No GPS lock and reboot problems while attempting root

[reeceptaylor]

Hi everyone,
Let me start by saying that I'm a complete newbie but I believe in doing my due diligence and trying to research a problem before having to resort to forums for help. I have a Nexus S from Sprint but it I live in Canada and it isn't on a network. I use it for apps, music and some web surfing over WiFi. I really want to use GPS apps for both hiking and running. I've run into the problem that I've seen in other posts where it wont acquire a GPS signal or can take hours to do so. I've tried everything; factory resetting, using all sorts of gps fix app to reset the a-gps, and killing conflicting processes/apps. I've hunted for hours online and cant find a solution.
I saw a post in one forum where the user was able to correct the problem by rooting the phone and installing custom ROMs. I didn't know the first thing about rooting and still don't understand what a ROM is but I read in many places that there was little risk of bricking the phone with this model so I decided to give it a shot using Nexus S rooting programs.
I tried two different rooters to no avail. Everything goes fine with my laptop. The phone unlocked easily. I turn on USB debugging and the programs detect the correct drivers. The rooters say they are pushing the root files and recovery files to the phone successfully and then it waits for the phone to reboot. At this point my phone freezes on the black screen that says 'Google' with the little unlock icon beneath. I pull the battery and the rooter seems to think all is well. The same thing will happen again and when I hard reboot the program seems to think rooting has been a success. Everything starts up okay but a root checker I downloaded says it has not been rooted and 'SuperUser' doesn't work. 'SuperSU' says it cant install new binaries, I'm assuming because the phone hasn't rooted successfully. I don't know the first thing about what any of this means but I've read about a dozen rooting tutorials and tried everything.
Can anyone help me? I just want my damn GPS to work. If you know how to fix it then that would be great, I will correct the problem and not worry about rooting the phone since I am just a casual user who doesn't really need full system access. If nobody knows how to fix the GPS do they know why my phone fails to reboot during the rooting process.
Thanks for your help and patience with my ignorance.

 

[jean15paul]

I don't know anything about the GPS issue, but I do have a question. How long are you waiting before you pull the battery? Sometimes the first boot after rooting or flashing can take a long time. A lot of times 1st-time rooters don't realize this and expect the phone to boot in a couple of minutes. I would let it sit there at least 30 minutes before I would worry that it was frozen.

 

[ratsttam]

One thing that comes to mind, is that you have airplane mode turned ON, since you're "not on a network". Turn off airplane mode, and give it another shot.
I use an old iPhone 3g that my cousin gave me a few years back, I had TomTom and CoPilot installed (offline stored maps!), and could not figure out why it would never get a lock. Turns out that airplane mode disabled gps sensors, leaving wifi as the only active radio. Since there isn't any service on it, you can safely turn airplane mode off. It'll just say "no service".

For your rooting issue, since you're posting this in the Galaxy Nexus forum, and not the Nexus S4g forum, is it possible you're trying to use the wrong tools? Each Nexus is different, and the correct tools must be used with the correct settings for each one.