Related
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
Hey gang -
Yesterday at home I pulled my phone out of my pocket and it was at the "touch the Android to begin" (!) screen. But it was still connected to my WiFi... And I was confused.
Rather than do that, I reset the phone, wiped Davlik cache and Fixed Permissions (took a long time!), then rebooted.
That sort of worked, but a LOT of my apps are crashing on start, and others are missing altogether. Even when I re-download them and re-install them, they don't work.
What's the way-ahead here? Am I stuck doing a factory reset? Or even formatting the SD card?
Thanks in advance.
When things get that fouled up, a clean install over a freshly formatted microSD is probably the best thing to do. You might be able to get away with restoring from a "nandroid" backup from before things started going bad, but "Your mileage may vary."
jeffsf said:
When things get that fouled up, a clean install over a freshly formatted microSD is probably the best thing to do. You might be able to get away with restoring from a "nandroid" backup from before things started going bad, but "Your mileage may vary."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay, thanks!
Anything else on the SD card I should back up besides DCIM / Media-> Ringtones/MP3s / "ui" / TitaniumBackup?
(Got about an hour while this stuff goes off to my HD...)
Hoo! Thought I effed myself for a sec - from CWM I was wiping all partitions... including /sdcard.
Then I realized... $#¡+... my ROM is on there!
Fortunately CWM has the "mount USB storage" option.
*whew!*
I was going to add format the sdcard from the phone. But you did that. Typically when what happened to you would happen to me it would be from some app updating and for whatever reason got corrupted during install and fouled the phone up. If you use TiB I highly suggest setting a automated task to back up your TiB backups to drop box, google drive or box.net. Then in these situations you have a recent TiB to fall back on.
JaimeZX said:
Hey gang -
Yesterday at home I pulled my phone out of my pocket and it was at the "touch the Android to begin" (!) screen. But it was still connected to my WiFi... And I was confused.[...]...a LOT of my apps are crashing on start, and others are missing altogether. Even when I re-download them and re-install them, they don't work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi JaimeZX,
I am curious if you have recently rooted, flashed to stock, or installed the VB or Basic w/a twist kernel? I am running the exact same setup as you list (minus the modem) and this *exact* same scenario happened to me on the exact same day. March 12th, at about 10pm.
Detail as much information as you can, I've had many problems since flashing back to stock, formatting the SD, wiping everything multiple times, and re-installing Valhalla Black, Basic w/a Twist and all fresh apps d/l'd from the market. I'm on multiple attempts to stabilize the device and have questioned whether or not there is some issue with either the Rom or the Kernel. Perhaps there is an issue with the stock packages, or the USB driver ghosts (I've deleted all USB assigns at all ports and reinstalled for device detection in Heimdall). Hopefully we can get a good list of information to help us fix an issue that is apparently quite catastrophic (in that /data seems to corrupt) and save others from a future headache.
I have searched the dev threads to no avail, and as a general rule it seems that if problems are brought up they are usually met with "try flashing back to stock," "gremlins," "no one else is having problem 'X'," etc. even in cases of users with multiple complaints of the same issue. Both the DSP Sound force close upon EQ preset select and the issue that some had with the Messages, Phone Dialer, Search, Call Logs closing to homescreen are issues that I've seen this with. I believe this is a real issue, and I need to get it fixed without wasting time on messaging replies to anyone advising "try this," "Try that," etc.
My hope is that between the two of us we can address any of the common responses from developers before taking the issue to them and reporting it. I personally cannot today get my phone to boot without freezing (after boot cycle completes - not bootlooping or freezing during the bootleader seq) and am currently attempting to get into d'l mode without much luck.
When this happened to me on Tuesday night I was able to reboot to recovery, reflash the final-fixed.zip first without wiping data (which failed-/data is corrupted somehow here) and then *with* wipe/data and it booted, ran fine, so I then re-flashed BasicWithaTwist Kernel and was fine until late last night again.
I had been using the phone for some fairly constant web searching and the screen went black, appeared to soft reboot, and then froze. I pulled the battery, waited a few mins, reinstalled battery, once again, Freeze after boot.
No indication that an app crashes, phone just completely freezes, remains screen on, capkeys lit, power button does not respond, nor do softkeys or touchscreen. Makes it though the scan device and scan SD processes *sometimes* and other times freezes before it completes them.
I pulled the both the SD and the SIM and booted up, same issue, though it makes it through the scan device processes everytime since it's not scanning 18gb of data on an SD. This tells me it is not SD or SIM related, and is most likely software related, either ROM or Kernel. I've also ruled out the possibility of an old app/data package by reformatting the SD (long format - wipe all containers to "o,") let Android rebuild menu structure on SD, redownloaded a short list of commonly used apps and installed fresh - *NO* TiBackup apps were restored and the actual backup folder was not replaced to the SD after flashing.
I've tried both the Odin (Fb KJ6 back to stock) and the one click (lumin's tutorial) back to stock. Checked the download of Final-Fixed, MD5 checksum is correct. Cannot find MD5 on the sms-T959V-KJ6-antsvx.v1.1.3.zip file. Doesn't seem to be listed on Anton's github site, perhaps I don't know how to find it there. That is the only puzzle piece I haven't double checked.
All for now, looking forward to yours or anyone's replies or suggestions for anything I may be overlooking. Thanks.
0
---------- Post added at 11:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:12 AM ----------
devlinandersen said:
Hi JaimeZX,
... I've had many problems since flashing back to stock, formatting the SD, wiping everything multiple times, and re-installing Valhalla Black, Basic w/a Twist and all fresh apps d/l'd from the market. I'm on multiple attempts to stabilize the device and have questioned whether or not there is some issue with either the Rom or the Kernel....
0
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should add that I have been on Valhalla Black Edition since it was in beta and have been quite happy with it. I only did a back to stock flash to try to (one more time) see if I could get a cooperative DSP sound manager. No such luck, and now a few headaches, and this issue on Tuesday coupled with yours in the exact same timeframe...I'm just thinking there is a problem somewhere in the chain of attack and hope to find it with the help of others.
Also, phone freezes after boot, needless to say, I'm not able to run a logcat.
devlinandersen said:
No indication that an app crashes
[...]
Also, phone freezes after boot, needless to say, I'm not able to run a logcat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try running logcat > /sdcard/some_file and cat /proc/kmsg > /sdcard/some_other_file so you have a capture of both the Android logs as well as the kernel logs. If you're not comfortable with command-line work, aLogrec should be able to at least help with the Android logs.
Given the number of people successfully running stock and custom ROMs on this device with stability, it either is going to be a hardware problem with your phone, corruption of a file system, or some app or combination of apps you are running, not a "dev" issue. Without logs, it is going to be nearly impossible to differentiate between the causes.
jeffsf said:
Try running logcat > /sdcard/some_file and cat /proc/kmsg > /sdcard/some_other_file so you have a capture of both the Android logs as well as the kernel logs. If you're not comfortable with command-line work, aLogrec should be able to at least help with the Android logs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will try in a bit, collecting files for another fresh install, different ROM.
jeffsf said:
Given the number of people successfully running stock and custom ROMs on this device with stability, it either is going to be a hardware problem with your phone, corruption of a file system, or some app or combination of apps you are running, not a "dev" issue. Without logs, it is going to be nearly impossible to differentiate between the causes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is false logic and is just what I was trying to avoid. I will attempt to explain to hopefully help build a stronger environment that is conducive to problem solving. It still very well could be a dev issue if say, a certain ROM or Kernel begins to wrestle with an app that has recently updated. Is it the apps or the rom's fault? Maybe it is a seldom used feature of an app that just missed all the users testing until now, it's well within the realm of possibilities and would just like to see helpful comments (such as the first portion directly above) to help solve issues. Truth is, I don't know *what* is wrong and neither do you, so a focus on constructive commentary would just help everyone out.
Logs or it didn't happen.
Update...
After a factory reset/data wipe, wipe cache, wipe dalvik cache I had to let the battery charge for a bit. Came back and decided to just try to boot phone, still freezes after boot sequence. I decide that I will flash a different kernel and a different ROM in order to see if I can make a difference. Before flashing Blastoff v2.5 Kernel I decided to factory wipe/data wipe, wipe cache and dalvik again...I am not sure if this is news, but when doing the Dalvik cache wipe in CWM it returned no result, perhaps because I had previously performed and is empty, but I thought it strange that there was *no* communication that it was already empty/wiped, etc.
Installed Blastoff v2.5 and was able to boot without freezing. Something else was damaged with the Rom as well, would not load home screen, only had pulldown menu. Rebooted to Recovery and flashed Unnamed RC-2.zip and have been charging the battery, talking on the phone and reinstalling apps from market.
Same error happened twice to me and once with Jaime. Both of us on VB and Basic+Twist. After installing new kernel i'd point towards kernel. Also uninstalled DSP and installed voodoo sound on VB, but had that on previous version as well. If I had to start somewhere, I'd start right around there.
Hope this helps, will provide logs from SD backup I made before reflash of new kernel/rom. Gotta run. Adios...
-devil.
I had to get my phone going today, it appears to be working without freezing, though on this new app the phone dialer/phone caller force closes on outgoing calls (I am only mentioning here, I will visit the Q&A for the ROM if I need assistance). Unfortunately I was unable to replicate the problem without flashing back to my previous nandroid. I have it saved and given some time I will do my due diligence and get a logcat **if** Jaime doesn't do it before me...because I kinda have a feeling that something was updated in the market on Tuesday evening that is now fighting with the kernel somehow. But again...I didn't run a logcat so it's not even happening...yet...
...to be continued...
Devlin - sorry for the delayed reply.
I did notice that I'd had more and more apps FCing on me in the week leading up to the Über-crash. Unfortunately I don't have any more "background" to add than that.
I backed up everything I wanted on the SD card and then formatted that, plus /data, /system /everythingelsethatwasanoptioninCWM. Then did my installs.
FORTUNATELY (knock on wood) I have not had any recurrence of the major issue.
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
I just bought a U11+ as an upgrade to my U11 and am configuring it, which is taking longer than I expected because neither of the two backups I did (htc's and Backup Your Mobile) installed most of the apps (or their data). Also, I've had two System updates in the last two days.
I got my custom background, the Keep Notes app (plus its data) and Facebook; that's pretty much it.
What did I overlook?
Oh, yeah... I cannot find a setting to keep the display on when powered. Anyone know how to do that?
If you did a jump to a new OS version or device that may be why.
If you did any major firmware updates on the new device, it's factory reset time.
Otherwise clear the system cache.
Manually loading them may be your only option.
Welcome to the fking planet
blackhawk said:
If you did a jump to a new OS version or device that may be why.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That occurred to me when I (finally) checked the OS version and saw that it was 8.
I've been getting update notices for the last two days and the most recent one (the third) was the Android 9 OS (update # 2.19.401.2). Where can I check on official updates so I can get an idea when this will stop (because manually looking for updates this morning got me nothing, then I saw the update prompt a couple hours later).
Updated to 9, rebooted and verified that Google Drive is connected, but I'm still not getting Backup & Restore to work. Will have to experiment with the others.
Jeff in 92833 said:
That occurred to me when I (finally) checked the OS version and saw that it was 8.
I've been getting update notices for the last two days and the most recent one (the third) was the Android 9 OS (update # 2.19.401.2). Where can I check on official updates so I can get an idea when this will stop (because manually looking for updates this morning got me nothing, then I saw the update prompt a couple hours later).
Updated to 9, rebooted and verified that Google Drive is connected, but I'm still not getting Backup & Restore to work. Will have to experiment with the others.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I learned long ago that if your OS is fast, stable and fulfilling its mission, let it be.
I've been on Pie for 2 years, my last reload was 1.5 years ago, still fast and stable with minimum maintenance. What's not to like?
Unless you start screwing with the firmware and bring in new issues that need fixed.
Security generally isn't an issue unless you do something stupid.
There's no saving dumb bunnies... be careful what you load and download.
blackhawk said:
If you did a jump to a new OS version or device that may be why.
If you did any major firmware updates on the new device, it's factory reset time.
Otherwise clear the system cache.
Manually loading them may be your only option.
Welcome to the fking planet
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did a Factory Reset (but it stayed Android 9). I did this because I had 'restored' a lot of files from Backup Your Mobile's (aka BYM) work on my U11.
Two things are bothering me:
1) The HTC Transfer Tool is not working this time (it transfers the PIN Code, but never gets to CONFIRM. After repeated attempts following reboots, etc., I have noticed that the PIN Code sometimes flickers off and back on again; what's up with that?).
2) BYM transferred my SMS and MMS to my U11+, but clicking on a text message that includes an MMS just makes the message thread avatar flicker and stay on the message thread listing (not even a flicker of the thread is displayed).
You mean screen lock codes?
First I don't password lock devices. You're the most likely one to end up getting locked out.
If you do use one I wouldn't attempt to back it up and transfer it. If it gets corrupted what follows won't be fun.
Pie's a good OS.
Clearing the system cache never hurts to try when experiencing glitches.
blackhawk said:
You mean screen lock codes?
First I don't password lock devices. You're the most likely one to end up getting locked out.
If you do use one I wouldn't attempt to back it up and transfer it. If it gets corrupted what follows won't be fun.
Pie's a good OS.
Clearing the system cache never hurts to try when experiencing glitches.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I did not mean screen lock codes. The HTC Transfer utility worked the first time I tried it before the Factory Reset, but it's not working now. The PIN Code is displayed on the source phone, but it doesn't activate the confirmation button to do the transfer.
I have since learned that many of the apps that were copied over via Google Play's utility also transferred the data, but not all the apps were transferred.
More research to be done, it seems.
Jeff in 92833 said:
No, I did not mean screen lock codes. The HTC Transfer utility worked the first time I tried it before the Factory Reset, but it's not working now. The PIN Code is displayed on the source phone, but it doesn't activate the confirmation button to do the transfer.
I have since learned that many of the apps that were copied over via Google Play's utility also transferred the data, but not all the apps were transferred.
More research to be done, it seems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My bad... I use Google search a lot and it doesn't need to be that specific model or OS version most times. Many of the issues are long standing. I even use solutions for other manufacturers models. Whatever comes in handy.
And/or just play with it until I work it out.
I haven't used that app. If you upgraded the firmware or are transferring data from another device these kind apps can screw up especially with app settings.
If you're doing a factory reset because of an issue or a crash they can inadvertently reload the root cause of the issue.
It's nice to save the homescreen, theme, icon setting on a reload using these though. Most apps I hand reload/configure or use the app's backup setting file like with Poweramp or DIGI Clock which are very intensive to set from scratch.
Critical data I save in a master backup folder(s) as files. Be ready to reload at any time as most crashes while rare give little or no warning. Redundantly backup critical data to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
Most times a factory reset is to give the device a clean slate. Looking over app settings while setting them up helps to spot things you may have previously missed. It helps a lot to be familiar with the nuts and bolts at the user interface level. Many times when troubleshooting this is where the answers lurk.
I consider my first load or two on a new phone trail runs. After which it's pretty well sorted out for a clean load. I do the same on PCs. Android's are very forgiving but poorly written apps or the user can still skew hidden user settings that are hard to find/access on a stock device. A stable, fast load is a pleasure to use and will run well for a long time with only simple maintenance on a stock Android.
A family member unfortunately died (no crime involved) in her home sometime this week. We are trying to determine approximately when it happened. She had a Samsung S10e that I have access to, and I am trying to get as much information as I can. By looking at call logs, browser history and search history I have gotten a little closer, but I had hoped to find something similar to the event log in windows, and see when the phone was last in use in any way as well as when it ran out of battery etc.
I have tried adb logcat commands, but they only show entries for the latest startup. The phone is not rooted.
A few questions:
* Are there any logs/activity info I might be able to access without root (I do have access to her google account and the phone itself (lock screen was not enabled)).
* Can I root the phone without destroying the information I am trying to find? If so, any tips on which guide to follow?
* Is there a better forum to ask this question?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
ziphnor said:
A family member unfortunately died (no crime involved) in her home sometime this week. We are trying to determine approximately when it happened. (...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sympathy.
I don't understand the purpose of bailing on a doctor to determine the time of death.
There are more logs after entering recovery mode, but each new boot of the phone overwrites another entry in the sequence of several logs.
ze7zez said:
Sympathy.
I don't understand the purpose of bailing on a doctor to determine the time of death.
There are more logs after entering recovery mode, but each new boot of the phone overwrites another entry in the sequence of several logs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know what you mean about "bailing on a doctor"? I am in Denmark (so free doctors), and the body has been taken to a morgue, but since there is no evidence of a crime I don't expect that much effort being taking in determining the exact time of death, and I suspect that I can get closer with logs from the phone.
As to the logs, the phone has been restarted once (because it had run out of battery and shut down (and even knowing when that happened would be useful)).
Can you share any resources on accessing logs in recovery mode? (it sounds like I better get it right the first time to avoid redundant reboots).