[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4] Rookx:
Hey all,

* *Going to apologize in advance for a longer post, but I have a lot of questions I'm having a difficult time answering. Hope I'm posting in the correct forum too.

I'm on a Verizon GS4 (SCH-I545), 4.2.2. Build *JDQ39.I545VRUDML1. Presently Rooted and running Stock. (Based on horror stories I've been avoiding doing the update to the stock system)

I came from a Droid Bionic, and it was my first foray into rooting / modding Android phones, but I had it for 2.5 years and became quite proficient with what I could do with it. As a result, I've become very familiar with safestrap's touch screen. Before that I was capable of using bootstrap which used the type of recovery where I had to navigate it with volume keys.

So I have a series of questions that I can't get definitive answers for... More often than not when trying to flash ROMs I end up with a black screen and end up battery pulling and going back to stock system because I can't figure out why its happening.*

1. *Should I continue not taking the OTA update from verizon on my stock system? Most of the horror stories I hear about are with the ME7 build, but my present thinking is that the ML1 build is already past the ME7 one, so maybe all of the extra lockdown features are in place? I haven't been able to pin down exactly where I am on the build paths, and almost all custom ROMs are mentioning MDK or ME7, not really much mention of ML1 - I truly don't know exactly where I stand with this.

2. *Is it going to be easier in the long run if I just abandon safestrap and instead move to one of the other recoveries? I've read enough to understand that I need to flash the fix posted by Hashcode, although I don't really understand what the fix is doing, nor if I'm applying the correct fix. (the file I found was jfltevzw-ME7-modules.zip). Some of the other ROMs have specific fixes that I'm unsure what to do with, often using MDK or ME7 for the Radio. Again, since I don't really understand the differences between the builds, all I know is ME7 seems to be making it harder to flash ROMs. People have also said it doesn't matter if you're flashing the fix with the wrong name (IE I'm on ML1 but flashing the ME7 fix should still work... again not understanding exactly what it is is hurting me here).

* *2a. If I can/should stick with Safestrap, this is a side question - Are the ROMs usable in other slots than ROM slot 1? Throughout the life of my Bionic for the most part that was the only usable partition - most of the custom ROMs wouldn't work in other slots, is this still true?

3. *The only portion of success I've had is that I've had is with Hyperdrive. I've been able to flash this ROM fully and boot into it, but I've had no success with getting the wifi to work - a big problem since I'm not on unlimited data. I will post this specific question to the Hyperdrive thread itself to see if I can have someone help me, but all the research I've done on it has different people having different tricks that worked to get their wifi running (flashing the fix by queueing it after the ROM worked for some, canceling out before rebooting the ROM and separately flashing the Hashcode fix worked for others, one person even had to download the fix via their computer before transferring it to their phone in order for the fix to work - I've tried all of these things and still have no success with wifi).

I'm truly sorry if these questions have been answered before, but I have tried to look for the answers and there are just so many different specific ones I don't really know where I'm going wrong. I suspect there is a simple small detail that I'm doing which would make everything easier, such as using a different recovery, or that I''m flashing the wrong fix, etc. but I'm looking for a little advice to be able to have some success running these ROMs on my phone - After a week running the stock ROM, I'm already completely over it.

Thanks in advance for anyone that takes the time.