[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] opethfan89:
Hi all,

This is the first time I've tried installing a custom ROM on my VZW S4 (i545) (MDK firmware. Yes, I held out on the OTA since May). I've got a few thoughts and a couple of questions I was hoping could be addressed. I consider myself familiar with flashing ROM's and whatnot, so I won't need hand-holding steps in answer to my questions.

Some info:

VZW S4

MDK Firmware

Recovery: OUDhs CWM Touch Req0very v1.0.3.5

I haven't taken any OTA since I got the phone back in May. This leads me to believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that I'm on Android 4.2.2?

Current ROM: AOKP Nightly Build for 10/31/2013 (MR2)

Thoughts: Holy hell, this ROM is BLAZING fast. I am missing a few features, but none I use regularly (I don't use

any

of the TouchWiz "smart" features. Damn battery hogs). I was able to flash this over and install GAPPS without any problems. Loading time is incredible, and I love how clean the interface is.

Questions:

Can anyone help me figure out why I cannot install CM10.2? Not sure if that's because I downloaded the wrong version or something, but after flashing it, the screen stays stuck at the Galaxy S4 logo and doesn't move. Maybe I didn't wait long enough, but it surely didn't move in any reasonably expected time (AOKP, by comparison, loaded probably <1 minute). Any thoughts on why this might be? I really want to try CM10.2, so perhaps I should try a different build?

Another question/concern: I downloaded a few different ROMs last night -- CM10.2, AOKP and st0ckdr0id. AOKP installed fine, CM10.2 froze up, but when I installed st0ckdr0id (after wiping out, of course), I got what I think is referred to as a kernel panic. The message was similar to "This phone has software installed on it that Verizon Wireless has determined to be unsafe. Please power off the phone and take to the nearest Verizon Wireless store for help". In the top-left corner, it had in bold RED letters "Kernel secure: FAIL" (or similar wording). I fixed this by booting back into recovery, wiping out, and then installing AOKP again. Can anyone help me understand why this happened?

Why is only ~10GB of space still available when I -thought- I wiped out everything?

What I'm really searching for is an AOSP ROM that is very clean and light, but has SOME of the TouchWiz features. Any recommendations?

My phone only shows me as having a 3G connection, where normally I have 4G LTE. Anything I can do to fix this? Is this an issue with the ROM not detecting the right kind of radio? Bug report, perhaps?

I can't mount my external_sd in my CWM anymore. Yes, I used to be able to do it at one point, because I've done an external nandroid backup to it from within CWM in the past (as of October 29th, if the date on the backups is correct). I've read in other Google searches that it has something to do with the formatting of the SD card, but I haven't removed that SD card from my phone in a few months to have adjusted anything to do with formatting. I plugged the memory card into my Linux laptop this morning while diagnosing this and got an error about an unknown exfat partition. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Stupid question: Is there a way to -completely- wipe my internal SD card clean of all my current files? I know when I "wipe" /data I can still see all of my files from the previous installation, and I'm not ballsy enough to wipe /sdcard. I guess the question that then coincides with this is if I were able to completely wipe the phone, I assume that would wipe the recovery as well?

Sorry for some of the novice questions -- I have no problem messing with my old TF300T tablet (because NVFlash will save the day), but this is my only phone, only line of communication and SOLE way for me to answer calls for work (24/7 rotating on-call), so it is VERY important to me to ask questions and not go down for more than 1 hour.

Thanks for all help guys, its much appreciated. I hope to be able to test ROMs regularly and maybe start posting video reviews or something, who knows?

Thanks,

Opethfan89