Database Develop

how to troubleshoot random freezes and restarts

Hi guys, I have had a G1 for over a year now, and it has been rooted for that long. I began using cyanogen's mods since 4.1 or so, and they have been rock solid until recently, when I upgraded from 4.2.6 to 4.2.7. Ever since that upgrade, my phone has been "freezing" and rebooting at seemingly random intervals.
First, let me try to define what I mean by freezing: this usually occurs when the phone is put to sleep, and it just refuses to wake up. The screen remains black, however my notification LEDs continue to flash (if they were flashing before). Sometimes, the phone freezes while I am using it; buttons stop responding, and opening/closing the keyboard does not change orientation. The phone usually gradually slows down to a crawl before this type of display-on freeze happens. In both cases, I am able to restart the phone by pressing call+end+menu buttons.
For the restarts: these started happening recently, I'll guess after 4.2.9. This always happen while I am using the phone. It'll pause for a second, like it's frozen, then restart back to the G1 boot screen a few seconds later.
I have tried wiping, repartitioning my SD card from scratch, using the phone without any of my apps installed, etc. The only thing that seems to fix this is if I downgrade back to 4.2.6. I have tried to narrow this down to the best of my ability, but I still cannot figure out the cause. My question is, how can I begin to troubleshoot this? Is there a log or some way for me to see what is the last thing the phone tried to do before it froze/rebooted? Right now, I don't even know where to begin.

well for the phone freezing it MIGHT be too many apps running in the background and eating up CPU usage...download advanced task killer from the market, it allows you to close apps that run in the background.
as for the random reboots, i am almost certain it has to do with the rom you are on. there should be an app called "log collecter" in your app tray, it comes with the rom, try and get the logcat from it when your phone reboots, and send that logcat to cyanogen via the link he provides on his thread.

2 things that I can think about:
1. Wipe you dalvik-cache
if that does not fix it
2. This may be a good time to re-format the ext 2/3/4 partition of your card and do a complete wipe.

I have this exact problem, it first started with random sd card errors "removed sd card" with an sd card inserted, and now the black screen of death, I reformatted and repartitioned my 8gb transcend class 6 card and flashed latest cyanogen. Today I got the black screen again so I used nandroid and went back to cyan 4.0.4, I still got the black screen freeze running old rom but so far sd card is working so not sure what the cause is, bad sd card? I just got this card a month ago... or phone going bad?

yeah, i get the freeze, its usually when i am running multiple resource eating apps. Try advanced task killer for a convenient notification bar click away from closing apps.
I also get the other problem where it wont wake up! Seems like we are running into the same problems under the same ROM. When it doesnt wake up i usually wait a few seconds and try pressing other buttons than the menu button to wake it up when its not turning on. A combination of waiting 5 seconds and trying a different button usually wakes it up.

Hey guys, thanks for the logcat info.
The most frustrating part about this problem is that it is unpredictable; it just happens when it feel like it and is impossible for me to reproduce, therefore I cannot figure out the cause nor can I tell whether or not any changes I make have any effect.
I do have ATK, and I use it regularly. It still doesn't stop this from happening. In fact, I installed ATK in order to try to solve this, which means before this started occuring, I did not even have ATK installed nor did I have this problem.
Can anyone tell if there were any significant changes from cyanogens 4.2.6 to 4.2.7? I see the changelogs, but most of it doesn't really mean anything to me because I don't understand what its talking about.

Yeah I usually get the freeze after installing a new rom onto my htc dream 32a. I just take out the battery and put it back in. Then I reboot and have no problems after that.

try going back to previous rom you had and see if the problem still exists... could possibly be an issue with latest update for rom...

Sd apps disappearing

Every once and a while my apps that are installed on my sd card will mess up, usually after a reboot. By mess up I mean that the icon on the launcher will be the generic android logo and it will be listed on the sd card with a name that looks like com.rovio.angrybirds.
Uninstalling the apps and reinstalling them fixes the problem temporarily, but the apps will still disappear eventually plus I lose all my saved data.
I've seen similar topics that talk about launcher pro causing the problem, but this is different: the installation of the apps is actually messed up.
I'm using a Nexus One with stock 2.2.1 build FRG83D. Thanks for any help you can offer.

When you reboot, give it an extra 30 seconds before you unlock and start using the phone. This will give the phone time to read your card...
Might wanna try a faster card, also.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

I tried resetting the phone four or five times and waiting about a minute each time and the apps still didn't show up correctly.
I'm using the stock card, is it really that slow?

Your SD card might be at fault. Reformatting the SD card might help.

I tried doing that a few days ago when the same problem ruined almost every app on my phone. I did a factory reset at the same time and reinstalled every app that I had, just to be sure.

[Q] External SD card not getting registered from time to time?

When I first got my 2x I had no problems with a dismounting SD card. But recently it has started to happen and generally when the phone reboots on its own and such. When it then comes back online it has dumped the External SD card and I am either forced to peel off the cover and then disconnect and reconnect the card.
Or simply reboot manually and go from there. Either of the 2 methods remounts the card, but I am simply at a loss as to what causes the phone to dump it the first time around.
Anyone got any ideas or tips on this?

Tried with different cards?
I have not experienced this whatsoever. I'm using Transcend 8 GB class 6.

I don't really have a huge choice of cards considering the one I am using is a 16 gig one . And it worked juts fine in the HTC Desire I had before the LG.
And it worked fine in the beginning, with the LG. The phone only started being a bit retarded about it a week or 2 ago >_<

I've had the exact same problem. No idea when/why it happens :<

Same here...

And same here, started a couple of days ago.

I would try to format the card with SD Formatter from Panasonic. Do a Google search. I works real good.

I notice this problem only happens to me if I restart the phone using an app (or via clockwork). I have resigned myself to no longer restarting but to instead, shutdown the phone and manually powering it on again..

bullyfrog said:
I notice this problem only happens to me if I restart the phone using an app (or via clockwork). I have resigned myself to no longer restarting but to instead, shutdown the phone and manually powering it on again..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please add your support to the thread over at MoDaCo about Paul's reboot app then...

Same happened to me last night. I've had my Optimus 2X for 5 weeks now, never had any spontaneous reboots, it was quite stable actually. Last night I mounted an 8 GB Kensington external SD for the first time on this phone, with some music and videos on it. After booting up, everything worked perfectly. Then, I went listening to songs via YouTube. All of a sudden, nothing but a very loud humming, which continued after I removed and put back the earphone plug. And then, the phone rebooted by itself, for the first time. After it had rebooted, the external SD was still visible using AndroZip, but it was empty! I was pissed off and went to sleep. Just now, I shut off the phone and started it again, and the external SD is back, with all the stuff I put on it last night. So this incident kind of freaked me out. I mean, the 2X isn't what you call a low-end, cheap phone, is it?

same problem here

Did this happen to anyone on stock rom or could the issue be related to a custom rom?
I have been using a class 6 16GB sdcard (unbranded from a reliable seller @ ebay) for about 2 weeks and did not encounter such error, but I am still on stock rom.

topanyel said:
Did this happen to anyone on stock rom or could the issue be related to a custom rom?
I have been using a class 6 16GB sdcard (unbranded from a reliable seller @ ebay) for about 2 weeks and did not encounter such error, but I am still on stock rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didnt have it on stock, so it could be a custom rom problem, though i had it on fr17 and cm7 and everything based on that. Seeing as fr 17, if im correct, uses stock as a base it should be possible to happen on stock aswell. Someone correct me if im wrong though
Sent from my Optimus 2X using XDA App

sometimes i also have the mount problem, also in recovery ...
a reboot helps in most cases, sometime it needs 2 ...
i also notified that software reboot to recovery (with an app, o2x reboot) causes mounting problems of sd card more often than rebooting with magic keys ...
but it´s not happening regularly, so i can live with that ...

i had it twice on stock, but in a month's time, so it isn't so frequent fortunately

I have the problem on stock rom and if I do a restart... The phone gets hot where the sd card is once loaded back up. Its shows as Unavailable in SD & Phone Storage and have to then just switch the phone off/on and it shows up again. Strange!.
It must be something to do with a soft reset!....

has anyone figured out a solution to this problem yet?

I was about to start a new thread on this prob,luckily i saw this 1st. I also face this prob. My class4 16gb sd card sometimes become unavailable without any notice. Any solutions?
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA Premium App

have you guys tried to format the card ? i hear that fixes it for lg optimus one/s/v and so on which also has severe mount unmount issues (also optimus s got an update from sprint which resovled it)

xilw3r said:
have you guys tried to format the card ? i hear that fixes it for lg optimus one/s/v and so on which also has severe mount unmount issues (also optimus s got an update from sprint which resovled it)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Already tried that unfortunately both computer format and phone format.
Sent from my Optimus 2X using XDA App

[Q] Phone freezes randomly / needs hard reboot - 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 custom ROM's

Hi all
Ever since upgrading to 2.3.3 I've been having random freezes that usually end up in needing a battery pull or pressing down on the power button until the phone reboots itself. This is with Darky's 10.1, although I don't think it's related to the "Darky parts" of the ROM itself, but something more to do with the OS.
Also, I've felt that the phone sometimes slows down. It doesn't feel like the original lag on 2.1, but rather feels like something's eating up CPU power. This will happen on ANY application, and even when moving through homescreens on TW Launcher or ADW Launcher.
Another thing of note is that it seems to be the UI or input process that hangs or dies or something. Because whatever's running keeps running I just can't make the phone respond to touch or any of the hard buttons. For example, today I was playing Age of Wind (sweet game, check it out) and after like 10 seconds of the game stuttering, the phone stopped responding, but my ship just kept going forward and the other ships were trying to keep up with me. Sounds and music kept going. And after 30 seconds of "inactivity", the screen went to sleep. As you can see everything's normal except there's no input.
So what I'd like is for ideas on how to fix or figure out what's wrong. I'm somewhat tech-savvy so I wouldn't be scared of using adb or some other debugging tool. So far I've not been able to figure out what's wrong because all the logs start over whenever I reboot the phone.
So, any ideas? Any additional information that would be useful?
Edit and update: I've changed the title because this has already happened on different custom ROM's, including Darky and Criskelo.
I have now tested for 5 days on Criskelo's ROM (based on 2.3.4) and it will happen also. So far what I've noticed both on Darky's and on Criskelo's ROMs:
- The phone will work perfectly for about 4-5 days
- On the 4th day it will start stuttering and lagging. That's when I know it's very close to locking up.
- On the 4th day it will maybe lock up once in a day
- After the 4th day it will start locking up up to three times a day
- The lock-up is at the UI level. Applications will keep running, it will ring if you call it, notification sounds are still alive, the screen will turn off normally after 30 seconds or whatever timeout you set up. But input is totally dead.
- When it locks up, both soft-buttons will light up and stay lit.
Possible causes:
- Something related to USB storage or SD card storage. Someone mentioned that it might be caused by the "fast media scanner". It's possible, because on one of my many tests, instead of reinstalling an OS, I formatted the minisd, the internal sd and phone storage and the phone was fine for 4-5 days and then it started doing screwy stuff again. This reinforces the theory that it's something to do with storage. My guess is the OS itself starts degrading the filesystem or handles or something. And my suspicion is that it's something in the /system/dbdata or /cache partitions, not the sdcard or external sd cards. Impossible to know because I have no idea how to debug using adb and nobody has given any ideas on this.
- I'm starting to suspect the BLN support in the kernel. I have BLN turned off, but I'm not so sure.

Hi,
Sorry don't have any answers, but am having the exact same problems on Darky's 10.1. Except I have a TouchWiz4 Port + Galaxy S II Icons.
Hopefully someone will know of this issue! Its starting to annoy me!!
Cheers,
Sunny

Tell me something, when you installed Darky, did you restore your apps via Titanium Backup? Did you select "Restore apps + data" or just apps?
I'm in the process of reinstalling Darky's from scratch, see if that works. If not I might go back to 9.5 or try Criskelo's ROM.
Thanks

Hi,
Nope I didn't backup or restore any apps. My data is all on my SD card and I just reinstall apps.. I came from DebusROM G1.
Thanks,
Sunny

Maybe a factory reset (do it in recovery) would help?

I actually did a factory reset before installing.
@sundazetoo: Do you have Voodoo lagfix enabled?
Last night, while in the process of reinstalling Darky's ROM, I disabled the lagfix (converting to RSF) and after almost an hour i decided to pull the battery. Then when I rebooted again, it went through the conversion process, finished in 2 minutes (wut!) and an error displayed (it couldn't mount some partition, one that I know is not critical).
So I'm suspecting a filesystem problem.
I already installed and DO NOT have Voodoo's lagfix enabled. I also did a complete wipe and restored my apps without data. So far it seems fine but it's only been a few hours.

@Lunchbox115: I did the factory reset when I installed too.
@ferparedes: Yep voodoo is enabled. I am now running on the stock launcher that came with Darky's 10.1 and it seems to be running a lot smoother. I was running a TW4 port so that may have been my problem!
I will monitor it and let you know how it goes.
Have you tried clearing the data / cache for the launchers you are using? That seems to fix alot of FC issues for apps for me.. I guess no harm in trying anyways?

2 days in after reinstalling.
Voodoo EXT4 lagfix NOT enabled. Phone is pretty snappy and I've haven't had any more freezes. I think it was either a bad EXT4 conversion or the lagfix itself was causing it. Anyways, since the phone is pretty fast I'm leaving it with RFS lagfix only.
One thing of note, though. I'm running stock GB launcher atm, because ADW was giving some problems.
Yesterday ADW Launcher *died* and although the phone was working and responsive, the launcher never came back. The result was that when I pressed the home button nothing happened but a blank screen. The power button worked, though, so I was able to do a clean reboot and switch to Launcher.

Interesting, I dont seem to have the same issues with the voodoo lag fix.
Also I am now using ADW Launcher EX and have not had any issues. I think my problem was the TW4 port.

Same again
I get these issues too. I seem to get them RFS and ext4 (I think - mostly its been ext4 though). Often get a delay on the keyboard. Its driving me a bit nuts but I am reluctant to go back to Froyo just for this (I hate having to restore all my user names and passwords).
Silly thing is I cannot recall if I got in when I tried Gingerreal (on Darky 10.1 now).
Would love to see thoughts and theories too..
G

UPDATE
After almost 2 days of totally flawless operation, I reinserted my 16 GB Micro SD card with all of my stuff in there. Among many things:
- Audible audiobooks, along with bookmark and "furthest listened" data
- Music, playlists. All created by TuneSync (which I use to wireless sync music and playlists from my PC's iTunes)
- Dropbox download folder
- Photos and videos taken with the phone
- Some other files not associated with any app
2 hours after doing this, blam, the phone locked up again requiring a reboot. So I removed the Micro SD and when I got home I backed up my photos and videos on the PC, reinserted it in the phone and formated the card. This was last night.
So far the phone's working fine.
My current theory:
The Micro SD card I originally bought for the phone was an 8gig. When I got the 16 gig one, I just copied everything from the 8gig onto a folder on the PC, then copied everything over to the 16 one. This might've broken something.
After going to Gingerbread, it's possible that the way some applications look for their data (for example, Audible) changed but when encountering the same data (that was copied over from a windows folder on the PC) it might've generated errors which in turn put the interface into a deadlock.
My strongest suspect is Audible. After installing Darky 10.1, the app just chugged away remembering all my farthest listened to data, all my audiobooks were visible, etc. After reinstalling (and removing the Micro SD) I had to redownload some, but it still remembered where I was and didn't have to reactivate the device. Now, after formatting the Micro SD, I've had to redownload everything, it didn't remember where I was on each audiobook and I also had to reactivate the device.
If the phone doesn't lock up during the next 4-5 days then I'll conclude that errors on accessing the Micro SD by some app was the cause.

sundazetoo said:
Interesting, I dont seem to have the same issues with the voodoo lag fix.
Also I am now using ADW Launcher EX and have not had any issues. I think my problem was the TW4 port.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I actually don't think ADW launcher is causing this particular problem. But in a different problem altogether, it did die and in this case required me to do a reboot, albeit a clean one. But if it gave me this one single problem than I'm inclined to stop using it. I don't want the phone disabled for the 3-5 minutes it takes to boot up if I need it in an emergency (it's a phone first and foremost, after all)

tw4 is an EVIL for SGSi9000 imho... because almost everyone have problems with it !!! so just use another Launchers... LauncherPro, Launcher EX (my favourite) but not TW4 )))

I tried to fix with a reinstall of stock jvp and then went to F1 v8 jvp rkm but I also formated ext_sd card as suggested here (and deleted audible application which I was not using.
So far so good but it's only been an hour...
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA Premium App

Definitely something related to sd card. Everything is screwy now but less so with the sd card out.
Anyone find any solutions?
I was getting double boot screens and freezes on the dialer. Realized it was the sd when my backup would not load.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA Premium App

Had this happen to me today,
I had the phone boot up and it would get to the lockscreen, then media scan, then it would lock up, only a battery pull would turn it off.
Tried booting without the External SD and it didnt occur, hmmm
Put the microSD card in the card reader on the PC, and performed a scan for errors/fix bad sectors, it didnt find anything but i put it back in and it goes fine now, im sure its the external card.

related info
Found this thread that seems related;
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=367912&page=3
Trying the chkdisk utility now...

It did it again with the micro sd card out. So today I reformated the internal SD storage (usb storage) and will see how it goes. If this last attempt fails I will either go back to froyo or try another ROM.
But I do think it has something to do with one of the SD card storage.

gfacer said:
Found this thread that seems related;
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=367912&page=3
Trying the chkdisk utility now...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Should be fine

More things to try
Looked at my rom page (F1 JVP) and noticed that V8, which I have now, had the faster media scanner as does Darky's 10.1-which is not getting updates often now it seems. Well the faster media scanner only lasted 2 days until V9 of the F1 rom when the delevoper removed it. My guess it that it was causing issues.
Leads me to wonder if that might be causing the corruption in the first place or at least a contributing factor.
Also read some threads at google about similar issues across a whole wave of devices and one person there mentioned H2testw utility to test the sectors of your SD card. It sounds like cheap ebay sd card and larger SD cards my have more issues (mine is a 32gb). It is best to format and then test with h2testw but I decided to run just on the empty parts of the card and decide from there.
G

[Q] Lockscreen unlock delay

I am running SpeedMod Kernel K3-3 on stock LPY rom. On the lockscreen I use WidgetLocker (but problem also was happening before I installed this). Pretty much been happening since I installed SpeedMod.
When I click the home button the screen comes up fine. Sometimes I can go ahead and do the normal unlock procedure. Meaning I can grab the lock and drag/swipe to unlock and it works. BUT many many times (and possibly because of deep sleep) there is a delay. Basically my screen is frozen...I cant access the notification bar etc etc...and when the screen is about to blackout again (6-8 seconds) then I can swipe to unlock. So essentially there is a 6-8 delay many times from being able to actually swipe on my screen. Has anyone experienced this or have any advice on what to try. I have wiped my data from CWM already and still happens.
I was going to try and ask this under my rom in development but I don't have enough whatever it takes to post there. I have also searched and searched but didn't find this exact issue or a fix for it. I have seen tons of threads about the clicking of home button delay though.

Is this the 1st custom kernel you have used with stock ICS?
Have you tried any others like francos r6 as it seem to work fine with LPY roms?

first kernel I have tried. Maybe I will give Francos a shot. I have been reading a bit more and see that maybe it could be related to my SD card? Not sure why or how this could be but I understand that when it deep sleeps so does the SD card. I have nothing to my knowledge monitoring the SD card though so I dont know why it would freeze trying to access it.

unless your widget locker app is on your sd card i wouldnt see any reason for it to effect unlocking your phone.

The only thing I have really on my external SD card that is used by the phone is ringtones/notification/UI sounds. I have copied those over to the phones SD card and deleted the ones on the external SD card. Going to test this out to see if this worked.
UPDATE - that seems to have done it. Amazing. So I guess the bottom line is to not have anything that the phone system uses or needs on the External SD Card. Tones/Sounds/Wallpapers etc.
Thanks for helping olliesmith6121

jbeef86 said:
The only thing I have really on my external SD card that is used by the phone is ringtones/notification/UI sounds. I have copied those over to the phones SD card and deleted the ones on the external SD card. Going to test this out to see if this worked.
UPDATE - that seems to have done it. Amazing. So I guess the bottom line is to not have anything that the phone system uses or needs on the External SD Card. Tones/Sounds/Wallpapers etc.
Thanks for helping olliesmith6121
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
happened to me as well, i noticed that widgetlocker was on external SD, and is doing the same problem as yours. I noticed it when widget locker is always closing when using usb storage, so i transferred widgetlocker on PHONE memory and it worked, no more delays and force closes whatsoever

Dammit problem started back up again. Definitely deep sleep has something to do with the issue.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium