Database Info

Weird problem. Cannot factory Reset. Phone keeps restoring previously installed apps.

Hi There,
I have been having the Samsung Galaxy Sl for 2 months now and the software kept crashing. I went to privacy and opted for a factory reset. Funny thing is no matter how many times I do a factory reset the phone restarts, and installs all the apps which i personally installed again. This is not a google recovery problem where all data is backed up in google. But the apps just magically reappear even after formatting the internal sd in recovery mode and reflashing it to the latest firmware. I am at a loss. I got a shock that even after reflashing my firmware to the latest 2.3.4 JKPJ5 it still reinstalls apps such as AVG, the BBC News, Cool reader.. And even my old wallpaper again.
Steps I have taken:
1) Formatted internal sd
2) Used recovery mode and wiped partition and cleared cache
3) Did factory reset and even installed a new firmware.
I have done everything. Pls help. My home button is also not working and the all the corrupted data from my old installation also comes back
Even when I restart my phone, any new apps i install vanish and are again replaced by the old apps.

Kishel Raj said:
Hi There,
I have been having the Samsung Galaxy Sl for 2 months now and the software kept crashing. I went to privacy and opted for a factory reset. Funny thing is no matter how many times I do a factory reset the phone restarts, and installs all the apps which i personally installed again. This is not a google recovery problem where all data is backed up in google. But the apps just magically reappear even after formatting the internal sd in recovery mode and reflashing it to the latest firmware. I am at a loss. I got a shock that even after reflashing my firmware to the latest 2.3.4 JKPJ5 it still reinstalls apps such as AVG, the BBC News, Cool reader.. And even my old wallpaper again.
Steps I have taken:
1) Formatted internal sd
2) Used recovery mode and wiped partition and cleared cache
3) Did factory reset and even installed a new firmware.
I have done everything. Pls help. My home button is also not working and the all the corrupted data from my old installation also comes back
Even when I restart my phone, any new apps i install vanish and are again replaced by the old apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you try factory resetting with the code? That should help you! And please post this in the Q&A section henceforth!

Sorry. Moving to Q&A
Thread Moved to Q&A

pls try this *2627*3855#
warning it will erase all user data.. ^^
Sent from my GT-I9003 using xda premium

Thanks.
Funny thing is i tried the reset codes. And only some work. I tried the reset code *2627*3855# . But I get an error saying its a connection probelm or invalid MMI code.
Sorry bangalorerohan. But I am not getting any replies in the Q&A section. I will just continue here for now..

Tell me the method you used to flash the new FW! I will tell you your error!

The probelm began before I even considered flashing my firmware. The sd card will be unexpectedly removed causing forced closes. Did a factory reset using the privacy menu quite a number of times for a few weeks. It helped for a while but the problem will always reocurred though. Then suddenly, factory resets stopped working alltogether. The phone will delete new apps i install every time i reinstall them and reinstall apps which i uninstall every time i restart the phone.
I thought flashing the firmware will fix the problem. But even after flashing the old apps and settings keep coming back.
Here are the steps I used to flash.
1) Removed sim card and micro sd card.
2) Restarted phone in download mode.
3) Run odin and plugged phone in Usb port
4) Checked Repartition, Auto Reboot, and Reset Time boxes.
5) Downloaded pit files.
6) Waited for it to pass
7) Pressed reset
8) Took phone out from usb port, took out battery and turned on download mode.
9) Flashed PDA, PHONE, AND CSC files. By ticking Auto reboot and reset time checkboxes.
10)Clicked Start
11) Waited for pass and started again.
I even tried using the recovery mode to wipe everything but still had the same problem. Apps and settings still keep reocurring from the corrupted android 2.2
I have done everything and am hoping for a solution for this frustrating problem. THinking of reflashing to android 2.2 and sending my phone to samsung for warranty.

Kishel Raj said:
The probelm began before I even considered flashing my firmware. The sd card will be unexpectedly removed causing forced closes. Did a factory reset using the privacy menu quite a number of times for a few weeks. It helped for a while but the problem will always reocurred though. Then suddenly, factory resets stopped working alltogether. The phone will delete new apps i install every time i reinstall them and reinstall apps which i uninstall every time i restart the phone.
I thought flashing the firmware will fix the problem. But even after flashing the old apps and settings keep coming back.
Here are the steps I used to flash.
1) Removed sim card and micro sd card.
2) Restarted phone in download mode.
3) Run odin and plugged phone in Usb port
4) Checked Repartition, Auto Reboot, and Reset Time boxes.
5) Downloaded pit files.
6) Waited for it to pass
7) Pressed reset
8) Took phone out from usb port, took out battery and turned on download mode.
9) Flashed PDA, PHONE, AND CSC files. By ticking Auto reboot and reset time checkboxes.
10)Clicked Start
11) Waited for pass and started again.
I even tried using the recovery mode to wipe everything but still had the same problem. Apps and settings still keep reocurring from the corrupted android 2.2
I have done everything and am hoping for a solution for this frustrating problem. THinking of reflashing to android 2.2 and sending my phone to samsung for warranty.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you have done everything correctly. Maybe it's a hardware problem because your sd card keeps unmounting. Have you dropped it? They best way is to send it to service center for repair.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

reflashing back to froyo
Hey guys thanks for your help. but the problem seems to be related to the hardware. I am reflashing my phone back to froyo and sending it to get the warranty. But after reflashing there seems to be another problem. I cant receive calls anymore. But i can make calls..
I need to know if samsung can find out if I have reflashed my phone because I am afraid that my warranty will be void. Is there anyone with experiece regarding samsung warranty?

Kishel Raj said:
Hey guys thanks for your help. but the problem seems to be related to the hardware. I am reflashing my phone back to froyo and sending it to get the warranty. But after reflashing there seems to be another problem. I cant receive calls anymore. But i can make calls..
I need to know if samsung can find out if I have reflashed my phone because I am afraid that my warranty will be void. Is there anyone with experiece regarding samsung warranty?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
play dumb, dont mention you flashed, tell them you tried to update with kies and since then the FW is acting up, you can't make calls anymore etc

Interestingly... i have exactly the same problem. I have had this problem for abt 4 months now and i have tried everything (except sending it back to the repair centre). I don't think its a hardware problem but more of a bad flash somewhere in between.
i have been searching the net for ages for a solution... have yet to find any.

Hi all:
I've got the same problem!!
Has any one a solution? I'm crazy with this.

Why do i keep posting on threads that have already been resolved!!

BassBlaster said:
Why do i keep posting on threads that have already been resolved!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what's been resolved?

[Q] NS4G is possesed

I have a strange situation going on with my phone and I could use some advice.
My issues started after loading the "official" IMM76D ROM, the rooted and odexed version. Phone would shut off like it was dead after charging all night. Wont boot back up without a battery pull. It would freeze up while the screen was on forcing a battery pull. Basically unusable for more than 10 minutes.
Here is where I might have messed things up. I tried to wipe the phone completely, including the SD card. Factory Reset multiple times, wiped everything multiple times. I even did a repartition of the SD card thinking it would format it further.
Where I'm at now. The phone still boots into the 4.0.4 ROM and I still have CM recovery. But now no matter what I do, factory reset, format/wipe EVERYTHING including the SD card, use fastboot to load a whole new setup, THE PHONE BOOTS RIGHT BACK INTO THE ROM AND SD CARD STILL HAS EVERYTHING. I dont get it.
I have ODIN 1.87 downloaded but it wont see my phone in download mode. I have all the correct drivers loaded including PDAnet, and my phone is correctly detected as Android ADB Device. Interesting side note: fastboot detects the phone, ADB does not. dont know if that means anything.
Sorry for the long winded post but I have been at this for 4 days now and I really need my phone back! Any ideas??

Maybe flash stock rom or CWM recovery from fastboot would solve the partitions issue. I remember when i had my old HTC magic i would sometimes change the partition layout and to reverse it i would have to reflash my recovery.
But as i said, this is all theory and can work or not.

Reboot loop after booting

Can anyone suggest a troubleshooting method without a factory reset. This is what I am experiencing:
Everytime I reboot the Sensation will boot up and go through the normal process. About 3 or 4 minutes it will just reboot. Often when this happens I note that I don't have to re-enter my pin (a clue?). This rebooting will go on repeatedly but eventually (if I leave the phone alone) I will at some point end up with the phone up and running.
There are no random reboots, it is only this situation that causes the problem and it's obviously some point 3 or 4 mins into the process that is causing the problem.
I've noticed that if I reboot to recovery and then select reboot from there it is usually successful.
I am s/off via wire trick method, and rooted. recovery is 4 ext and I am still on stock rom.
I'd like to find out what is happening at the point of the reboot, is there a good way to do this?

louiscar said:
Can anyone suggest a troubleshooting method without a factory reset. This is what I am experiencing:
Everytime I reboot the Sensation will boot up and go through the normal process. About 3 or 4 minutes it will just reboot. Often when this happens I note that I don't have to re-enter my pin (a clue?). This rebooting will go on repeatedly but eventually (if I leave the phone alone) I will at some point end up with the phone up and running.
There are no random reboots, it is only this situation that causes the problem and it's obviously some point 3 or 4 mins into the process that is causing the problem.
I've noticed that if I reboot to recovery and then select reboot from there it is usually successful.
I am s/off via wire trick method, and rooted. recovery is 4 ext and I am still on stock rom.
I'd like to find out what is happening at the point of the reboot, is there a good way to do this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
boot into recovery and wipe dalvik cache n then do a normal reboot n check wad happens
you can also make a nandroid backup n install a custom and check wheather the problem exisit by doing backup ull not loose ur data n u can return to stock again just by restoring the backup ... try and let me know

louiscar said:
Can anyone suggest a troubleshooting method without a factory reset. This is what I am experiencing:
Everytime I reboot the Sensation will boot up and go through the normal process. About 3 or 4 minutes it will just reboot. Often when this happens I note that I don't have to re-enter my pin (a clue?). This rebooting will go on repeatedly but eventually (if I leave the phone alone) I will at some point end up with the phone up and running.
There are no random reboots, it is only this situation that causes the problem and it's obviously some point 3 or 4 mins into the process that is causing the problem.
I've noticed that if I reboot to recovery and then select reboot from there it is usually successful.
I am s/off via wire trick method, and rooted. recovery is 4 ext and I am still on stock rom.
I'd like to find out what is happening at the point of the reboot, is there a good way to do this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Have you installed a new ROM recently?
Did you fully wipe the phone before you did this?
If not,try re-installing the ROM you are on.
No wipes.
You will not lose settings or data.

shrex said:
boot into recovery and wipe dalvik cache n then do a normal reboot n check wad happens
you can also make a nandroid backup n install a custom and check wheather the problem exisit by doing backup ull not loose ur data n u can return to stock again just by restoring the backup ... try and let me know
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What I noticed is that the problem didn't exist when rebooting from ADB or fastboot either.
Anyway your suggestion so far looks promising. I've tried a normal restart from the phone and a battery change both of which would usually end up with the rebooting problem. Both of these tests haven't caused it so I'll keep testing but thanks for the suggestion.
What is does the Dalvik cache do and how would this have caused this kind of problem? I'm interested in the whys. The problem appeared soon after installing a couple of things as I remember and I did try to backtrack without much success.

malybru said:
Hi,
Have you installed a new ROM recently?
Did you fully wipe the phone before you did this?
If not,try re-installing the ROM you are on.
No wipes.
You will not lose settings or data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No I've not installed any Roms, I'm on stock.

Revived thread - as it's happening again
I'd like to revive this thread - perhaps I should post a new one but since it's here ...
This problem has returned with a vengeance. It took me about 3 hours of fighting to get this phone to stop rebooting. It seems clearing the dalvik cache isn't a solution anymore (if it was in the first place).
What I've observed is that if I take the sd card out it doesn't reboot. When the card is in I have several shortcuts on one of my home screens which often will not refresh for ages (ie. android icons for anything moved to sd card). When the icons start to appear the reboot will happen shortly after. All the time I'm waiting for this to happen the phone is very sluggish.
I don't think this is an incompatible sd card but maybe it is, however, if I can get this to stop rebooting then all is ok till I attempt another reboot.
Ideally I'd like to track this down to find out if there is an app which is misbehaving. Are there any tools that can help me do that.
Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Backup all your data and do a factory reset
This problem might be due to 3rd party app as you phone without sd card dosent reboots
Might be some of ur app is seriously miss-behaving
After a factory rest install each app n check ( I know it's time consuming)
Hit thanks button if you find me helpful
sent from amazing HTC sensation using xda premium

shrex said:
Backup all your data and do a factory reset
This problem might be due to 3rd party app as you phone without sd card dosent reboots
Might be some of ur app is seriously miss-behaving
After a factory rest install each app n check ( I know it's time consuming)
Hit thanks button if you find me helpful
sent from amazing HTC sensation using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah hoped to avoid that for 2 reasons. 1) It's a bummer 2) I won't know what the problem was / is.
I did do a factory reset after backing up data via my recovery. It seemed to be ok but I had nothing on SD at that point. I loaded a couple of apps and moved them to sd and it still didn't happen. The I restored the data and it was back to the same problem.
I may have to go with your suggestion but I'm going to lose some data as I can't back up selectively (so it seems).
Is there a logger I can use that starts at reboot. If I could find out exactly what it's doing when it decides to reboot I might nail the app?

louiscar said:
Yeah hoped to avoid that for 2 reasons. 1) It's a bummer 2) I won't know what the problem was / is.
I did do a factory reset after backing up data via my recovery. It seemed to be ok but I had nothing on SD at that point. I loaded a couple of apps and moved them to sd and it still didn't happen. The I restored the data and it was back to the same problem.
I may have to go with your suggestion but I'm going to lose some data as I can't back up selectively (so it seems).
Is there a logger I can use that starts at reboot. If I could find out exactly what it's doing when it decides to reboot I might nail the app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi
greetings
to find the problematic app might go tough you will have to install each and every app and check after that
try installing all the trustworthy apps before eg. file manager,fb,twitter,gmail etc then check once again ,after that install single app at a time

[Q] Phone resets but doesn't turn off

Sometimes the phone will "reset" at random times. It does not reboot or show the logo or splash screen. It typically starts by the brightness going all the way up, then it just unmounts/remounts my sd card, reads internal and external storage, and will unmount then remount my sim card (I lose signal completely then get signal back). It does it for no reason sometimes a few times in a row. It's acting like I've reset it, but I am not doing anything at all to it.
I have unlocked it so I can use it on T Mobile. I've upgraded the android version to 2.3.6. It is not rooted.
Please help me fix this problem as I like the phone but this problem is really making me angry.
Help please! :victory:

You could try installing a custom ROM and see if that helps.
Sent from my SGH-I997 using xda app-developers app

cgarrod said:
Sometimes the phone will "reset" at random times. It does not reboot or show the logo or splash screen. It typically starts by the brightness going all the way up, then it just unmounts/remounts my sd card, reads internal and external storage, and will unmount then remount my sim card (I lose signal completely then get signal back). It does it for no reason sometimes a few times in a row. It's acting like I've reset it, but I am not doing anything at all to it.
I have unlocked it so I can use it on T Mobile. I've upgraded the android version to 2.3.6. It is not rooted.
Please help me fix this problem as I like the phone but this problem is really making me angry.
Help please! :victory:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sounds like there could be some residual on your sdcard. back up your photos and docs.
do a complete reset and complete wipe a few times or odin or heimdall to complete gb stock and reset
unlocked or tmobile shouldn't be an issue. neither should root or no root
if you're trying to determine hardware or software function, complete stock is the best testing ground

[Q] Bricked... and bad battery :(

Just to explan in short notes how everything started..
I was using "ICS GPCR V2.1 by P-VLAD" happily for about a year i think, didn't have any problems. Then one day when i started to play some game my phone just turned off. After that i noticed that my battery drops to zero when i turn my phone on again. I noticed after, that my phone shuts down always when i watch 3d stuff or when my flashlight is on, after 1 or 2 minutes..
So i thinked it's time to refresh system.. So i went to factory reset on phone settings (not on recovery). Then i fell in bootloop. I don't know why but then i started TWRP and wiped cache, dalvik, system.. And that's it, im now in bootloop.
After that i accidently saw that i have inflated battery, so system probably was not the problem..
I readed everything from around this and...
Flashed again TWRP, bootloaders with "SimpleTool" and "OS Hacking" (tried them both), then i tried again to flash P-VLAD ROM but nothing, just says "booti: mmc_read 0x55e2dc" and bootloop stays. Tried "Universal_RecoveryLoop_Breaker.zip", then flashd everything, but it's same again.
I don't know it's possible because of bad battery that those tools cannot do their job. Also when i flash ROM i must get phone to charger..
What to try next?

ratluci said:
Just to explan in short notes how everything started..
I was using "ICS GPCR V2.1 by P-VLAD" happily for about a year i think, didn't have any problems. Then one day when i started to play some game my phone just turned off. After that i noticed that my battery drops to zero when i turn my phone on again. I noticed after, that my phone shuts down always when i watch 3d stuff or when my flashlight is on, after 1 or 2 minutes..
So i thinked it's time to refresh system.. So i went to factory reset on phone settings (not on recovery). Then i fell in bootloop. I don't know why but then i started TWRP and wiped cache, dalvik, system.. And that's it, im now in bootloop.
After that i accidently saw that i have inflated battery, so system probably was not the problem..
I readed everything from around this and...
Flashed again TWRP, bootloaders with "SimpleTool" and "OS Hacking" (tried them both), then i tried again to flash P-VLAD ROM but nothing, just says "booti: mmc_read 0x55e2dc" and bootloop stays. Tried "Universal_RecoveryLoop_Breaker.zip", then flashd everything, but it's same again.
I don't know it's possible because of bad battery that those tools cannot do their job. Also when i flash ROM i must get phone to charger..
What to try next?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try flashing system with kdz it will return you phone to stock system and it should me good then

DiveNNN said:
try flashing system with kdz it will return you phone to stock system and it should me good then
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks that was my next step. Problem solved.
But next problem... I started Stock ROM everzthing worked fine.. Then i tried to install "OptimusRS ICS_ROM_P920" http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2317616,
and after flasing, phone doesnt see my SIM CARD (says , "your SIM Card doesnt allow connection to this network")
How to solve this now..
Just to add that my SIM CARD has PIN.. Maybe thats some bug
Just one thing, i can see IMEI..

ratluci said:
Thanks that was my next step. Problem solved.
But next problem... I started Stock ROM everzthing worked fine.. Then i tried to install "OptimusRS ICS_ROM_P920" http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2317616,
and after flasing, phone doesnt see my SIM CARD (says , "your SIM Card doesnt allow connection to this network")
How to solve this now..
Just to add that my SIM CARD has PIN.. Maybe thats some bug
Just one thing, i can see IMEI..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ask develolper of ROM

DiveNNN said:
Ask develolper of ROM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I installed ICS GPCR V2.1 by P-VLAD again and everythig is perfect.. Don't know why OptimusR wont work with my SIM..
Just need to buy new battery.