[Q] Recovering files from messed up SD card and other problems with GT-i9506. - Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi!
So around christmas time my phone stock Galaxy S4 GT-i9506 4.4.2 started getting weird.
I kept wondering why my sound profile kept changing to something else eventough I've set it ie. for vibrate.
One day I noticed what was going on.
Everytime I open "settings" no matter how, through the gear in the upper corner of the notification drop down screen or from the app drawer, whatever...
My phone changes the sound profile automatically to silent. Once I exit the "settings" area alltogether the sound profile automatically changes to sound again.
No matter what profile I had to begin with it changes to silent when entering the "settings" area and to sound when exiting the "settings" area.
This problem still exists.
If i mess around in the sound settings area, everytime I open a setting to change, the sound profile goes to sound
momentarily until I back out from the menu to somewhere else in the general settings area, then it instantly goes back to silent again.
I haven't installed any apps that mess with sound settings.
Problem number 2 :
My phone started to randomly get really hot during which the battery drained really fast. And sometimes the phone would freeze.
Shutting down and starting the phone always made the phone work as normal again.
Next phase was that the phone started to randomly get hot again as before but this time the phone went to a boot loop.
The phone kept restarting itself over and over again.
In fact my aunts Samsung phone (don't know the model) started doing the same thing recently. I told her to remove the SD card and the phone was back to normal, so I guess this is a common problem with Samsung phones.
Next phase was that on top of the boot loop the phone kept unmounting and mounting the SD card. A Kingston micro SDHC 16GB class 4 card that wasn't too full.
Shutting down by removing the battery and starting again made the phone stable for a while. While the phone was stable "Gallery" functioned normally as any way of browsing the files on the SD card.
I still figured that the SD card was the problem, I removed it and the phone was back to normal apart from the sound profile problem.
Now to the things I need help the most.
I really need the files from the SD card but the SD Card wont open anymore in any computer, card reader or phone I've tried.
How can I recover the files from the SD card? A file recovering program perhaps?
What program is the best for this? It doesn't have to be free.
Also I guess an factory reset would fix the sound profile issue and some other occasional problems, but I would like to keep my phone as it is .
Is there a way to backup the whole phone, and do a factory reset and then restore every app, setting, file etc. I MEAN EVERYTHING back as they were? I just wan't my phone as it is without these bugs.

You can factory reset your phone but you can't recover everything. This is the idea of reset to get a fresh phone...

Related

Cingular 8525 Device Speed Issue and Questions?

Device: 8525
The first question, does installing tons of applications on storage (memory) slow down your device? (I'm not speaking of running several programs at once but, essentially installing softwares on the device other than SD.)
Second question, the theory of, anything that goes on your TODAY'S SCREEN, should go on the device, however, is there a specific limitation as to how much should go onto the device?
In other words, I noticed that my memory runs roughly between (from soft boot) 28m and an average of 20-25m. Usually the device starts feeling sluggish around 20-25m. It's tolerable but this is only having basic applications on the device. I noticed that once I went below 20m, I'm prone to crashing and severe slowdown on applications launching, closing, etc.
I currently have all my applications on the SD card. I won't focus on the non-today screen applications but I did install those softwares as well on the SD card. The only thing I have installed on the device are Resco Keyboard, Tengo, Flexmail.
Needless to say, my device runs pretty fast. I do get occasionaly lock ups. Lock ups such like when I press the Standby button, at times, when I press the standby button again to wake it up, it won't wake up. Lights are still blinking as if it was active but nothing. I have to actually remove the battery and turn it back on.
This issue could be caused by? (Today screen items installed on SD card?)
I will probably try to reinstall all the todays screen item on the device later on but I'm still testing as to what is the best thing to do. Obviously, there is no way around having certain applications on the SD card but this obviously leads me to my first question.
Here are my current software (there are more but non-essentials are no issue and are on the SD card).
SBSH PocketBreeze
SBSH Contact Breeze
Pocket Informant
SBSH Ilauncher
SBSH Pocket Weather
Flexmail
PhoneAlarm
These are all on the SD card.
What do you think?
nutnbolt said:
Device: 8525
The first question, does installing tons of applications on storage (memory) slow down your device? (I'm not speaking of running several programs at once but, essentially installing softwares on the device other than SD.)
Second question, the theory of, anything that goes on your TODAY'S SCREEN, should go on the device, however, is there a specific limitation as to how much should go onto the device?
In other words, I noticed that my memory runs roughly between (from soft boot) 28m and an average of 20-25m. Usually the device starts feeling sluggish around 20-25m. It's tolerable but this is only having basic applications on the device. I noticed that once I went below 20m, I'm prone to crashing and severe slowdown on applications launching, closing, etc.
I currently have all my applications on the SD card. I won't focus on the non-today screen applications but I did install those softwares as well on the SD card. The only thing I have installed on the device are Resco Keyboard, Tengo, Flexmail.
Needless to say, my device runs pretty fast. I do get occasionaly lock ups. Lock ups such like when I press the Standby button, at times, when I press the standby button again to wake it up, it won't wake up. Lights are still blinking as if it was active but nothing. I have to actually remove the battery and turn it back on.
This issue could be caused by? (Today screen items installed on SD card?)
I will probably try to reinstall all the todays screen item on the device later on but I'm still testing as to what is the best thing to do. Obviously, there is no way around having certain applications on the SD card but this obviously leads me to my first question.
Here are my current software (there are more but non-essentials are no issue and are on the SD card).
SBSH PocketBreeze
SBSH Contact Breeze
Pocket Informant
SBSH Ilauncher
SBSH Pocket Weather
Flexmail
PhoneAlarm
These are all on the SD card.
What do you think?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To be honest it sounds like you have this pretty well thought out already. You know the theory - anything that runs allthe time should be in Main Memory the rest on SD etc etc.
My experience is that yes, if you over-crowd Main memory it will slow down and crash.
I largely ignore the rules about not storing certain apps on storage card. My only exceptions are Wallpaper and my regular Ring tone - (all the rest on card)
I did notice frequent hangs while I had Phone Alarm installed. (However it has several settings which perhaps could have been changed to make it work more smoothly)
I do not get many lockups but I have run all the usual precautions such as "The Fake Server" for Active Sync automatic soft re-sets, Task manager to shut running progs., etc etc
Overall I guess it's a trade off against speed if it's installed to Main Memory and slowing things down if you overfill Main memory. You find your own balance. I favour virtually everything on SD Card.
Mike
If I had it my way, I would store everything on the SD card. Unfortunately some applications will not work on it, however, some are so and so. It will but it won't. Nevertheless, I thought this out well but I needed to find out if there was anything I would miss in terms of device issues. Like when it goes to sleep mode, I noticed in phonealarm, there is a way to prevent the battery from sleeping? What does that mean? I don't know....
Anyway, anyone else have any other suggestions.
Just got a sandisk 1 gig card for my 8525. Oddly when I press the power button to recover from sleep mode, without the disk in it restores in under a second. With the empty card installed it takes up to 3-4 seconds. Is this normal??
TIA
roverman said:
Just got a sandisk 1 gig card for my 8525. Oddly when I press the power button to recover from sleep mode, without the disk in it restores in under a second. With the empty card installed it takes up to 3-4 seconds. Is this normal??
TIA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does not sound excessive BUT I have same SD card and restores in under 1 second with card in.
Mike
I would put ALL of those apps on your device. The card should be used for programs that you OPEN and CLOSE when done. All of those apps run while the phone sleeps. Exit media player when you tyurn the phone off, in case it is playing mp3's that are on yourcard, etc. The whole point is this:
You're device should never, for any reason, try to access the card while asleep!!!
That's the golden rule...
OK so I have to ask. What happens when you break the golden rule? Is it possible that applications accessing the micro SD card while the unit is 'sleeping' (eg messaging software connecting to download new messages every X mins and trying to save them on the SD card) is the cause of the lockup / freeze condition that people are reporting (and that I have too - but only when apps that connect to data network are running in the background).
I have broken the golden rule. I store everything on my SD card with the exception of a few that didn't allow it. This includes softwares that even goes on my today's screen.
How is it performing?
Well, you will get lockup's if you don't know how each software reacts. What is the cause of it? I'm not sure exactly. I know that I narrowed down a couple of softwares that I initially stored on my SD card and then finally moved it onto my memory and the lockups/BSOD (Black screen of death) disappeared.
You have top lay around when installing each software. Some software will warn you that you should install it in memory but can get away with it if it's on the SD card and some softwares will tell you THIS SHOULD BE ON MEMORY, so I don't mess with that. I suggest install as much as you can on SD card and if something goes wrong, check the settings of the last recently software you installed and make sure nothing in the settings is causing the lockup. If there is nothing, then move it to memory.
So here is what I've found out so far for my 8525.
I've convinced myself that if any application, running in the background while the PDA is 'sleeping' (ie the screen turned off), tries to access the SD card it will cause the PDA to lock up.
For a while I thought the issue was related to apps connecting via DUN to the internet, but I now thinks the lock up are related to the SD card access.
So I do install apps on the SD card where possible - but NOT ones that would access the SD card while running in the background. This also applies to where data is stored - eg message attachments (if messaging is downloading e-mails/attachments periodically don't store them on the SD card).
Secondly ensure Active Sync is set to 'manual'. See the following post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-288352.html
When I ensure nothing is running in the background that accesses the SD card I don't see lock up. While I've not been able (yet) to attribute 100% of my lockups to SD card access by doing this I've been able to virtually eliminate lock ups (I was getting 2-3 per day).
This also implies that I can't leave the programs that I installed on the SD card running in background when the device goes into sleep if there is any possibility they will try and access the SD card (some apps won't do anything until you interact with them, some apps run in the background and connect/download data etc - those I can't leave running).
Hopefully the new ROM will be released shortly and will eliminate this problem and improve the reliability overall!!
derekmg said:
So here is what I've found out so far for my 8525.
I've convinced myself that if any application, running in the background while the PDA is 'sleeping' (ie the screen turned off), tries to access the SD card it will cause the PDA to lock up.
For a while I thought the issue was related to apps connecting via DUN to the internet, but I now thinks the lock up are related to the SD card access.
So I do install apps on the SD card where possible - but NOT ones that would access the SD card while running in the background. This also applies to where data is stored - eg message attachments (if messaging is downloading e-mails/attachments periodically don't store them on the SD card).
Secondly ensure Active Sync is set to 'manual'. See the following post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-288352.html
When I ensure nothing is running in the background that accesses the SD card I don't see lock up. While I've not been able (yet) to attribute 100% of my lockups to SD card access by doing this I've been able to virtually eliminate lock ups (I was getting 2-3 per day).
This also implies that I can't leave the programs that I installed on the SD card running in background when the device goes into sleep if there is any possibility they will try and access the SD card (some apps won't do anything until you interact with them, some apps run in the background and connect/download data etc - those I can't leave running).
Hopefully the new ROM will be released shortly and will eliminate this problem and improve the reliability overall!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is a good summary and good to get actual experience feedback. The proof of the pudding is in the eating or in your case the enormous reduction in lock ups.
Mike
I took another approach to this problem. I like to keep everything on my SD card as well, but I hate the lag that occurs if you put the device to sleep. My solution was, simply put, to never put it to sleep. I disabled sleep completely and I never use the power button to shut down the screen. It's very very nice having it instantly ready to go at the touch of a button. The battery life usage is minimal for me to have this benefit. However, I feel this device is a bit slow still. I would like to find an overclocking program that works for this device eventually.
I was able to reproduce the freezing in standby (i.e. the device not waking up, but leds blinking AND when I tried to call myself from another phone I heard the ringings in the caller phone, but no sign from the freezed TyTN).
I Installed AEButtons (on PHONE memory, not on card).
Put HW1 / HW2 that on single-click / double click to toggle WiFi.
I turn WiFI off, then on, using the HW shortcut.
Then put phone manually to sleep.
It won't wake up by any mean, except soft reset.
Unfortunately, this worked for me every time .
I am uninstalling now all programs one by one because sometimes the freezing would manifest when charging, too (but not always). I will probably end up with a hard reset and start rebuilding again...

Auto hard reset - wp7

anyone else with this problem? i decided to stop using wp7 after a couple of auto - hard reset after every 4-5 days of usage and countless hours of deploying side applications and dreadful unlocking chevrons and activation codes and etc... %@$%
SIGH.
anyone who can solve this problem is much appreciated.
i once had this issue, too: turned my hd2.7 on in the morning, had a look at the display and voila - all settings are gone to factory state (brown tiles, english lanquage, all my apps were gone, too....) first time i was shocked; but then i discovered that this behaviour was the result of the non-compatibility of my sd-card! i switched my device off, pulled out the sd-card, re-inserted it directly after pulling it out and as i startet my hd2.7 again, all settings, apps and data were back!!!!! seemes to me, that any sort of cache or ram partition on the card runs into full after a few days of continouus using the device, and then the card disappears from the raid-system, looking to the user like performing a hard-reset... it's just like you would have startet your divice without the card insertet then.
for me, the solution was to buy a stated-as-compatible sandisk 8gb class 2 card - now all my wp7 problems are gone away
thank you my mannn!
edit: it doesnt work, it keeps auto reboot before even entering the home (tiles). and sumtimes when it gets in, it is factory resetted.

Safe Mode!

I'm starting to think I might have something wrong with my Note. From time to time I'll turn on the screen and go to do something, but it'll freeze, then go black and make the chimes sound it does when booting up. At first I thought touchwiz was restarting since it doesn't always make the chime sound, but now I'm pretty sure it's doing a full reboot.
Yesterday I got the freakout reboot, but this time it booted up into Safe Mode! I didn't even know there was such a thing on Android, but see the attached screenshot. It clearly says Safe Mode in the bottom left corner, and it deleted several widgets from my home screens, and in my app drawer it removed most of the apps from the folders I'd created, but left the folders.
Rebooting took the device out of safe mode, but didn't fix my foldered icons or home screen widgets. Pretty annoying.
Anyone else had any Safe Mode experiences? Any idea what might cause a spontaneous reboot into it?
Since you have AT & T in your profile, could it be that you're posting in the wrong thread?
If you have AT&T Galaxy Note I717, you should go here for assistance:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1494
Restart your phone. . My little boy managed to put my note into safe mode (dont ask me how cos i cant work it out how he did it) turning off the phone and restarting puts the phone back to normal
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium
You enter safe mode buy touching the menu button while the phone boots. If you are not touching menu, then some ap/ software is causing this. Try a factory reset to see if that resolves the problem.
chasmodo said:
Since you have AT & T in your profile, could it be that you're posting in the wrong thread?
If you have AT&T Galaxy Note I717, you should go here for assistance:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1494
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I have the international Note. I did just buy an AT&T version, too, but haven't started using it.
I did reboot back into normal mode already. I was mainly wondering if booting into safe mode was responsible for removing all of my aftermarket widgets, non-stock app links in the bottom quicklaunch section, and taking everything out of the folders in my app drawer except for the stock apps. I guess I'll start removing apps and hopefully the problem will go away. The spontaneous reboot happens probably once every other day on average, but just to safe mode that once so far.
my phone used to go into reboot loops often and also very predictable. widgets would not load properly too.
The problem as per me is a buggy apps 2 sd move occurring in the phone (reproducible event every single time i recreate that situation).
Solution that i found the hard way after a lot of trial and error and a lot of frustration (needing to repeatedly reload all my apps) was to go into application manager and delete any apps that are present but blanked out without logos. They are always some apps that have been moved to sd card improperly by the phone.
Sometimes when you try to move many apps fast to sd card in sequence then the move isnt done properly and you get application manager showing the app size as 4kb or 8kb or 12kb etc when the actual app size is many times that or even several hundred kbs or mbs. you will need to uninstall all these apps and reinstal them slowly one by one instead of autoupdating market apps which just recereates the problem if the app has already been moved to sd card.
Also another reason not to auto audate apps that have been moved to sd card is that sometimes when you have many apps then this auto update feature when moving it to sd card does it improperly and previous properly installed app after the autoupdate will cause the device to crash because the sd move is buggy and when you go through application manager then the app size show is at variance with actual size and usually just shows 4kb 8kb or 12kb etc instead of usual size. You will then need to uninstal these apps and start all over again.
Since manually moving apps to sd one by one and removing autoupdate for these apps i havent had issues usually.
Once the phone even got stuck on data signal only and would not let wifi on and when ever switched on it would immediately disable it autoatically. couldnt solve this by rebooting or deleting apps or firmware update (not rooted) and had to do a factory reset to sort the problem.
This is not an issue with sd card as even brand new sd cards cause the same issue again. The problem does not occur if all apps are on internal memory or sd card is removed. so guess it is an issue with phone being unable to properly work when many apps are trying to access info on card that it cant access because of improper transfer to sd card. phone then freezes and goes into reboot loops sometimes for 8hours at a go! only sorts itself when the apps are deleted and works ok when same apps are reinstalled properly.
ps: wondering what the safe mode does though and when it is useful to start in this mode? any pointers anyone.
once i accidentally removed the battery while the phone was on. When i put the battery back and restarted it, it booted in safe mode.
Mine just went into Safe Mode. I had rebooted the phone and put it in my pocket whilst it was rebooting. I rebooted normally and got it out of Safe Mode. There is one very annoying thing and one quite good thing that has resulted from this though.
Annoying thing: Many widgets now need putting back onto the home screens
Good thing: All Apps in the App Drawer are now in alphabetical order !!!!
Use app zorter from the market or clear data of touchwiz. All downloaded apps will be sorted automatically.
Well I had safe mode once after unexpected reboot. Still wondering what the reason was.
I have random rebooting issues with my Note as well. It hasn't always done this but it has been happening for the last few months and it'll generally happen once every couple of days. It does seem to be somehow related to moving apps around as mentioned in previous posts because I've had apps fail to move to SD a couple of times and it has rebooted once or twice whilst in the middle of trying to move an app to SD. It'll also sometimes reboot when auto-updating an app as I can hear the boot sound happening at times when I'm nowhere near the phone. I don't have any apps showing up with a dodgy icon at the moment but I have seen some stuff appear like that in the past and the only solution was to uninstall and reinstall the app; although that's only fixed the app in question, it's never solved the general rebooting issues. The phone will also sometimes lock up and reboot when trying to launch application (this seems to happen more often with newly installed apps at first launch, but that might just be a coincidence).
The only other odd thing I've noticed, which might well be completely unrelated, is that the shortcut for one particular app (the full version of "Where's My Water?") continually disappears from a folder of shortcuts on my main desktop screen. The app itself is usually still on the phone and will happily launch from the app drawer, but if I create a shortcut anywhere else it will always disappear again shortly afterwards and it's literally the only app this happens with. The only reason I mentioned this as possibly related is because the app has appeared with a bad icon once and had to be reinstalled again as if the phone had lost track of it on the SD card.
Anyway, I do get the feeling that the reboots are happening when the phone can't find something on SD storage, or when it can't get data on/off the card fast enough or whatever. God knows how you'd get to the bottom of this or solve it though; the ICS upgrade will probably force me to do a factory reset of my phone so I'm hoping the issue will just fix itself as part of that process otherwise I'll just need to put up with being annoyed at it.

Clicking at Secure Startup Pattern Input Screen

I've been having problems with device Encryption and the external storage not mounting, but I recently noticed that after enabling Secure Startup on my Galaxy S7 Edge running 6.0.1 for Verizon and left at this screen for longer than a minute without touching it, a clicking sound as if you were pressing buttons or entering the pattern can be heard. It's continuous and clicks every other second. I Reset All Settings, Reset Network Settings and even applied updates as well as restarted the phone after turning Secure Startup off and back on, but it's still happening. Not exactly sure if this is expected, but I couldn't imagine it would be, especiall due to the fact it's really audible. Any advice or suggestions would be great! I'm really at my wits end with this phone and I'm ready to throw it away. The encryption problem I had originally (found here: SD Card No Longer Available (Encrypted) After Firmware Update) is still an issue even after applying the latest updates and I can't afford to lose all the data on my SD card again.

A5 2016 crashing and restarting all the time, completely unusable. what could it be?

hi guys. my girlfriend has this A5 2016, and it is a complete piece of ****. it restarts on it's on, be it updating, under heavy usage or just in standby mode. it restarts several times in a row, sometimes going into that "optimizing applications" green screen before completing boot. sometimes it stays in this green screen for hours before i give up and reset it. sometimes it works, sometimes it goes back to the green screen. my girlfriend lost appointments a couple of times before learning that she can't rely on this POS phone.
as you can see, there isn't a clear pattern. is there a log in the system where I could check for the cause of all these crashes?
If your girlfriend didn't make any modification to it, prehaps her phone is fake
Maybe something was installed that doesn't work and makes the phone crash in the background or maybe the phone was shutdown while doing an update from the firmware. (it's a maybe, i am just guessing)
If you have a micro sd card (memorycard) in the phone you can remove it and see if the problem is still there. If problem is solved you need to format that card or maybe even replace it with a new microsd card
Also you can reset it to factory settings to remove everything you changed in the phone (after factory reset don't restore your apps in google play without very good looking if the apps are working ok)
If that doesn't solve the problem you can install TWRP recovery and do a full wipe & after that flash the stock firmware with Odin. If that still doesn't solve the problem you need to bring it back to the store where you bought it

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