[XDA Assist] XDA Visitor:
Hey Folks,

So as the title says... I'm lost and with a bootloop's fan with is a softbrick by now.

About my phone:

Verizon Samsung Galaxy S3 SCH-I535 from 2012

Acquired with Jelly 4.3 and root it with towelroot and SuperSU so I could use it abroad. Upgraded it using the Verizon Upgraded tool to Kitkat 4.4.2 and everything was fine.

The Story:

I encountered an issue with my apps (Fb, German Bahn and Whatssapp to mention the first ones). Facebook was completely wiped out on its own and I had to install it again. The other apps their icons turned into the Android Icon and although I could use whatsapp to receive calls, I couldn't open it and I had to uninstall it. Said this I lost my whatsapp ID because of my number being different and my being abroad. I got a few new apps to solve that but once resintalling Whatsapp it told me to erase a task killer app (Battery Doctor) and I did. Two to three hours after my phone restarted itself and told me I had to factory reset which freaked me out and I looked for information to avoid this. I found none but a good recovery tool for numbers and messages.

I confronted the factory reset button like a man and nothing happened. Just bloop bloops.

I've tried flashing it with Odin and I followed so many instructions with must of them failing to some spot (NAND write FAIL!, cache.img.ex2-3-4 NOT Auth, and at some point I tar(ed) and untar(ed) my tar.md5 files and remade them in certain order I found in a post here about solving the NAND Write issues. Part of it included ticking the "NAND erase all" (which I fear by now already deleted the data I so much wanted to keep) and remake them my files with extension xxx.img for all the important ones but xxx.bin and xxx.mbn.

I succesfully flashed a recovery.img from a file called "Verizon_SCH-I535-StockRecovery.tar" (you can find it online) but now it won't even let me get to the factory reset screen and automatically reboots itself.

NOTE: it never gave me the menu option in recovery mode because it would restart. But when I didn't try to go into recovery mode I would see the factory reset screen. I am not sure what happened there.

PLEASE, I've been 5 days working on this and I also encountered issues with my laptop after downloading so many ROMs and Odin versions but I was able to fix that.

Any ideas?

List of ROMs I've tried flashing to no avail.

-ROM for my phone getting into Jelly 4.3

-ROM for my phone for Kitkat 4.4.2

-BOOTLOADER-I535VRALF2-618049-REV09-user-low-ship-tar.md5

-i535VRUDNE1_I535VZWDNE1_I535VRUDNE1_HOME.tar.md5

-openrecovery-twrp-2.8.5.0-d2vzw.tar

-StockVerizonGalaxyS3WithRoot.zip

-stock.vzw_root66.tar --> here the issues where the cache.img.ext4 which I changed the just -.img, -.img.ext2, -.img.ex3 and nothing happened.

Did create a tar file with the recovery.img of the stock.vzw_root66.tar file and it did work for flashing on the PDA but when it restarted I am still in a bootloop after getting into recovery mode within 4-5 seconds.

NOTE about RECOVERY MODE:

I don't have any menu to work with the sequences of holding POWER button and pressing VOLUME UP once and releasing didn't work. Neither the other way around. Tried also with POWER, VOLUME UP and HOME and I get a seemingly working Android figure during one second and then turns into the dead Android one for 4-5 secs and restarts.

Succesful ones but with no change for better or for worse:

-VRALEC.bootchain.tar.md5

-Said before recovery.img from the stock.vzw_root66.tar file

AND the pitfile for my phone SCH-I535_D2VZW_16gd.pit (Which I already used and gets me the PASS word... but nothing else):confused:

Please can any one help me fix it? I looked the the right ROM several times and still not working. Should I just turn into a different OS other than Kitkat and/or Jelly? I haven't tried upgrading to Lollipop yet but I am thinking/fearing it might be a solution.

To Sum up,

- Recovery mode doesn't give me any option

- My phone reboots itself on recovery mode - checked all the buttons and I took them off even but still does.

- I can go into ODIN mode and stays there all day!

On ODIN mode it says:

PRODUCT NAME: SCH-I535

CURRENT BINARY: Samsung Official

SYSTEM STATUS: Official

QUALCOMM SECUREBOOT: ENABLE

BOOTLOADER RP SWREV: 2

ODIN fails to flash any WHOLE ROM file and just can "flash" the PIT and two different recovery.img (the latest from the stock.vzw_roo66.tar file.

Hope this doesn't give anyone a headache after reading it!