Encrypted Phone freezes when turning on!

[arienrhod]

Today I tried to factory reset my phone using the hard reset, forgetting my phone was encrypted. It failed. I turned it on and now it freezes on the AT&T sphere after it spins around a couple times. I tried it again a second time, even erasing cache out of false hope... (I don't exactly know what cache is, or what erasing it would do.)

I can't access my google account or avg to wipe it, but would that even work? I contacted Google and hopefully I am let into my account soon.

My phone model is: SGH - 1747
Carrier: AT&T
I live in USA.

Help please! I just need to get into my phone. Sorry if there is already a thread like this, but I couldn't find one pertaining only to encrypted phones.

I encrypted it with the method already in the phone. I didn't use an app or anything.

I think my phone had JellyBean 4.3. It was whatever the latest update is available for S3.

 

[GTWalling]

If you can get into Recovery you can do the wipe from there.
1. Turn off the device.
2. Press and hold the Volume Up key, Home key, and Power key at the same time.
3. When the phone vibrates, let go of the buttons.
4. Press the Volume Down key to move to and highlight wipe Data.
5. At the same time you should also with the Cache.
6. Press the Power key to select and start the wipe.
7. After the wipe is finished, go back up till reboot system now is highlighted and press the Power key to restart the phone.

 

[arienrhod]

If you can get into Recovery you can do the wipe from there.
1. Turn off the device.
2. Press and hold the Volume Up key, Home key, and Power key at the same time.
3. When the phone vibrates, let go of the buttons.
4. Press the Volume Down key to move to and highlight wipe Data.
5. At the same time you should also with the Cache.
6. Press the Power key to select and start the wipe.
7. After the wipe is finished, go back up till reboot system now is highlighted and press the Power key to restart the phone.

Sorry if I didn't made it clear, but that's what I did in the first place. I thought it was called hard reset.

When I go to recovery mode it says:

E:failed to mount /data (Invalid argument)
can't mount '/data(Invalid argument)
E: Can't mount /data/log/recovery_log.txt
​

When I try to wipe it, this pops up:

E:format_volume: make_extf4fs failed on /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/userdata​

Actually this didn't happen before? Mores lines of red text popped saying it failed last couple times. Now it says Data wipe complete!? Why did it mess up before!

I'm just going to continue with this and see what happens.

...So I wiped cache and clicked reboot system.... I noticed on the bottom the red "failed to mount data" popped up again right after it began to reboot, and my phone still freezes at the AT&T Sphere after it spins a few times.

 

[arienrhod]

Help, anyone?

 

[arienrhod]

Posting this to bump up the thread.

 

[Rgomez90]

Hello GTWalling, i've the same problem here and i've a SGH-T999L T-Mobile S3 version.
Same issue, i did factory reset in order to free memory, my phone was updated to 4.3 version but after the reset it keeps frozen at T-mobile start screen, i've tried many possible solutions to fix it but any of them has worked. ive tried installing am official firmware provided by sammobile via ODIN, i've tried using the update and initializing option in KIES tools menu, both of them seems to have worked since they install the firmware but when the phone reboots, it's still frozen in the T-mobile screen, by the way i've noticed that a command line appears in recovery mode, it says: E:failed to mount/data (invalid argument) and cant mount '/data'
E:Can't mount/data/log/recovery_log.txt

 

[Rgomez90]

Same problem :'(

 

[Ryan Brown6]

Had this issue when working on a phone at work. It was an AT&T phone but had the same issue. It was showing 0mb of storage on the /data partition and would not mount. I ended up installing TWRP recovery one it through Odin 3.07. Inside recovery there are options to format the internal storage. I had to format it to a FAT partition then formatted it back to an EXT4 partition. After that it worked fine.