Hi,
Did a search but could not find anything like this.
Problem with my new Gemei G9T Android 4 Tablet. Until 3 nights ago it functioned normally, but 2 days ago I switched on and there was a problem accessing storage. File Browser and ES File Explorer cannot access internal SD, nor can QuickPic, MoviePlayer, or Music. Icon continuously shows ‘preparing SD card’. Settings accesses most functions, except ‘storage’ and ‘developer options’ which cause it to freeze. Tried factory reset – did not work. Most apps work fine, but not Camera or Gallery. Cannot access external SD or USB storage, or connect to laptop. Entering sleep mode causes power off. Normal powering on and off now require two presses with time gap between. All of these functions were fine previously. Have you any suggestions, please?
Brian44 said:
Hi,
Did a search but could not find anything like this.
Problem with my new Gemei G9T Android 4 Tablet. Until 3 nights ago it functioned normally, but 2 days ago I switched on and there was a problem accessing storage. File Browser and ES File Explorer cannot access internal SD, nor can QuickPic, MoviePlayer, or Music. Icon continuously shows ‘preparing SD card’. Settings accesses most functions, except ‘storage’ and ‘developer options’ which cause it to freeze. Tried factory reset – did not work. Most apps work fine, but not Camera or Gallery. Cannot access external SD or USB storage, or connect to laptop. Entering sleep mode causes power off. Normal powering on and off now require two presses with time gap between. All of these functions were fine previously. Have you any suggestions, please?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to take out your SD card and put it in a Card reader, remember to do it while your device is off or unmount it from memory settings, try to swtich on your device later and connect it to your computer and check if it connect through USB or not.
Try some system tools?
Brian44 said:
Hi,
Did a search but could not find anything like this.
Problem with my new Gemei G9T Android 4 Tablet. Until 3 nights ago it functioned normally, but 2 days ago I switched on and there was a problem accessing storage. File Browser and ES File Explorer cannot access internal SD, nor can QuickPic, MoviePlayer, or Music. Icon continuously shows ‘preparing SD card’. Settings accesses most functions, except ‘storage’ and ‘developer options’ which cause it to freeze. Tried factory reset – did not work. Most apps work fine, but not Camera or Gallery. Cannot access external SD or USB storage, or connect to laptop. Entering sleep mode causes power off. Normal powering on and off now require two presses with time gap between. All of these functions were fine previously. Have you any suggestions, please?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm guessing databaiz's suggestion to take out the card isn't an option because it's the internal sd card, right? If so, for the one-in-a-million chance that the external card is screwing with the bus, I'd take the external card out and reboot anyway, just to make sure; if it works OK then, I would check the external card as databaiz suggests. But assuming it still doesn't work, next question is, do you have a terminal app installed? Please try the 'mount' command and let us know what you see. One other question, will it still go into fastboot mode? Can you see it from your computer when in fastboot mode (the details of how to do this depend on whether you have windows or linux/macOS - I can maybe help with the latter, but not the former).
It could be bad card
It could be bad card.... Remove and test in card reader...
cannot access internal or external storage
Thanks guys, I have been booting without external memory, with problems still the same. So, cannot be problem with external SD.
The internal SD card is not accessed properly. When I go to settings>Apps>All, the line at bottom shows Internal storage 4.1 MB used, 798MB free. (I have uninstalled most apps to see if that helped – it did not.) So, something is accessing the internal SD, also apps are running which must be off the internal SD.
I do not know what a terminal app is, Urilabob. I have downloaded it but what do I do with it?
At: [email protected]:/ $ I keyed in # mount [enter] , making:
[email protected]:/ $ # mount [enter]
But nothing happened, just another line of: [email protected]:/ $
Also, what is fast boot mode – this is not the same as sleep mode? This is all new to me. Appreciate your help.
My laptop is Windows 7.
Brian44 said:
Thanks guys, I have been booting without external memory, with problems still the same. So, cannot be problem with external SD.
The internal SD card is not accessed properly. When I go to settings>Apps>All, the line at bottom shows Internal storage 4.1 MB used, 798MB free. (I have uninstalled most apps to see if that helped – it did not.) So, something is accessing the internal SD, also apps are running which must be off the internal SD.
I do not know what a terminal app is, Urilabob. I have downloaded it but what do I do with it?
At: [email protected]:/ $ I keyed in # mount [enter] , making:
[email protected]:/ $ # mount [enter]
But nothing happened, just another line of: [email protected]:/ $
Also, what is fast boot mode – this is not the same as sleep mode? This is all new to me. Appreciate your help.
My laptop is Windows 7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, I replied earlier but it seems I messed up so the reply didn't appear.
My problem is I know unix fairly well, and android is very similar, so I forget what is the same and what's different. Sorry, the command you need in the terminal is "df". That will show you a list of what partitions are mounted on your system. I'm guessing you're going to see /system, but not /mnt/sdcard. Why, I don't know. It's possible that the sdcard partition has got corrupted - but suspicious that the external card is also having problems. Is it possible that either the tablet or your pc crashed while you were copying files between them? Or that you disconnected the cable between them before telling the tablet to go out of connected mode? Either of those could explain corrupted partitions. Unfortunately fixing them may not be easy.
There are three different ways to connect your tablet to a computer. One is so it looks like external disks. I got the impression you already discovered this, and that it has now stopped working. The other two require you to install (parts of) the android development system on your computer. The simplest one is adb mode. Please google it to see how to use it. This might give you a chance to check the state of your partitions. The other is in fastboot mode. Fastboot mode is an alternative way of starting your computer, that goes into a fairly bulletproof, but very simple, mode that allows you to do various things on your tablet (it gives you very low level access to the tablet - powerful but dangerous). I'm pretty sure it will still be working. How you get into fastboot mode depends on your tablet; you'll need to google it. And how you access it in fastboot mode is fairly different on windows. So I'm not the best adviser. But please be careful - it's easy to brick the tablet in fastboot mode, you need to make sure you completely understand any steps you might take, especially any that might write to the tablet (of course, reading from it is safe). And of course the simplest alternative is simply to completely reinstall the tablet (sorry, I forget the android term for this). That should restore things OK, but it will mean you lose all your data and will have to reinstall all your applications.
cannot access internal or external storage
urilabob said:
Sorry, I replied earlier but it seems I messed up so the reply didn't appear.
My problem is I know unix fairly well, and android is very similar, so I forget what is the same and what's different. Sorry, the command you need in the terminal is "df". That will show you a list of what partitions are mounted on your system. I'm guessing you're going to see /system, but not /mnt/sdcard. Why, I don't know. It's possible that the sdcard partition has got corrupted - but suspicious that the external card is also having problems. Is it possible that either the tablet or your pc crashed while you were copying files between them? Or that you disconnected the cable between them before telling the tablet to go out of connected mode? Either of those could explain corrupted partitions. Unfortunately fixing them may not be easy.
There are three different ways to connect your tablet to a computer. One is so it looks like external disks. I got the impression you already discovered this, and that it has now stopped working. The other two require you to install (parts of) the android development system on your computer. The simplest one is adb mode. Please google it to see how to use it. This might give you a chance to check the state of your partitions. The other is in fastboot mode. Fastboot mode is an alternative way of starting your computer, that goes into a fairly bulletproof, but very simple, mode that allows you to do various things on your tablet (it gives you very low level access to the tablet - powerful but dangerous). I'm pretty sure it will still be working. How you get into fastboot mode depends on your tablet; you'll need to google it. And how you access it in fastboot mode is fairly different on windows. So I'm not the best adviser. But please be careful - it's easy to brick the tablet in fastboot mode, you need to make sure you completely understand any steps you might take, especially any that might write to the tablet (of course, reading from it is safe). And of course the simplest alternative is simply to completely reinstall the tablet (sorry, I forget the android term for this). That should restore things OK, but it will mean you lose all your data and will have to reinstall all your applications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, Urilabob. The command df had an effect!
Shows Filesystem with figures for Size, Used, Free, and Blksize (4096), next to each of the following:
/dev, /mnt/asec, /mnt/obb, /system, /data, and /cache. The figures are all different except Blksize.
/mnt/sdcard is not shown.
Does this tell you anything useful?
I have never been able to access the tablet from my laptop with Windows 7. My son’s laptop has an earlier Windows, so I checked today and found that his Windows Explorer finds the tablet (as 2 disks, A and F) and asks “Please insert a disk into Removable Disk H:” (and same for F.
By the way, this problem started when I downloaded the (automatic) firmware update direct to the tablet, not via laptop. But the wifi signal was weak, and files may have been corrupted. I have since downloaded the complete, latest firmware to the laptop (with strong wifi signal), but do not know how to get it into the tablet!
Have not yet done anything on adb or fastboot modes. Will Google adb tonight.
Not worried about losing data or apps.
Thanks again, Brian.
I'm guessing that your tablet is rooted? If so, do you have an app like superuser? I remember having to go through some options to give my file explorers access to my SD card. You may have accidentally set you SD card to be off-limits or something. If you haven't already done it, see if giving an app like ES File Explorer superuser access will help.
Also see if you can enable USB debugging. For my nook color, I have to enable in order to access usb mass storage for one of my memory units. See if you can access your internal SD card content through USB debugging.
cannot access internal or external storage
SacTappingUni said:
I'm guessing that your tablet is rooted? If so, do you have an app like superuser? I remember having to go through some options to give my file explorers access to my SD card. You may have accidentally set you SD card to be off-limits or something. If you haven't already done it, see if giving an app like ES File Explorer superuser access will help.
Also see if you can enable USB debugging. For my nook color, I have to enable in order to access usb mass storage for one of my memory units. See if you can access your internal SD card content through USB debugging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your thoughts. My tablet is not rooted. And I cannot enable USB debugging, because Settings freezes when I tap Developer Options to get to USB debug. I am just learning about Android - seems to be 2 partitions on the internal storage, one about 2.6GB with apps and other things on (which is accessible), and the other partition must be about 13GB, but has not been accessible since the automatic firmware update.
Sounds like the update caused you issues. If you have everything backed up with your Google account I recommend that you do a factory data reset and see if that fixes your issue.
cannot access internal or external storage
MissionImprobable said:
Sounds like the update caused you issues. If you have everything backed up with your Google account I recommend that you do a factory data reset and see if that fixes your issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Factory reset would be great, if it worked, but it does not function.
Can you exchange the device?
Brian44 said:
Factory reset would be great, if it worked, but it does not function.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, so from your df listing, it's clear that sdcard is not getting mounted. That's a pretty low-level function that is failing. The fact that factory reset also doesn't work suggests (doesn't prove) that the sdcard partition at least has a corrupted filesystem, and quite possibly the partition itself has been corrupted. Could a spotty OTA update do that? I'm surprised - I would have thought they would use fairly high level functions for OTA updates, precisely because any drop-out could cause corruption if you use low-level disk access. But who knows - the mysteries of google? Another possibility is that the sdcard is physically bad, and maybe the update just caused you to get into the bad region (with the dynamic memory mapping in flash memory, once something goes wrong it's almost impossible to figure out what). At this point, I'd be going back to the distributor if possible (you said it was new, right)? I think even if you were an android guru, and knew exactly how to do a complete rebuild from scratch, you would be risking that the device itself is faulty - and that the rebuild would mean you couldn't prove that the device was at fault (rather than your rebuild)...
Best Wishes
Bob
cannot access internal or external storage
urilabob said:
OK, so from your df listing, it's clear that sdcard is not getting mounted. That's a pretty low-level function that is failing. The fact that factory reset also doesn't work suggests (doesn't prove) that the sdcard partition at least has a corrupted filesystem, and quite possibly the partition itself has been corrupted. Could a spotty OTA update do that? I'm surprised - I would have thought they would use fairly high level functions for OTA updates, precisely because any drop-out could cause corruption if you use low-level disk access. But who knows - the mysteries of google? Another possibility is that the sdcard is physically bad, and maybe the update just caused you to get into the bad region (with the dynamic memory mapping in flash memory, once something goes wrong it's almost impossible to figure out what). At this point, I'd be going back to the distributor if possible (you said it was new, right)? I think even if you were an android guru, and knew exactly how to do a complete rebuild from scratch, you would be risking that the device itself is faulty - and that the rebuild would mean you couldn't prove that the device was at fault (rather than your rebuild)...
Best Wishes
Bob
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, Bob for all your help. This seems like the end of the line with this tablet. I expected this might be the case, and emailed DinoDirect two days ago for a refund, as I am heading overseas next week and want to resolve the matter before I go. They responded that "we will contact our related department to process your case priority". I have been aware that any actions I might take could invalidate the warranty, and this has inhibited me a bit. I will forward your latest comments in support of my refund claim.
I learned some basics of Android from all this!
Good wishes, great talking to you.
Brian
Just for a great justice :victory:
Got same bug on my Gemei G6, guess it hapens after i connect dc cabel to a fully charged pad that was charged in off mode and turn on. So i just download last firmware fro Gemeitech.com, unzip it on SD card and tnen turn on pad with pressed Home and Power buttons that must be pressed untill robot with green rotating belly appears what mean start of flashin` Thats it.
Got the same issue in Huawei Ascend P-7, I just switched off the mobile, removed the SD card and turned it back on after 5 minutes ....... and that was it, all issues resolved. Just the thing was that once SD card was re-inserted, problem came up again. So i have decided to copy SD card data to PC via Card Reader and format it or get new SD card
I have searched the internet for the answer for the last few days, have tried multiple things suggested and nothing seems to fix my issue!
First the problem : When I sync my phone to my computer it syncs like normal, phone gives me all 3 options (Charge, Disk Drive, Tether). I choose disk drive and then my computer asks me what I want to do. I click explore and it opens up the phone folder yet it doesn't show anything on my SD card, just the stuff on my phone.The weird part is when I Search for a folder that is on the SD Card for example "audio" the folder shows up with all it's contents. This has been driving me insane for the last couple of days.
Things I attempted already to fix the issue to no avail : Have tried different computers, have tried 3 different cables at this point, HTC Sync (Doesn't recognize phone at all), I have went into my folder options on my computer and made sure all hidden folders are showing. I have restarted and replaced my SD Card multiple times.
The thing that really gets me is that when I do search for a folder on my SD Card such as audio it DOES show up and I am able to delete/copy/paste stuff into it but everything on the SD Card does not show unless I search for it specifically. I hope someone can help, this is really frustrating me at this point!
Okay, so I deduce windows based on htc sync - you can start by going ahead and uninstalling that. (htc sync)
What version of windows?
Try choosing your usb mode before plugging into the pc.
What brand sdcard? Capacity?
Did you format the card in the doubleshot when you started using it?
What rom are you running on the device?
Or are you sure it's not a virus? I once had a friend who had his USB drive infected with a virus. And same situation as yours. When I plugged in the usb it should that most of the space is used. Yet when I opened the usb there's no folders or even files. But when I plugged it in a linux PC I saw all the folders and found a autorun.inf and an exe file. Deleted it and when plugged back in the windows PC all the files showed up again but as hidden & system files. But all contents are intact.
Ok so to clarify some more things, Yes I am using Windows 7, have already uninstalled HTC Sync.
Next one important fact might be that I'm NOT rooted in which case I'm not sure if I'm even supposed to ask this question in these forums (I did read all the rules pages and understand this site was created for developers and development aspect of phones, did not see any specifics as far as asking questions about unrooted phones, Sorry if that is the case).
I DO have Disk Drive as default setting before plugging up.
It is a SanDisk 16GB SD Card Blue.
Don't think last two questions apply since I'm not rooted.
Also just to clarify something else, I think I actually am seeing folders on my card when plugging in but for some reason it's not showing all of them. I know this because when I search the drive for "audio" it brings up the folder and shows that it is directly under the drive, not in any subfolder.
As far as it being a virus, in that case what should my actions be?
I REALLY appreciate you guys taking the time to reply and answer some of my questions. Thanks again, hopefully I can get this fixed.
Does it do the same thing when you connect to a different PC? I want to say this is a PC OS setting issue.
Hastily spouted for your befuddlement
Coug76 said:
Does it do the same thing when you connect to a different PC? I want to say this is a PC OS setting issue.
Hastily spouted for your befuddlement
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried 3 different PCs with Windows 7 and got the same result. This is beyond frustrating at this point!
If it's a virus issue have you already tried browsing the content of your SDCard? If there's a virus using a android file manager like ES Explorer for example you might see some unfamiliar files in there. On most case you should see a .exe file in the root of your SDCard. Also try looking for some odd named folders or RECYCLER.
This is not applicable on a windows OS. So I recommend you to browse through your android phone or try plugging in your device to a linux PC.
Using ES Explorer I did find an exe titled audio.exe and deleted it, restarted phone and that didn't seem to help.
The way I finally fixed my issue though, I had to uncheck "Hide protected system files" in folders options to see the rest of the folders.
Dmitriy305 said:
Using ES Explorer I did find an exe titled audio.exe and deleted it, restarted phone and that didn't seem to help.
The way I finally fixed my issue though, I had to uncheck "Hide protected system files" in folders options to see the rest of the folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Classic. Right up there with windows hiding known file extensions, so you end up with some-file.zip.zip but only see one .zip extension and can't fathom why it won't work.
Glad it was something simple and not catastrophic!
Yeah a virus indeed! Just as I guessed on my 1st post better scan your PC then... Cleaning up your phone storage isn't enough as it will just come back once plugged in back to your PC.
And the audio.exe is indeed a virus. Also I'm sure theres more of those in your sdcard. Try to look further specially .exe files in sub directories etc.
Also I suggest these links in fixing your phone storage.
http://imacify.com/2011/02/how-to-recover-hidden-files-from-virus-infected-usb-pendrive/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxTrFSOTdjo
So in preparation for backing up my internal storage for 4.2.1 in case it messes up or I do I was planning on copying everything from my internal device storage onto my computer. When going through the folders to see which ones were empty and I didn't need to copy I came across a folder that I had deleted the contents of earlier that day. Thinking I may have not actually deleted it I did it again.
Before copying the information over I went to check to make sure I had my backup of my nova launcher and noticed it wasn't there, I went to make another backup when I hit restore just to check that there was a back up and there was, and in the folder I had just looked on in my computer.
It was then I realized that the data my computer showed was very old files, things I had deleted months ago and some of the newer files were not being shown. I also noticed that old videos and pictures showed in my gallery app even though I knew I deleted them. I tried rebooting my tablet disconnecting it from my computer and reconnecting it and to no avail I also cleared the gallery app data and that seemed to fix the phantom videos and pictures in the app.
If anyone knows what is going on and how I can correct this issue that would be helpful as it does not seem to be an issue with my phone, Galaxy S3.
Thanks,
Frostbiter
You are using MTP connection to delete files/folder or just a file manager? I had similar issues when i was using my PC to delete stuff from the internal storage so you could try to use a file manager and see if it solves the issue.
I do delete stuff from es file manager, I rarely connect my tablet to my computer but when I do its using MTP and only to put files onto the internal storage or sd card.
The gallery thing happens to more people, we have a thread about a multi-GB cache file somewhere around here.
I have never had it show old files on my pc though. Have you tried rebooting your computer? (I feel a bit like the microsoft helpdesk for saying that... xD) Oh, and a registry cleaner might fix the issue. (for the pc, not the tab.)
I have had my sgs3 not showing up at all every once in a while (i use mtp a lot), but thats probably me being an idiot and killing the media storage process again. (I clear out all non-essential processes when gaming.).
Send from my Samsung Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 2
I haven't tried rebooting my computer after plugging my tablet it, but I normally turn it off every night and as I said before I rarely plug my tablet it so I don't think it's a cache issues. I'll clean out my registry and maybe I'll uninstall the drivers for my tablet and let them reinstall too.
I was able to fix the issues by switching usb ports I plugged it into, it started showing the proper files when I plugged it into the first usb too. I took a picture while still connected to the first usb port and it showed up in internal storage in my computer so I don't think it's a usb problem.
Thanks for the info on the gallery issue, maybe this cache file and issues I'm having are connected some how.
I was wondering if anyone has any ideas or can point me in the right direction to solve this. Yesterday I started getting messages that the apps that were installed on my sd card stopped working...........then the gallery was gone (all my pics) now there's a message in the corner that says Blank SD card......(card is bland or has unsupported filesystem) do you want to format...........I've tried taking the card out and plugging into a PC however it says its a read-only. I don't want to format, is there any way to get all my pics and data back
any help is appreciated
anesh01 said:
I was wondering if anyone has any ideas or can point me in the right direction to solve this. Yesterday I started getting messages that the apps that were installed on my sd card stopped working...........then the gallery was gone (all my pics) now there's a message in the corner that says Blank SD card......(card is bland or has unsupported filesystem) do you want to format...........I've tried taking the card out and plugging into a PC however it says its a read-only. I don't want to format, is there any way to get all my pics and data back
any help is appreciated
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately this is mostly a lost cause. This is a known issue on the Galaxy S3, and I've heard a couple of other phones as well, including the Note 2. I've had this happen THREE times on my phone, to the point that I just don't even use an SD card anymore.
From what I've read the brand and size of the SD card doesn't make a difference.
You may be able to recover some of your pics and other files by using file recovery software on your computer. I used a program called Pandora Recovery, and while it spit out the files using different random names, at least I got a majority of my pics back (I had over 1000 on the card).
Beyond that there is no way to recover the data on the card. Once you try recovery software, you'll have to let your phone format the card if you want to use it again. Even Windows won't read the data from the card in it's current state.
Thank you for your help........im going to give Pandora a try and see what happens. I did hear about a program called DiskDigger Pro........so wish me luck..........I wish I was more pro active in reconizing the signs but it just happened out of no where
anesh01 said:
Thank you for your help........im going to give Pandora a try and see what happens. I did hear about a program called DiskDigger Pro........so wish me luck..........I wish I was more pro active in reconizing the signs but it just happened out of no where
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe you should able to cause it happened to me a few times and I able to recover all my stuff (videos, photos). The trick is find a good SDcard recovery software.
This may or may not help, but it's worth a shot.......http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=367912&page=2
This problem is why I will not be buying Samsung phones again. It is BS that I can't even use my 32GB SD card because it will eventually fail I will lose everything on it. It has happened twice in 7 months with the phone already.
Sent from my SCH-I535
disk digger worked great for me except for the occasional corrupt. You have to format first.
Thanks a lot for sharing information about other products. However, while scanning the corrupt SD card encountering error messages and unable to recover entire data. In order to overcome such problems, use Remo Recover tool to restore data from corrupt or formatted SD card.
Just wanted to let you guys know that my old SD cards got corrupted because I tried to configure the metadata of my songs through such apps like player pro and etc. I have a 64gb right now and its been working fine for over a year because I just manually configure everything when I connect it to my computer.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app
I have a stock Nexus 5 running OS 6.0.1. Yesterday I decided to use DS Cloud to backup my documents to my Synology Disk Station (NAS). For simplicity I just told it to sync the entire internal storage folder. This appears to have been a BAD mistake.
Everything looked like it was going well I saw the files from my phone appearing in the backup folder on my NAS. IT was almost done when suddenly my Blue tooth music stopped streaming. I looked and Google Play Music says there are no files on my device. Browsing from a USB connection all of the files are in my Music folder, the app just can't seem to find them.
I uninstalled DS Cloud, rebooted the phone, etc. but it's still broke. Basically all of the files appear to be intact but Google Play Music, and Photos can not find anything. I used VLC to browse and play the files so they really are there and undamaged.
I suspect that some "virtual" folders or symbolic links may have been corrupted. The reason I think this is because when I open VLC it shows 4 paths "Internal Memory", "Emulated", "Emulated", "Emulated". I seem to recall that since the N5 does not actually have a SD card slot, it had a fake SD Card folder, and I do seem to remember vaguely there were some emulated or legacy folders, I assume for backwards compatibility with older apps.
In any event I don't remember exactly what those "special" folders were or how to recreate them.
I suspect that if I can recreate them then Music and Picture will start working again.
If I do a factory reset on the phone will that recreate the proper folders and links?
Any ideas?
More research/info.
OK doing more research, now I am fairly certain that the issue is the missing folders. Apparently there's a symbolic link to /data/user/0/com.google.android.music/files/music that is needed for Play Music. Using adb shell I can see that there is a sdcard folder and it is linked to /storage/self/primary.
I think I am on the right track but can anyone tell me what links/folders I need to create? Can I even create them without root? Is there a utility that will fix it? Will a factory reset/wipe fix it?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Don't know how to recreate the missing folders, but I'm fairly sure a complete factory reset will fix this. Unfortunately, you will lose your data if you go this route.
RESOLVED - The Hard Way
Last night I tried Settings > Backup & Restore > Factory Reset. It said it was doing it for several minutes. I read that it could take a long time, so I left it in the office and watched a TV show. Came back an ouur later and it was rebooted but 100% intact??? Even though it said "Erasing..." for at least 30 minutes, nothing was gone.
I used the phone all day and except for the original problem it worked fine.
Tonight I tried again. Same process. This time after the wipe it came up like a new phone. Strange.
Anyhow it looks like everything is working. Copied a few songs and pictures and they worked.
I am in the process of restoring everything else which is probably going to take some time...