Friday, 13 November 2015

Question: Turn on USB debugging with black screen



Hi Everyone,

I'm using a Samsung GT-N7105. It has 16GB of internal memory. It has no external SD card.

A few days ago my phone's screen went black. Everything else works fine, including touch, just that the screen is always completely black.

I took it to a repair centre. After the repair centre ran some tests, (they kept my phone for 2 days,) they confirmed it was the LCD screen problem (i.e. a hardware issue). Since that LCD screen is expensive to repair, I chose not to repair it.

So now I want to install Android Screencast on my phone. I connect my phone to my desktop, and to my surprise I discover that USB debugging isn't enabled anymore!

So I call the repair centre and ask them what software changes they made to my phone. Their response is:
1) The partition table has definitely NOT been altered.
2) "Your Android version has not been upgraded."
3) "We used a special software to format your phone." They declined to tell me what software they used, and they don't seem to know which partitions have been "formatted"! But they did say that "format" was not the same as "factory reset".

(Btw the people at the repair centre are non-native English speakers, whereas my first language is English, so it was hard to ask about technical details.)

Therefore my best guess about the software state of my phone is:
1) It's running stock Android 4.1.2, which it's been running since the first day I bought it
2) The bootloader should have no KNOX nonsense
3) Recovery should be stock recovery
4) A few partitions have been "formatted" to unknown states
5) There are no longer any pattern, PIN, or password locks on my phone. If my phone is on and it's been sitting idle, I just have to tap the home button, then swipe the screen, and it unlocks.

I can reconstruct the partition table of my internal memory if you guys need it. I did an entire dump of mmcblk0 about two months ago.
(Btw the size of that dump of mmcblk0 is 15,758,000,128 bytes, which is significantly less than 16GB, even if you count by 1000s instead of 1024s. Unimportant side question, but does anyone know why?)

**************

My main question is: How do I enable USB debugging ON ANDROID with the black screen restriction?

I've searched the forums, and in thread 2395047 (can't post links yet) the recommendation is to flash CWM recovery to get adb access. But keep in mind that my ultimate goal is to be able to install Android Screencast on my phone, so that I can regain full phone functionality (with the help of an attached computer screen). I don't quite see how adb access via CWM recovery can help me to achieve this goal.

Also, I've never actually used CWM recovery before and don't know how it works. One of my concerns is: Once I have flashed CWM recovery, and after I boot into recovery, do I immediately get adb access just by hooking up to USB cable to the desktop? Or do I first have to select some setting, which would be tough to do with a black screen?

Thanks in advance for all your help!


Ernest

(Note to mods: I accidentally posted this question earlier to xda assist when I wasn't logged in. You can delete the earlier duplicate.)



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