[WARN] Before You Flash a Custom Recovery - READ!

**creccaj1** · 12-28-2012, 06:34 AM

[WARN]I sit here typing this feeling as if this happens with every iteration of new phone that comes out with a locked bootloader. If you are considering flashing a Custom Recovery, CWM or TWRP you need to be aware of what you are doing to your phone. When you flash a Custom Recovery, it alters the boot structure of your device and therefore will require you to unlock your bootloader. If you do not unlock you bootloader before you flash a Custom Recovery, you will be greeted with a big yellow exclamation point with a message saying "Your device is running unauthorized software" and to bring to the nearest Verizon store immediately.

So what does this mean? It means that the locked bootloader is catching your custom recovery and not allowing your phone to boot any further until you bring it to Verizon or fix it yourself by flashing the stock bootloader file.

So why am I writing this? To hopefully save one or two poor souls who are going to experience this. That being said, I will post this is big bold letters again to make my point very VERY clean...

DO NOT FLASH A CUSTOM RECOVERY UNLESS YOUR BOOTLOADER IS UNLOCKED.

If you did not heed my warning, and you are greeted with Verizon's lovely message then you are going to need to use ODIN to restore back to stock. This means you will lose all your data on your device and have to start from scratch as if you just go the phone out of the box. I am not posting this to be mean, I am posting this to help you avoid bricking your phone and panicking. If you feel that you don't have the ability or you are just afraid of what could happen if you unlock the bootloader, that's fine. Just be aware of what you can and more importantly CAN'T do because of that decision.[/WARN]

**Paul627g** · 12-28-2012, 06:39 AM

Thanks for this creccaj1. Hopefully this will get the attention of people before they get to this point

FYI, I stickied this thread so it should get proper attention.

**creccaj1** · 12-28-2012, 07:18 AM

Originally Posted by Paul627g

Thanks for this creccaj1. Hopefully this will get the attention of people before they get to this point

FYI, I stickied this thread so it should get proper attention.

Thanks Paul!

**siouxpernatural** · 01-24-2013, 11:51 AM

I was a victim of this EXACT scenario...I downloaded the chainfire exynos root app, rooted and then downloaded ROM manager, then flashed CWM recovery and rebooted...only to see that I had soft bricked my brand new Superphone...I did some digging and found out the proper boot loader unlock via Odin...I also had USB debugging enabled before my fatal reboot...I had Odin up and running on my laptop but had no idea which file to flash or by which procedure to follow as I had no prior experience with Odin... I managed to get the phone to freeze at the "samsung galaxy note 2" boot screen, so I had no trouble with the exchange

**DroidXcon** · 01-24-2013, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by siouxpernatural

I was a victim of this EXACT scenario...I downloaded the chainfire exynos root app, rooted and then downloaded ROM manager, then flashed CWM recovery and rebooted...only to see that I had soft bricked my brand new Superphone...I did some digging and found out the proper boot loader unlock via Odin...I also had USB debugging enabled before my fatal reboot...I had Odin up and running on my laptop but had no idea which file to flash or by which procedure to follow as I had no prior experience with Odin... I managed to get the phone to freeze at the "samsung galaxy note 2" boot screen, so I had no trouble with the exchange

You had to flash the stock package then use casual application to unlock the bootloader. But congrats on the replacement

From my Galaxy Note 2 via Tapatalk

**siouxpernatural** · 01-27-2013, 04:29 AM

Originally Posted by DroidXcon

You had to flash the stock package then use casual application to unlock the bootloader. But congrats on the replacement

From my Galaxy Note 2 via Tapatalk

Thanx...that's exactly what I did as soon as I got home from the store with my brand new phone...now I'm running sbrissens cm10 port and with a few configs here and there I got it running smoothly enuf to be my daily driver...and with my grandaddy unlimited data plan on big red I am loving the 38+mb/s download speeds!!! Love the Note 2 on 4g LTE...!!!

**pendraggon87** · 04-15-2013, 04:49 PM

So I was an ***** and did not see this warning (note to self - come to androidcentral instead of random sites) and tried flashing TWRP without unlocking the bootloader. I ended up reflashing the stock rooted image, no problems. But I could not run Casual in order to unlock the bootloader. Screwed up bootloader - how do I restore? sboot.bin causes Odin to fail

When following the steps, it dies at sboot.bin in Odin when using the SuckIt package in Odin.