[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S 4] aeneas1:
so i recently dove into rooting my s4 after first spending a lot of time reading this great board, thought i had a handle on it, thought things were going very well, but i've hit a snag, which came while attempting my first restore - i'm hopeful someone will give me a little help,

a little background:

1. before rooting i backed up my phone with titanium, also backed it up by copying all of its contents to my pc.

2. i followed the excellent "[SGH-M919] CF-Auto-Root" instructions and it worked without a hitch, it was a quick and easy process, no surprises.

3. confirmed that i was rooted using "root checker", all systems were go.

4. once the root was done i made another backup using titanium and sms backup. i also made a full system backup using online nandroid pro and, to be extra safe, i also backed up efs using efs backup tool.

5. i then moved some folders and files to my external card and once again backed up my phone as before, including to my pc.

6. feeling confident that i could now restore my system to its rooted stock state if things went south, i decided to flash my first rom with cwm, i went with cm11 m7 4.4.3 - i saved the cm11 and gapps zips to my external card using rom tool box pro, rebooted into cwm recovery, selected the two files, and flashed. i also did a data and cache wipe before doing so.

6. needless to say i was thrilled when cm11 loaded perfectly, it worked great, and it was just what i was hoping for.

7. having been bitten by the apparent ease of flashing roms, i decided to restore my system to it's pre cm11 state, to it's rooted stock rom state, and try another rom, rather than just flash another rom from cm11 - i wanted to make sure that returning to my rooted stock rom state would be a simple matter.

and that's where i've run into problems.

1. as i mentioned i made two system backups of my stock rom before flashing cm11, one right after i rooted my phone, and one after moving some folders and files to the external card.

2. after doing a wipe, i chose to restore the second backup, the one i made after moving files and folders, and it didn't quite work out - everything appeared to restore perfectly, but my device was immediately inundated with pop up warnings about stopped apps, i also got a persistent warning that the system had stopped responding as well, prompting me to choose between "wait" or "stop it". not only was the restored backup mired in popup screens, but it was impossibly slow, impossibly "laggy".

3. so i decided to restore the other stock backup, the one i made before i moved folders and files, and the results were the same, pop screens for apps not working, system warnings, severe lags, etc., identical to the first backup.

then i panicked.

1. i decided to flash my phone with the "[SGH-M919] CF-Auto-Root" file again, again with odin, hoping that it would put me where i started - i didn't stop to think that my phone was already rooted, that the file was was for unrooted phones.

2. not only did the reflash not work (my phone just booted as normal, as if the flash didn't get a chance to finish), but cwm recovery in boot mode was gone, replaced by what appears to be the andorid stock recovery screen, a screen with an animated dying/collapsing robot, - the screen was titled: "android system recovery <3e> and asked for an "update" from the external storage or cache.

3. not knowing what "update" it was looking for, i selected a backed system files (the first rooted stock rom backup i made, the second rooted stock backup i made, and even the cm11 file) - none worked.

4. i then downloaded a clean stock rom from cwm's website, converted it from zip to tar, and tried to flash it using odin with my device in upload mode, it didn't work either.

so how badly did i mess up my phone? any help would be greatly appreciated.