[Samsung Galaxy S7 Questions and Answers] kfasse:
heyo - I have a G930w8 Samsung S7 (Exynos.) I don't know what CSC the phone has. It was just sold new-in-box on Ebay as an unlocked Canadian Samsung S7. I'm using it in the US.

I've had it for a while. While attempting to update today, the phone, well... didn't update. It was stuck updating for a day. Could not get into recovery menu, but Odin/downloading mode worked.

I used Odin to flash this stock firmware: sammobile. com/samsung/galaxy-s7/firmware/SM-G930W8/XAC/download/G930W8VLS6CSH1/288555/ to the phone, using the CSC file (not HOME_CSC.) It worked. I did not flash the userdata and didn't use PIT as neither are included in the sammobile package. I didn't use re-partition, because whenever I try that, Odin (3.13.1) fails to flash with "Can't open the specified file, line 1892"

So, post-flashing, the phone boots to a "Erasing" screen, then to an "installing system updates..." screen, stops at 32%, then goes back to "Erasing". After a while on "Erasing", the Android logo freezes. I left it in this state for 30 minutes and nothing happened - I now plan to leave it there overnight, but in the meantime:

- if I force restart the phone, once it reboots it tries "Erasing" for a moment, then goes into a permanent "No Command" boot loop.

- If I re-flash the firmware, it goes back to the previously described "Erasing > Installing System Updates 32% > Erasing > Frozen logo on Erasing" state.

- If I go to the recovery menu, the phone usually randomly freezes or reboots. A couple times I successfully selected the factory reset option, at which point the phone would print "formatting /data...". It remained in this state for 30 minutes with no change, so I am not sure if it's freezing or actually doing something. I intend to also try leaving this overnight.

Can anyone help me get this phone functioning again? I am not sure what's going wrong here, if I have installed the wrong firmware, if I have installed the wrong CSC, do I need to use a PIT file, etc.

Edit: The phone is working again. For posterity, here is what I did:

- left it overnight at the "erasing" screen. It was still there when I woke up.

- went into recovery, tried a factory reset. It almost instantly went through. Rebooted the phone from recovery menu.

- phone now did "Erasing" for a moment, then, reboot > glowing samsung logo > setup screen > rebooted (with no prompting) into bootloop while I was setting up

- re-flashed the firmware, removed SD card

- now it does "Installing updates > 32% > erasing" except it doesn't freeze on erasing this time, it completes "Erasing" and reboots

- phone now boots normally

- encountered a crash/boot into bootloop after setting up the phone, but re-flashing (this time with HOME_CSC) fixed it

And I'm currently in the phone, able to use it... hopefully no more bootloops. What a cluster****.

Edit 2: I kept getting unprompted reboots into boot loops after 5-10 minutes of using the phone (after flashing.) Re-flashing with HOME_CSC would un-bootloop it, but I decided to let it boot loop for 30 minutes to see what would happen. It eventually stopped boot looping and stayed on the Samsung logo, not booting into recovery or anything. I turned off the phone (power + volumedown) and started it up and it booted just fine. Phone now doesn't appear to be bootlooping randomly.

Edit to the edit of the edit - actual solution: The phone still randomly rebooted every now and then, although no bootloop. I ended up installing TWRP through Odin and hard-wiping the phone ("Format Data".) A normal wipe did not work. I then finally re-flashed the stock ROM and now the phone has been working perfectly for hours.

Here's to hoping future Android updates don't prompt two days of attempts to un**** the phone!