[CALUG] Bricked Phone - Need Windows Box For 15 Minutes

[Shawn Webb]

Thanks for the responses, everyone. TL;DR: I actually installed Win8.1 on
the old laptop I bought at Defcon last year and got my phone working with
it. I'm surprised to see Win8.1 actually works on that underpowered thing.
What you can learn from my mistake: don't try flashing firmware of a
physical device from inside a VM.

Long-winded version:

Anyways, I was growing impatient over the lack of KitKat on my VZW Galaxy
Note 3, so I decided I wanted to install the leaked version. I figured that
using my existing Win7 VM I use for ClamAV development on my MacBook Pro
would work fine. I go through the motions, Odin (the proprietary device
flashing utility for Samsung techs) detects my device, the leak validates
fine, etc. I start the installation process, and everything went great
until Odin tried to flash the system partition. Poop. It appears that Odin
relies on precise USB timings that not even VMWare Fusion can provide.

I have a valid Win8.1 Pro key, but MS doesn't give out ISOs anymore. So I
had to download an MSDN-based ISO through not-so-ethical means. I first
kept trying to do the whole Apple Bootcamp thing, but it appears either my
MacBook Pro is too old, MS doesn't support Apple's EFI, or just plain
stupidness on my part (a combination of all three being completely
possible). It took hours and hours and hours of trying different things,
just doing trial and error. Also, the DVD drive in the MacBook Pro is
busted, so I can't just burn and boot an ISO. Good thing I left my
emergency computer repair kit with the external DVD burner at work. And, my
wife has the car (we only have one).

I tried to get Heimdall (an opensource version of Odin that's quite
confusing to use) working in OSX. No dice. Heimdall kept trying to force
repartitioning of the device and failing.

Finally, the laptop I bought at Defcon last year I've been using for
FreeBSD development (I'm implementing ASLR on FreeBSD in coordination with
another awesome developer). There wasn't anything I needed to keep on that
laptop, so I tossed Win8.1 32bit on there. I was surprised to see it even
boot. After messing with a few drivers and battling the petrifyingly ugly
UI that a third grader could draw up, I got Odin to work.

All in all, because my wife had the car and because I was being stubborn
with wanting Win8.1 on my MacBook, rather than on the ASLR development
laptop, the process took me around twelve stinkin hours.

Thank you, Samsung, for not using fastboot and requiring proprietary
firmware flashing mechanisms. (Your sarcasm detector should be going off at
this point).

That's all, folks.


On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 9:22 PM, Rick Nakroshis <rick at nakroshis.com> wrote:

> At 12:22 PM 4/26/2014, you wrote:
>
>> Irony: posting this email to a Linux User's Group
>>
>> Anyone in or around Columbia and have a Windows laptop I can use for like
>> 15 minutes? I soft bricked my phone and need to reflash. Can't do it in a
>> VM (which is how I bricked it in the first place).
>> _______________________________________________
>> CALUG mailing list
>> CALUG at unknownlamer.org
>> http://lists.unknownlamer.org/listinfo/calug
>>
>
>
> Ouch.
>
> I'd certainly be interested in hearing about how this sad state of events
> came to pass, and any words of wisdom you'd care to add.  (I knew I was in
> no great hurry to try this on my own for some reason...)
>
>
> Rick
>
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