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Étiquette dans repair

Repair a failing boot disk (constant repair mode)

Par dans Informatique / Computers Étiquette , , ,

Boot from a Windows 10 Install Media (USB disk)

Select Next on language/region

Select Repair PC option on bottom left

Select Troubleshoot

Boot a command prompt

run diskpart

list disk to identify the internal hard disk

select disk # to select the proper disk

list the disk volumes – list vol

Identify the EFI hidden volume # number (Hidden, kind of 512Mb, could be formatted FAT32)

Selection this EFI hidden volume : select vol #

Assign a drive letter : assign letter=n:

exit

browse from command line to this EFI drive letter N:

Repair the BCD boot : bcdboot C:\windows /s n: /f UEFI

Repair the MBR : bootrec /fixmbr

Reboot the machine

Android i9195 (S4 mini LTE) fix for /efs can’t mount issues

Par dans Informatique / Computers Étiquette , , , , ,

Ok, sometimes after some kind of flashing error/corruption, you end up with your Samsung S4 mini LTE (GT-i9195) returning error E:failed to mount /efs (Invalid argument) in various recovery tool (TWRP and others).

If you check your /efs with a root level explorer, you will find out the folder is empty. Technically this cause my phone to : loose bluetooth pairing after turning it off or turning off bluetooth stack. Also cannot install Lollipop, stuck on the loop boot 🙁 with Cyanogenmod or other updates.

Here is the fix for it :

– Flash TWRP recovery and root your device using recovery method by installing UPDATE-SuperSU-vX.XX.zip file.

– Install ADB on your computer.

– Boot your device into recovery mode (Vol Up+Home+Power).

– Connect your device to PC via USB cable wait until windows update the driver.

– In the recovery mode choose  “Mount /System”

– Open ADB command window and type the following command (from windows command line, from the folder ADB is installed into):

adb shell
mke2fs /dev/block/mmcblk0p10
mount -w -t ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p10
reboot

These instructions are quite similar to what you find around on Internet with S3, however here please note that the block is the N°10, different from the instructions you find googlig around. At this stage the phone should reboot itself.

If you encounter some « can’t mount /fstab » error, this is because you have NOT applied correctly the root UPDATE-Super-SU patch on the device.

By following the above command, it will create a generic EFS files on your device. Your IMEI number will NOT be changed or reset, as this is stored in a different place on a Samsung GT-i9195 (on the p11 and p12 blocks apparently).

Reboot, and voilà you should not hit this /efs folder issue anymore, and if you browse the /efs folder, you should now see something with folders named « drm », « imei » « lost+found » and « wifi ».