T-Mobile UK contract user - cannot connect to Kies to upgrade to ICS

[John Hopper]

I have tried numerous times over the last couple of days to upgrade my SGS2 to ICS. After I realised connecting to Kies Air wouldn't work, I downloaded and installed the latest version of Kies onto my laptop.

The first time I tried to download via USB, the phone connected to Kies but said I could not upgrade unless my battery was fully charged. Odd, as it would be charging while linked to my laptop during upgrading anyway, but I thought I would try again in the morning when my phone was fully charged from overnight charging.

So I tried this morning when charged to 100%, and later this evening when half charged, and Kies refuses to recognise my phone. It keeps saying connecting, connecting, then I get a message saying it cannot connect. I have disconnected and reconnected umpteen times to no avail. I have run the troubleshooter a few times and reinstalled the Kies drivers two or three times. Again, to no avail.

I have seen various threads on here about USB debugging etc. and I have tried to tick then re-untick that, but no joy there.

I'm starting to think it would be easier just to do without this bloody update and just wait for the SGS3 to come out......but any advice would be greatly appreciated before I resign myself to a further wait for that (and probably a long one, knowing T-Mobile).

Would be grateful for any constructive advice please (please don't tell me to root my phone, though, as I don't want to go down that route [pun unintentional]).

Many thanks in advance.

John

[RichH]

No need to root, you just need to perform some black magic instead!! What version of windows are you running? If Win 7 try running Kies in compatibility mode for XP. USB debugging should be unticked for Kies. Otherwise remove Kies completely, reboot computer, reload Kies, reboot computer, connect phone but open Kies first, wait for drivers to load then disconect and reconnect phone again. More drivers may be loaded at this point.... then, relax

[John Hopper]

Okay, thanks, Rich, I will try all this at the weekend when I have enough spare time.

John

[John Hopper]

Thanks again, Rich. I have tried all your ideas, and retried some of mine, but unfortunately none of these work and I still cannot connect my phone to Kies.

This amount of hassle for a firmware upgrade seems ridiculous. I love Samsung phones and my next phone will almost certainly be a S3 (or, if not, a Note), but I never had a problem updating to 2.2 on my HTC Desire. That took just a simple OTA update after receiving an alert on the phone itself - no wires and no computer needed. At the very least Samsung could enable firmware updates over Kies Air. Cables are so 20th century

John

[RichH]

Samsung have enabled OTA - but it is down to the networks if they choose to use it or not. That doesn't help you though... It seems the drivers are not loading properly for some reason. What version of windows are you using? Can you see your phone in windows explorer as a drive?

[John Hopper]

Rich, I'm using Windows 7 and yes my phone does show as a drive in Windows Explorer. I get a message saying the drivers have loaded successfully...but it STILL won't connect to Kies.

I've just tried using the USB cable from my Kindle and have got one stage further on some occasions with this. I get to the page where it says do you want to upgrade the firmware? When I click OK, it says it can't because the connection has been lost even though Kies is still showing as being connected to my 9100 phone.

[RichH]

The connection lost message, I think, applies to Kies connecting to the server to download your firmware, not the Kies connection to the phone. In the tabs at the top of Kies one of them is "Firmware upgrade options" (or something like that). You should see an option to download firmware for a specified list of devices. If you tick the box next to your SGS2 and leave Kies running it should download the upgrade file to your PC so that it is saved locally on your hard drive when it has a good connection to the Samsung server. This means it will not have to download "live" when you plug your phone in and might help you. Kies will also tell you that you have an update available if you enable this option without having your phone connected. Also, find and tick the option to "load Kies into memory on start up" as this will help with server connections. Note ICS is a 235mb file so it will take some time to download.

[John Hopper]

Hi again, Rich, I played around a bit more and it works now. I used a brand new USB cable from my new Kindle. I don't see that that should have made a difference as the other USB cables work for other purposes. So I now have ICS. Of course, I whether I like some of the new icons and set ups is another story

Thanks very much again for taking the trouble to respond several times.

[RichH]

Great success.... Well done with persevering

[Joey]

It's a lost easier to use Odin for flashing, Kies is a flaky piece of crap.