I leave out the pit file and just flash the ROM (remember, the reason for the pit was to repartition from mtd for a BML stock rom and I didn't know how far the flash had gotten before it bricked).

It went a lot slower than I'm used to, but...SUCCESS. I'm back on FC09. Flashed CWM 5, boot into recovery, flash the deodexed pre-rooted BML fc09, and I'm back in action. Change the MMSC url and everything's happy again.

Except me.

I wish I could figure out how to get Boost MMS working on a JB rom. I love Carbon and Slimbean, but I gotta have MMS now.

Anyway, hope this helps someone who gets the same error.