[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Lightside:
Hello everyone! :)

After browsing the forums and reading through some of the information available on bricked Galaxy Note N7000 devices, I decided to post a thread about my specific issue, given that it happened spontaneously, on a device which was never modded/rooted in any way, and which has been kept gingerly for almost four years! I will provide a brief, step-by-step overview of the issue as well as the different attempts at addressing it that have already been undertaken, in the hope that some of you will be so kind as to give me your opinion on what I could do next!

- A couple days ago, I received a phone call, and, as usual, I connected my headphones to the device. I immediately heard a crackling noise from them, as the device rebooted itself.

- I noticed that the device was stuck on the Samsung Galaxy Note GT - N7000 black and white logo. As a result, I tried turning it off, and connecting it to my charger. The grey battery icon popped up, and was quickly substituted by the green "charging" icon with moving dots. After a few minutes, I tried turning on the phone again, and it was stuck on the splash screen once more.

- I tried going into the recovery menu, which I successfully did, and, upon rebooting from it, the phone moved past the splash screen to the pink and purple Samsung animated logo; that was quickly followed by a screen I had never seen before, a password bar, and the message "Enter password to use encrypted device storage". Not knowing what to do, I turned off the device.

- the next logical step was to contact Samsung Italy, and I was told to try wiping cache and data from the recovery menu and attempt a restore to factory settings. Nothing particular happened, as the phone got once again stuck on the Note splashscreen, and the recovery menu showed a series of red lines, containing information such as:

E:failed to mount /efs (No such file or directory)

E:failed to mount /system ((No such file or directory))

# MANUAL MODE #

--Appling Multi-CSC

E:failed to mount /system (No such file or directory)

can't mount '/system' (No such file or directory)

E:failed to mount /cache (No such file or directory)

can't mount '/cache' (No such file or directory)

- Next step was to take the phone to a local repair shop, where I was told that flashing the firmware was really my only option, given the functioning download and recovery menus; I left the phone with the technician, who called me later in the evening asking me if the phone was still under warranty. I told him there was no warranty, so he attempted to install a custom recovery menu via Odin, namely the following versions of PhilZ: PhilZ-cwm6-XXLSZ-OXA-4.93.6.tar and PhilZ-cwm6-XXLTA-ATL-5.15.0.tar. Upon seeing the failed install, he decided to wait for the firmware to finish its download (abysmal connection speeds in my area) and try flashing it.

- The following morning, I joined the technician in his office as he showed me that the phone could now no longer access recovery mode, seeing as the custom recovery install failed, and the flash attempt counter had gone up to three (like I mentioned earlier, I took great care not to do anything too fancy with this phone, seeing as it's my work phone), with a yellow warning sign appearing under the splash screen.

- The technician's attempt to install stock firmware (N7000XXLSZ_N7000XXLSO_N7000ITVLS4_HOME.tar.md5) was met with failure. Odin fails at the "NAND Write" step, as shown by the following log (I replicated it at home):

<ID:0/012> Added!!

<OSM> Enter CS for MD5..

<OSM> Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable..

<OSM> Please wait..

<OSM> N7000XXLSZ_N7000XXLSO_N7000ITVLS4_HOME.tar.md5 is valid.

<OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully..

<OSM> Leave CS..

<ID:0/012> Odin engine v(ID:3.1005)..

<ID:0/012> File analysis..

<ID:0/012> SetupConnection..

<ID:0/012> Initialzation..

<ID:0/012> Get PIT for mapping..

<ID:0/012> Firmware update start..

<ID:0/012> SingleDownload.

<ID:0/012> cache.img

<ID:0/012> NAND Write Start!!

<ID:0/012> Complete(Write) operation failed.

<OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1)

- attempting to install a PIT file via Odin to repartition the device (filename: Q1_20110914_16GB) was also met with failure (the error message said something like "failed to repartition"), but, as I didn't pay enough attention to the steps taken by the technician to be able to replicate the operations at home - like I said, I've never done this before.

To sum up, the phone is showing the following symptoms:

- battery icon not changing from grey to green

- stock recovery menu not accessible due to a failed attempt at installing a custom recovery menu (+3 custom flash counter)

- yellow triangle on splash screen, where the device remains stuck indefinitely

- download mode still accessible, device recognized by Odin, firmware flash fails at NAND Write Start

I really hope some of you will be able to give me your two cents on how to proceed! Thank you in advance for any and all help! :)

Lightside