This will save you 8-12 hours of your time if you are lucky. This means that it also includes the meaningful links of 8-12 hours of searching.
Sentences in italic are important. 1 link is for the Odin official website, the rest are re-links back into XDA.
The device in question is a SM-925T Tmobile S6 Edge.
The problem was this. I rooted my phone and messed around with Greenify and the Play store.
To prepare for rooting, I allowed unknown downloads, unlocked the bootloader, and turned my security lock off (I had set it to a finger print lock). After I was done rooting, I immediately locked the bootloader again
(<--A mistake that caused my bootloop/ soft-brick). After I was finished messing with the above apps (Greenify, etc), I wanted my phone to restart. So I held the Power button and selected restart, while I was on the lock screen (may not be important). I noticed that it took a long time to restart, and upon closer examination, I noticed another error under the "kernel is not seandroid enforcing" (which appears to be natural for rooted phones). The error was "Custom Binary blocked by FRP Lock". It was a new error. I investigated this new problem using the internet , and
this dude was panicking like hell, but he didn't appear to fix his problem.
He did hint that returning to the bootloader to its locked state was a mistake. Looked a bit more and
this guy pointed to another
thread, which introduced me to flashing and more importantly
his fix, which was to flash the stock 5.1.1 image through odin. He used
this link, which contains all the stock firmware for the majority of the new Samsung S6 and S6 edge versions.
To make a long story short, most of these fixes involved flashing your firmware to the stock version. So I went to the
Odin Website,
and downloaded every version, as a couple threads have said that different versions worked for them.
Here is a thread with everything you need for Odin. Now, after
sorting through and finding micro USB cables that are detectable by Odin, an important step because Odin might develop a pattern of detecting then failing to detect your device through that cable, and
testing all the usb 2.0 ports, I was ready, and had Odin with my stock firmware. Odin kept saying "NAND Write", then in the next line "FAIL". This was annoying as Odin wouldn't detect my device again unless I unplugged it, restarted it to download mode, then restarted Odin before plugging it back in. I got confused and found links for
somehow fixing the .tar files, stock roms,
.pit files (
DO NOT MESS AROUND WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THOSE THINGS DO), and other threads/websites that say to boot into recovery mode , factory reset, then wipe your cache. I could only do that once. After me messing around with all of the above file variants and supposed fixes to help with my issue, I couldn't boot into recovery mode, it got stuck on the "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge" logo. It did not fix the NAND write failing. There however, are a lot of websites allowing you to download stock software for your phones, and I don't think I can link them as it might break a rule. Surprisingly, some have
claimed that using a stock file for another device worked to fix their problem. This
thread, which convinced me to use Smart Switch when it failed for everyone else, was very useful, although I recommend downloading Smart Switch from the official website of Samsung. None of the Odin flashing had worked so far, including the Roms and .pit files so I tried Smart Switch. I opened it, and upon selecting the "more" tab on the upper right corner,
a bunch of tabs drop down. One should be "Emergency Software recovery and initialization". I had to find my S / N (Serial) number, and I was very confused on how to obtain that number as I was locked out. But to obtain it, do the same process to boot into download (hold volume down, home key, and power key), but
stay on the prompt and don't go to the screen that has the word download in the middle. Don't do anything other then reaching the prompt confirming if you want to install a custom ROM. Then, press the home key and it should show your S / N number along with your IMEI number. Once I imputed the code I saw on my phone into Smart Switch, it told me to connect the device. Now, by this time, I realized that
Odin only detects my device if it is actually in the download screen. Why shouldn't my computer? I booted into Download
on my phone and followed the steps
on my computer, making sure that the computer can recognize my phone while it is using a valid USB port and Cable. And after some waiting, for me, my problem was fixed and I could use my phone again, it reverted to it's out-of-box state. I hope this drawn out but very specific explanation helps you guys. It's my first post :) And also,
this thread confirms that you can use a USB port for flashing(at least for ROMS), Smart Switch, and for rooting.
