Reinstalling (flashing) MIUI ROM through fastboot has been a common solution when a Xiaomi device is in soft-bricked state or in endless bootloop state. However, it could also be an utter disaster if done improperly and therefore it is a tedious task for some users who never try to install an Android ROM through Fastboot mechanism. In this article, we are going to show you a step by step tutorial on how to flash MIUI ROM on Redmi 3s / Prime even with bootloader locked and hence solving any issues of your phone. Please bear in mind that the method of reflashing Android ROM can only works fixing soft-bricked devices and NOT for hard-bricked ones. For instance, you won’t be able to use this method if your dropped your phone and it crashed which eventually it’s getting bricked.
Xiaomi Redmi 3s is also one of notable Redmi series phone due to its specs offered. The phone boasts Qualcomm MSM8937 Snapdragon 430 chipset with octacore processors, Adreno 505 GPU, 2GB RAM, 13MP main camera, 5MP front-facing camera, and also 5-inche IPS touchscreen display. On top of that, the phone is available at very affordable price tag.
Normal way to flash MIUI fastboot ROM needs a device with unlocked bootloader which can be obtained officially from Xiaomi Dev Team. Nevertheless, the permission requires few days to be granted (usually 2 weeks). Luckily, Mitch002 which is one of honorable member in MIUI community has shared a procedure to flash the ROM on device with locked bootloader. Thanks and credits belong to him.
Requirements
Xiaomi Redmi 3S / Prime device – with either locked or unlocked bootloader.
A USB cable – just use the one came with your phone.
A computer either PC or laptop running Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10.
Make sure your phone has at least 50% battery power remaining.
Download corresponding build of MIUI Fastboot ROM for your device (links below).
MIUI Fastboot ROM file always has .tgz extension NOT .zip. The one for Redmi 3S should have _land_ (codename of the phone) in part of its file name. You can download the file from one of the links below (choose which version you want):
Moreover, we really recommend you to use a computer running Windows 64-bit. Xiaomi has rolled out MiFlash Tool version 20160830 that is being said to work also on 32-bit OS. However, it should be better if you can use a 64-bit computer.
Important! Please do not attempt to follow the article at your first reading. Make sure you have read the whole article first and have understood each steps before trying to proceed. Neither Mitch002 nor XiaomiTips.com will hold responsibility of any damage that could happen on your phone.
How to Flash MIUI Fastboot ROM
Step 1 – Download and install USB ADB Driver or Mi PC Suite on your computer. Only do this if you have never done it before.
Step 2 – Disable driver signature enforcement on your computer. How to do it? Simply follow these sequence. You can do that by pressing Windows button + i on keyboard to reveal the Settings page. From there you can choose Update & Security >> Recovery >> Advanced startup >> Restart now. Wait a moment for your computer to restart. Next, go to Troubleshoot >> Advanced options >> Startup settings >>Restart. Once your computer restarts, now choose Disable driver signature enforcement which is option number 7. See the video below for more details :
Step 3 – Now install MiFlash tool onto your computer.
Step 4 – Extract the MIUI Fastboot ROM (.tgz) you have downloaded. Use either WinRAR or 7ZIP to extract it. Make sure you have all the files and and the images folder. Also make sure you extracted the ROM package in the C: drive and it is not inside any folder with spaces.
Step 5 – Now you have to firstly boot your phone into Emergency Download Mode (EDL Mode). You can read and follow my previous guide : How to put Redmi 3s into EDL mode. Alternatively, you can also try this one :
Turn off your phone completely.
Launch up Mi Flash Beta on your computer.
Plugin the USB cable into your computer main USB port. It means if you are using PC then the USB port is in the back of your PC (the one attached directly to the motherboard).
Now grab your phone.
Press and hold Volume Up (+) as well as Volume Down (-) buttons all together and then plugin another end of the USB cable to your phone while the buttons are still pressed. Alternatively if that also didn’t work: Press and hold Volume Up + Volume Down + Power buttons all together, connect it to USB cable (which still connected to PC), and then release the Power button at the first vibration. Wait for the device to vibrate for the second time and release both Volume buttons.
EDL Mode Alternative #2:
Turn off your phone completely.
Connect your phone to PC while it is off – use its USB cable to connect it to computer.
Press and hold Volume Up (+) and Power button together.
The screen will be blank. Just let it be.
EDL Mode Alternative #3:
Turn off your phone completely.
Press Volume Up (+) and Power buttons simultaneously. This will bring your phone into Recovery Mode.
You will see several options in Recovery menu. Choose “Download”
Your phone should reboot into Download mode / EDL.
Finally you can connect it to PC using its USB cable.
Step 6 – Install Qualcomm QDLoader driver you have downloaded before. You can read our previous guide on how to install Qualcomm QDloader driver. Alternatively, you may follow this short sequence:
Open Windows Device Manager.
Look for your phone in Device Manager. It should be displayed as QHUSB_BULK under the COM Ports section.
Right-click on it and choose “Update Drivers”
Choose “Browse My Computer for Driver Software”
Go to following path : C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Xiaomi \ MiPhone \ Qualcomm \ Driver
Choose “Install this Driver Software anyway”
Once done, it should be displayed similar to this:
Step 7 – Assuming your phone is now in EDL mode and it is connected to computer, open up Mi Flash tool and then click the “Refresh” button. Your device should be displayed in the list of connected device. It will be recognized as COM3 or COM4.
*Please ignore the folder name of the ROM in the screenshot pics.
Step 8 – Next, click the “Select” button and locate the folder of where you extracted MIUI Fastboot ROM in your computer.
Step 9 – Select “Clean All” option in the button of the tool.
Step 10 – Finally, click the “Flash” button and wait for the tool to finish its job.
Step 11 – Once done, You’ll see the status displayed as “Success“.
Step 12 – Disconnect your phone from PC and tun it on by pressing Power button until your phone vibrates and shows the familiar MIUI logo. First time booting may take longer than usual (~5 min – 10 min).
Voila! Your bricked Redmi 3S device is now fixed. Have that worked successfully for your phone? Do not hesitate to share your experience in comment section below.
A blogger, an ordinary husband, and a simple person. I love everything Xiaomi and I like collecting useful information about Xiaomi devices.
winkle sharma
man you are a life saver
Dominik Brdar
im stuck on step 10.
it says ”cannot receive hello packet,MiFlash is trying to reset status”
then after few seconds ”object reference not set to an instance of an object” and error
Saste
Same here may someone help?
pas!
hello.my pc cant see the phone as a port.im trying to install the driver with no luck,every time my pc says that it is better with adb driver.
i am almost sure that i disabled signature
Diana S.
Tried everything before this, and this is the only tutorial that actually worked for my Xiaomi 3s prime
Diana S.
thank you so much..
Tomas Jonuska
It helped me to flash miui 8 on locked Redmi 3s. Thank you very much!!!
Audy Agung
my redmi 3s pro can’t boot.. i was reset aboot.mbn
please help me
Bendul Bendil
Can you fastboot?
if you can, try the following, i believe you’re indonesian.
1. masuk fastboot
2. donlot rom yang depannya miui-xxx.zip
3. ganti nama filenya dengan update.zip
4. di fastboot ketik fastboot update update.zip
Peter
Many thanks!
0verseer
What if EDL mode is not working? EDL does not work for me, it boots up Android instead and will not stay in EDL.
Jinendra Malekar
Thank u so so much for helping me…
Many Thanks…
I have tried many things to start my phone but only this method worked.
Again thanks a Lot.
Ibra Kamara (HelmontIsBack)
it gave an error at last while flashing ’cause of a missing file but after i tried to boot it loaded with miui 8 and ’till now it’s working properly so thanks a lot man for this guide “the only guide that really works for Redmi 3S”
Anton Yatsushko
hey pal, here is 100% working method how to boot into download mode if any other doesn’t work https://youtu.be/ReT0uNQtYvQ
Basically push all 3 Buttons until it restarts like 3 times. Then when the mi logo disapears again, drop all 3 Buttons and the phone is completely turned off.
John D
If your phone is stuck on the MI logo you can turn it off this way:
1. Hold Volume down and Power buttons
2. When phone vibrates let go of the power button but keep the volume down button pressed.
3. The Phone will show fast boot logo but if you keep holding the volume down for a while longer the phone will turn off.
John D
This guide works except none of the methods suggested to enter download mode worked for my soft bricked phone. I had to use a Xiaomi “Deep Flash” Cable (which I made myself) but you can easily buy one (just google it).
Also there are some additional tips when using this Guide you should be aware of
If you use The MIUI ROM Flashing Tool V20160830 it has all the drivers you need (especially the Qualcomm Drivers and the ADB drivers)
You need to Disable Driver Signature Enforcement in 64 bit versions of windows 7, 8 & 10.
If your PC has windows 8/10 and a UEFI enabled Bios, you will need to also locate and disable the secure boot setting (if enabled) in the Bios, otherwise flashing will not work.
I’ve got Redmi 3s, but at 1st switching on I did not get any touch screen reaction: the phone showed me the language choise… After I leaved the phone for a few hours I could get 2 touches.
And now? The phone show me 3rd step of wizard at “choise the keyboard”, but I can get it away…
I tried also the combination “volume up” + power button. After boot into this screen I have also no any touch screen reaction, it just doesn’t work… Can somebody help me and say me what I have to do? Or better if I just send it back to the store?
Thanks.
Sim Ao
This guide worked flawlessly on the locked Redmi 3S (ofc qualcomm edition).
Hi guys,
Another article on another really worked and helped me as I was finally able to bring my bricked MI Redmi 3S prime phone back to life from the MI logo..This is the link: https://www.xiaomigeek.com/unbrick-redmi-note-4.html
If u want to know what resulted in the stuck at MI logo and how I came out from that situation, then u have to read a really, really long story:
I wanted to flash my phone clean as I suspected some kind of malware was slowing and hanging my Redmi. Btw my device is Redmi 3S Prime and was running on MIUI 9.5.1.0 (MALMIFA). The Android version was 6.0.1. MMB29M (Marshmallow).
I had installed TWRP and the device was rooted using SuperSu. First I tried to factory reset the phone from the settings menu. The device prompted me twice with passwords – the phone password and the MI Account password. Once both passwords were matched the phone rebooted. But it rebooted into TWRP menu. Now as I was (and still am) NAIVE in terms of booting, flashing, TWRP, etc etc. I didn’t knew what to do. I clicked on the exit to system/boot menu and the phone again rebooted into the normal mode.
Since I was hell bent on flashing the phone and erasing everything on the device [inlcuding killing the handing virus :), pun intended], I downloaded the Global Rom version for the Redmi 3S Prime (MIUI 9) and put the entire downloaded zip file into a folder in my computer and copied the entire zip file also in the root directory of the phone’s internal memory. I think this was the starting point of my blunder as the SU Superzip zip file was also in the same root directory.
Anyways I again rebooted to TWRP recovery menu by pressing Volume UP button and power button simultaneously and this time I decided to use the option update from zip file in the TWRP menu. I navigated to the zip file of the rom which was put by me in the internal memory of the phone. After that some prompts appeared on the TWRP menu screen for confirmation (slide right for the update) and the phone started to update from the ROM zip file which I had mentioned in the TWRP menu path. However the phone didn’t booted successfully as it was stuck at the MI logo. Usually after a few seconds of rebooting “the powered by Android” option appears at the bottom of the screen in addition to the MI logo during a boot. But in this case the boot was stuck at the MI logo inspite of rebooting the phone several times.
Then I searched again for some more threads on google as I suspected the TWRP was not allowing a successful reboot. After seaching for the phrase how to remove TWRP Recovery from MIUI/Redmi phones, I finally stumbled upon the following site: http://en.miui.com/thread-631845-1-1.html with the heading:
“How to remove twrp recovery without root.”
Now a thread at this site asked for the following steps:
========================================
“Download stock recovery Img file. You can find it in forum under ‘Tool, tips and tutorials’ section.
Extract the downloaded .zip file
Find the .img file
Rename it recovery.img
Copy paste to C:/adb folder
On window C:/adb folder, press shift +right click
Click on open command window here
Connect your phone to PC in fastboot mode
Enter fastboot command
Best regards ”
===========================================
The method executed in the adb shell prompt but when I executed the final command “Fastboot reboot”, the phone was still stuck at the MI Logo. After a few unsuccessful attempts I tried to renter the recovery mode once again but the volume up and power button didn’t responded and I could only enter the fastboot mode (by clicking both volume down and power button for a few seconds).
I was really beginning to feel frustrated as none of the sites were able to resolve the problem. The MI PC suite won’t detect my device and the MI flashing tools option gave error (no succh directory exists). However the option 2 at the site worked like charm though once I wandered again for some time in this option also (partly because of my impatience).
Actually after executing the first command mentioned in step 2 of this article:
“fastboot flash system system.img”
“Press Enter to Continue”
gave this message on the adb prompt/command prompt:
“target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes”
There was no activity on the command prompt for a few minutes and I thought this was some kind of error and then I started to search for this error on google (what a dumb a** I am). Actually this is not an error. It can take some time at the first command (fastboot flash system system.img) as the file can be quite large at the initial stage. I had pulled of my data cable after a few minutes thinking that the command prompt had become unresponsive. However when I came back from the browser to the adb/command prompt, the following error was showing on the adb prompt:
C:adbFASTBOOT ROMimages>fastboot flash system system.img
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
erasing ‘system’…
OKAY [ 0.138s]
sending sparse ‘system’ (524096 KB)…
FAILED (data transfer failure (No such file or directory))
finished. total time: 30.348s
So I again rebooted my phone to fastboot mode and again reinserted the data cable into the bricked phone at fastboot logo and executed all the commands religiously one by one and finally I was able to reclaim my bricked phone which I was going to declare as dead (RIP my phone :). One advise to everyone who used the method 2. The first command : “fastboot flash system system.img” might take a while but don’t abandon the process or take the cable out from the phone as it will take some time initially. Here is the complete list of commands executed and the success message after each command. Will help and guide you if you are in same situation of bricked phone at MI Logo. I think this can also work for other models and phones provided you have the actual ROM with relevant image files as asked in the command.
C:adbFASTBOOT ROMimages>fastboot erase userdata
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing ‘userdata’…
OKAY [ 1.124s]
finished. total time: 1.151s