Have I bricked my phone?

[defensa24]

First, I wanna say I have rooted the Moto Droid, Epic 4G, and Droid X for my family and friends... But now with my OWN Samsung Fascinate...

I have absolutely no clue what I've done.

I have rooted my Fascinate before. How? I don't know, but I was able to use Wifi Tether and I was happy with that. But then, my phone got an update from Samsung, I believe, and I lost the ability to use Wifi Tether, so I was pretty sure I lost root access.

I tried to use the z4 app thing, I'm not sure what the complete name is. And it wasn't rooting my phone. It kept freezing without ever finishing the process. So I just took out the battery halfway thru the process.

Yesterday, I tried another method of rooting, and for the love of God, I cannot remember the page where I read how to root the Fascinate or the process. BUT, i have the SuperUser icon on my phone and even after a factory reset, the icon wont go away. I cannot get Wifi tether to work either.

I can use the phone as is, but I want to tether for free! And PDA.Net is not an option.

How can I unroot my phone and then root it again properly following one of the tutorials on here? I guess the reason I messed up my phone is because I kept trying the quick and easy rooting tutorials.

BTW, I'm on a Mac without Windows access!

TL;DR How do I unroot my phone using a Mac? I don't know how I even managed to root it in the first place.

 

[Kevin Gossett]

Follow the instructions in the sticky "Rooting Using A Mac".

 

[gunnermike53]

hey man, i am a newb, but i just ran into a similar problem, though with other apps. to fix it i had to do a factory reset and a cache wipe through clock work (the reset and cache wipe from the samsung recovery did not work). flash a new rom (dj05) and stupid fast kernel. now my phone is running great and i have my root access again. if you really want to unroot and cant figure it out, from what i understand if you get a stock unrooted fascinate rom and flash your phone it should work. i could be wrong on that though. i will include my threrad link.

http://forum.androidcentral.com/fas...per-user-rom-manager-keeps-force-closing.html

hope that helps.

 

[defensa24]

hey man, i am a newb, but i just ran into a similar problem, though with other apps. to fix it i had to do a factory reset and a cache wipe through clock work (the reset and cache wipe from the samsung recovery did not work). flash a new rom (dj05) and stupid fast kernel. now my phone is running great and i have my root access again. if you really want to unroot and cant figure it out, from what i understand if you get a stock unrooted fascinate rom and flash your phone it should work. i could be wrong on that though. i will include my threrad link.

http://forum.androidcentral.com/fas...per-user-rom-manager-keeps-force-closing.html

hope that helps.

Thanks for the reply. But I don't understand how to do a factory reset thru clock work. (to unroot)

In the old Droid, if you wanted to go back to stock and unroot, all you had to do was download the correct update.zip and run it via the recovery mode.

 

[defensa24]

I was able to find a update.zip file but when I try to install from SD, i get the error message :
E. Failed to verify whole-file signature
E. signature verification failed
Installation aborted.

 

[gunnermike53]

give me a bit to get together everything i did and i will post it.

 

[Kevin Gossett]

I'm assuming you don't have Clockwork installed... Which is why you're not able to run the update.zip.

 

[gunnermike53]

these are the windows instructions (i hate steve jobs and his evil elitest apple crap)

here are the rom links

[RELEASE] DJ05 rom, kernel, radio - xda-developers

copy system and kernel to your sd card

put modem on your desktop

i would flash clockwork through odin again here is the link:
http://forum.androidcentral.com/fascinate-roms-hacks/35726-clockworkmod-recovery.html#post353417

here is the update.zip i used:
http://forum.androidcentral.com/show...815#post473815

boot into download mode (power off, hold down vol down key plug in usb)
apply modem through odin

reboot

boot into recovery. apply update.zip.
do a factory reset IN CWM, not samsung
do a cache wipe in CWM
choose select file from sd card
select the ROM
select yes

it will flash the ROM. this will take a minute

choose select file from sd card
select the kernel
select yes

reboot system

thats it.

 

[defensa24]

Ok, so I installed Windows on my Mac. And I remember now, that originally, this is how I rooted the Samsung Fascinate the first time. Witht the one-click root.

But now... I cannot get Windows to see my phone while in USB Debugging mode so I can use Odin. I've uninstalled and installed the drivers twice. It doesn't work. Please, help me!

 

[gunnermike53]

Where did you get the drivers from.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

 

[defensa24]

From here:
http://forum.androidcentral.com/fascinate-roms-hacks/33899-how-root.html

 

[defensa24]

One more thing: I installed z4 (how I got "root") and the choice to unroot was there. I clicked it (tapped it?) and it unrooted my phone. I tried Wifi tether and Rom Manager and said I need root access.

BUT! The SuperUser icon is still there. And I can access it but everything is blank.

Is it safe to try and root again? And I still have that problem with Windows not recognizing my phone while in Debugging Mode. I know it has worked before... Why not now?

 

[gunnermike53]

What is a version of windows, are you using?

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

 

[defensa24]

Windows 7 Ultimate

But I tried z4 and it gave me root access! I can run Wifi Tether and ROM Manager.

I've been hearing a lot about Lag Fix or something like that... What is that? Do I need it? Will it make my phone faster? What else can I do to make the Fascinate even better?

 

[gunnermike53]

i am no expert with this rooting stuff, infact i have rooted less phones than you, however i do know quite a bit about computers. do the normal uninstall the drivers. restart. update windows, specifically the usb controlers. restart. reinstall the drivers, then plug in your phone. the drivers worked great for me the first time, but then again i didnt have an apple machine, bill and steve dont get along. if you do it in that order you should not have a problem. also make sure you get the proper drivers for your os (ie. x86 of x64).

now on to something i know less about. do you NEED to root your phone? no. however, i am so glad i did. my fascinate runs 3 times faster than it did the day i bought it. my gps went from 2-5 miles accuracy to within a meter!!! this is only my second day haveing a working root, but so far, i say if you can do it, go for it, its deffinately worth it.

btw. to answer your thread question, from what i understand, there are very few things that cant be undone to your phone. i dont think you have bricked your phone, atleast not permanantly anyway. if it make you feel better at one point my phone wouldnt even boot up, it would just go to this screen with the android icon and a big exclamation point. hang in there. once you get this you will have learned alot.

 

[Kevin Gossett]

Read through as many posts on customization (ROMs, kernals, lag fixes, overclocking and undervolting, etc) as you can before you start actually flashing anything.

In a nutshell, you shouldn't need any type of lag fix. The biggest culprit for lag is the write process that Samsung put in the software, and a lag fix (most commonly used is Voodoo) changes the file write process to speed up the system. Power users tend to use a lag fix to speed up their phones, but most likely you will be fine with a nonvoodoo kernal.

 

[Kevin Gossett]

now on to something i know less about. do you NEED to root your phone? no. however, i am so glad i did. my fascinate runs 3 times faster than it did the day i bought it. my gps went from 2-5 miles accuracy to within a meter!!! this is only my second day haveing a working root, but so far, i say if you can do it, go for it, its deffinately worth it.

It's worth pointing out that rooting by itself will not do any of these things (speed increase, GPS fix, etc)... It's what you do after you root that gives these results. In gunnermike53's case, he upgraded to DJ05, which is a maintenance update that hasn't been pushed OTA yet, along with a custom ROM and kernal

 

[gunnermike53]

Yeah. What he said.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

 

[gunnermike53]

oh yeah, DONT USE VOODOO!!!!!!!!! holy crap thats where my nightmare started. from what i read alot of people have trouble with voodoo. and its hard to get rid of.

 

[defensa24]

Wow thank you guys both! I got my phone rooted and got the wifi tether working (which is what I really needed).

But I still couldn't get the phone to be recognized by windows. Now, I know for a fact that its possible to do it even if Windows is running on a Mac, I've done it before. I just can't remember what I did. Lol. (My culprit)

I seem to have another issue... I want to install a ROM via ROM Manager and I've got ClockworkMod Recovery flashed but when I reboot in to it, it's still the stock recovery mode. And I can't install the ROM. Help?