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Root [Virgin Mobile] [OUTDATED][GUIDE][MD7][MG2] Rooting & Recovery for Galaxy S3(VM)

Just to save people some time searching:

How to enter download mode on Galaxy S3:
Boot up by holding the power button, home button and volume down key. Now you will see download mode and you will be asked if you want to cancel or continue. Press volume up to continue or volume down to cancel and reboot.

How to enter recovery mode:
Boot while holding the volume up, home button and power button simultaneously.
 
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I haven't gotten my S3 yet, I won't get it until at least the first week of July, but I have a question anyway...

Would it be possible to flash 4EXT recovery instead of CWM? Or to replace CWM with 4EXT after all said-and-done?

Yes you would be able too, I'm not sure if 4ext is released yet for Samsung galaxy s3 but if it is make sure its the US version and not the European version. You can also get cwm touch version, if you really want a touch based recovery.
 
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Is the recovery and kernel intertwined on this phone like on the S2? Meaning if I flash a repack kernel will it also flash a new recovery? Or can a kernel and/or recovery be flashed independent of each other?

Their independent, though some kernels will try to reinstall stock recovery(If the code is still in the kernel).
 
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Just wondering if custom roms from other carriers work?
(ONLY SPRINT)
It would but 3g/4g don't work, and MMS also don't work; though it has a fix for MMS. The thing about 3g/4g is that VM made a lot of changes from it's original form as a sprint gs3, making the sprint ROMs not have 3g/4g unless the changes are made to the sprint ROM.
 
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(ONLY SPRINT)
It would but 3g/4g don't work, and MMS also don't work; though it has a fix for MMS. The thing about 3g/4g is that VM made a lot of changes from it's original form as a sprint gs3, making the sprint ROMs not have 3g/4g unless the changes are made to the sprint ROM.

I thought only MMS would be affected like on the Evo V... This is kind of disheartening to me.
 
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I backed up but even so after trying to restore it didn't want to restore right it kept freezing when entering my gmail info. It took me 3 tries the other night to get the stock rom loaded. lol Once loaded it has been fine.

I spent yesterday repartitioning and rebuilding my laptop to give me more room to load software to try and learn this stuff.
 
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Yeah custom recoveries do not back up the modem so if you flash a Sprint modem you'll need to wait until someone makes a flashable stock rom that includes the modem or just the modem itself to restore. It's best to wait until there is an actual flashable stock rom before trying out any of the Sprint roms just to be safe :)
 
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I used android kitchen when I was just learning to develop on the Motorola Triumph, it helped a bit with learning. But in general for stock ROMs and porting, I would use 7-zip, apktool, and notepad++ on Windows OS, then for building kernels or AOSP ROMs I would use Ubuntu(Linux OS); and adb logcat to help solve any errors.
 
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Rooted my brothers new GS3 on my iMac through the terminal process. Everything when fine with the phone until after it restarted, i downloaded rom manager and it couldn't detect that it was rooted. So I opened the superuser app and it said I had to install an update, when I clicked the install button I got: There was an error installing Superuser. Please send a log of the error to the developer.

Going to do some tinkering and see if i screwed something up. But if not, then I guess Ill just have to do the 30 step process on a windows machine. -_-

Edit: Just re-ran the terminal exploit and where the first time it said "-failure" it now said "+success" ... so maybe it has to be ran twice? I dont really know, but everything seems to be working now.
 
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I'm still skimming the knowledgebase of S3 rooting...so these questions may seem obvious to some.

1. Is this basically the same thing as rooting a Sprint S3? I'm not referring to ROMs with carrier specific files...just the root procedure itself. The video you linked to is the one I've already watched...so I assume that you're linking to the most recent files that are pertinent.

2. Is there such a thing as S-OFF for the Galaxy S3?
 
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