S2 - Soft brick bug fix (MMC_CAP_ERASE brick)

Hi All,

This article briefs the steps and processes I did to recover my soft bricked S2 GT i9000. 

{ Basically this post is written keeping in mind that it should help me for any kinds of soft bricks to my phone ;) :P }

1. You may have to read a lot xda forums to get detail info about these briefed steps. 

2. Also you may have to google out a lot of info. 

3. This article or the owner of this blog is no way responsible for any kinds of damages that may occur to your phone. 

1. About S2 Memory options
2. 3 types – internal card of S2 (16Gb with 11.5Gb user space, 1.97 Gb internal system space and external card till 32Gb)
3. Custom ROM installation for advantages like – better battery backup et al, tweaking the kernel, overclocking, lot more hardware related tweaks.
   [ Lots of custom ROMs for S2 at galaxys2roms.com ]
4. Custom ROM installed – M1U1 A1exander with custom themes and downloads from xiaomi.com
5. The PIT problem (wrong PIT file used partition information table which soft bricked my S2)
6. 11.5 Gb became 4Gb
7. Retrieval via processes (unsuccessful attempts)

1. Reinstallation of the same ROM
2. Tried other roms like JellyBAM, Vanilla RootBox
3. Reinstalled 4.0.3, 4.0.4 ICS also lots of old GB versions Samsung stock ROM via samfirmware.com using ODIN
4. Only changed the kernel – used different kernels also rooted them
5. Ripped the bootloader
6. different ODIN versions used
7. used the proper – with no bug PIT file

Usage of partition tools (Some hope via)

1. went into recovery mode n tried to use live Cds, partion magic softwared, parted magic live cd none worked
2. then connected the usb cable n in recovery mode tried to side load or side push parted – the command line tool (Usb debugging option required for side load functionalities)
3. Device was not detected cos the stock rom by default wont enable USB debugging option.
4. Then had to again root (used cfroot) the Stock ROM with the hope of USB debugging option enabled. Yes luckily it got enabled.
5. then via adb (Android Development Bridge) the device got detected but as ??? (Unrecognized device)
6. Then had to set permissions (fix permission in recovery mode - via CM mod 6.1.2 of cfroot)
7. Then was able to detect the device

parted command used (thanks to XDA developer hg42)

1. parted (only parted command with no arguments wont work)
2. parted /dev/block/mmcblk0 (Note your internal SD card is a block device)
3. print (prints the partion info, throws error if the card has any non-contigous blocks of memory)
4. the device (S2 only) shows 12 partitions
5. dont manipulate the first 6
6. dont touch the EFS SBL1 SBL2 space/area. You could hard brick the phone.
7. rm 11
8. rm 10
9. rm 9
10. then reformat (mkpartfs commands as primary partitions)the last 3 once more n this time into ext2
11. label all the partitions back to original (use name command of parted)
12. journal fs to ext4(tunefs command) (parted does not support ext3/ext4)

Then tried to install the same M1U1 custom ROM – but now got new errors

The getprop(“S2 i9000”) errors

Then tried 2.3.4 and 4.0.3 stock ROMs – but same errors.

Then had to install notepad++ editor to open the manifest.mf file of the M1U1 zip file.

Find the line where it read getprop and delete the line and save the file.

Notepad++ is an editor that could open your .mf file (other editors not tried)

Reinstall M1U1 ROM n now it was successful

Once the stock ROMS of samsung are rooted – you cant use KIES software for firmware updates or recovery

So had to use SpoofFW (spoof firmware by Johan Nenzen)

3 days with lots of card data transfers –

Tried to reboot but got the black screen error (thought as hard brick but then lucky)

tried Samsung 4.0.4 XXLQ5 firmware thro ODIN but now this was successful

then reformatted the USB storage for successful retrieval of 11.5 Gb data.

Hope this brief article did help you retrieve the soft brick bug of your S2. 

Contact me for more help. Send me a PM,

Ananth G S