If I break forum etiquette in some way please excuse the lapse - this is my first post to any forum. Honestly, it's a bit intimidating but I'm more than a little desperate right now. Near panic would be a better description of my state.
My Droid Incredible is stuck in a continuous boot loop. 24-48 hours after downloading a sleep sound generating app (if this is relevant), I was trying to use a different app and a pop-up stated "internal error" and would not load the app. I tried another and same result. I tried to kill all running apps with advanced app killer and same result. I turned off the phone thinking that it would correct when turning it back on but no luck. Now it just power cycles in a continuous boot loop. There has been no solution through tech support or a store visit. I don't care about the phone. At this point I would like to strap it to a steak and throw it in a lion cage. I do care about the data its holding - none of which is backed up in any way. There is no sd card and no back-up in my gmail account. I need to try and rescue the following data: voice memos from the HTC app, notes from the 3bannana (catch notes) app, photos, videos, apps, bookmarks from the dolphin HD browser and the Android browser, pdf downloads, text messages, call log settings, etc.
I have tried to boot the phone with a sd card installed. I have tried to view the data from a Celebrite machine at the Verizon store - it sees the drive but not the data. I tried to get into a "safe mode" menu by depressing down volume+center click+menu. Nothing has worked.
Is there any desktop software (or any other solution) that would enable me to restore (rescue) the data from the phone while it is in this state?
If there isn't, please just make something up so I can continue for a while in a delusional state of hope and get over this gradually.
Thank you for your wisdom and mercy.
Kandinsky1 said:
If I break forum etiquette in some way please excuse the lapse - this is my first post to any forum. Honestly, it's a bit intimidating but I'm more than a little desperate right now. Near panic would be a better description of my state.
My Droid Incredible is stuck in a continuous boot loop. 24-48 hours after downloading a sleep sound generating app (if this is relevant), I was trying to use a different app and a pop-up stated "internal error" and would not load the app. I tried another and same result. I tried to kill all running apps with advanced app killer and same result. I turned off the phone thinking that it would correct when turning it back on but no luck. Now it just power cycles in a continuous boot loop. There has been no solution through tech support or a store visit. I don't care about the phone. At this point I would like to strap it to a steak and throw it in a lion cage. I do care about the data its holding - none of which is backed up in any way. There is no sd card and no back-up in my gmail account. I need to try and rescue the following data: voice memos from the HTC app, notes from the 3bannana (catch notes) app, photos, videos, apps, bookmarks from the dolphin HD browser and the Android browser, pdf downloads, text messages, call log settings, etc.
I have tried to boot the phone with a sd card installed. I have tried to view the data from a Celebrite machine at the Verizon store - it sees the drive but not the data. I tried to get into a "safe mode" menu by depressing down volume+center click+menu. Nothing has worked.
Is there any desktop software (or any other solution) that would enable me to restore (rescue) the data from the phone while it is in this state?
If there isn't, please just make something up so I can continue for a while in a delusional state of hope and get over this gradually.
Thank you for your wisdom and mercy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have a custom recovery image and the partitions aren't corrupt you should be able to recover everything with adb.
If you don't have a custom recovery then it might be impossible to recover anything.
Have you rooted the phone and installed a custom recovery?
With respect to backups - GMail for example is stored in the cloud - so the data on your phone is just a clone - you won't loose your mail - other apps I don't know, you'll have to check each.
If you can't get stable adb access you will need to research a factory reset for your phone which should fix it (but will wipe your data).
djmcnz said:
If you have a custom recovery image and the partitions aren't corrupt you should be able to recover everything with adb.
If you don't have a custom recovery then it might be impossible to recover anything.
Have you rooted the phone and installed a custom recovery?
With respect to backups - GMail for example is stored in the cloud - so the data on your phone is just a clone - you won't loose your mail - other apps I don't know, you'll have to check each.
If you can't get stable adb access you will need to research a factory reset for your phone which should fix it (but will wipe your data).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately, I have not rooted my droid, have no custom recovery image and don't even know what adb is. As you can tell, I am a complete novice - but a novice in serious trouble if I can't recover the data. When you say stable adb access, what do you mean?
I was hoping to find some type of desktop recovery software that may be able to recognize the drive on the phone and then view and copy the data. Is it possible that this might exist. By the way is there a more appropriate sub-forum to place this post?
Thanks for your help,
Caleb
Kandinsky1 said:
Unfortunately, I have not rooted my droid, have no custom recovery image and don't even know what adb is. As you can tell, I am a complete novice - but a novice in serious trouble if I can't recover the data. When you say stable adb access, what do you mean?
I was hoping to find some type of desktop recovery software that may be able to recognize the drive on the phone and then view and copy the data. Is it possible that this might exist. By the way is there a more appropriate sub-forum to place this post?
Thanks for your help,
Caleb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol ADB is the Android Debugging Bridge - in layman's term, it's a way to gain terminal access to your phone and do several other things with your phone. Mostly for debugging, but can be used for these purposes if you're rooted/installed a custom recovery.
That said, it would be at this point in time, virtually impossible to save your data that hasn't been backed up. Even if you had root, this might have been a bit more accomplishable (though usually a custom recovery never hurt ). If you're REALLY desperate, there might still be a way, though the chances of it working and providing good results is a mixed bag of results.
I'm assuming that if you didn't have an SD card in there in the first place that it has some built-in memory, right? Well, If not, then Catch notes would not have worked as it depends on an SD card to hold backups and (if i believe correctly) notes. Also, I'm assuming that you had some accounts set up on your phone (HTC/Google). If not, then I don't know how you've gone this long without it, but I'm almost positive you did have at least those two. In that case, the voice memos might be saved as well as the call log settings. Contacts might also be synced, so its more of the physical stuff we need to worry (texts/pdfs/bookmarks/pictures/videos)
Now, there are ways to recover using a computer. It all requires that you get your phone to work again (don't throw it to the lions yet!) So, we'll need to try and unbrick it. Follow the instructions here to try and get your phone back into factory state. It's true this will delete all your data, but as you are now, you have even less of a chance of recovering it.
From here, you're going to just skip past the setups and everything. After that, you're going to mount the phone as a disk drive. Now, this is where things can either go really good or really bad for you.
Get a recovery software for Windows, Linux, or Mac here. I honestly prefer Recuva as it has worked well for me in the past and this other program I had to pay for (can't remember the name. Search google and you might find it ;P), but Recuva should serve these purposes well.
The reason why these things work very inconsistently is that when you delete stuff in your phone/computer, they don't actually get "deleted". Rather, they are flagged as "not needed" and is left there until the phone/computer needs more space. It'll search out any flags, then overwrite them. In our case, that will work for and against us. Since we have to rewrite about 1 GB of data to reinstall the system (or was it +- 500 MBs?) we'll have to assume that about that much will be lost to us. That's why usually videos are unrecoverable. They are large and usually take up the most space, so they will be hard to recover if anything.
However, this works out for us as we can recover things like texts, contacts, your color note files, bookmarks, pictures, and whatever else you can dream of with a very high success rate. This is because they are small enough and if they don't get touched, you can probably get them in their original form. However, if parts of it is overwritten (i.e. texts, video) , you'll know cause the texts will have funky characters that dont make sense and the video wont load. Use this to your advantage and recover only small things first. Rule of thumb: if its small and seen by the software, most likely untouched. Grab these first.
I apologize for this really really long post. I just wanted to explain every part to you so you can understand the thinking behind why I'm asking you to do something as delete your precious data. However, like I stated earlier, there is almost 100% chance you won't get everything back and you could still possibly lose all your data should the software not see it. However, I feel this is much better than not having any chance at all and just staring at your phone waiting for it to grow brains and spit out the data in a conveniently-hidden SD card. So, I hope this works for you and if things go well, let me know! =]
~jojojohnson7410
In case hard reset didn't work...
You can follow the following section by clicking here:
How to revert to factory (stock, S-ON, no root):
Get S-ON by flashing THIS FILE (218.5kb) via recovery the same way you would flash a ROM. If you're not on the stock radio, you'll first need to FLASH THE STOCK RADIO. If you don't know how to do this, then you've never flashed off the stock radio, so you're good.
Revert your phone back to the stock, unrooted ROM. You have two options.
Option 1: Download HTC Sync and run the RUU. You can download the RUU HERE (180MB).
Option 2: Download THIS FILE (172.5MB) and place it on the root of your SD card. Reboot your phone into HBOOT (Bootloader, NOT RECOVERY!!!). Once the bootloader checks the image, it will ask you if you want to update. Select Yes and let the update run. After the phone reboots, you will have a stock, factory Droid Incredible running the November update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's all the way at the top. Do this only if the hard reset didn't work. If you need help using this or encounter any problems, let me know =] (oh, PM me cause sometimes I forget to check >.>)
~jojojohnson7410
Related
The Short Version: Screen's trashed, bootloader is unlocked, can I install Clockwork Recovery without losing the data on the phone right now? And can someone at least step me through the Clockwork Recovery menu, as my SAMOLED display is actually damaged (I've done the software hacking before)? If I can't do the CWR thing, can I at least force the phone into USB boot mode so I can pull the backups I do have in USB Storage before Samsung nukes the phone?
The Long Version:
Title says it all. I know there are other "help me back up my phone with a busted screen" threads, but the ones I've seen so far all reference camera buttons and such. There's some data on the "local" storage I'd like to try and recover, if at all possible, specifically data in a time clock app, a car maintenance log app, and save games would be a nice little bonus. The apps have native back-up features, but they aren't automatic, and I can't trigger them with the broken screen.
Here's the kicker: I rooted once and installed CM7, CWR, and the rest of the usual toys, right before ICS came out. Then once ICS came out, I ran into all sorts of trouble with the manual upgrade, and basically undid everything... almost. I know the bootloader is still unlocked, and I'm pretty sure I removed Clockwork Recovery (like a damn fool). Is it possible to reinstall CWR without nuking the main storage? And, of course, since my screen is totally trashed, is it possible for someone to help me navigate the menus?
I'm pretty confident in actually installing CWR and removing it and relocking the bootloader. Tons of guides out there, and I've done it once before, I just need to know if I can do this without losing my data. If I can't, is there some way to force the phone into USB Storage Mode so I can at least recover the data on the phone that is auto-backed-up (or backed up previously)?
Thank you for anything you can do to help me out here!
HI guys, I'm hoping you can help me with a problem that's led me to start threatening my galaxy ace (S5830i) with a hammer.
Actually it's not the phone's fault it's purely my own stupidity, but none-the-less I'm here for help because I've spent all day and night trawling the net, trying to figure out how to proceed to resolve my issue on my own but I simply cannot make sense of the conflicting information I'm finding.
I promise you thing thing if nothing else, I have tried my very best to read around a hundred other forums, pages, and how 'to's but I'm finding that I have no resolution that I can work with because either:
- The tutorials turned out to be for the S5830 - not the i model - when I got to the forum
- The youtube videos all seem to be spoken in accents I cannot understand or not explained clearly, or are too technical
- Links I go to to get apk files etc are broken, wrong or leading me up another path I cannot follow
- Software does NOT look on my screen as it does on tutorials or websites (SDK for example)
- The people explaining the resolution type with such poor English I cannot understand what they're actually saying
- The solutions that work for others are too technical or advanced for me to understand and I'm finding it difficult to learn as I go (apart frm the root instructions which I found quite easy)
Anyway, I'll start at the beginning:
I have a samsung galaxy ace (S5830i) running:
- Gingerbread 2.3.6
- Baseband version S5830iXXLK1
- Kernel version 2.6.35.7
- Build number GINGERBREAD.XXLK3
I've already rooted it so I have superuser access, and I managed that perfectly well on my own
I installed titanium backup and somehow I managed to uninstall the stock email that comes with the phone. I think this is my problem because I now cannot download anything from google play, nor can I add a new gmail account to do so, so I'm stuck in no mans land not able to use googleplay (because my gmail account is now missing from my phone) nor can I seem to figure out how to get th apk file directly into the phone so that I can start fresh.
I'm also absolutely stuck on how to flash the phone and start again because nothing I seem to read is explaining it in simple clear terms that a layman can understand. When I do find a simple explanation, I find it's only for the non 'i' version of the phone, or if I find a simple instruction it's zip files for the rom do not contain all the files I need to use with odin v1.5
Also, there are conflicting explanations on flashing the rom on different forums/sites so I dare not use one over the other because another one contradicts it. I do not want to ruin my phone as right now it still basically works for now as a phone.
In my phone menu, the gmail icon is still there, just not the icon/app that said "email". The icon is now missing from my menus and with it there is now no way to use the play services without a gmail account on the phone.
When I click the gmail icon, it stats to open and then just shuts off quickly, not opening gmail, so I'm pretty sure all this is due to me deleting the email app using titanium backup.
Make sense?
What I'd really be grateful for is if on of you guys could help me out and explain in very simple terms what I need to do to either install the apk directly (preferred) so that I can add a gmail account to the phone and get access to google play again, or failing that a simple how to flash the rom with stock gingerbread, together with links to software that's known to be bonafide.
I am literally being driven mad going around in circles on forums and sites to keep going back to square one.
Any help will be very gratefully received. Or I'm afraid this may mean I'm going to smash my new phone int a wall and never use a smartphone again, because obviously I'm too stupid to play around with them on my own.
I really appreciate your help if someone would be able to invest a little time here.
Thanks very much for your time, guys
Jobeeey
additional info
Right, these are the instructions I found on this forum, but I'm unclear if I'm approaching this right..
Flashing s5830i with Odin v1.85
1.Turn off the phone and put it in Download mode by pressing Power+Volume Up+volume down.
2.Open Odin v1.85.Run as Administrator!.
3.Put the files in Odin and don't touch the settings
4.If it's a one-file firmware put it in PDA section.
If it's multiple put the files in the correct section.
5.Click start and don't touch the phone!Don't turn off computer and don't unplug the phone!It will reboot automatically and the first boot will take some time,so don't panic!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've found a rom (which is a single file) and if I'm reading this right I place that in the PDA section of Odin after installing the usb drivers onto my pc (done that and windows recognizes my phone in the sense that it isn't now hassling me for drivers every two seconds).
Ok.. so I seem to have got the correct rom for my specific ace model.. and the instructions seem to be that I now:
1) Connect usb cable
2) Boot my phone into download mode (I can do that I think).. but at what point do I press vol down to download a new os.. before or after pressing start in Odin?
3) Open Odin and add file as in my attached screenshot (I can do that)
4) Click 'start' in Odin
5) Wait for my phone to reboot
And that should be job done, the phone should be flashed with the stock rom again and that should get me back on track, right? Or am I about to screw up my phone and ruin it even further?
Thanks for reading. I hope someone can advise if I'm doing this right as I've seen other forums say that I should tick the 'Re-partition' box, and other that say I shouldn't, and this one says nothing about it at all.
This is one of the tings that's confusing me, and once I'm now flashing a phone for the first time it's flippin scary to do it on my lonesome!
This is what I mean..
I've just tested going into download mode with odin ready, and the phone gets there (vol up+down + power on).. but each time it gets into download mode it seems to disconnect from odin and no com port is open. I get the windows device disconnected/connected beeping and the connection seems to sever.
What the Fffff...
This is exactly what I'm talking about.. nothing seems to be working like it's meant to be and I'm getting nowhere with any instructions I can find after god knows how many hours researching this.
:crying:
update (lol)
Mornin all,
So, just in case anyone finds this useful..
The flashing problem is kind of irrelevant now because:
A) Odin (tried several versions) simply will not stay connected to my phone when it boots into download mode, and having checked many tutorials for this it sees that this is a problem some of us cannot get past.
Anyway, one of the methods to resolve this was to wipe the cache and clear all data etc, which I did, and now my phone is stuck on the "pres the android" screen, and my phone will no longer get past that. Tried pressing clockwise in all four corners but still nothing.
No probs.. so we move on to a new step of trying to split the roms via cygwin, but guess what? Every single time I try to download the cygwin files, that freezes at about 98% and will not download, no matter which mirror I select.
So, this is what I call a curse that isn't going to be lifted by me no matter hat. It's not not meant to be.
Therefore, what I'm going to do is take it to a local shop that unlocks mobiles and give it to them to flash back to stock rom for me.
If that doesn't work, do you know what I'm gonna do?
Nothing. Because there's nothing you can do when the processes do not follow the same progress as they do in the tutorials.
I hope other novice S5830i users save themselves all his time and trouble and don't bother following the same process and become locked out of their phone at the touch android screen.
Update
Yipee,
Right, I stumbled across a solution that worked for me.
What I did was get my 2gb msd card that came with the phone and slapped MindCR v1.0.12 on the card and whacked that in my phone (this bypassed not being able to get a new rom on the sd card as it wasn't unmounted before the crash, so my pc wouldn't recognise the date to put it on via the pc).
Then I updated the rom from that 2gb card (vol up + menu + power to get into recovery mode) and it took it a few minutes to update the firmware and give me back the full use of my phone, and with a shiny new os on it. Whoop!
I didn't bother with CWM as I'd forgotten to add it before flashing, but it worked none-the-less and I'm now back in business (wiped it manually).
As it turned out this version of MindCR works really well so far as I can tell. I realise there are updated roms now but I've come to the conclusion after the scare I had that if you're not entirely sure what you're doing, it's best to leave it alone if it ain't broke.
SO.. now I have a phone with what seems to be a better os than the stock and less bloatware on it, no phone problems I can see after thorough testing... and from what I can tell it turned out to be better than it was before the disaster.
And I learned a bit in the process. Like for example, don't feck around removing apps from smartphones with titanium unless you've backed them up and you're prepared to stress out for over 20hrs wondering what to do about it.
And, also, don't expect much help from a forum because you may not always get it. << That' not a dig at xda by the way. It's just a BIG forum so your threads may not be seen by the right person before they get buried in past pages.
Hope my little journey helps another unsuspecting S5830i user who comes across the thread.
Hey Guys
Im in a bit of a situation here
It sounds a bit odd, but when making up my electronic stuff, i dug out my old Galaxy S7 and several other phones and i got a bit nostalgic about those times and what i did back then.
So i started charging them up and scrolling to the photos and messages of that time. (im not the type of guy who has everything synced, i mostly start from scratch on a new phone).
However on this device, i was not able to figure out the PIN Code nor the Google Account i was using back then.
So i am now trying to get access to this data by working around the pin code or something like that.
I thought that with the ADB shell i could do this and i found some hints on google about it. However as it looks, you need to have USB debugging enabled to get the shell access. Which of course i haven't and i cannot set as i am not able to get into the system the usual way.
There is no custom recovery or similar flashed on the device. Stock. I might even have wiped it back then but just curious And searching solutions for problems like that is in my nature.
So does anyone know a way how to get there?
I am not interested about the os or something, just my old personal data.
Is unlocking through odin still a thing? and can i get a custom recovery on the device that way WITHOUT loosing the data on the phone? so through that recovery i cloud get a shell to bypass the lockscreen?
Or is there just no solution to that?
I found that there is some SD Card installable flashes to bypass the lockscreen, but here i would first have to buy an SD Card. Since this is just a project i dont want to waste money. Do you guys know if this works for sure? I mean, can i even install this tool without a custom recovery? I have the menu option to apply updates from sd card in the standard recovery, just not sure if this does the trick.
Any other approach?
And yeah, i would probably find it out one day by just trying the codes, but it locks you for 60 minutes after every try now, so this would take ages ^^
I'm actually in a very serious problem as I have a problem with restoring my whatsapp messages please help me asap I uninstalled my whatsapp on 16th July and last I backed up it on 7th July. Now when I try to restore the messages after reinstalling it shows my google account but it doesn't show the size of backup and also it says no Internet connection please help me. Also my whatsapp images and whatsapp videos folders have disappeared. I really want to get back my chats. Hope someone will really help me as it means alot to me now
Connect to a wifi or a hotspot, or get better signal then H+
Kenora_I said:
Connect to a wifi or a hotspot, or get better signal then H+
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm already using WiFi and I tried using mobile data as well both didn't help and I tried reseting network settings and all still it didn't work out
ruinaaaa said:
I'm already using WiFi and I tried using mobile data as well both didn't help and I tried reseting network settings and all still it didn't work out
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you check your google account the backup.
It could be app problem, try resetting and other stuff.
Kenora_I said:
Did you check your google account the backup.
It could be app problem, try resetting and other stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey yes I checked it as well in google drive it shows the backup I can't restore it locally because I deleted the whatsapp databases like or two months ago will it affect this
Try clearing the data and cache of whatsapp or reinstall it.
Kenora_I said:
Try clearing the data and cache of whatsapp or reinstall it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried this too and tried so many things.I watched so many youtube videos and searched a lot in google as well still couldn't find any possible way to recover
Albert83BCN said:
Hi guys!
I have been facing this issue this whole week while trying to move all my chats to a new phone I just bought as with the old one the charging port was dying and I could not bear it anymore. So almost everything restored smoothly from Google Backup and it was like being in my phone again with a few wizard steps but then I Installed WhatsApp (WA) and gone through the typical activation and restoring process and. as many, I got stuck at the 24% sometimes, some others 31% and 39%, and never got past the 39%.
I Tried almost everything: restoring from Google Drive, transfer all WhatsApp directory to internal storage and trying to restore from there, etc. Going back to the old phone to create fresh backups just in case they were corrupted as many people suggests, getting every time more delay to be able to activate WhatsApp again up to 12h for both SMS and call activation... just to mess again and feel back at square one, I guess you all feel the pain.
Well, the good news is that I finally managed to restore all the chat history!!! (well, cannot be certain that 100% was restored but I do not miss anything ATM and I can go back up to 2012 chats so I guess that qualifies as "everything" hehe).
So, I'm posting here because I've been searching a lot on the forums and the reddit and for all the people that is having this issue recently, almost no body came back to report success and I know it feels really discouraging It certainly gives the impression that this issue has no fix at all, and that you should accept losing all the chat history and starting from the start again. But from all the data I've been gathering during this week, at least two or three people reported to eventually being able to restore the chat; they fell in one of these two categories: they either transferred to a different phone where the backup seemed to restore okay, and then exported and restored in the target phone with success (something like a "bridge" restore mode, most of the cases I've read did it this way) or they finally succeeded by sheer brute force by trying again and again and again.
I fall in this 2nd category. In the most recent attempt I was doing what I've been doing again and again and again with just minor variations in the workflow and finally succeeded. TL; DR; I think in reality in many cases attempts could succeed by just letting the phone restore the backup endlessly, by not giving up and assuming the restore process went wrong when it has been stuck forever at either 24, 31 or 39% and force closing..
But I know in the midst of desperation OCD kicks in and you want step-by-step success case scenario reproduction so I will tell you all the steps that I followed that I can remember that got me to finally have the backup to end successfully:
0. First of all, in the winning attempt I had already uninstalled WA from the new phone and removed totally the WA folder in the internal storage / sdcard storage. Not sure this is mandatory but just to tell this was the case.
1. Since I got WA working perfectly on the old phone at every moment, I backed up locally for the Nth f%!?&·( time. This left me with the latest local backup plus a few others in the databases folder as a result of keep messing up.
2. I copied the full WhatsApp directory from the internal storage of the old phone to a safe place. This could be the PC or whatever, but PC transfer via USB seems too sloppy. You maybe could do it via ADB, whatever, I went by the route of coping it to the external SD with some random explorer utility like ES File Explorer. It does not matter, the point is to be able to backup the full WhatsApp folder in order to restore it as similar as possible as the original. What we are more interested right now is in the database folder but having all images, videos etc in place will help in getting it like before the easiest way. (Disclaimer: Ok guys sorry if some steps are too obvious to XDA users which usually are highly educated in the matter, but I was thinking of sharing/linking this text on the reddit and others, so please bear with it).
3. I installed latest WA in the new phone, opened the app (I intended to not open but I somewhat forgot) and got to the welcome screen, immediately closed the app at that step.
3. I restored the full folder to the new phone internal storage, pure copy/paste style (as said, in my case via the SD since both phones have SD slot and was very convenient, but via USB, cloud, etc. can be done).
4. I went to the databases folder and only kept the msgstore.db.crypt12 file and the latest backup with a date (ie: msgstore-2019-11-21.db.crypt12), deleted the rest. Honestly I do not think this is crucial but I somewhat wanted to make it easier for WA to know which one to target, I thought about keeping only the msgstore.db.crypt12 but some random dude pointed that the one with the date was needed. I was under the assumption that file structure is identical in both but just wanted to get done with this and keep both, just in case.
5. Before opening again the WA to try to activate and restore with this full local copy, I opened the Android settings app and went to applications > whatasapp > storage, as suggested by user redweaver, thanks for the tip! by keeping looking at the storage usage of the app during the restore process we could get insight about if it was really doing something or the app was really stuck. Keep open for now. In my case, I saw also on the old phone that my data used for the app was 780+ MB, so I had an idea of what should be on the new phone by the time it finished (if it did!).
5b. I don't think this is really necessary but I did it just in case. I was planning to go to work and let the thing running as long as it would need, and I would make sure that the process would get maximum uptime and nothing would get in the way. So I went to Applications > WhatsApp > Battery usage (or something like it) and disabled the battery optimizations for this app. I also went to the developer mode settings and enabled do not lock the phone while it is charging and everything that looked like it might be relevant. Again, most likely this has nothing to do, but reproducible steps, right?
6. Now open WA and activate it as usual, but when it seems that the activation step ended and you go to the next screen, immediately put the phone in air plane mode or disable data/WiFi, whatever. The goal is that it cannot reach Google Drive to look for the online backup. Honestly maybe in the end is not the culprit of GDrive but many people states that the GD backup is broken at this time and suggests going the local route, so we will do it like this.
7. WA should tell you that looking for the backup is going too slow and to skip this step (sorry to not have exact message, I have it in Spanish, but something in these lines, BTW excuse my somewhat limited English ). The point here is to click on the link that says skip the step and when you are prompted with a popup, click also on Skip.
8. WA will display the typical restore / transfer-like screen where the process starts. At this point you have to enable again data plan / WiFi at least or exit air plane mode, don't know really but even if restoring from local it complains about not having internet connection, maybe needs it to encrypt with the key or something? don't know.
9. Now is the feared moment! Even this time, I got somewhat stuck at 31% again. I left it do its thing, and some time later, it prompted for the popup that has a progress-bar from 0 to 100 (honestly, what is the difference between both?!) which also got stuck at 31%. If you let it be, it starts going back and forth many times, I guess maybe its going chat per chat and the progress-bar represents each one? Dunno. Thing is, even in the prior attempts I got at this point and the backup did not finish successfully. But this time I was decided to let it do its thing as much time as it would take, until the end. In the process the phone might display a pop up saying that WA does not respond. I clicked a few times in the 'keep waiting' option, then I just forgot because I did not have time to mess with it and hoped that it was still working on the background, which bring us to step 10.
10. While we are contemplating the backup process, we can go to the settings app again and look how the internal data is going for the WA. In my case, after some time under the restore process, when I went there I saw WA had occupied 0.91 GB of data space. After going back and forth again between WA and settings, the usage keep growing: 0.96, 1.03, 1.10... I thought it was on the right track, and encouraged me to keep waiting. Maybe in the end the process is too slow for old databases. Note that some people speculates that having messages from very long ago might be the culprit here due to changes in the table structure and that this might be the reason breaking the restore process. And maybe it is the case, but even if it is, in my case I finally succeeded where previously I didn't and without deleting anything, so this does not seem to be a deal-breaker or I would have never succeeded. I say it because some people reported that deleting old conversations and trying again finally made them succeed. Now I suspect the true reason was simply that by making the database smaller the process finished earlier, but YMMV.
11. Cannot be totally sure, but in my case, I noticed that leaving WA on the background and clicking on the WA icon again might stop the process for true and bring a message about not being able to recover the chats, I got this previously, do not try to open the WA normally, only leave it temporally to look to the space usage in the settings to get back to it by swyping between recent apps to keep the same instance open and working, this was a key point in my success trial that did not happen during the previous ones.
12. And finally, while I kept switching between WA and the settings and when I last saw like 1.30GB of space used (almost twice the space compared to the old phone, maybe it leaves a lot of temp data) I don't know if I either messed with the app-switching or it really finished, but then I got prompted to the screen where you enter your name or nickname. And when I completed this step, I finally got to the chats screen and everything was like in the old phone! Where previously I would get to a lot of empty chat rooms with maybe 40 total messages restored according to WA. Hurray!
Notice that in my case it was still reporting 31% on the WA background screen under the progress bar popup when it finished!! so it seems that is not really mandatory to experience the 100% complete to have it work in the end, but YMMV.
OK, maybe not the most elegant "guide" out there but I wrote it in a hurry and my english sucks, I just hope it might help someone to not lose their WA chats forever.
Good luck!
Edit: I almost forgot but, for the sake of completeness. I also tried a certain script that can backup WA from the phone and retrieve the encryption key, it will also leave an unencrypted copy of the chats database that can later be viewed with a WhatsApp viewer like this. The script is called WhatsApp Key/DB Extractor, and it still works as of 2019, just look at the latest posts in the thread. Guys here on XDA most likely know about it but if not, you might give it a try. I tried it because I assumed that maybe I could circumvent the restore issues by going that route and pushing the backup via ADB, but turns out the legacy WA won't prepare the database due to the time out of sync issue, or at least the data seemed to be lost after performing the restore process, and the unencrypted database on the PC cannot be digested by WA latest versions by just putting it into the internal storage directly according to what other users commented. But, if you finally give up trying the restore process, it still could be relieving to know that you keep a local copy in the PC that can be viewed with another PC tool, at least you get a backup and the conversations are there, in a different way though. Maybe in the future there's a process that can restore them again to a different phone, and you could then merge the new chat database with the older backup with tools like Merjeapp.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has the solution
Kenora_I said:
This has the solution
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you but today I read this in the afternoon. This guy has solved it through whatsapp databases but I don't have a way go backup locally as I deleted my whatsapp databases two months ago. All I can do is recovering from google drive but the thing in this guy's scenario his chat was actually being restoring but I can't even do that since it says that I have an Internet connection problem
Hi guys,
I am looking for some time now into the possibility to recover data from a data wiped phone. The phone is not rooted and basically stock with MIUI installed (Xiaomi 10T Pro).
First, I tried “normal” windows data recovery programs but with these I am not able to select the internal drive of the phone when connected to the PC just the hard drive of the PC. Then I read this could be when the device is not in MTP mode but after enabling it I still couldn’t select the device. I tried different programs also some mentioned here on XDA like DiskDigger, TestDisk, GT Recovery, Restoration and so on.
Then I tried it on the phone itself with the DiskDigger App, GT Recovery, File Recovery, Photo Recovery and so on. I got the feeling that all these apps don’t really look for data or do a deep search. The progress stops usually after a second with no results at all. Access to the storage was given.
Then I tried different recovery programs for Android I found on google like EaseUS, Android Data Recovery and so on. At least a dozen of those programs. Some of them unfortunately weren’t able to recognize the phone. And honestly, most of the programs look quite the same, have similar stile websites and installers and all claim to be number 1 in restoring. I also read that they scam people but I can’t really tell because they usually want you to pay for a result. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem in paying a price to recover some pictures but I have to pay before I even get a result if some data can be recovered. If I would get at least a preview that something was found and can be recovered I would give it a shot.
Is it really so hard to find a decent software or app that can help me with trying to recover some pictures?
If anybody can lead me in a good direction, I would really appreciate that.
Thank you!
As anyone EVER recovered data after a Factory reset?
As anyone EVER recovered data after a Factory reset? There are so many people who just give blind advice to use android recovery software which actually doesn't work. I have contacted all data recovery they claim it's not possible after Android...
forum.xda-developers.com