If you can provide your carrier and current build number for you device, I can move this to the proper root forum for people more familiar with the device to help you out.

 

Alright, it has been moved to the sprint s4 root forum.

 

Did you make a backup in cwm prior to flashing the tether zip? If so, have you tried to restore?

 

I issued a general call to arms to get more folks in to help.

Although you've got a few rockstars in here already.

 

Ok. The S4 has a removable sdcard no? If so, how about placing a rom on there (surely there must be one that's almost pure stock but made into a rom) and then flash it from recovery?

Lemme look around for a stock rom unless another S4 user wanders in before I can get it done.

 

Ok so there's some roms but if my research is correct (don't own this device), it appears that when you updated to 4.3 (mja), you got the knox enabled bootloader with that. Which I believe means you'll have a flash counter in play now. Wasn't sure if that'd be a deal breaker for you or not?

edit: although after a re-reading your OP, may be a moot point since you've been flashing zips on 4.3 already.

 

I got that tidbit of info from here:

[HOW TO]Update S4 to Stock 4.3 MJA w/Root ,MJA Modem & Keep 4.2.2 MF9 Bootloader! - xda-developers

OP did a nice job of explaining the situation. In that same development forum, there are some good looking stockish roms if you end up going that route.

 

I know you've already accepted the OTA, I was just explaining where I got the "flash counter in play now" from because you asked for an explanation on that.

So if you don't have a warranty to void, you can flash a rom and not worry about the flash counter. Flashing a working rom should get you a booting phone again assuming you can still get into recovery that is. I suppose the other route would be to flash back to stock using odin if the newest stock tar is available. I have not searched for that.

 

When you were flashing stock with Odin, were you using the new 4.3 firmware file? Because I'm pretty sure you can't go backward with Samsung.

But yeah, anyway I would think you'd be good flashing a rom unless there are known limitations preventing you from loading certain roms with your current baseband and/or bootloader. And if that's the case (which it can occasionally be), I wouldn't be privy to that since I'm not close enough to this phone to know off the top of my head. One would like to believe that any such pitfalls would be noted in the flashing instructions. I'd also read through any rom threads you might be interested in to search for any known oddities with your particular setup (meaning whatever you have for OS/baseband/bootloader from the OTA you took, plus the fact you're running cwm as your recovery). Need to be sure any given rom is flashable with your recovery as well.

 

i do not have an s4 so i can't be of too much help.

curious do you still have a recovery?

and let this be a lesson to make sure that once you have a custom recovery.....always make a nandroid backup.....they could have possibly have saved you already.

 

Still being not sure what stock version you've tried flashing with Odin, I figured I'd throw this out there:

[FIRMWARE][ODIN] All Sprint Firmwares {12/8/13} - xda-developers

You may have already been there. Just making sure.

 

EDIT: Looks like the MK2 Hotspot just became available:
xda-developers - View Single Post - [MOD][Deodex][Odex][MDC][MDL][MF9][MJA]Hotspot Mod

 

I don't think that's what's actually causing the bootloop and from that thread, it sounds like you can't get rid of it once you have it. Which is fine since you don't have warranty concerns. That flash counter means nothing to you. I think the bootloop came entirely from flashing the tether zip. So the only way out is either flashing a rom via recovery or try to reflash stock using Odin and the correct file for whatever OS version you just updated to.

 

Um, also I had this on my GNex and my fix was just factory resetting the device. I don't know if this will help you at all, but it fixed mine.

However, it sounds like you might just need to flash a rom like iowabowtech said from the issues you sound like you are still having.