[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Psychlone:
Hey there.

To preface, I'm not new to flashing, just new to Samsung and Odin. (former CrackFlasher from the original D1 and Bionic/Razr days)

I got my S4 a couple months ago, rooted it and installed TWRP immediately and it had been running great ever since. I'm still on MDK and have not taken the ME7 update.

Got the bug again and decided to give Hyperdrive RL7 a shot. Downloaded it, rebooted into TWRP, flashed it, rebooted and let it sit for a few hours last night.

Opened it up this morning, everything worked GREAT! I know how these things work - new ROM, coming from stock, so I started from a clean slate and didn't use my TiBu backup to restore, I literally went and redownloaded every single app I use direct from Google Play Store.

I have to say the ROM was perfect - fast, smooth and awesome functionality and even some customization that gives previous Razr AOKP a run!

That's where the fun ends though - I rebooted the phone and ended up on the Samsung Unlocked with an unlocked padlock, and it wouldn't budge.

So, no problem, boot into TWRP, wipe and install Hyperdrive again.

NOPE. So I read that some people were having problems with TWRP, so I decided to give the older 2.5 version a try - Odin'd it to the phone and FAIL.

So someone else had mentioned they had luck with OUDHS. Odin'd it to the phone, but it wouldn't take it, so I found a download for OUDHS that's flashable from within "recovery" and flashed it from within TWRP, fully believing that's what it was meant for. THAT was a horrible idea that resulted in a boot that shows yellow text that states that there is software that isn't Verizon verified and to take my phone into the local Verizon store.

I had a feeling about flashing a new recovery from within a recovery, but I also thought it was pretty straightforward to flash back to stock... that's not been the case so far - the VRUAMDK_No Wipe file doesn't want to do anything because it's a .tar inside a .zip, opening the .zip in WinRAR, 7Zip and even WinZip doesn't open anything... so I can't even flash to stock.

Now I have NO recovery (no TWRP), and everything I've tried to push to the phone via Odin fails - with the exception of \SCH-I545_MD2_423399_Kernel.tar.tar which is what was used to root the phone to being with, and that only gets me back to the Samsung Custom unlocked padlock screen.

PLEASE HELP!

(thanks in advance for all input)

***EDIT:

I redownloaded the VRUAMDK_No flash 2 more times and got one that opened with WinRAR (still wouldn't open with 7z or WinZip, and after pushing it with Odin 4 times, the last time it finally went through.

I know a bad download was part of the first problem with not being able to open the original zip file to extract the md5 from within, but there was NO difference whatsoever in the 4 times I kept poking it with Odin when it finally took.

I successfully booted to stock, then rooted, then flashed TWRP 2.5, then installed Hyperdrive RLS8 successfully.

For anyone that's reading this that may have the same or similar problem, first try to download the ROM again and again (and again if necessary) - until you can open it with 7z or WinRAR, you don't have a valid, good download of it.

Second, keep poking it with Odin. It was my 4th try when it finally worked. --literally no changes in between, nothing changed at all, it just worked out of random on the 4th try.

/thread

Hope that helps someone. Glad I wasn't in more of a hurry!