Related
I searched for anything similar before I posted here, however I doubt anyone else was dumb enough to do what I did.
Long story short I got a replacement phone because of the random lockup issues. I agreed to keep this one at stock JF6 for a couple of weeks to appease the manager at my local AT&T store. He said nothing about me rooting it though
Everything works fine, great even. I still love this phone even without Froyo, but I stupidly deleted settings.db and settings.db.backup.
How the heck am I to sideload if I don't have the file to edit?! Again, the phone works fine without the files there at all. . .
Thank you in advance.
It works fine? Have you rebooted the phone at all? There is a lot more than just side loading settings in that db file. If you haven't rebooted, my guess is that everything was saved in memory and being run that way. However, you may be in for a serious problem should a reboot occur.
Anyone have some thoughts on a solution? Would posting another settings.db work for him or are they very device specific?
Settings DB has some device specific settings. The only recourse is to do a Flash back to stock if you deleted system files.
Rooting the phone is not keeping it stock as rooting is making changes to files. Deleting and or modding settings.db is also not keeping it stock... so you really didn't honor the managers request.
You can always sideload a non-rooted phone using ADB or side load wonder machine.
Yeah, I went ahead and bit the bullet and rebooted it. It's fine, absolutely fine, strangely.
The manager only asked that I not replace the O.S. with say, 2.2 so I can have flash and other specs I bought this phone for. Regardless of the issues with AT&T and Samsung, I want what I paid full price for as a consumer.
That being said, rooting for one click lag fix is all that was done to this phone other than deleting a little bloatware. All of this went fine.
The problem lies in my dumbness being allowed to have two identical phones in each hand and trying to clear off the old phones files before sending it back to AT&T. I had a memory lapse and when I snapped to I was deleting on the wrong phone. Nothing suspicious, no mal intent. Just stupid human error.
I, like trekie, have been wondering if I can just use a stock setting.db and edit it to match whatever it needs to match on my phone. I do not remember what all lies in the file.
Because the phone is ok, my guess is it reads from settings.db for changes. If there are no changes, the programs that relied on settings.db just go on as they are. If there is no settings.db, the program just continues on with the values last obtained from said database.
Thoughts?
My guess. Slap on the odin and get that thing back to its out-of-the-box configuration. Good luck!
Thanks, I'm deffinately not waiting around for my froyo update from AT&T just because the Vibrant is getting it lol!
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
I Have rooted my phone, and have the clockworkmod. I havent paid for the full version, but have verified that my binaries are up to date.
I am trying to create a nandroid backup, but when I go to the clockworkmod, then backups, then create backup, my phone reboots, then I get a triangle with an exclamation point that is rotated slightly counter clockwise, and a green android man standing to the right of it. at that point, nothing happens.
There are no menus, no options, nothing. I then have to restart my phone as usual.
I have scoured to internet and the forums but have not seen this issue or any related problem. How can I create a useful backup that I can restore from.?
I have mybackup Pro, and have created data backups, but when it comes to backing up my apps including APKs, the backup begins, then all the sudden my phone restarts and when I check the manage and restore areas, there are no backups for my apps.
Before I rooted my phone this program worked fine. Now all the sudden I cannot backup my apps.
I have also restored quite a bit from my previous backups, but the personalized settings for each app were not saved nor recovered.
At this point I have been unable to create any sort of useful backup, which means I do not want to risk downloading a new ROM such as ICS.
Im not sure how to procede, but my main question is why wont clockworkmod work to create a backup? it seems to easy to create a nandroid backup when browsing the forums, but for whatever reason my phone either freezes or reboots on its own when attempting to do so.
All other functions on my phone work correctly.
By the way, I have a samsung galaxy s2 epic 4g touch if that helps at all.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I really want to try some other ROMs, especially the newer versions of ICS since I am doubtful that anytime in the near future I will get an upgrade for it. especially with the s3 coming out with ICS already on it, I suspect it will be months before ICS becomes available for the S2, if it ever becomes available at all. I think manufacturuers and Sprint, Verizon and the like just want people to spend the extra money upgrading to the S3 and they will forget about the S2 alltogether.
Please advise how I can create a nandroid backup.
I have also downloaded titanium backup, but dont have the funds for the pro version, and on top of that, I have read that its a lot easier to brick your phone using that program since it is so much more powerful. Id rather stick to clockworkmod, but cannot create any sort of backup using it.
Any ideas? any suggestions? you guys seem very useful and intelligent when it comes to this stuff, and I literally just rooted my phone last weekend not more than 3 days ago and have had nothing but problems since. The root worked fine, my phone works fine including all functions, but I cant create a backup for the life of me.
Thanks in advance for any help.
colin1182 said:
I Have rooted my phone, and have the clockworkmod. I havent paid for the full version, but have verified that my binaries are up to date.
I am trying to create a nandroid backup, but when I go to the clockworkmod, then backups, then create backup, my phone reboots, then I get a triangle with an exclamation point that is rotated slightly counter clockwise, and a green android man standing to the right of it. at that point, nothing happens.
There are no menus, no options, nothing. I then have to restart my phone as usual.
I have scoured to internet and the forums but have not seen this issue or any related problem. How can I create a useful backup that I can restore from.?
I have mybackup Pro, and have created data backups, but when it comes to backing up my apps including APKs, the backup begins, then all the sudden my phone restarts and when I check the manage and restore areas, there are no backups for my apps.
Before I rooted my phone this program worked fine. Now all the sudden I cannot backup my apps.
I have also restored quite a bit from my previous backups, but the personalized settings for each app were not saved nor recovered.
At this point I have been unable to create any sort of useful backup, which means I do not want to risk downloading a new ROM such as ICS.
Im not sure how to procede, but my main question is why wont clockworkmod work to create a backup? it seems to easy to create a nandroid backup when browsing the forums, but for whatever reason my phone either freezes or reboots on its own when attempting to do so.
All other functions on my phone work correctly.
By the way, I have a samsung galaxy s2 epic 4g touch if that helps at all.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I really want to try some other ROMs, especially the newer versions of ICS since I am doubtful that anytime in the near future I will get an upgrade for it. especially with the s3 coming out with ICS already on it, I suspect it will be months before ICS becomes available for the S2, if it ever becomes available at all. I think manufacturuers and Sprint, Verizon and the like just want people to spend the extra money upgrading to the S3 and they will forget about the S2 alltogether.
Please advise how I can create a nandroid backup.
I have also downloaded titanium backup, but dont have the funds for the pro version, and on top of that, I have read that its a lot easier to brick your phone using that program since it is so much more powerful. Id rather stick to clockworkmod, but cannot create any sort of backup using it.
Any ideas? any suggestions? you guys seem very useful and intelligent when it comes to this stuff, and I literally just rooted my phone last weekend not more than 3 days ago and have had nothing but problems since. The root worked fine, my phone works fine including all functions, but I cant create a backup for the life of me.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you can try to flash a different kernel with different clockwork recovery or install a different clockwork recovery. Myself I always used Titanium backup and never had any problems (just took backup user applications not system applications), but I had an international galaxy s2. There is also rom toolbox which takes backups of your applications.
Try in the forum for your phone specifically in this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1587607
Sent from my M886 using Tapatalk 2
Hey everyone, I've had my eye since release and just haven't rooted it and now I took the update to 5.0.1 and my Edge is all messed up. I click on a notification such as a file I downloaded and it takes about 5 minutes before it opens. Our text messages and any other messages, i.e. Facebook, don't come through for about 30min. Amongst many other issues.
My question is, can I root with cf-autoroot even with the fact that I did the update? I've got a Sprint edge. I'd like to try and use titanium to backup and then do a clean wipe and start fresh. I think it was a bad upgrade.
Hopefully someone knows the answer.
Sent from my SM-N915P using XDA Free mobile app
squick said:
Hey everyone, I've had my eye since release and just haven't rooted it and now I took the update to 5.0.1 and my Edge is all messed up. I click on a notification such as a file I downloaded and it takes about 5 minutes before it opens. Our text messages and any other messages, i.e. Facebook, don't come through for about 30min. Amongst many other issues.
My question is, can I root with cf-autoroot even with the fact that I did the update? I've got a Sprint edge. I'd like to try and use titanium to backup and then do a clean wipe and start fresh. I think it was a bad upgrade.
Hopefully someone knows the answer.
Sent from my SM-N915P using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you not use Google/Samsung backup? I'm just saying that you could do a clean wipe and the Google/Samsung backup would restore you back to whatever you have set up now?
I'm not opposed to you rooting, I do it as well but haven't yet rooted the replacement phone I just got because of a broken screen.
It was interesting that when I activated this phone that ALL of EVERYTHING I had on the previous phone (which I had Nandroid BU, TI backup, and directory BU to my PC) was automatically reinstalled on the replacement phone.
A bit of setup of NOVA Launcher and a few other minor things and I was back up and running (just without root). It DID take quite a while for the many many many apps I have to reinstall through the backup, but it was automatic.
Just wanted to give you an alternative. In fact, I'd probably want to get a good install BEFORE I rooted. I don't know (think) that rooting and resetting will necessarily fix a bad install.
beejmeister said:
Do you not use Google/Samsung backup? I'm just saying that you could do a clean wipe and the Google/Samsung backup would restore you back to whatever you have set up now?
I'm not opposed to you rooting, I do it as well but haven't yet rooted the replacement phone I just got because of a broken screen.
It was interesting that when I activated this phone that ALL of EVERYTHING I had on the previous phone (which I had Nandroid BU, TI backup, and directory BU to my PC) was automatically reinstalled on the replacement phone.
A bit of setup of NOVA Launcher and a few other minor things and I was back up and running (just without root). It DID take quite a while for the many many many apps I have to reinstall through the backup, but it was automatic.
Just wanted to give you an alternative. In fact, I'd probably want to get a good install BEFORE I rooted. I don't know (think) that rooting and resetting will necessarily fix a bad install.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the idea. Honestly, I've never noticed the google backup actually work. Any time I've gotten a new phone, I've usually gone off a TB backup so it's hard to trust that it's going to work. I had also wondered if I could root, then do the full wipe on cache and all and then flash a rom of choice.
I've just been away from xda for a while and not totally up on what's going on lately, what's able to be done, if there's any particulars to keep an eye out for, etc...
All I know is I'm going though a few batteries a day, notifications come at least 30 minutes late on all apps, and the phone is about to take a swim in the pool.
I've been transferring all files off the device and sd to my laptop just to be safe but I'm having some issues with that as well, lol. errors pop up about file names too long and crap or it disconnects in the middle of transferring. I'm having to use a usb drive adapter to put them on a drive first and then onto the pc. Slow going.
Thanks again
Dont know about sprint, but what you are getting is very unusual at least for unlocked. Might have no option but a fresh stock flash.
Yea, I actually 5 seconds from clicking the button. Just finished getting everything backed up that I think I could. I'd like to root after the restore. Does anyone out there know if you can root the Sprint Edge on 5.0.1 using cf?
Sent from my SM-N915P using XDA Free mobile app
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%!?&ยท( 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