[Galaxy Note II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ven1x:
OK the main idea is in the title, and i know there are many topics like this already, but i just wanna know if i should stop wasting my time :crying:

on n7100 stock rom 4.4.2 I rooted and installed twrp

made a nandroid backup of everything except cache

flashed Nameless nightly 4.4.4

flashed the EFS that i backed up before with twrp

still no signal/baseband/imei blank

flashed the entire nandroid backup to stock 4.4.2

No signal/baseband unknown/imei null

i tried EFS professionals fixes, both "repair NV data from bak" and "repair ownership" state they went successfully, but no change.

I extracted the EFS.wim from the twrp backup (that was frustrating, winrar apparently cant do that and shows corrupt, it works fine with 7zip after renaming extension to tar.gz.

contents are as follows

01/01/2012 07:01 AM 47 .files
02/19/2014 07:25 AM 1,048,576 .nv_core.bak
02/19/2014 07:25 AM 32 .nv_core.bak.md5
02/19/2014 07:25 AM 2,097,152 .nv_data.bak
02/19/2014 07:25 AM 32 .nv_data.bak.md5
03/09/2013 04:18 AM 1 .nv_state
03/09/2013 04:26 AM 152 00000000.authtokcont
04/02/2015 02:30 PM 0 applied_sdcard_policies
03/09/2013 04:26 AM 57 bluetooth
04/01/2015 11:32 PM 47 carrier
05/26/2014 12:46 AM 47 drm
04/03/2015 11:59 PM 0 efs.txt
01/01/2012 07:06 AM 51 FactoryApp
03/09/2013 04:22 AM 12 gyro_cal_data
01/01/2012 07:02 AM 1,100 h2k.dat
01/01/2012 07:03 AM 52 imei
02/19/2014 07:25 AM 3,178 nv.log
04/02/2015 02:30 PM 2,097,152 nv_data.bin
04/02/2015 02:30 PM 32 nv_data.bin.md5
02/19/2014 07:24 AM 108 ss_data
01/01/2012 07:02 AM 52 wifi
03/09/2013 04:26 AM 220 wv.keys
22 File(s) 5,248,100 bytes
2 Dir(s) 1,468,375,040 bytes free

it seems the file/folder is not large enough, i've read people report file sizes in excess of 200mb, an efs.img and whatnot

i tried the 3rd way in over at sammobile as so

3rd way
-----------------------------------
I deleted my IMEI number when flashing roms a few days ago and it was showing as 000000...

I searched everywhere for a recipe of how to restore it and could not find one that would work. The closest that I got was a brilliant post (see link below) describing how to restore the IMEI on a SGS2 i9100. After following this recipe, I was able to restore my IMEI number to 0049 .... which is just as useless as 0000....

It took me a couple of days of research (and HUGE thanks to everybody whose previous research I was able to use) and I finally succeeded in restoring my IMEI using the 9 step process that I describe below. I can't guarantee that it will work and I do not know if it will work on any device besides the SGS3 GT-i9300 (international SGS3), because this is the only device that I have and was able to test the process on.

You need:
-EFS PRO, a brilliant little program for Windows used to backup / restore the efs folder as well as recover / repair the nv_data*.bin files.
-Windows
-Windows USB drivers
-Rooted SGS3
-Root explorer.apk
-Original phone firmware (actually, you only need the modem.bin file, so once you download your firmware package, you can just extract the modem.bin file).
-Odin or Heimdall

Your phone's IMEI number is stored in the ".nv_data" file in the original shipped efs folder.

Process:
1. make a copy of your EFS folder using root explorer and store it somewhere safe (on your SD card and external SD card should do it).
2. delete the EFS folder from the root of your phone using root explorer.
3. reboot the phone
4. open root explorer and go to the EFS folder (yes, it is still there! The Android OS has generated a new one for us) and delete the following files:
nv_data.bin
nv_data.bin.md5
nv.log
.nv_data.bak
.nv_data.bak.md5
nv_data.bin.bak
and the entire IMEI folder.
5.Now go to your backed up EFS folder on your sd card and copy the IMEI folder and the " .nv_data" file (note the dot) to your new EFS folder.
6.Make another copy of the ".nv_data" file in your new EFS folder. Rename one of them to "nv_data.bin" and the other one to "nv_data.bin.bak".
7. Connect your phone to your PC and start up EFS PRO. After your phone has been detected, press the "Repair nv data" button to correct the ownership and permissions.
8. Reboot your phone into recovery mode using the three botton combo and flash the original modem firmware (the modem.bin file that you extracted earlier) to your phone using Odin (use the "phone" button for the upload) or Heimdall (use the "radio" partition for the modem.bin file upload).
9. Reboot the phone normally and your IMEI number will be restored and you will be able to connect to your mobile network again

but no luck.

i havent tried other methods of ijecting imei via NV-items_reader_writer.exe because the secret code responses are different.

I tired emergency recovery via samsung kies but it doesnt show up as "requiring emergency recovery" (something like that at least)

so am i wasting my time or what? can i fix it without having to bring it to a phone repair shop?