[Galaxy Note II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] hennot:
HOW IT STARTED

Yesterday I noticed that my phone was off. I connected the charger and found that it was still half full. I turned the phone on and it worked normally. After an hour I noticed that my phone was off again. I tried turning it on but it only reached the SAMSUNG animation and animated it indefinitely.

A month ago or so I received a notification in the notification bar about refreshment of security policies. Since my phone was rooted, I did not want to apply them because I was afraid that it would kick Knox back in. Then a couple of weeks ago I received a new notification about a new software update from Samsung. At first, I did not want to install that one either. But a couple of days ago I thought what the heck, let's try it and agreed to install it. I left it to install in the background and forgot about it.

WHAT I DID

First I rebooted into recovery (TWRP) and did all wipes. While doing them, TWRP complained that some of them could not me completed. I rebooted and saw that this wiping did not have any effect on the issue.

Then I rebooted back into recovery and did wiping again. This time I noticed that when I ordered a reboot from TWRP, it confirmed me if I was sure because there was no OS installed. I found that weird but had no choice but to reboot and naturally nothing had changed: it still animated SAMSUNG indefinitely.

What else is particular is that the samsung theme melody is cut of in the middle of the animation. When I hear it being cut of I already know: that boot attempt will never end.

Then I downloaded and flashed the latest stock firmware from Sammobile with ODIN. All was well in ODIN but when the phone rebooted, I once again had the opportunity to watch the word SAMSUNG indefinitely.

Then I tried downloading and installing the latest Kies 2 into fresh Windows 8.1 virtual machine and tried the Firmware Upgrade and Initialisation option. It asked for model and serial number and then downloaded something but then said that "This device's version cannot be updated". I then tried Kies 3 but that said that I had the wrong Kies.

WHERE I AM NOW

I tried flashing downloaded n7100_odin_efs.tar with ODIN, knowing that it would erase/overwrite my /efs partition which contains nv_data file with my IMEI code but since /efs could not be mounted anyway, there was nothing to lose. After flashing this file I successfully booted into fresh TouchWiz and saw the information in the attached screenshot.

I checked the IMEI by dialing *#06# and it was "004999010640000 / 01". I don't have a backup of nv_data and I have broken the warranty by flashing custom roms on it. How would I get my nv_data file regenerated with the correct IMEI (without purchasing special hardware or paying some guy with such a box)?

I tried a program called WRITEIMEI which should allow me to write back the correct IMEI but when I tried to read or write with this program, it only displayed "Verifying" indefinitely.

Current problems:

- Unable to fix IMEI from generic to back to what it's supposed to be (to get mobile network access back)

- Unable to get rid of this technical information banner (see the attached screenshot)

- Wifi is always off after reboot