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Hi all -
I bought an HTC Touch pro Sprint phone, brand new, original and from the store and have had it for 3.5 years. Today, it froze and was running low on battery. I did a soft re-set with the stylus, something I've done many times over the years and I set the phone to recharge. It instead re-booted and wiped out all my data - contacts, text messages, voice mails, note files, pictures, apps and software I had downloaded. The phone restarted from scratch. It runs windows 6.1. How may I retrieve this data?
I am extremely upset as this information is essential and irreplaceable. I spoke to a computer data retrieving specialist who said it is possible to retrieve this information and not to use my phone till I get help. My phone is also my source of internet access at this moment. I am stranded and writing from a store. I know of this brilliant site - your site - from before, though I've not posted here before. If you can help me, I'd be so, so, so grateful. Thank you!
First of all don't put any data on your phone it will only write over the maybe recoverable space of your deleted files.
I dont know very much about your phone but if your able too connect it on USB as mass storage there is a chance you could recover it with:
Recuva
As i am a newby to these forums i can't post any links so just google recuva and than click the first link you'l get ..
Good luck..
Carrier: Verizon
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S3 4gLTE 32gb
Model Number: SCH-I535
OS: stock
My friend entered the pattern-swipe password too many times, which made my GS3 lock up and force me "To unlock, sign in with [my] Google account". So, I did that many times to no avail. I tried all 3 of my gmail accounts even though I know which one specifically that associated with the google play account as I had bought an application a few weeks back and found the receipt of that app in my main email. Next, I changed the passwords to all the accounts and tried them again. Then after that I changed all my passwords to strictly numerical passwords so my passwords had no letters in them as I thought perhaps my phone was auto-capitalizing the first letter of my password -- didn't work. I've turned my phone on and off multiple times, taken out the batter and sim card multiple times as well. Also, it's important to note that I attempted to log in with and without the domain name: "emailaddress" and "[email protected]" and that I assume the Wi-Fi is turned off due to the fact that manually turned it off since I was on a cruise at the time that was charging $23 per every half hour of internet... I also turned off the data inside the scroll down menu and then turned on airplane mode; however, I was able to turn off airplane mode via holding down my power button and clicking on the airplane mode button. I'm pretty sure that the data is on now, at least when I try to type in my password.
I called google: the woman told me to turn my phone on and off and to make sure I had the right password -- she was clueless
I talked to Samsung online: they told me that Verizon had unlock codes...
William: As you are unable to unlock the device with the Google account details , please contact the carrier for assistance
William: As the unlock codes are provided by the carrier
William: You can contact Verizon support at 1-888-466-4646.
I called Verizon and they said they can do a factory reset and don't have any such "unlock codes"
I've tried to access the phone with Samsung Kies, but it says that I need to unlock the phone first.
I tried accessing the phone through the my computer folder, but there's nothing inside the SCH-I535 folder.
I right clicked and looked at the properties of the SCH-I535 folder and there was no information provided (not even the file size of the harddrive).
I right clicked and tried to import movies and photos and I couldn't do that.
I tried having someone call me (I can receive calls) and quickly pressing the menu button to try to get into the phone -- that didn't work.
So yeah, I can't get into my phone.
I want to at least be able to retrieve my photos/videos from the family vacation I just went on. Is there a way to salvage them? (I didn't set up dropbox or any backup service for that matter) Does verizon backup assistant plus backup information on your phone without you having to set it up? Is the password that I need to supply the same one as my gmail password?
How can I fix this?
Someone save me.
not sure if doable, but I'd try booting into the recovery menu. It usually is done by holding a combination "volume-down + home +power" or "v-up+-home+_power". Once you get there, one of the options should be factory reset.
ricecracker96 said:
Carrier: Verizon
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S3
Model Number: SCH-I535
My friend entered the pattern-swipe password too many times, which made my GS3 lock up and force me "To unlock, sign in with [my] Google account". So, I did that many times to no avail. I tried all 3 of my gmail accounts even though I know which one specifically that associated with the google play account as I had bought an application a few weeks back and found the receipt of that app in my main email. Next, I changed the passwords to all the accounts and tried them again. Then after that I changed all my passwords to strictly numerical passwords so my passwords had no letters in them as I thought perhaps my phone was auto-capitalizing the first letter of my password -- didn't work. I've turned my phone on and off multiple times, taken out the batter and sim card multiple times as well. Also, it's important to note that I attempted to log in with and without the domain name: "emailaddress" and "[email protected]" and that I assume the Wi-Fi is turned off due to the fact that manually turned it off since I was on a cruise at the time that was charging $23 per every half hour of internet... I also turned off the data inside the scroll down menu and then turned on airplane mode; however, I was able to turn off airplane mode via holding down my power button and clicking on the airplane mode button. I'm pretty sure that the data is on now, at least when I try to type in my password.
I called google: the woman told me to turn my phone on and off and to make sure I had the right password -- she was clueless
I talked to Samsung online: they told me that Verizon had unlock codes...
William: As you are unable to unlock the device with the Google account details , please contact the carrier for assistance
William: As the unlock codes are provided by the carrier
William: You can contact Verizon support at 1-888-466-4646.
I called Verizon and they said they can do a factory reset and don't have any such "unlock codes"
I've tried to access the phone with Samsung Kies, but it says that I need to unlock the phone first.
I tried accessing the phone through the my computer folder, but there's nothing inside the SCH-I535 folder.
I right clicked and looked at the properties of the SCH-I535 folder and there was no information provided (not even the file size of the harddrive).
I right clicked and tried to import movies and photos and I couldn't do that.
I tried having someone call me (I can receive calls) and quickly pressing the menu button to try to get into the phone -- that didn't work.
So yeah, I can't get into my phone.
I want to at least be able to retrieve my photos/videos from the family vacation I just went on. Is there a way to salvage them? (I didn't set up dropbox or any backup service for that matter) Does verizon backup assistant plus backup information on your phone without you having to set it up? Is the password that I need to supply the same one as my gmail password?
How can I fix this?
Someone save me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow! You've done everything. Possibly changing the password made the situation worse? It wasn't letting you in regardless. Wow... sucks about your pictures and videos... god damn thing. God damn friend.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
If you're completely stock, factory reset from settings, privacy should get you back to the set up wizard or whatever its called. If rooted and custom recovery is installed, boot in to recovery and do a restore or data factory reset. Anything on your SD card should be safe.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
Also, I should note that my goal here is to recover my pictures/videos. I do know that the factory reset is an option; however, that wouldn't allow me to retrieve my photos/videos as my 32g stock verizon galaxy s3 didn't come with an sd card, nor did I insert one, so all the pictures and videos are saved onto the harddrive.
Do you guys know if the harddrive is partitioned so that photos/videos are saved in the event of a factory reset?
ricecracker96 said:
Also, I should note that my goal here is to recover my pictures/videos. I do know that the factory reset is an option; however, that wouldn't allow me to retrieve my photos/videos as my 32g stock verizon galaxy s3 didn't come with an sd card, nor did I insert one, so all the pictures and videos are saved onto the harddrive.
Do you guys know if the harddrive is partitioned so that photos/videos are saved in the event of a factory reset?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you connect it to your computer it should bring up a "Phone" drive, Inside that there should be a folder with all of your pictures and videos. Are you not seeing that at all?
And no, if you factory reset you will lose everything on the internal sdcard
Check your Google accounts. Every now and then, they get hacked or spammed and Google will lock them. Check the account online and perhaps re-set your password. If that doesn't work... you may be hosed.
Sccrluk9 said:
When you connect it to your computer it should bring up a "Phone" drive, Inside that there should be a folder with all of your pictures and videos. Are you not seeing that at all?
And no, if you factory reset you will lose everything on the internal sdcard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a "phone" drive that pops up as "SCH-I535", and inside of this drive there are 0 items. When I look at the properties the only info it gives me are:
model name
manufacturer
firmware version
serious number
battery life percentage
Yeah, nothing really useful in there.
Thanks for the clarification on the factory reset; I have a feeling that's what I'll have to end up doing :[
can you odin CWM in then backup stuff through there?
xrock80 said:
Check your Google accounts. Every now and then, they get hacked or spammed and Google will lock them. Check the account online and perhaps re-set your password. If that doesn't work... you may be hosed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I already changed the passwords multiple times to test that out :[
Did you happen start start Google + ? If so, then it should have stored your photos/videos in your Google + account.
Otherwise; I think you have to reset...
con247 said:
can you odin CWM in then backup stuff through there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looking into it right now. If you have any threads you know about for my phone please let me know. Thanks ^^
con247 said:
can you odin CWM in then backup stuff through there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't. For some reason I cannot find 2 files I need:
Blank System.img.tar
or
Rooted System.img.tar
Does anyone know where I can find these files?
ricecracker96 said:
I can't. For some reason I cannot find 2 files I need:
Blank System.img.tar
or
Rooted System.img.tar
Does anyone know where I can find these files?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I originally did my phone I used the rooted stock image image (root66) found here. The original non-rooted images are available in a different thread in the same forum.
Ok just to clarify a few things that have been mentioned in the thread:
If you don't have usb debugging enabled then your phone cannot communicate with your pc so ALWAYS enable that as soon as you get your phone even if you never plan on using it (just in case). Without usb debugging enabled you cannot use any of the backup functions in the S3 ToolKit.
You cannot access internal storage if you are locked out and cannot get past the lock screen for security reasons. If you do not have any security set then you can access internal storage by turning the phone on.
Performing a NAND backup in cwm will not back your data/media folder as it could potentially require a 16/32/64GB backup file if your whole internal storage was used up. For this reason you could not recover any data from internal storage using this method.
Performing a wipe in recovery will NOT format the data/media partition so you will not lose any data on there. I just tried it to make sure and the system is reset but everything on internal storage is still there. This was tested on a custom rom and using cwm recovery 6.0.1.0.
As you dont have usb debugging enabled then your only option to get the phone working again is to wipe from recovery. If it wipes your internal storage then I apologise but there is really nothing else you can do.
Mark.
Just in time, I think this may solve your problem:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1800799
caslca said:
Just in time, I think this may solve your problem:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1800799
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He has stated that his phone doesn't have usb debugging enabled so adb commands will not work.
Mark.
mskip said:
Ok just to clarify a few things that have been mentioned in the thread:
If you don't have usb debugging enabled then your phone cannot communicate with your pc so ALWAYS enable that as soon as you get your phone even if you never plan on using it (just in case). Without usb debugging enabled you cannot use any of the backup functions in the S3 ToolKit.
You cannot access internal storage if you are locked out and cannot get past the lock screen for security reasons. If you do not have any security set then you can access internal storage by turning the phone on.
Performing a NAND backup in cwm will not back your data/media folder as it could potentially require a 16/32/64GB backup file if your whole internal storage was used up. For this reason you could not recover any data from internal storage using this method.
Performing a wipe in recovery will NOT format the data/media partition so you will not lose any data on there. I just tried it to make sure and the system is reset but everything on internal storage is still there. This was tested on a custom rom and using cwm recovery 6.0.1.0.
As you dont have usb debugging enabled then your only option to get the phone working again is to wipe from recovery. If it wipes your internal storage then I apologise but there is really nothing else you can do.
Mark.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much for the help, good sir. Yeah, I made a big mistake not turning on usb debugging or setting up dropbox/google+/something of the sort. Though, I guess it's somewhat of a good thing that this happened since I was never interested in understanding how android works before. Now, I'm planning on playing around with it once I wipe it. Hopefully, it'll work. Anyway, thanks again
ricecracker96 said:
Thank you so much for the help, good sir. Yeah, I made a big mistake not turning on usb debugging or setting up dropbox/google+/something of the sort. Though, I guess it's somewhat of a good thing that this happened since I was never interested in understanding how android works before. Now, I'm planning on playing around with it once I wipe it. Hopefully, it'll work. Anyway, thanks again
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah it always takes a disaster to bring you closer to your phone lol.
Let us know how it goes
Mark.
Won't a stock Odin flash fix this?
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
While backpacking my battery in my Xperia LT29i shat out on me, and by the time I made it home and ordered a new battery I had forgotten the pin number.
I have spent the last several days guessing, to no avail, my phone is set to airplane mode, so I can't use google's recovery/reset.
I don't care about saving anything else on the phone, but I really REALLY want my pictures- is there anyway I can flash something / use the microSD or any other trick to either turn airplane mode off and possibly reset the password that way, or, can I simply extract the photos via USB or something else?
At this point I don't even care about saving the phone, I can take it apart and remove anything to get my photos back.
Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks
gwisawesome said:
While backpacking my battery in my Xperia LT29i shat out on me, and by the time I made it home and ordered a new battery I had forgotten the pin number.
I have spent the last several days guessing, to no avail, my phone is set to airplane mode, so I can't use google's recovery/reset.
I don't care about saving anything else on the phone, but I really REALLY want my pictures- is there anyway I can flash something / use the microSD or any other trick to either turn airplane mode off and possibly reset the password that way, or, can I simply extract the photos via USB or something else?
At this point I don't even care about saving the phone, I can take it apart and remove anything to get my photos back.
Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello
You could try connecting the micro SD card to some other device/ a micro SD card adapter and recover your photos. You could also use ADB to pull the contents of the internal SD card if that's what you need. If you have any other issues, you can post them in the Xperia T/TL/TX/V Q&A subforum.
Good luck,
Quasar.
Long story short.... a friend factory reset his phone on accident.... yes you ask how..... phone holder pressed correct buttons to get into recovery, he grabbed phone , pressed home button on accident ... and that's that .
phone is running the new Nougat release.
Anyway, I know most of his pics should still be on the phone buried in the memory somewhere since nothing new has been written to the phone, is there ANY way to run some kind of file recovery utility , or get the phone in a state where the memory can be dumped etc. I've spent hours looking and I don't see much on JTAG or any way to get direct access to the memory.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
smokeynerd said:
Long story short.... a friend factory reset his phone on accident.... yes you ask how..... phone holder pressed correct buttons to get into recovery, he grabbed phone , pressed home button on accident ... and that's that .
phone is running the new Nougat release.
Anyway, I know most of his pics should still be on the phone buried in the memory somewhere since nothing new has been written to the phone, is there ANY way to run some kind of file recovery utility , or get the phone in a state where the memory can be dumped etc. I've spent hours looking and I don't see much on JTAG or any way to get direct access to the memory.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope!! They're gone! A factory reset does just that, resets and deletes everything and in all my time being here I've never seen anyone post a way to do that.. But I bet the FBI can do it lol.. Did he have a backup account set up? Because that could help which is why I always back my phone up to my wireless storage hard drive!
There are some apps in the market that will recover. I had to use it last year to recover a naked picture my friend girl took in my phone then deleted it before she gave it back lmao. Worked great too. Just remember don't put any new files or use camera before you restore
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