Unrooted Galaxy S in bootloop

[sqrnookle]

Hi everyone!

So I've had my Galaxy S for a year and a bit now, and it's essentially stock from the provider - unrooted, and has been updated to 2.3(.3, I think. Maybe .4). Then about a week ago I pulled it out of my pocket and it had begun - completely of its own accord - a bootloop I haven't been able to break it out of since. I hadn't done anything to it that day - I know I had fetched it out of my pocket a few hours earlier to check the time, and it had been left on since then; the only thing I'd done in the past week was install a couple of games, but that was all, system wise.

When I try and boot it, all it does is the initial startup screen, then the twisty S logo (with music), and then after about 20 seconds loops the twisty S logo animation but without music. From there, the only way out is to pull the battery. Booting while attached to the computer likewise yields no results.

I *can* get into Recovery and Download modes. In Recovery mode I've tried wiping the cache and rebooting to no avail.
(There is one interesting bit: in the yellow text there's a typo ('Successfully copied meida files') and under 'Installing Multi-CSC' it reads:
'Can't access to '/system/csc/XSA/system'.
Succesfully applied multi-CSC.'
I have however seen that other Australians having had that appear without problem, so it's probably unrelated).

Worst of all, I've been slack and not backed up data from the phone for a few months (), and as such would really like to avoid wiping it, like the phone carrier is likely to automatically do if I send it to them for repair.

I've tried draining the battery, fully charging the battery, letting the bootloop run overnight, left it off for a few days, even the old 'bag of rice' trick, even though it hasn't been submersed. So can anyone help me out with a few suggestions of what to do, or at least to be able to get the data off the phone before factory resetting it?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide...

[RichH]

What data do you need off it? It sounds like you need to do a factory reset first to see if it helps or at least stops the loop enough for you to get the OS up and running. A factory reset should not delete photos and videos taken with the camera and anything on your external SD card will remain also.

[sqrnookle]

What data do you need off it? It sounds like you need to do a factory reset first to see if it helps or at least stops the loop enough for you to get the OS up and running. A factory reset should not delete photos and videos taken with the camera and anything on your external SD card will remain also.

Mostly the usual - photos, contacts (ones not saved to SIM), plus a little bit of program data (mostly from the notepad app, and some audio recordings). Would a factory reset from the Recovery menu leave any of that intact?

Failing that, even if it does delete everything is it possible to use data recovery software to recover bits from the wiped internal memory?

[RichH]

Any photos / videos taken with the phone and saved in the phones default "DCIM" folder will remain. You will lose contacts and any app data unless it was saved to your external SD card. There is no way to recover this after a wipe. If you had your phone syncd with your Google accounts your contacts should be saved to Google automatically.

[maira hedge]

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