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can someone please help me figure out what the deal is with my phone, it's been working great minus the fact it wont work with activesycn anymore, but today i was at my friends using wifi and surfing the net and using Remote Desktop and it locked up, i rebooted it with the reset button and it sits at the Windows Mobile splash screen, for 45+mins, i havent waiting longer than that, i noticed if i pull the battery, sim, SD out and let it sit, put it all back together, press all the buttons, turn it back on and press buttons while is coming on, itll come on, dont know why i have to press stuff lol but its working, and its done this twice, if my activesync worked i'd re-flash it but this rom hasnt been too bad for me, it's one of the earlier Faria releases of wm6. anyone know what would cause it to freeze up during boot and work Sometimes? or a way to make it boot up for sure w/o doing a hard reset.
i noticed it will boot up if i press some buttons during the first/second splash screen, the HTC one and the one with the version numbers, if the keyboard lights up i know its gunna boot successfully. this is crazy. and annoying.
You might try flashing with Shelltool. I'e never done that but it seems to work.
Have you tried to do a hard reset on it? No flash is required. Also for ActiveSync, go to Start > Settings > Connections > USB to PC and uncheck (or check) the box there and see if ActiveSync starts working for you.
And you can always flash directly to the bootloader (no activesync required) if thats what you want to do. Just turn off the phone, then hold the camera button and turn the phone back on. As long as you see USB above the left softkey you are good to go for flashing a different rom onto your phone. I would strongly suggest if you do this to flash back to an official ROM first (T-Mobile 2.26 is a good one to use) and then flash a custom rom of your choice.
No idea why this would have started, but my guess is something you have recently added has a conflict on your phone. You might want to go to remove programs and remove the last couple of things. Then grab a trial copy of MemMaid and run that to clean up bad registry entries and such. See if the problem goes away.
Good luck!
Ah.. See, I want to flash really bad and try something with the new HTC Touch on it, there are so many roms lol, i don't even know where i saved the file for the one im using now.. but the only problem is, i cannot get the damn thing to sync with activesync, i've tried reinstalling it and unchecking the other box on the phone, no go. i'm sure there is no other way to back everything up is there? :-( i'll try memmaid too just incase that can fix the registry. any specific rom you recommend with HTC Touch ? i text A LOT with my phone so i'm mainly only worried about texting and taking pictures, but i've got the UK rom to install, i heard that is better than my current one.
sintax said:
Ah.. See, I want to flash really bad and try something with the new HTC Touch on it, there are so many roms lol, i don't even know where i saved the file for the one im using now.. but the only problem is, i cannot get the damn thing to sync with activesync, i've tried reinstalling it and unchecking the other box on the phone, no go. i'm sure there is no other way to back everything up is there? :-( i'll try memmaid too just incase that can fix the registry. any specific rom you recommend with HTC Touch ? i text A LOT with my phone so i'm mainly only worried about texting and taking pictures, but i've got the UK rom to install, i heard that is better than my current one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't care for the Touch stuff (I assume you are talking the Cube), so I really can't comment on that. You'll have to try that yourself.
Use PIM Backup to backup your SMS, MMS, Calendar, contacts and more to your SD card. You could install it by downloading it directly to your phone (its just a zip file with the exe that you run).
As I said, you can upgrade without activesync. Just go to the bootloader as I described.
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
The 4.0.4 OTA update was waiting for me when I woke up this morning. I started the install but when it went to reboot it hung up with a picture of the Android man on his back with a red error/warning triangle.
I haven't done anything with it, hoping someone might be able to help me out.
The phone is rooted but running 4.0.2 stock rom. the battery was a little low when i started the install, but i plugged it in before starting.
Thanks in advance for help,
jvoosh
the reason is that your phone is rooted ,so ... if you want OTA ,you had better unroot you rom or ruu
so can I hard reset the phone (pull the battery) without screwing anything up and then figure out how to unroot the phone?
thanks for your help,
j
Ditto
I'm in exactly the same boat, and hope someone answers this before I try a battery pull.
EDIT: I read around and found some people describing our situation, and mentioning that they did battery pulls to no avail. So I did, and nothing broke. However, the update didn't go through, and now I'm trying to figure out why this happened.
Same issue
I'm having the same issue. Phone got the IMM76k update, and after downloaded, was prompted to restart and install. So i did, gets through part of the install, and then goes to the android man on his back with a red exclamation mark. Have tried multiple times, all to no avail. Now, when I click check for update, it says system up to date, but still on 4.0.2.
Non-rooted, bootloader unlocked...anyone have any luck fixing this?
After downloading update, get Android man on back with red exclamation point
I'm having some difficulty getting the update to install, along the lines of some of the comments posted before mine:
I was able to force download the OTA update (IMM76K) according to the instructions on this original post. (It took a few tries, but eventually worked.)
I select the "Restart & Install" option (which is the only option available to me), and it restarts.
I get the relatively familiar Android man with his blue-green glowing polyhedron wireframe guts spinning, and a progress bar beneath him. After getting through what looks like about 20%, it slows down significantly, and I get the Android man on his back with a red exclamation point above him where the polyhedron used to be. I don't recall seeing any specific error message any of the three times that I tried this. (The first time, I did a battery pull; the second and third times, I just waited, and it eventually restarted on its own.) Needless to say, I'm still on 4.0.2.
I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with different version names and so forth (e.g,. I don't know what yakju is), but this was a phone that Verizon sent me in December 2011 here in the US.
Here's the information from my "About phone" page:
Model number: Galaxy Nexus
Android version: 4.0.2
Baseband version: I515.09 V.EK05 / I515.EK02
Kernel version: 3.0.8-gaaa2611 [email protected] #1
Build number: ICL53F
When I first got the phone, I immediately unlocked the bootloader and rooted it. I did NOT install a custom recovery, nor did I install any custom ROM.
It sounds like there might be some kind of validation error, but I do not recall doing anything that would make my OS non-stock, except perhaps side-loading Google Wallet, but since that doesn't even require root, I can't imagine that it would have any effect. My Superuser app shows only the following apps to have ever used root permissions: BusyBox Free, Secure Settings, Superuser, Terminal Emulator, and Titanium Backup. I've only used BusyBox and Secure Settings with Tasker to automate certain tasks, but nothing crazy! Mostly, I just need root for Titanium Backup. (I cannot recall exactly what I restored from my stock Gingerbread Droid X, but I was very careful to only restore apps and their corresponding app data--and I avoided restoring any Google-provided apps.) Even my tethering is done through an app not requiring root (SVTP).
Any advice (not requiring that I do a factory reset or flash a custom recovery or ROM) would be greatly appreciated! I'd also like to hear about people who have similar circumstances, but didn't have problems updating (so that I can rule out various factors).
Thank you in advance!
same exact issue here.
A "solution", albeit less than ideal
The OTA update eventually came to my phone naturally, and it still didn't work. (No surprise there.)
I called up Verizon tech support, and they had me do the Google Services Framework workaround to try to force the update again. Of course, it didn't work.
They said "We're going to need you to reset your device." (i.e., to factory default).
I told them that was wholly unacceptable, since I want to make sure that all my settings are preserved. (I'm kind of obsessive compulsive about things being set the way I like them, and Titanium Backup, as great a program as it is, has sometimes caused some trouble for me when restoring system settings, and especially since I'd be doing a restore after upgrading the OS, I was nervous about that option.)
Verizon got Samsung on the phone. They had no advice except "We're going to need you to reset your device." Both the Verizon rep and I told him that wasn't acceptable.
So Verizon's "solution" was to send me a new device, allow me five days to get everything transferred over, and then have me return the old device.
Up side: In case there was something wrong with my hardware or something else got messed up, I get a new device that I can get set up with the exact same settings as the old one.
Down side: The "new device" is refurbished, so there could potentially be some kind of baggage.
The "new device" came with 4.0.2. I booted it up without the SIM card, skipped all the logging in to Google, and immediately started going through the steps to unlock the bootloader and root the device. (I used the Galaxy Nexus Root Toolkit, which worked like a charm on a 64-bit Windows 7 machine I had lying around.) After unlocking and rooting, I logged into the device with my Google credentials and let it restore my settings and apps that I had downloaded from Google Play.
Then, it notified me that the 4.0.4 (IMM76K) update was available, so I installed that, and it worked without a problem.
Then, I installed the SIM card and got the new device activated through Verizon's website for activation.
Then, with both devices side by side, I went through every phone setting and made sure it's what I wanted, I made sure every app was installed (and if it was a non-Google Play app, I restored it through Titanium Backup), and I restored data for apps that don't store their data in the cloud (e.g., various games) through Titanium Backup. (I made a backup of my old device with Titanium Backup and transferred it over to the new device after getting the new one up and running.)
Everything seems to be working just fine, and the "new device" runs a bit faster and smoother than the old device, and that's with both devices rebooting and then going through the exact same "click paths", side by side.
So it's a bit of a hassle, but everyone who has a Galaxy Nexus should still be under warranty, so if you're polite with your Verizon tech support representative, they may be willing to help you out.
Verizon can sometimes be infuriating with their update release schedule and keeping their customers informed, but they sure do a good job accommodating their customers in other ways.
I realize this isn't really a "solution" to the Android man on his back problem, but this seemed to be the path of least resistance for me, and I'm pretty happy with the outcome so far. (It's been less than 24 hours since I got the "new device" set up!)
Other things I realized I should have tried (and still may, before I wipe my phone and send it back):
- uninstalling BusyBox (through the app itself, since it makes modifications to the system) and Secure Settings
- unrooting
Good luck!
My friend who has a nexus has his bootloader unlocked and CWM on it. He got the OTA today on his way into work and like you guys, he has a broken android when he boots up. We can get into CMW but we are unable to mount his internal SD storage onto our computer and he has no ROM zips on his phone. Any advice as to how to get his phone up and running?
Will wiping the system/data fix it? Is there a way to get a ROM like AOKP onto the device outside of CWM?
Edit: After several reboots it decided to just boot into the stock ROM. Really strange. Anyhow, flashed AOKP and all is well now.
I've got a rooted (Super User) LG C800 that I was having problems with. To be specific, I installed some apps on to the system. Some of these apps would be Titanium Backup for root, Avast Mobile Security, ROM Tool Box, Super SU, and a couple others. From day one they seem to be kicked right back to my S.D. card, but not all at the same time, and some would stay on the system. I read where I should move the apps back to my S.D. card and try to re-install them on the system minus the data. When I did, the phone went nuts. Now it stays in a restart mode but never fully boots up. Can I salvage it, and if so, please tell me how?! I have tried the hard reset/recovery boot where you hold down the power button, volume, and a few other keys, but it did not work. I'm a broke college student and can't really afford to buy a new phone. I used this one for everything including tethering it to get my assignments done at home in on time. Please help! I'm open to suggestions.......
Did you do a Nandroid backup? If not, I would try reinstalling whatever ROM your running, see if that helps.
Why did you want to move the apps in the first place? Did they not install/run properly? I'm not certain but I believe that some apps prefer/require running from system, others from the SDcard. I don't think you can just assume that all apps should be moved to your card. Normally, wherever they install to, is where they are supposed to remain.
I can't even........
My phone will be completely off. When I plug it into my computer, via U.S.B., it automatically turns it on whether I want it to be on or not. Then it starts into that "boot loop" all over again but never fully boots up before going back to the beginning of that "boot loop" yet again. I can't even get it to register on my laptop as being plugged in. The reason I took the apps I placed on the system off was because sometimes when I'd re-boot the system the apps would be on the system and sometimes back on my S.D. card without my involvement of any kind other than rebooting my phone. Is completing a Nandroid recovery or re-installation of my ROM even possible with my computer no longer recognizing it as even being plugged in?
Rooted myTouch Q 4G, a.k.a. LG C800
I believe it had a what the exact numbers were but I want to say it was 2.3.4 GRJ22-perf, and then something like 2.6.35.7? I can't remember off the top of my head, and I can't pull it up on my phone anymore or else I'd double check.
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.
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This has the solution
Kenora_I said:
This has the solution
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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