[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] The_Lord_BoNes:
S3 I9300 stuck at Samsung animating logo

Hello peoples.

I recently acquired an S3 from a friend who looks like they've soft-bricked it (yeah, I know, NOT a good place to start)... it boots up but only gets as far as the animating Samsung logo (the one with the blue "glowing halo") and the startup sound sort-of plays, but cuts off after the first couple of notes.

The phone DOES have TWRP installed and working, and the sd-card has a working copy of CWM on it (so I can swap between them if need be). I have a card-reader, so I can put whatever I want on the sd-card. At least THAT's something :P

Download mode works (it boots and waits for PC connection), however, the mini-usb port seems to be damaged, it charges fine but it is unrecognized by Windows (I've tried on XP and Win7). By "unrecognized" I mean that it either doesn't show up at all or that it very rarely shows up in device manager as "unknown device" (but only when the cable is right in a sweet spot, and I can't keep it that way indefinitely).

And yes, I have the drivers correctly installed as my Galaxy Tab 3.0 gets recognized fine using the same cable. I've even tried several other cables, and tried changing usb port (tried them all, front and back, on my desktop) and tried using other PCs (2 laptops, again tried every usb port)... with no luck at all.

So using ODIN or Kies is completely out of the question :(

The real problem is that when I boot into TWRP, the log shows "E:Unable to mount '/sdcard' (tw_mount)" twice... and upon using the file manager, I've found the internal sd-card to be mostly inaccessable or empty:

/cache has only a "recovery" folder, which contains 3 files "intent", "last_log" and "log"

/data has an "app" folder, and "fix_permissions.log" that's it

/dev contains only a single file ".coldboot_done" and has many folders under it (with sub-folders under them), but they seem to be entirely empty (every folder contains either another folder or nothing)

/efs is either empty or not mounted correctly (I can see this is gonna be a problem)

/etc contains "fstab", "mke2fs.conf" and "recovery.flash"

/proc contains a whole bunch of files/folders (waaay too many to list here)

/res contains the folders "fonts" (containing only "Roboto-Condensed-30.dat") and "images" (lots of png files)... and a few files ("dummyfileforgit", "keys", "twrp" and "ui.xml")

/sbin contains a bunch of SO/SH files and a few others

/sys and /system folders contain several sub-folders, contents look fine (but I could be wrong)

/tmp only has "extract.jpg" and "recovery.log"

/external-sd /extSdCard /preload /root /sdcard same as /efs (empty or not mounted correctly)

The only files in the root folder are "default.prop", "init", and a few RC files

I'm guessing that the empty/unmountable folders are because of a trashed partition table and are the cause for the freezing at bootup. And the guy I got it from doesn't have any backups <insert facepalm here>

My questions:

- Is there a way to re-partition the phone from TWRP? Or can that only be done in download mode via ODIN?

- If I re-partition the phone, I'm guessing that the EFS folder is gonna get trashed (therefore, I'd need someway to re-setup the IMEI and S/N information), correct?

- Could I re-compile the stock ROM (I downloaded it before I even tried ODIN) so it'd be flashable from TWRP? Or do I have to download a specific ROM?

- Could I use a Nandroid backup from another S3 (either stock or custom ROM) and simply "kill-off" thier IMEI and S/N replacing it with the correct information?

I'm sorry for the REALLY LOOOONG post... but I'm trying to give you more information, so as to give you a better picture of the situation. I'm really wanting to get this phone working if at all possible.

Thanking you in advance

- BoNes

EDIT (7:11pm):

I've just updated TWRP to the latest version (2.8.3) and my thoughts above about the /efs have been confirmed. The newer version gives a slightly different log, it now looks like this:

E:Mount: Unable to find partition for path '/sdcard' (3 times)

Updating partition details...

E:Mount: Unable to mount '/efs'

...done

EDIT (8:16pm):

I've managed to get the phone to boot to the home screen (after trying various methods for the last 4 days). I believe that it was because of some partition commands I was using in TWRP (this page gave me the idea... "mke2fs /dev/block/mmcblk0p3" followed by "mount -w -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p3")

After that, I flashed CyanogenMod. I'm not sure if flashing Cyanogen actually made a difference, but its working now.

I find it amusing that I've tried many different approaches over the last 4 days, and when I finally resort to asking you guys for help, THAT's when I finally make progress.

When I rebooted the phone, it actually booted. Although I don't have my /efs folder back yet... I can now use Mobile ODIN to re-flash the stock ROM, then root, followed by re-flashing CyanogenMod. So I should be out of the woods now... but I'll keep you guys updated.