Database Info

Observations as to why market breaks / force close, and other anomolies

As I suspected early on the issues boil down to corruption within the User Data or Cache partitions, less often on the system partition due to an unexpected shutdown of the device. Shut on these devices need to follow the proper shutdown routine as any linux environment. Following this best practice will ensure that all data is written out to its corresponding file system by flushing all cache, unmounting the file system, etc..
Here are the culprits of why we see so frequent random Force Closes, Market Resetting, etc. ultimately resulting in an unclean shutdown, corrupting some data.
1. The button we use is also a forced off button. Typically if you hold it down too long you are powering off the device.
2. Some times when in sleep mode you see the Viewsonic logo upon starting - that means that the system shutdown (most likely crashed).
3. If your running Vegan your hitting the reboot.. I dont know for sure but I suspect this is NOT performing a clean shutdown... (I dont have a copy of the source)
Anyway... wanted to pass this on... as last night my data partition became corrupt after using the Reboot function on the Poweroff menu of Vega 5.1..

shouldnt need source code to debug a dirty shutdown..Cant you just run an adb logcat? maybe run the shutdown command in a terminal on the device and pipe the output into a text file for later viewing

My internal memory has to be repartitioned every few weeks - I'm certain that something is corrupting it over time. I had massive FC's just a week or so back where the SD partition re-do was the only fix.
I suspect that this happens in stock, as well - the problem of course is that there is no fix for a stock user, other than a return / exchange.

roebeet said:
My internal memory has to be repartitioned every few weeks - I'm certain that something is corrupting it over time. I had massive FC's just a week or so back where the SD partition re-do was the only fix.
I suspect that this happens in stock, as well - the problem of course is that there is no fix for a stock user, other than a return / exchange.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been on stock since I got the device just moving to the newer versions when they come as OTAs and have never ever had to mess with my partition, so I don't THINK the issue is in the stock software. In fact, the only problems I've ever encountered were when I used the enhancement pack, in which case my screen started to become unresponsive and the calibration.ini I was told to try did not work. Since then I went back to 3389 and the device has been perfect ever since.
I could be wrong though and just very, very lucky....here's to hoping. Another thing to consider is maybe the memory is going bonkers for some reason. I've had flash memory that lasted forever and I've had flash memory that has gone wacky over a period of 6 months....even a wipe by the utility designed to do it doesn't fix it properly. I don't know how CWM wipes or partitions the memory, I do know there's supposed to be a special way to do it.
If it's not faulty memory off the bat, then that leaves something in the 'extras' being put into these ROMs. Maybe some of the newer tegra drivers or some coding to make the ROMs faster - I'm just saying, can't leave any stone unturned.
Has anyone that has stayed loyal to stock encountered these issues? We have to ask that question I think. Then we ask how many of the people playing with ROMs are seeing the issues, this would include people that have used CWM to partition and mess with their mounts initially.
I can say I've never seen data disappear from my internal memory or my SD and I can also say I've never seen multiple FCs except after putting in the enh. pack (keep in mind I got my tab on Dec 20something, so I had 3053 and then 3389 soon after).
The first sign of anything being 'corrupted' on it's own at stock and I'll be sending mine back. As an owner of Android since Android's been around, I've never had my G1 or MT4G (or any smartphone before it) become corrupted due to not being shutdown or reboot properly and while this is a tablet I think the fundamentals should be the same. Pampering 'faulty' memory is a risk. You can wipe and re-do all you want, but if it's faulty it's going to stay that way.

Ive done that but I guess you can say unfortunately I have had only clean shutdowns since then... The last corruption I had I formatted my data and cache partitions before I ran logcat.... Of course thought of that afterward....
Generally if any has FCs, etc. etc. run a logcat and post it here... we will be able to confirm this...
We could change the way the partitions are created and add a sync which will further reduce chances BUT will take a performance hit...
I am very surprised though as the EXT3 filesystem is very resilient to dirty shutdowns (more than EXT4)...
I reviewed the out of the box framework source on the google GIT and technically if a reboot command is given a clean shutdown is performed via the framework... but the widget on the shutdown screen I suspect is not calling the method properly or is not being called at all... All speculation at this point... But for sure there is corruption occurring..
Since the last corruption I switch over to pershoots kernel... Even though his kernel seems to be a little slower he seems to have included the latest drivers which other items relate to data integrity (im reading into the release notes).
NEO: The first thing I did when I got my device install CW, Vegan... Updated Kernels also... Never had an issue until the first time (yes about a day ago) I used the reboot feature of Vegan. That corrupted my user data. I suspect if you have not been performing clean shutdown then you are just lucky. Linux, like any other OS, even with Journaling if you do not perform a clean shutdown you will surely encounter SOME corruption. Typically the corruption is re-mediated by the the file systems integrity controls. You dont even know it happened... 1 in 1000 the integrity controls can not overcome the significant loss of data and thus results in crashes, etc. Some times the corruption happens in areas where are lightly used thus why you would get a Market Reset... that data is easily replaceable on the fly. Core components that require subsystem to run are not replaceable and thus why I had to reformtat. What upsets me is that this failsafe is not working properly most likely as its far too frequent.... I too suspect it has something to do with CW.
But again.. between the wrongly placed power switch, the unprovoked reboots (ie viewsonic screen showing when trying to wake up the device) and the reboot button possibly not performing a proper shutdown will sure increase the chances in a wider distribution of users. So it may not be a CW issue and just some poor design.
When I have time today I will verify if the reboot function performs a clean shutdown... if anyone has the time please post the logcat... Im going to be running around today and will try to get to it..
watson540 said:
shouldnt need source code to debug a dirty shutdown..Cant you just run an adb logcat? maybe run the shutdown command in a terminal on the device and pipe the output into a text file for later viewing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

stanglx said:
I am very surprised though as the EXT3 filesystem is very resilient to dirty shutdowns (more than EXT4)...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AFAIK they're running yaffs ATM. Next move is to ext4...
Read some articles about this several weeks ago, apparently many apps do not properly flush file caches. One of the articles was a Google developer post about file corruption along with their API method which did a cache flush prior to a close, then a bit later was the Google indication that they were planning to move to ext4 FS to further help alleviate the problem.

stanglx said:
I am very surprised though as the EXT3 filesystem is very resilient to dirty shutdowns (more than EXT4)...
I suspect if you have not been performing clean shutdown then you are just lucky. Linux, like any other OS, even with Journaling if you do not perform a clean shutdown you will surely encounter SOME corruption. Typically the corruption is re-mediated by the the file systems integrity controls. You dont even know it happened... 1 in 1000 the integrity controls can not overcome the significant loss of data and thus results in crashes, etc. Some times the corruption happens in areas where are lightly used thus why you would get a Market Reset... that data is easily replaceable on the fly. Core components that require subsystem to run are not replaceable and thus why I had to reformtat. What upsets me is that this failsafe is not working properly most likely as its far too frequent.... I too suspect it has something to do with CW.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's my point. How many times since we've had our Android and smart phones have we had situations where they are turned off or rebooted without the proper procedures? Power drains till they die, they drop and reboot, we clog them up with stuff or some app drives them nuts and they reboot or shut off....Yet you rarely if ever hear about a phone's data being 'corrupted' with stock software. Sure it may happen with official OTAs etc, but never just off-the-bat like what's happening with the G-Tab. But it's not happening to everyone either so I'm just looking to see if there's a pattern.
Even since the G1 and newer phones, you don't really hear about or see file corruption issues on stock software with these phones. It's when users start going to ROMs that you hear of issues cropping up. That's not to say it doesn't happen at all at stock, I just think we're seeing it in a more concentrated fashion here because of all the formatting, re-partitioning, etc. At first you hear, 4GB is a great partition size, then you hear there are problems so move to 2048, then you hear 256MB swap, then no swap since Android doesn't use it. Then dataloop for speed, then no dataloop because of critical issues. Rules and instructions change almost on a daily basis. I think it's more than these poor flash drives can take I find sometimes it's good to keep it simple.
I owned a Vibrant for a while...decided it was a PoS when at stock I was seeing bad lag (because of Sam's terrible FS). People said...do the speedhack, it'll be fast!, but what was the caveat? Having to reboot the phone almost weekly, sometimes several times a week, and people were seeing what? Data corruption. That's not for me. Give me something that is lag free (doesn't have to be a bullet train, just don't skip on video or audio and make sure my live wallpaper and drawer animation is fluid and I'm happy!). Point being....keeping it simple may help to alleviate some of the issues. If people are seeing these problems with stock, then you're absolutely right and it would be a point of contention that the failsafe isn't working right.
Otherwise it seems the stock OS on these things are able to self correct in most situations and it may just be some of the many tweaked features in these ROMs doing something it shouldn't - or, I may just be very lucky indeed.
I'm still dying to get the OTA - I haven't seen one since 3899 yet.

[TIPS & TRICKS] Common ICS problems

Common ICS Problems
If you plug in USB while your tablet is asleep you will have a SOD​
Installation Problems
Install tips from tlb1961 here and lyricalpapa in post #3
Try not to use any backup's as they cause many problems.
Make sure your using CWM 5.5.0.4 Beta 15 (comes with the nvflash in TeamDRH ICS thread)
On your first boot let it sit for 30-60min (the longer, the better) and then reset.
If all else fails try this
Th3DmaN's G-Tablet Tools for anyone who is having trouble connecting and flashing their G-Table
Speed Problems
Different launchers such as Apex or Nova or any compatible launcher may or may not increase smoothness. There is no problem with installing them on top of the stock launcher as only one launcher runs at a time.
Battery and Power Problems
Your tablet went to sleep and wont wake up, try pushing the power button a couple of times and wait 5 seconds inbetween presses.
Your tablet has completely frozen, try pushing the power button for 30+ seconds. If that doesn't do it, you can leave your tablet alone for a couple hours and try again (may or may not work) or you can wait till the battery dies or if your impatient you can open the tablet up and press the internal reset, it looks like this. Here are some helpful pictures and a video for opening it up. If you have no reset button you will need to disconnect the battery, here's what it looks like. If you do get a SOD do this to help the developers.
Connection & Browser Problems
WiFi not working, try to "forget" the WiFi and re-enter your password. Also can try resetting your router or changing the security. Some say ICS does not like high channels.
If your having market errors, try force closing and clearing the cache in settings\apps\all. If that doesn't work then find every market reference and force close then clear the cache and reset.
Your computer doesn't recognize your tablet, you will need MTP drivers read the ICS rom page again. For Windows XP you need to disable debugging. For linux try Th3DmaN's guide.
Adhoc does not work with this build.
Stock browser seems to lock up after a bit. Possible fix is to disable java. Thanks plastikman
Screen and Sound Problems
1080p on H/W? Use Handbrake and import this profile. Here's the high profile settings for 720p, for those wanting the best quality.
Videoplayers such as MxVideo player, can play H/W video but the sound will need to be changed to S/W.
Icons and text too small? Try using this guide. CAUTION Changing the DPI really messes with the Market.
DSP Manager has been causing slowness/audio problems. Try stopping it to see if that's the problem. You can delete it safely if causing problems.
Game and Apps Problems
Alot of games and apps are not updated for ICS yet so they won't work correctly.
Hulu flash hack here. It should work. Anyone with Hulu can you post your results.MAY NOT WORK ANYMORE
Bypassing Exchange Security Policy try this
Connecting the ICS Mail app to Microsoft's Cloud hosted Exchange services check here
Gamepad support - follow jazzruby's guide here
Miscellaneous Problems
Errors popping up constantly, you need to reinstall again and make sure this time you erase everything.
Nandroid backups, you need to follow this guide
Important Notes
The SOD (sleep of death) we talk about is when the device goes into a sleep mode and there is absolutely no other way out but by pressing the internal reset. This is also called a kernel panic.
We are always talking about roms on Bootloader 1.2 unless specified.
When installing or removing things from the system, it is always a good idea to reset and clean the cache, clean the dalvik cache and fix permissions.
USB problems sometimes are caused by your own computer, you may have to restart/change USB port/change USB cables/check your USB drivers
Windows 7 is the implied OS most are working on, if you have different then ask.
IF I'M MISSING SOMETHING PLEASE LET ME KNOW

Stuff that WILL cause a SOD (sleep of death) causing you to push the internal reset
DON'T DO THESE
If you plug in USB while your tablet is asleep you will have a SOD
If you do get a SOD please do this so the developers can help.
Use the reset button
Don't power the tablet off at all, just use the internal reset button
Don't touch the tab or do anything but logging into adb.
If for some reason you can't open adb, you can use terminal on the rom
At the prompt type:
Code:
su
Hit enter and then
Code:
cat /proc/last_kmsg
If this doesn't work, the easier way is to access it is with a root explorer by going to /proc and then copy last_kmsg to /sdcard (rename to last_kmsg.txt or zip it up in a file).
Copy and paste the results to a paste bin and post the link. If you don't know pastebin then just post the last 10 lines or so.

tlb1961 install guide
Howdy all,
Glad to hear most are having good luck with this newer revision. To those seeing odd issues after install, I would suggest start over from scratch and clean out the gTab prior to reinstall including repartition the internal SDCard. Run the ROM for a bit before installing anything else. If you have a lot of media files on an microSD card then let it sit for a little while. Once the ROM is running smoothly you should then apply the latest the3dman GApps package.
I know it's tempting to try and hang onto old configs and settings, but it will give you a better experience in the long run if all old data is cleared.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lyricalpapa installation essentials
Here's some things I do that work for me:
1. Give my tablet time to boot - let G-Mail, Google Maps, and the other apps load in, talk to the mail server, etc. I watch the activity in the "broadcast" symbol and wait for the browser widget to display its bookmarked pages.
2. Follow the dev's install instructions and @serialplague's FAQ - goes without saying.
3. Have Patience - I give the cache driver's balancing and optimising routines time to do their work after I load a ROM, plus any time I add/remove apps or any time I make changes to the settings. Remember this is a Beta Test ROM and not a snapshot image of a fully tested, optimised, and balanced ROM that you would get if you were to buy a new ASUS Transformer or whatever.
4. Use the apps the Dev's gave us with the Beta ROM - I use the Elixir app regularly to check if the CPU and I/O activity levels have dropped down to near 0% for both. I check them after installing my ROM's, etc. (I also now use the Diagnosis app thanks to @oldtimer)
5. Remember the G tablet only has 512M DDR-2 RAM on board and was built to run with a 2.2 Froyo ROM, a cadged 2.6.32 kernel, and slow generic drivers. Google's minimum published specification for a system running Honeycomb or newer is a Nvidia Tegra-2 processor and 1G of RAM. So the challenge is to modify and tune the 2.6.39 kernel drivers and the ICS ROM to live within the available 512M RAM.
6. edit-no longer needed
7. Killing unnecessary apps sometimes frees up enough memory to stop the CPU and I/O churning. But I have to be careful which apps I kill using an app like Advanced Task Accelerator - it can shut down necessary services - although Android will usually restart them automatically (and kick up the CPU and I/O activity while doing so)
8. Remember that Google Apps come with a high overhead price - the standard Viewsonic set-up for the G tablet does not include GAPPs, and it runs very fast. The same for many other tablets that don't have a Tegra-2 and 1G of RAM. Game players might want to experiment with not loading GAPPs. In the past I've done this by downloading all the apps that I was interested in from GAPPs, then copying them all out to my PC using the "adb pull" command ("adb remount" to get in as root). Then I wipe and reload the ROM without GAPPs, and use "adb push" to put the apps in the right directories. Then on my G tablet, I find the apps using Root Explorer and "click" on them to install them.
Lyricalpapa
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

How do I stop my tablet from downloading every app I have ever owned or used from the market when I log into my android account.
I suspect I am doing something wrong because the tablet is very laggy with ICS.

When you first install it will ask you if you want to use your backups, just uncheck that. Or you can let it sit for awhile, 30min to an hour, it sucks but once everything calms down its much better.

Android Keyboard
Good men of this forum,
It seems that with the new ICS rom, I am having issues with my android keyboard. If my tablet is vertical, I have the dialpad-looking keyboard with what seems to be Japanese characters on a few buttons. When my tablet is in the horizontal orientation, the keyboard disappears completely. I have searched the popular forums here and with Google. I'm terribly sorry if I have missed a tip somewhere.
I used the flashing procedure on the TeamDRH website to the letter, and I am no stranger to flashing custom ROMs to android devices. The keyboard continues to work beautifully under Froyo and Gingerbread ROMs, as well as the earliest beta of ICS. I only seem to have an issue with this version of ICS.
I'm also getting frequent Google Apps errors about the services stopping. After signing in with my account, Market crashed and disappeared from my apps menu altogether.
It seems that I have a fairly unique problem. I'm a linux sysadmin and I'm very handy with the command line if you need dmesg or kernel output.
Thank you in advance.

I've heard a couple of people are having problems with the GApps, have you tried installing with the lite 7b GApps?

No Luck
Thanks for the reply!
I have tried both the full and lite versions of 7A and 7B for this ROM with no luck. When I perform a first-time boot of the tablet after a ROM and Gapps, the very first message I encounter is "Unfortunately, the process com.google.process.gapps has stopped" for any version of Gapps, and it continues to pop up every several seconds that the tablet is in use.
I have also tried installing the ROM without Gapps at all and the keyboard is still nowhere to be found. Odd that the keyboard works in the first beta (1E), but this ICS (2B) is much faster than the old one
If anyone has a link to download the ICS Preview 2A instead of 2B I would be interested in trying it out, the links on TeamDRH's website all point to 2B now.
Other useful info: I know for certain that I am running the 1.2 bootloader and I'm using the newest Clockworkmod v5.5.0.4 Beta 15. I like to re-format before every flash to ensure a clean start.

Thats very odd it sounds like the download may have been corrupted. I've seen it happen a couple of people.
I still have 2A and some previous ones, kinda a catalog lol, just PM if you want to go that way.

I'm a newb
Thank you very much for the help you've provided me.
I tried downloading 2B a few more times with the same issue :/ so strange. Unfortunately for me, I am below the 10 post minimum to allow PMs. It's kind of ironic actually, I've been a member for years and always found my answers without having to ask because xda is wonderful about providing info
Thanks again.

Sent ya an email
simplyphp has a great writeup on an installation method you could try his way

SUCCESS!
Using the simplyphp method you referred me to, not only does the 2A ROM work, but the newest ROM and Gapps as well! I must admit that I'm a little embarrassed that I can't actually identify the original problem, but I believe it has something to do with my installation of Clockworkmod. I got it from a forum here that is trustworthy, but it didn't seem to work exactly as I needed it until I installed it with nvflash. I also had a strange problem with the first flash (out of the two that I am supposed to do) in that it wouldn't boot all the way into the TnT factory OS and was in an endless reboot. I simply turned it off, booted into APX mode once again, and continued with the listed steps and it worked flawlessly. I would thank simplyphp but I can't post on development threads yet!
So thank you and have a "Thanks!", I hope I've contributed to your wealth of knowledge on troubleshooting.

[Q] Galaxy Ace (S5830i) headache with stock email deletion

HI guys, I'm hoping you can help me with a problem that's led me to start threatening my galaxy ace (S5830i) with a hammer.
Actually it's not the phone's fault it's purely my own stupidity, but none-the-less I'm here for help because I've spent all day and night trawling the net, trying to figure out how to proceed to resolve my issue on my own but I simply cannot make sense of the conflicting information I'm finding.
I promise you thing thing if nothing else, I have tried my very best to read around a hundred other forums, pages, and how 'to's but I'm finding that I have no resolution that I can work with because either:
- The tutorials turned out to be for the S5830 - not the i model - when I got to the forum
- The youtube videos all seem to be spoken in accents I cannot understand or not explained clearly, or are too technical
- Links I go to to get apk files etc are broken, wrong or leading me up another path I cannot follow
- Software does NOT look on my screen as it does on tutorials or websites (SDK for example)
- The people explaining the resolution type with such poor English I cannot understand what they're actually saying
- The solutions that work for others are too technical or advanced for me to understand and I'm finding it difficult to learn as I go (apart frm the root instructions which I found quite easy)
Anyway, I'll start at the beginning:
I have a samsung galaxy ace (S5830i) running:
- Gingerbread 2.3.6
- Baseband version S5830iXXLK1
- Kernel version 2.6.35.7
- Build number GINGERBREAD.XXLK3
I've already rooted it so I have superuser access, and I managed that perfectly well on my own
I installed titanium backup and somehow I managed to uninstall the stock email that comes with the phone. I think this is my problem because I now cannot download anything from google play, nor can I add a new gmail account to do so, so I'm stuck in no mans land not able to use googleplay (because my gmail account is now missing from my phone) nor can I seem to figure out how to get th apk file directly into the phone so that I can start fresh.
I'm also absolutely stuck on how to flash the phone and start again because nothing I seem to read is explaining it in simple clear terms that a layman can understand. When I do find a simple explanation, I find it's only for the non 'i' version of the phone, or if I find a simple instruction it's zip files for the rom do not contain all the files I need to use with odin v1.5
Also, there are conflicting explanations on flashing the rom on different forums/sites so I dare not use one over the other because another one contradicts it. I do not want to ruin my phone as right now it still basically works for now as a phone.
In my phone menu, the gmail icon is still there, just not the icon/app that said "email". The icon is now missing from my menus and with it there is now no way to use the play services without a gmail account on the phone.
When I click the gmail icon, it stats to open and then just shuts off quickly, not opening gmail, so I'm pretty sure all this is due to me deleting the email app using titanium backup.
Make sense?
What I'd really be grateful for is if on of you guys could help me out and explain in very simple terms what I need to do to either install the apk directly (preferred) so that I can add a gmail account to the phone and get access to google play again, or failing that a simple how to flash the rom with stock gingerbread, together with links to software that's known to be bonafide.
I am literally being driven mad going around in circles on forums and sites to keep going back to square one.
Any help will be very gratefully received. Or I'm afraid this may mean I'm going to smash my new phone int a wall and never use a smartphone again, because obviously I'm too stupid to play around with them on my own.
I really appreciate your help if someone would be able to invest a little time here.
Thanks very much for your time, guys
Jobeeey

additional info
Right, these are the instructions I found on this forum, but I'm unclear if I'm approaching this right..
Flashing s5830i with Odin v1.85
1.Turn off the phone and put it in Download mode by pressing Power+Volume Up+volume down.
2.Open Odin v1.85.Run as Administrator!.
3.Put the files in Odin and don't touch the settings
4.If it's a one-file firmware put it in PDA section.
If it's multiple put the files in the correct section.
5.Click start and don't touch the phone!Don't turn off computer and don't unplug the phone!It will reboot automatically and the first boot will take some time,so don't panic!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've found a rom (which is a single file) and if I'm reading this right I place that in the PDA section of Odin after installing the usb drivers onto my pc (done that and windows recognizes my phone in the sense that it isn't now hassling me for drivers every two seconds).
Ok.. so I seem to have got the correct rom for my specific ace model.. and the instructions seem to be that I now:
1) Connect usb cable
2) Boot my phone into download mode (I can do that I think).. but at what point do I press vol down to download a new os.. before or after pressing start in Odin?
3) Open Odin and add file as in my attached screenshot (I can do that)
4) Click 'start' in Odin
5) Wait for my phone to reboot
And that should be job done, the phone should be flashed with the stock rom again and that should get me back on track, right? Or am I about to screw up my phone and ruin it even further?
Thanks for reading. I hope someone can advise if I'm doing this right as I've seen other forums say that I should tick the 'Re-partition' box, and other that say I shouldn't, and this one says nothing about it at all.
This is one of the tings that's confusing me, and once I'm now flashing a phone for the first time it's flippin scary to do it on my lonesome!

This is what I mean..
I've just tested going into download mode with odin ready, and the phone gets there (vol up+down + power on).. but each time it gets into download mode it seems to disconnect from odin and no com port is open. I get the windows device disconnected/connected beeping and the connection seems to sever.
What the Fffff...
This is exactly what I'm talking about.. nothing seems to be working like it's meant to be and I'm getting nowhere with any instructions I can find after god knows how many hours researching this.
:crying:

update (lol)
Mornin all,
So, just in case anyone finds this useful..
The flashing problem is kind of irrelevant now because:
A) Odin (tried several versions) simply will not stay connected to my phone when it boots into download mode, and having checked many tutorials for this it sees that this is a problem some of us cannot get past.
Anyway, one of the methods to resolve this was to wipe the cache and clear all data etc, which I did, and now my phone is stuck on the "pres the android" screen, and my phone will no longer get past that. Tried pressing clockwise in all four corners but still nothing.
No probs.. so we move on to a new step of trying to split the roms via cygwin, but guess what? Every single time I try to download the cygwin files, that freezes at about 98% and will not download, no matter which mirror I select.
So, this is what I call a curse that isn't going to be lifted by me no matter hat. It's not not meant to be.
Therefore, what I'm going to do is take it to a local shop that unlocks mobiles and give it to them to flash back to stock rom for me.
If that doesn't work, do you know what I'm gonna do?
Nothing. Because there's nothing you can do when the processes do not follow the same progress as they do in the tutorials.
I hope other novice S5830i users save themselves all his time and trouble and don't bother following the same process and become locked out of their phone at the touch android screen.

Update
Yipee,
Right, I stumbled across a solution that worked for me.
What I did was get my 2gb msd card that came with the phone and slapped MindCR v1.0.12 on the card and whacked that in my phone (this bypassed not being able to get a new rom on the sd card as it wasn't unmounted before the crash, so my pc wouldn't recognise the date to put it on via the pc).
Then I updated the rom from that 2gb card (vol up + menu + power to get into recovery mode) and it took it a few minutes to update the firmware and give me back the full use of my phone, and with a shiny new os on it. Whoop!
I didn't bother with CWM as I'd forgotten to add it before flashing, but it worked none-the-less and I'm now back in business (wiped it manually).
As it turned out this version of MindCR works really well so far as I can tell. I realise there are updated roms now but I've come to the conclusion after the scare I had that if you're not entirely sure what you're doing, it's best to leave it alone if it ain't broke.
SO.. now I have a phone with what seems to be a better os than the stock and less bloatware on it, no phone problems I can see after thorough testing... and from what I can tell it turned out to be better than it was before the disaster.
And I learned a bit in the process. Like for example, don't feck around removing apps from smartphones with titanium unless you've backed them up and you're prepared to stress out for over 20hrs wondering what to do about it.
And, also, don't expect much help from a forum because you may not always get it. << That' not a dig at xda by the way. It's just a BIG forum so your threads may not be seen by the right person before they get buried in past pages.
Hope my little journey helps another unsuspecting S5830i user who comes across the thread.

Gretel G1 displays lines but input/Audio works after flash

Okay,
I have a Gretel G1 (MT6580) here. I backed up the data and decided to flash it (like most cheap phones, it eventually got filled with Malware). So I followed the typical flashing procedure: Drivers, Flashtools, scatter, etc.
But this time, I was stupid enough to select "Format All + Download", so inevitably, it's not very usable right now.
Since then, and despite all the things I've tried (different drivers, versions, etc.) the phones been pretty much bricked. However, I did notice that the phone seems to be booting despite the display not showing much more than lines. I even unlocked the phone by trying the standard gesture (confirmed by the Android unlock sound effect).
I still seem to be able to flash the phone effectively, and access the non-system files normally (via file manager when the phone is on). I cannot however, get into system restore via the usual route (power and volume keys) or if I can, I can't tell if I'm in it due to the confused display.
I reckon I've probably removed an element that wasn't included in the needrom rom that makes the display stop working. Has anybody else got any ideas?

Aosp installation issues

Hey all,
I admit, I'm new to this whole android os thing, and this is only the second smart phone I've ever had. so far I gotta say, I'm not impressed with these things.
I've been banging my head against various bricks in this wall for the past three nights, and could really use some help before I decide to incinerate this Xperia.
Im trying to load and run Aosp 10 for this thing, but the few times I've had it stable, I've found It was really rather barren and honestly useless beyond strictly phone calls and texting.
over the course of these past three days, I've encountered; mounting errors (failed to mount oem/system/vendor,) issues with twrp becoming inaccessible (requiring a re-flash) after any successful operation of the Aosp 10 rom, at which point I may or may not be able to get the rom to boot again. Perhaps my assumption that they can coexist (basically a dual boot) is incorrect.
I've tried both the most recent & relevant standard twrp, and the Kagura version of twrp, to no avail. I'm still currently fighting "failed to mount /OEM". this has only ever resolved randomly (seemingly) in the past, only to crop back up again. I've formatted everything (short of the sd-card) 6 ways from sunday (getting the "failed to mount /OEM" the whole while during this operation).
I've tried older versions of roms, twrp, etc..
I'm burnt out on this trouble, and perhaps my choice of rom or phone was a mistake. All I'm after here is a rom (or phone, or hell, maybe a PDA) that works reliably, doesn't glitch a ton, have its screen adhesive fail, or suffer encryption so deep and aggravating its useless for simple and plain operations (looking at you APPLE). A "set it and forget it for a while, works when I need it and doesn't glitch out when needed,
well thought out and designed device.
Point me in the right direction here guys. My programming days are years behind me and the rest of the world, and I've not got the time or patience to learn & write a new rom/os from scratch.
sincerely-Psykora