# It's wonky! Have advice while I set Odin up?



## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

Hey all, moderator here looking for ya'lls help! 

I've got some seriously strange behavior going on with my phone that's *persisting through data/cache/dalvik wipes and system formats*. "Strange" is defined by random reboots, lock-ups when unlocking the phone, when I can actually get in the Home and Search buttons do nothing (I can sometimes run long enough to set some of the OS up before it reboots), and all sorts of "obviously a bad install" behavior.

Events leading up to strangeness:
Been running AOKP M4 for ~1 week and it's been working beautifully for me.
Downloaded B28 when it dropped but didn't flash it immediately.
2 days ago I downloaded and installed Permissions Denied by Stericson and played with it on a few inconsequential apps (Hanging with Friends and other unimportant apps) just to test it for the first time ever.
After the initial reboot after applying settings from that app is when I first noticed things going really wonky.
After a few reboots and attempts to stabilize things, I decided "screw it, I'll just wipe and install B28".
So I did so. Wipe data/cache, format system, and installed B28 and the new 20120317 gapps listed on the B28 page (no mods, no custom kernel, as stock of an AOKP install as you can get).
Further wonkiness ensued. After a few wipes/flashes, I realized that I didn't check the MD5 of the B28 install. Checked it, and sure enough, it was bad! (gapps MD5 was fine)
So I downloaded B28 again, checked MD5 and it was good.
So more full wipes/system formats/installs and the exact same wonkiness continued. (No, I didn't accidentally flash the bad B28 or anything silly like that)
Tried nandroids and they also continue to be wonky in the same ways. (btw, recovery seems perfectly stable. This is the same recovery I've been using for months while flashing 5-10 things a week - not one of the buggy ones.)
So I decided, maybe B28 just isn't for my phone. So I wiped/formatted and then flashed the M4 rom that I still had on my phone (same file used to previously flash my ~1 week stable M4) and the exact same wonkiness continued even on here. Tried it with/without gapps - no difference.
So now I'm working on getting ADB set back up (just built my new PC last week - not gotten it setup before) so I can pull all of my data off my sd card before doing anything really drastic. I've never used Odin before so I figured this is a great chance to get some experience with that.

*Other than Odin, anybody have any other ideas for what I can try?* Again, just to recap:
I think Permissions Denied by Stericson was the original source, or at least the catalyst, for the problem. *Anybody know what this app really does and where it does it?* It mentions something about "the permissions file". What is this and where is it?
Yes, I'm properly wiping everything.
Originally flashed a corrupt B28 but now everything I'm flashing is MD5-verified.
M4 was perfectly stable for ~1 week and flashing it again with the same .zip I flashed a week ago shows wonkiness.
No matter what I flash (previously stable ROMs) or restore (previously stable nandroids), the same behavior continues (random lock-ups/reboots, sometimes bootloops, but every time I can get in I verify that the Home button does nothing, although it lights up with the background image and I get haptic feedback)
Thanks, ya'll!


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## mentose457 (Aug 26, 2011)

Have you tried fixing permissions in CMR?


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

mentose457 said:


> Have you tried fixing permissions in CMR?


Yup. I didn't think it was worth the try but I tried it anyways. No change in behavior from it.


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## times_infinity (Aug 6, 2011)

I'd give it an Odin. Thats what used to fix a lot of things on the older Galaxy S phones and even the S2s. If that doesnt then something serious might be wrong.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using RootzWiki


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

times_infinity said:


> I'd give it an Odin. Thats what used to fix a lot of things on the older Galaxy S phones and even the S2s. If that doesnt then something serious might be wrong.


Agreed. This simply doesn't show the signs of "something serious is wrong", so I'm holding out that Odin fixes it for me. I don't know if something was corrupted in nand somewhere or what. Doesn't Odin fix even stuff like that?


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## GRZLA (Aug 13, 2011)

Jaxidian said:


> Agreed. This simply doesn't show the signs of "something serious is wrong", so I'm holding out that Odin fixes it for me. I don't know if something was corrupted in nand somewhere or what. Doesn't Odin fix even stuff like that?


If it is wonky now, it will only get worse later. Odin will fix you up nicely.


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

This whole rebooting thing is making it difficult for me to pull my files. This is what I get for being too lazy to setup my automatic nightly backups due to flashing too much. Right now sure would be a good time for a removable SD card!


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

GRZLA said:


> If it is wonky now, it will only get worse later. Odin will fix you up nicely.


That's most certainly what I'm hoping!


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## Rythmyc (Jul 23, 2011)

You could also try using the "super wipe" utility, or reverting back to a stock recovery and wiping that way to ensure you get a "full" wipe. The problem may be in a partition that CWM isn't wiping (it obviously skips some part of phone in order to save the personal data). If that doesn't fix it, i'm not sure how much more Odin would fix that a factory restore wouldn't fix.


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

Rythmyc said:


> You could also try using the "super wipe" utility, or reverting back to a stock recovery and wiping that way to ensure you get a "full" wipe. The problem may be in a partition that CWM isn't wiping (it obviously skips some part of phone in order to save the personal data). If that doesn't fix it, i'm not sure how much more Odin would fix that a factory restore wouldn't fix.


That's kind of my thinking as well.

However, I had a change. I'm not sure yet if this is an improvement or if this is a false sense of security. Right now, all is working well. What did I do? I restored a known-bad nandroid! I restored a backup that I created AFTER the craziness began and now, no craziness!

Once this cleared up, I've done no more testing. I'm waiting until I finish backing up my sd card before I do anything else. So all of the obvious questions at this point, I don't have answers to.


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

This is REALLY strange. So after a while, I rebooted and it went right back to wonky. Did some full wipes and performed a fresh install and still wonky. Restored that "bad" nandroid and bam, things work again! In other words, the "bad" nandroid working well is a repeatable thing and not a fluke! I'm totally boggled about this!

Anybody have any clue what that Permissions Denied app does?


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

And alas, "something is really screwed up" surfaced. While I could repeatedly "fix" my phone by restoring that nandroid, it would only last until my next reboot. While it was in that state of being "fixed but broken", any restores from any other nandroid would result in a *failed restore on the data partition*. So I think that my partition structure got all jacked up somehow. I have absolutely no clue how that happened. While Permissions Denied seems like a culprit, I also need to look at Avast (I've been using it ever since I flashed M4 to try it out a bit since it seems so awesome for what it is) as I know it attempts to do some pretty low-level stuff and maybe it could have been the culprit as well.

So it's Odin time!!!


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## mentose457 (Aug 26, 2011)

Jaxidian said:


> So it's Odin time!!!


ODIN!!! HECK YEAH!!!


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

And after an Odin, things seem a bit happier! Primary problem now: Fastboot doesn't work on Windows 8. ADB does but Fastboot does not (drivers don't install properly).

Time to resolve this somehow...


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## blaineevans (Jul 11, 2011)

Jaxidian said:


> And after an Odin, things seem a bit happier! Primary problem now: Fastboot doesn't work on Windows 8. ADB does but Fastboot does not (drivers don't install properly).
> 
> Time to resolve this somehow...


Ahh yeah, Odin yeah!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk


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## hazard209 (Aug 1, 2011)

Would a VM work for fastboot?


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## Jaxidian (Jun 6, 2011)

hazard209 said:


> Would a VM work for fastboot?


Not worried about it - was just annoyed. I have fastboot working on a box at work (I actually have my SDK on Dropbox so it syncs to many of my machines) so I took care of it today.

One thing I learned today: If you Odin your device back to stock, the bootloader is still unlocked! That's cool, so I didn't need fastboot for that. I did, however, need it for recovery. But it's all good now. And Odin solved my problems.

In other news, I think I'm done playing with Avast and Permissions Denied.


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