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How I Saved My SGH-I317 ATT Note 2

I decided that my unlocked SGH-I317 ATT Note 2 running on t-mobile would be great with the t889’s wifi calling feature. Loaded up Odin, used sammobile’s t889 rom and halfway through it failed.
This wasn’t my first rom, so I just thought, oh well, back to the one I was using.
Insert dramatic music here.
Nope. Boot loop. Bootloop. Bootloop.
Ok, so I can just go into philz recovery and wipe it clean. Load again. Nope.
Used Odin’s nand erase. Nope.
At some point during my trials, philz became super slow. Oh no… maybe it was something with the processor. Nope. Loaded philz again and it was faster.
I went back to first stock, then upgraded stock, then another rom… then back to original stock again.
During my wiping with philz, I must have formatted the right thing. It booted up to stock! I thought it was ok. Nope. My I317 would not get a cell signal.

The IMEI was null/null. The baseband was unknown. I didn’t know about efs partition until this moment. So no backup.
I tried to upgrade the stock rom again. While I was in the phone, I did notice that there were several levels of what appeared to be installs of android. The \0\ folder where the newer OS’ reside looked like \0\0\0\0\0 and each one of those had an install of android.
Adb should take care of that. For a day I tried to format eveything so I could start over fresh.
Bootloop again.
More days of inet search for any help. Finally broke down and started looking for someone online who could repair it. Found someone on ebay. They said to contact them via text. I did that and they didn’t respond.
A few more days of playing with it and I found the right combination of steps to flash a rom, but still with no signal. Baseband unknown again. Null IMEI.

When wiping the device with philz, it didn’t seem to be wiping everything automatically (using the option wipe for new rom).

Here’s what worked: (in this order)
1.Wipe davlik cache under advanced (sometimes this was available to wipe, sometimes not. Try it.)

2.go to mounts and format everything that’s listed there (except external sd, which you shouldn’t have inserted anyway if you are in this loop, as that may be one of your issues.)

3. Wipe cache.

4. The last step was to wipe for new rom. This should go quickly since you have formatted everything.

When you then use odin to install a stock rom, click nand erase all.

When you flash the stock rom, everything should be back to factory settings. Still no baseband. Still IMEI null/null.

Up and running, I found that since my phone was a non-blacklisted IMEI and I had the serial, Samsung Kies supposedly took it back to factory settings INCLUDING the efs folder.

Tried for days. Kies 3 recognized the phone once and ignored it after that. Kies 2 never recognized it. Oh, it knew the phone was there. But never wanted to play nice.

That’s ok, from what I read, it would still take the phone back in time. People said you had to be patient. Tried that. It would download the firmware upgrade file to get the rom, but would then sit for hours, blacked out and not responding.

Tried reinstalling Kies, upgrading Kies, upDATING Kies. Bleh.

I was trying to find one of my philz backups on my windows 7 machine and thought, while I am here, I will try kies again. Kies 2, started it, it downloaded the firmware! Would it work? YES!!!!!!!!

Kies did not work on Windows 8.1.

Kies 2.? on windows 7. Do NOT update/upgrade when it pops up.

****While the phone is in download mode and is upgrading, go to windows explorer, type this into the bar at the top:

%TEMP%

And hit enter.
Then, sort by date modified. Find the folder that is the most recent something like

Temp unzipped something…

Look in there and if you see 4 very long filenames and one starting with CSC, go back up to the folder and quickly copy it somewhere else. Once Kies has finished flashing your device, it will delete the original folder.

Supposedly, that CSC file contains your serial/IMEI combination. Looking at ODIN, there is another place to put a CSC file instead of a PDA file.

Steps:
1. Windows 7
2. Samsung Kies 2.(?)
3. Plug in your phone. No need to see if it recognizes it.
4. Firmware upgrade
5. Type in SGH-I317. This HAS to be all uppercase and match the phone’s model to their database!!!
6. It will ask for your serial #.
7. Follow the steps after it downloads the upgrade files. It will ask you to confirm stuff. It will also tell you to put your phone in download mode. Volume DOWN+HOME+POWER.
8. As soon as it starts sending the files to your phone, start windows explorer and type in the bar %TEMP%, find temp unzipped folder by date modified, copy somewhere safe.
Everything is fixed!

If this helped you, please help me out. Any site that is helpful usually has an ad somwhere on it and when you visit that ad, they get credit. You didn’t have to spend any cash, either!

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