A lot of Samsung Galaxy Note II users immediately perform root, flash custom recovery and ROMs shortly after purchasing it. But many of those have no idea how to restore their Galaxy Note 2 to stock with no root, re-using stock recovery or reset flash counter to “0”. Restore your phone to stock required if you need to repair or return to device (AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint) store, this procedure can also be needed when you wish to trade this phone, since most buyers prefer a device that hasn’t been mods before.
The phone knows when you root, installed a custom recovery (CWM / TWRP) or running a custom ROM. You can see it in Settings > About > Status, Device status changes to “Modified” we should return to “Normal”. Another trace that can be located is the flash counter (Custom Binary Download), Samsung create a flash counter to keep track of how many you’ve flashed custom firmware, we need to restore it to its original state (Custom Binary Download: No). To check the flash counter, go to Download Mode (see step 5 below).
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Restore Samsung Galaxy Note 2 back to stock and reset the flash counter.
Listed below are the steps to restore the phone to stock using CF-Auto-Root by Chainfire. You can also unroot/unbrick or back to stock by flashing stock ROM/Firmware using Odin. This method may be used on almost all variants (GT-N7100/SGH-T889/SGH-I317/SPH-L900).
- If you have root without a custom recovery you can simply do the Factory Reset via Phone Settings. However, if you previously installed a custom recovery (TWRP/CWM) it’s better to perform Factory Reset via recovery (Wipe> Factory reset).
- Download most recent Odin 3 and CF-Auto-Root file can be downloaded at autoroot.chainfire.eu, find the proper version: T889 (T-Mobile), I317 (AT&T), L900 (Sprint ) or N7100 (International).
- Extract Odin3-vx.xx.zip into New Folder, and also extract CF-Auto-Root-xxx-xxx.zip into same folder.
- Run Odin3-vx.xx.exe, hit PDA button and select the file extracted on step 3 (CF-Auto-Root-xxx.xxx.tar.md5).
- Grab your phone and go to download mode (turn off first, press and hold following buttons: vol down + home + power). Then connect it to PC via USB.
- Back to Odin3 and make sure your device has been recognized, on Option uncheck “Repartition”.
- Start flash by pressing the Start button, and wait for your phone to boot. If it works then you will have a stock recovery and rooted with SuperSU.
- After Samsung Galaxy Note II boots, in order to reset the flash counter, install Triangle Away app that you can get it for free here, but if you have a some funds we recommend to purchase it from Google Play. After successfully resetting the counter and reboot, uninstall it.
- Open SuperSU and select an option to Full unroot.
- Enter into stock recovery and perform factory reset. Device Status will change to “Normal”.
- This guide is hard to follow ? Try to use another method by flashing Galaxy Note 2 stock ROM/firmware.