Galaxy S7: Flashing stock firmware - how to get HOME_CSC?

[Wingnutbob]

Hi there,

I have a Galaxy S7 SM-G930A that's stuck in a boot loop. I've already tried soft resets and wiping the cache partition several times. When I do the recovery boot, I get the "Installing system update" screen, followed by the "No command" screen, followed by the recovery boot menu with a following printed at the bottom:

#fail to open recovery_cause(no such file or directory)#
#Reboot Recovery Cause is [UNKNOWN]#
No Support SINGLE-SKU

I have *not* tried a factory reset yet, because I'm first trying to find a way to fix it without erasing the user data, and I understand from other threads that this may be possible by flashing the stock firmware using Odin - but only if I select a file called "HOME_CSC" or "CSC_HOME" instead of the regular CSC file.

The problem is, none of the firmware downloads I can find online seem to have the HOME CSC file. Do I just need to keep looking? Is there some reason that I'm never going to find one? Or is there some other way forward?

Thanks a ton for any help. I've never flashed Android firmware before - just learning all of this from research I've done today

 

[Wingnutbob]

So, after half an hour of that, without even being able to get into the recovery menu, I flashed it over again...same thing, except after five minutes it sent me to the recovery menu. This was printed at the bottom:




I wiped the cache partition, and now it's back in the same Samsung logo boot loop as before I did all this.

 

[Wingnutbob]

Strangely (to me), on very rare occasions it does boot all the way up, but hasn't yet gone long enough for me to do anything before crashing again. This was the case before flashing the firmware as well.

 

[MNMobileGuy]

Strangely (to me), on very rare occasions it does boot all the way up, but hasn't yet gone long enough for me to do anything before crashing again. This was the case before flashing the firmware as well.

Sorry but I don't have any other ideas or suggestions for you

 

[Wingnutbob]

Okay, fair enough! Thanks so much for your help! I guess maybe the factory reset is next...

 

[Wingnutbob]

Well, I managed to get the most important data from the phone using the infamous "freezer trick". I had to substitute several hours in a hotel mini-fridge for 20 minutes in the freezer, but sure enough, the phone booted up afterwards (well, two out of five times instead of the normal 1 out of 100 or so, and possibly with the help of a cache wipe and/or soft reset). It only went about five minutes before crashing back into the boot loop, but I was really prepared to make the most of that five minutes! Might try to replicate it a couple more times for less important data before doing the factory reset.

 

[MNMobileGuy]

Well, I managed to get the most important data from the phone using the infamous "freezer trick". I had to substitute several hours in a hotel mini-fridge for 20 minutes in the freezer, but sure enough, the phone booted up afterwards (well, two out of five times instead of the normal 1 out of 100 or so, and possibly with the help of a cache wipe and/or soft reset). It only went about five minutes before crashing back into the boot loop, but I was really prepared to make the most of that five minutes! Might try to replicate it a couple more times for less important data before doing the factory reset.

Wow, never heard of that trick! But if temperature affects the performance of the device, I would definitely lean towards the problem being caused by the motherboard beginning to fail

 

[Wingnutbob]

Wow, never heard of that trick! But if temperature affects the performance of the device, I would definitely lean towards the problem being caused by the motherboard beginning to fail

Came across a few discussions of it online...apparently a lot of people have gotten similar results. Thanks for the tip about the motherboard - I was indeed starting to wonder if it might be a hardware issue. I can report back later on whether the factory reset works, and on whether there are subsequent failures.

 

[Wingnutbob]

Update: Factory reset didn't fix really fix it either, unfortunately. The phone boots up more often now, but after several tries I could still never get it to stay on long enough to finish Android setup before it crashed back into a boot loop again. Guess I'll be getting a new phone - luckily didn't end up losing much data in the end. Thanks again for all the advice and help along the way!