[Q] [Bricked?] Salvaging the Vibrant - Vibrant Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I just purchased a Vibrant from a co-worker yesterday for forty bucks and immediately started working on getting CyanogenMod running on it. I have some experience with CyanogenMod, and currently have it running on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 (Wifi only, US).
Getting this Vibrant free of the original operating system was easy enough. I also was able to flash ClockworkMod Recovery onto it via Heimdall at the command line.
What I cannot do is boot the device into Recovery Mode. The vol up + vol down + power button combination does not work. I've also tried connecting the device to my laptop (Windows 8) with Kies, but it cannot connect, even after re-installing the Samsung USB drivers through Kies. Equally unsuccessful is attempting to interact with the device in any manner whatsoever through the adb.
Also, after interfacing the device with Kies, it seems I may not be able to boot into Download mode (USB + vol up). I only get an error (on the phone) stating "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again.
Can anybody help me out?

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actuallybambi said:
I just purchased a Vibrant from a co-worker yesterday for forty bucks and immediately started working on getting CyanogenMod running on it. I have some experience with CyanogenMod, and currently have it running on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 (Wifi only, US).
Getting this Vibrant free of the original operating system was easy enough. I also was able to flash ClockworkMod Recovery onto it via Heimdall at the command line.
What I cannot do is boot the device into Recovery Mode. The vol up + vol down + power button combination does not work. I've also tried connecting the device to my laptop (Windows 8) with Kies, but it cannot connect, even after re-installing the Samsung USB drivers through Kies. Equally unsuccessful is attempting to interact with the device in any manner whatsoever through the adb.
Also, after interfacing the device with Kies, it seems I may not be able to boot into Download mode (USB + vol up). I only get an error (on the phone) stating "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again.
Can anybody help me out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, never use Kies with a rooted phone, it could hard brick it!
Do some more reading, you can access your cwm recovery in several ways. It depends also on the type of bootloader you have.

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ioancr said:
First of all, never use Kies with a rooted phone, it could hard brick it!
Do some more reading, you can access your cwm recovery in several ways. It depends also on the type of bootloader you have.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The thing that concerns me is that I don't know of any other means by which to access recovery mode beyond the three button combination. I'm concerned something may be up on the hardware end. The only files I modified on my phone via Odin where the PIT to redo the partitioning, and the PDA image of CyanogenMod. As far as I know I did not alter the bootloader in any manner, nor did I replace it with an alternative one.
And please, please do not patronize me by telling me I should "read some more". I racked my brain for almost four days looking for methods by which I could get this phone usable again. I came to xda in hopes that someone could assist me with what I'm certain is becoming a unique and mind-numbingly stupid problem. Being thrown back out into the wild binary yonder is not how I had anticipated someone trying to help me.
Thank you for replying to my post, but is there any helpful resources you could link me to involving complete and utter necessary recovery of my Vibrant?

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Try to use Odin back to stock 2.1,had the same issue a while back.Odin worked for me.then flashed a 2.2 ROM. Then went from there
Sent from my SGH-T959 using xda app-developers app

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actuallybambi said:
I just purchased a Vibrant from a co-worker yesterday for forty bucks and immediately started working on getting CyanogenMod running on it. I have some experience with CyanogenMod, and currently have it running on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 (Wifi only, US).
Getting this Vibrant free of the original operating system was easy enough. I also was able to flash ClockworkMod Recovery onto it via Heimdall at the command line.
What I cannot do is boot the device into Recovery Mode. The vol up + vol down + power button combination does not work. I've also tried connecting the device to my laptop (Windows 8) with Kies, but it cannot connect, even after re-installing the Samsung USB drivers through Kies. Equally unsuccessful is attempting to interact with the device in any manner whatsoever through the adb.
Also, after interfacing the device with Kies, it seems I may not be able to boot into Download mode (USB + vol up). I only get an error (on the phone) stating "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again.
Can anybody help me out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The vibrant all in one by Bay wolf. It has all the tools you need to get the phone working again.
Good luck.

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actuallybambi said:
I just purchased a Vibrant from a co-worker yesterday for forty bucks and immediately started working on getting CyanogenMod running on it. I have some experience with CyanogenMod, and currently have it running on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 (Wifi only, US).
Getting this Vibrant free of the original operating system was easy enough. I also was able to flash ClockworkMod Recovery onto it via Heimdall at the command line.
What I cannot do is boot the device into Recovery Mode. The vol up + vol down + power button combination does not work. I've also tried connecting the device to my laptop (Windows 8) with Kies, but it cannot connect, even after re-installing the Samsung USB drivers through Kies. Equally unsuccessful is attempting to interact with the device in any manner whatsoever through the adb.
Also, after interfacing the device with Kies, it seems I may not be able to boot into Download mode (USB + vol up). I only get an error (on the phone) stating "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again.
Can anybody help me out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So does your phone boot up or are you soft bricked, I'm confused? If it boots up then download "quick boot" from the playstore and it will boot you into recovery but you must be rooted. If its bricked just get back to that kies error screen/download mode and see if a yellow com box comes up in Odin when connected to your pc, if so just flash back to stock.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2

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iTz KeeFy said:
So does your phone boot up or are you soft bricked, I'm confused? If it boots up then download "quick boot" from the playstore and it will boot you into recovery but you must be rooted. If its bricked just get back to that kies error screen/download mode and see if a yellow com box comes up in Odin when connected to your pc, if so just flash back to stock.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only thing the phone currently does it turn on and show a screen stating "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies and try again."

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actuallybambi said:
The only thing the phone currently does it turn on and show a screen stating "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies and try again."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would NEVER recommend using kies, it messes up more phones than it helps. If Odin doesn't recognize the phone you can try kies as a last resort. If that doesn't work either you should call Samsung and tell them Kies has bricked your phone, they should fix it for free or send you a new replacement. I have heard many stories of people getting a replacement for free so give that a shot. You could also try a usb jig and try to get into download mode if you have one but that is no guarantee.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2

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iTz KeeFy said:
I would NEVER recommend using kies, it messes up more phones than it helps. If Odin doesn't recognize the phone you can try kies as a last resort. If that doesn't work either you should call Samsung and tell them Kies has bricked your phone, they should fix it for free or send you a new replacement. I have heard many stories of people getting a replacement for free so give that a shot. You could also try a usb jig and try to get into download mode if you have one but that is no guarantee.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apologies for the lateness of this reply, but I do think that I have made some progress. Or at least, there is hope for me yet.
The machine I'm doing all this work on is now running Arch Linux, and Heimdall is detecting the phone when it's plugged in; despite it being stuck at the "firmware encountered an error" screen. I'll be doing the rest of the work on the phone through Heimdall from this point on, and won't ever be letting this phone touch Kies again.

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actuallybambi said:
Apologies for the lateness of this reply, but I do think that I have made some progress. Or at least, there is hope for me yet.
The machine I'm doing all this work on is now running Arch Linux, and Heimdall is detecting the phone when it's plugged in; despite it being stuck at the "firmware encountered an error" screen. I'll be doing the rest of the work on the phone through Heimdall from this point on, and won't ever be letting this phone touch Kies again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea don't mess with kies ha, its really a terrible program. I hope you get heimball to successfully flash it. O yea, im pretty sure there is a heimball one click unbrick around here somewhere. I own a windows pc so can't really attest to its usefulness but I have heard success stories, good luck.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk 2

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Okay, I feel like an update on my progress is appropriate now.
The phone can get to download mode via my jig, the current issue is getting it to boot into CWR. The three-button press method does not work, as I stated earlier. I'm currently building the Android platform utilities on my Linux machine to access the adb so I can pass whatever command it is to the phone to reboot into recovery mode.

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One last update before bed.
the adb is working, but will not recognize my phone while it's in download mode.
I'm afraid I'm SOL since I didn't enable USB debugging before I nearly bricked this thing.

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I don't think adb is supposed to recognize it while in dl mode, that's meant only for Odin or Heimball. Did you ever flash your phone back to stock?
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk 2

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iTz KeeFy said:
I don't think adb is supposed to recognize it while in dl mode, that's meant only for Odin or Heimball. Did you ever flash your phone back to stock?
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been scratching my head over this for a few days now; how exactly would I go about to flashing it to stock?
Would you happen to know where I can find the necessary firmware package/files I need to do that through Heimdall?

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Okay, I've downloaded a firmware package and PIT file from here.
However, when I try to open the firmware package in Heimdall (through heimdall-frontend), it throws up an error stating that "firmware.xml is missing from this package". I can load the PIT file up in Heimdall, but am confused as what to do next.

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I've managed to get the device's PIT table from Heimdall:
Downloading device's PIT file...
PIT file download successful.
Entry Count: 13
Unknown 1: 0
Unknown 2: 0
Unknown 3: 0
Unknown 4: 0
Unknown 5: 0
Unknown 6: 0
Unknown 7: 0
Unknown 8: 0
--- Entry #0 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 0
Attributes: 0 (Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 1
File Offset (Obsolete): 6684783
File Size (Obsolete): 2097268
Partition Name: IBL+PBL
Flash Filename: boot.bin
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #1 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 1
Attributes: 0 (Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 1
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: PIT
Flash Filename:
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #2 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 20
Attributes: 2 (STL Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 40
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: EFS
Flash Filename: efs.rfs
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #3 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 3
Attributes: 0 (Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 5
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: SBL
Flash Filename: sbl.bin
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #4 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 4
Attributes: 0 (Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 5
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: SBL2
Flash Filename: sbl.bin
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #5 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 21
Attributes: 2 (STL Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 20
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: PARAM
Flash Filename: param.lfs
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #6 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 6
Attributes: 0 (Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 30
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: KERNEL
Flash Filename: zImage
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #7 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 7
Attributes: 0 (Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 30
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: RECOVERY
Flash Filename: zImage
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #8 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 22
Attributes: 2 (STL Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 1540
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: FACTORYFS
Flash Filename: factoryfs.rfs
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #9 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 23
Attributes: 2 (STL Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 2120
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: DATAFS
Flash Filename: data.rfs
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #10 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 24
Attributes: 2 (STL Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 160
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: CACHE
Flash Filename: cache.rfs
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #11 ---
Binary Type: 0 (AP)
Device Type: 0 (OneNAND)
Identifier: 11
Attributes: 0 (Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 256
Partition Block Count: 60
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name: MODEM
Flash Filename: modem.bin
FOTA Filename:
--- Entry #12 ---
Binary Type: 1 (CP)
Device Type: 1 (File/FAT)
Identifier: 11
Attributes: 0 (Read-Only)
Update Attributes: 0
Partition Block Size/Offset: 0
Partition Block Count: 0
File Offset (Obsolete): 0
File Size (Obsolete): 0
Partition Name:
Flash Filename:
FOTA Filename:

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Okay, I've made serious progress but I am still severely lacking in luck at the moment.
I'm attempting to re-partition the device, and I have all the necessary files loaded up in heimdall-frontend (minus EFS and SBL2, are these totally necessary?).
However, heimdall is being a pain in the butt now. While heimdall detects the phone no problem, every time I attempt to re-partition, I get this error:
"ERROR: Protocol initialisation failed!"
Again, this is where I think I'm SOL because I believe this protocol is failing to initialize because I did not enable USB debugging prior to making a huge mess of this phone.