[Galaxy Note II General] Brandzel:
UPDATE: Problem solved! Subsequent attempts at Odin flashing succeeded. So...Nevermind! ;)

Hello XDA sages!

I'm an avid Android user and I like to mess around, but I have no genuine technical skills or training and it's now bitten me pretty hard. I just got engaged and I was trying to clean out my phone and gift it to my new mother-in-law...with disastrous consequences. So this is my SOS to this incredible community! (Please note, I have searched many other Note 2 bootloop threads but I've seen nothing describing my situation and their solutions have not helped. Though I do apologize if I've missed something!

My current situation:

* Upon restart, the phone (Note 2 GT-N7100, unlocked) is stuck in a terrible bootloop, where the "Samsung Galaxy NoteII GT-N7100" logo appears for 6 seconds, and is then replaced by the Clockwok mod recovery logo (not recovery mode screen, just the hat+geer+orange arrow logo in the center, with "ClockworkMod Recovery v6.0.4.3" in small letters at the bottom). That logo lasts for about 1 second and then it goes black for 1 second, then repeats with the Samsung logo. And so on.

* Many other threads have suggesting entering recovery mode by holding power + home + volume up. This only causes the Samsung logo to refresh every few seconds (i.e. it eliminates the Clockwork mod logo interlude but does nothing else)

* Down+power+home does stop the loop and change to the custom OS download option screen. Pressing volume up then does enter the "Downloading..." screen with the picture of the green Android. (pressing volume up restarts the phone and the loop begins again).

* I've tried loading a stock firmware package onto the device in this mode with Odin v.3.0.9 (obtained via this post) but it doesn't recognize my device. I'm guessing this is because USB debugging was not turned on before the crash. :(

How I got here:

* I first rooted and flashed a custom rom several months ago using the Cynogen Mod custom installer. I installed the only "stable" release for the N7100 (here.)

* About 1 month ago I used the Rom Manager app and CWM to flash OmniRom, from a zip file on my external SD card. Just before the crash happened last night, I successfully completed an OTA to the latest OmniRom nightly.

* As mentioned, I was preparing the phone to be gifted to my new mother-in-law, and wanted to clean it out. I started by booting into recovery mode (from the Rom Manager app) and then initiating a factory reset.

* Upon rebooting, I noticed that somehow a bunch of my data was still hiding on the phone. Photos and videos and some songs were mysteriously still present, and the storage analysis in settings showed only about 6 gigs were free out of 16. A subsequent Factory Reset did nothing to change this. (All other aspects appeared to be working perfectly, however, as far as returning to a clean install of a fresh copy of OmniRom Android 4.4.2 -- no account data was preset, all my apps were gone and all the stock apps were in the default folders, etc.)

* I booted into Recovery Mode and initiated a "Media Data wipe" (I think that's what it was called) in an attempt to clear out the stubborn media files that weren't being erased.

* I then initiated a "data wipe" (which appeared to just be one level of storage hierarchy above the media data wipe I had just completed).

* I'm pretty sure I also separately initiated a "cache wipe". (But not a "Dalvik Cache" wipe that I have seen referenced on other threads, as I don't believe I saw a reference to that within the recovery mode interface).

* After these wipes I restarted, and all appeared to be fine. The stubborn media data was wiped clean. Finally, after logging back into my Google account to use the App Store to download Rom Manager one last time, (and I honestly can't quite remember why I needed to that) I wanted to complete the process with one more factory reset to eliminate my account data before handing over the phone. This time, I initiated the reset from within the settings menu of the phone in normal operational mode. (This was the first of the various factory wipes I've mentioned that I initiated this way -- all the other factory resets were initiated from within recovery mode).

* I think this is when the current loop started. But to be embarrassingly honest, I had the phone face down and didn't look at it after initiating that final factory restart until I subsequently popped out the battery in order to remove the SIM card. I think the factory reset was complete by that time, but I'm not sure. (In other words, I might have interrupted the factory reset by removing the battery before it was complete).

* After that point this evil loop began.

* To my amateurish eye, the two leading contenders for how I did this are a) the "media wipe" or "data wipe" which I completed before the penultimate restart (although the phone did boot and operate just fine after those were completed, or b) the final factory reset which I may have interrupted by removing the battery.

Three other notes which may or may not be relevant

:

* Every time I did a factory reset or data wipe and then went to restart the phone from within the recovery mode, a warning screen came on saying that something might have messed up root access and asked me if I wanted to fix. I always said that I did,

* I had selected TWRP recovery in the Rom Manager app on the advice of the Omnirom site, and I think I saw a reference to TWRP on the recovery mode screen, but I had previously installed ClockWorkMod Recovery and thought maybe that was still active in a way it shouldn't be. (I can't remember what those indications were exactly, but I think it might have just been seeing the logo in the recovery page). But the presence of the ClockWorkMod Recovery logo in my evil boot loop makes me think this may be relevant.

* Before my first factory reset I had made a full backup copy of the current Rom (omnirom) onto my external SD card, which is still in the phone.

I would be eternally grateful for any help, tips, references or suggestions! My fate is in your hands!!

Many thanks,

- Your overeager n00b