S3 Verizon Restore instructions for proper 4G data (MB1)

[johnsandiego]

4G data should work as long as the icon is on! That is proper behavior for the phone. I restored mine today and now I have 4G properly even with NO signal bars showing! The receiver was numb with the Verizon update I did and made the phone useless in rural or remote areas. A safety issue that concerned me. Here is some instructions I found to get back to an earlier version that works. NO loss of apps or data occurred.

Step 1: On a Windows PC which has a USB port, download the following two items:

a.) Stock Firmware I535VRBMB1 (4.2.1) from Firmware archive | Samsung Updates

b.) Odin from http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1168421&d=1341114315

c.) You may need winrar and/or pkuzip (or similar) to unpack the above

Step 2: Connect phone to PC using USB data cable (that came with the phone, a "charging" cable is
not sufficient.

a.) Connect/reconnect the phone a few times to ensure that all the drivers get installed. Windows should
do this automatically. Don't disconnect while the drivers are installing (I would do this a couple of times
to ensure all the necessary drivers get installed.

b.) run ODIN and connect the phone again to make sure it is recognized. If the phone is recognized, you will
see a device under ID:COM (just above the Options boxes), such as [0:COM5]. If it is blank, the phone is
not recognized. If that is the case, all the drivers are not installed and try disconnecting/reconnecting phone
to see if Windows will install more drivers.

Step 3: Flash phone.

a.) With phone disconnected. Put it in download mode. This requires powering off the phone first. Then hold
Volume Down [NOT Volume UP (recovery mode), there is a difference], the HOME button and power-on
button ALL at the same time.

b.) Start ODIN on the PC and then reconnect phone.

c.) In the Options section, make sure ONLY Auto Reboot & Reset Time options are selected.

d.) Check PDA check-box, and click on PDA button, filemgr will open and then select the tar.md5
file downloaded in Step 1/a above.

e.) Make sure device is recognized (ID:COM), see Step 2/b above.

f.) Click on Start button. The flashing process should take about 10 minutes.

I am going to save these files so that I can restore my phone if this happens again!

 

[murfnamedsmurf]

The only variance I had is that the drivers on my phone simply would not work with my computer (this seems to be more of a problem with older computers / older versions of windows). I simply downloaded the driver from a website and installed it that way instead. Once the driver installed correctly (as evidenced by the computer asking whether I wanted to transfer files with Windows Media Player, open the folder, etc) I was good to go.

Thank you very much for this. I was not yet disillusioned enough to try another ROM since Ive seen some problems with most of those as well. I simply wanted MB1 back so my camera would not look like crap. There were some neat features on the June firmware OTA release but it was not worth it when I realized my camera (both video and still shots) looked like crap from a ~2007 2MP camera phone