So, a little history...
I'm on my 2nd Captivate (unrelated issue). The boot problems didn't arise until I restored my data onto it. The first time I tried restoring system data along with my apps (which I figured was safe since I was going from 2.1 stock to the same) but that had lots of issues. So I did a factory reset, and started over. This time I just restored apps and their data, and a few specific pieces of system data (contacts, wifi APs, etc). That worked better. But later I got too aggressive with what system apps I "froze" (using Titanium Backup), and it got into boot loops I couldn't break out of. So I did another factory reset.
This time, first I carefully froze only apps I was to confirm were safe to freeze. I didn't proceed restoring my apps until I was done freezing and ensured it was booting fine. I then restored all my apps (and their data). The problem is now that it takes forever to boot... in fact, it'll go into a boot loop if I just leave it be. It seems the only way I can gain access is to try and unlock it before it's done booting, clear any "Force close" errors (sometimes takes a few tries) and given enough attempts, I can get in. But the boot takes an unbelievable amount of time, and even with my original apps is many times longer than before on my previous Captivate. Once I fuss my way in, it seems mostly fine, but something is obviously wrong and I want to get it straightened out.
Aside from doing another factory reset, and reinstalling all my apps (which takes like a day without troubleshooting after each, since batch restores in TB don't seem to work well on the Captivate so I have to do them one by one), I'm hoping there's a way to troubleshoot it in its current state and try to fix the problem surgically versus erasing and starting over. I looked at the logcat logs but got in over my head... there are so many errors and warnings and I don't know what's normal and what isn't... too many to know where to begin with searching Google.
So... advice? What tools are available? Even the logcat doesn't seem to kick in until the boot is mostly done, so I'm not sure if it can catch the problem while it's happening. One frustrating thing about Android is that is seems to have no "safe mode" or other diagnostic boot or full logging where you can methodically look at what's happening and experiment with the config. If this was a Windows, Linux or FreeBSD box I'd be in my element and able to get to the bottom of this, but on Android I feel even more crippled, locked-out and helpless than even on Windows. Urgh.
There's got to be a better way to troubleshoot and fix than endless random factory resets. This is something us anti-Windows people scold PC makers for, with all their use of "Restore CDs" for every minor and trivial software issue.
Thanks!
I can't help but think you are still disabling some essential system apps. Either that or one of your apps is causing major problems. Please list what you have frozen in tibu. Btw, the batch function works fine and is what most people on here use.
Also, what is force closing after you restore your apps.
newter55 said:
I can't help but think you are still disabling some essential system apps. Either that or one of your apps is causing major problems. Please list what you have frozen in tibu. Btw, the batch function works fine and is what most people on here use.
Also, what is force closing after you restore your apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, thanks for taking a stab at this.
My frozen apps are:
* AllShare
* AT&T FamilyMap
* AT&T Hot Spots
* AT&T Maps
* AT&T Music
* AT&T Navigator
* AT&T Radio
* Daily Briefing
* Days
* Instant Messaging
* Media Hub
* Mini Diary
* Mobile Banking
* Mobile Video
* MobiTV
* Where
* Write and Go
* YPmobile
I also tried removing my MicroSD card, as well as switching back to Touchwiz (from LauncherPro). Didn't help.
Yeah the batch problem in TB is very frustrating. I'm using the pay/donate version so I'm missing out on a feature I paid for. I've been exchanging emails with Joel (the author) and we haven't figured it out yet. Batch backups work fine. Batch uninstalls also work fine (update: phone just spontaneously rebooted after about 50 or so uninstalls in a batch). It's the batch restores that seem to choke it. It's not corrupt backup files... a verify runs fine, and I can individually restore the same handful of apps one by one that will choke and hang/reboot the Captivate if attempted to restore in a batch.
The FC error I get is on boot-up, as I try to unlock the screen prior to the boot finishing. I often see "Process system is not responding".
I have aLogcat installed, if that's any use. A few questions about that:
- What's the best logging level to view on? In other words, do I care about "Warnings"?
- What errors are common, harmless, and safe to ignore?
Currently I've tried uninstalling everything down to just a few core apps. Certainly boots fine now, but I get plenty of warnings and errors in logcat.
Are u restoring just the user installed apps+data, or system apps too? Or restoring system stuff like contacts data, accounts prefs, etc?
diablo009 said:
Are u restoring just the user installed apps+data, or system apps too? Or restoring system stuff like contacts data, accounts prefs, etc?
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Click to collapse
I did not do a "restore system data" or any batch/bulk option in TB that restored all system data. As I recall, the only system data I restored a-la-carte (by selecting the individual item from the TB list) were:
Accounts
Bluetooth pairints
Bookmarks
Calendar
Contacts
Wi-Fi Access Points
These were all items in green in TB. I don't believe I restored anything else. Possibilities I suppose are wallpaper settings, "Country, Launguage, Time Zone"... but I definitely would not have restored anything not green.
Are these items safe? Is there any system data definitely not safe to restore? I have to wonder though, if "system data" is unsafe to even restore to the same stock OS version... why back it up at all?
I'm not a long distance from doing yet another factory reset I suppose, if it must come to that. But I'd love a way a bit more analytical/exacting to try and troubleshoot this other than "reinstall one app, reboot, see what happens" as that will take me a week to get back to where I was. I also suspect it's not just one single app that would suddenly show a huge difference after installing, but instead might be the cumulative errors from several apps and knowing how to identify that and clean them up would be useful.
Using adb logcat you can view what is occurring while the phone is booting and possibly see where it is hanging or what is causing the slow boot times. I have seen problems from restoring data such as accounts and contacts with titanium backup but does not seem that it should be an issue when using the same system though I have very little experience with the stock firmware. I know it is not an answer to your question but it seems that you are wanting to remove all the att/Samsung BS so why not flash a rom that does this as well as much more?
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
Thanks for the tip about adb. I've actually not needed adb for anything yet so I've never set it up or used it. I wasn't aware that the service would be active early enough on the phone's boot process to allow it to log boot logs... nor was I even aware it could do this. I'll definitely check out how to set this up... however, if you have a free second and can point me in the right direction (FAQ, instructions, etc) it'd certainly be appreciated otherwise I'll search around and try to find it.
I could probably find other ways to restore contacts and could set my accounts up again manually but I really doubt that's the cause and the other ways are sort of a pain and imperfect. Since neither of us is really convinced that'd be it I won't bother yet until/unless you really suspect it.
I wondered how long it'd take before someone would suggest a custom ROM, this being XDA and all. Short version is I'm not really sold on the concept, as they are all based on the buggy beta leaked ROM, or 2.2 ROMs from other devices that have been hacked up to sort of work as well as possible on the Captivate. All seem to have issues... enough that I'm not really left feeling confident about them. Seems every release unleashes new issues despite addressing old ones, and all seem to have at least a handful of gremlin items that just don't work quite right. Don't have a warm fuzzy feeling, and I still feel like Samsung is going to release an official 2.2 for the Captivate within the next month or so, so I'm interested to see what comes of that. If nothing else, it'll give a better baseline for custom 2.2 ROMs. Then there's the 2.3 being worked on... now that might be interesting.
I don't really think my issue here is related to me running 2.1.
On my phone so it is a pita to search and add a link for you but search for android sdk and you will find what you need to get adb up and running.
And as far as the rom issue goes..it is your phone and I respect your concerns I just had to ask
I would think its media hub that slows it down. It will search your SD cards on every boot. I would start there first.
smokestack76 said:
I would think its media hub that slows it down. It will search your SD cards on every boot. I would start there first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's one of the apps I've frozen though.
For me the longest process while booting is the stupid media scanner upon bootup. Takes FOREVER for the phone to finally "boot" all the way up.
Been looking for a way to disable it (not really lol) and only have it scan manually to see if the boot time will improve. I'd start searching there.
Also - from what I've read nothing you did should have affected the phone. BUT - if your using Google for your Calendar and Contacts.. and they all get synced up to Google? Why bother doing the restore for those? After you sign up with the Market they get pulled back down to your phone automagically
It's definitely more than just the media scanner. I watch that. When everything is loaded up, it actually reboots in a loop unless intercept the FC. The media scanner will rerun over and over each time... far more than the standard two times.
And I use Google Calendar for my events, but I keep my contacts locally on my phone.
So what is the FC again?
Yep.. my media scanner will run at least 3 times before it stops checking everything.
Very frustrating that the software does this EVERY time I boot back into my phone - you'd think a programmer would put a check to see if it had run before or make it user configurable to scan when you want it to.
avgjoegeek said:
So what is the FC again?
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Click to collapse
See my second post (reply #3):
"Process system is not responding"
LOL sorry not enough coffee and a lil' guy that decided to wake up at 4a.m. = not a good mix.
Well.. did the ol' wise search of Google and came up with:
Might be a permissions issue. Easiest way to fix it is to run ROM Manager and have it fix permisions.
Run the command yourself in ADB:
Code:
Open terminal and
>su
$mount -a
$fix_permissions -r
The -r is optional, but necessary if you find orphaned apps (the app not found please reinstall message)
And reboot. That may help.
And it was also stated that you might have an errant widget/application causing the issue as well. That will be fun trying to figure out what it is.
And.. from my non-dev/non-professional experience - I have checked the logs on my phone and do see a large number of warnings on the phone - but never hindered performance.
So.. 99% of the time you can probably ignore them.
But back to the FC issue - I would try doing a restore of your apps/data again (I read where you have it back down to the "core) and then run the permission script or have ROM Manager do it for you and see if it returns.
Just an update that I think the "fix permissions" thing solved most (but perhaps not all) of my issues. Thanks so much for the tip. I've been reinstalling apps in batches and it's much better, although I see it getting bogged-down bit by bit and I can't pin down what or why.
Thing is, the apps I'm installing in these later rounds/batches shouldn't be resident all the time, shouldn't be auto-loading, and don't come up in things like Startup Cleaner or Advanced Task Killer. Nor do the various process monitors I've tried seem to have the granularity/ability to catch them while they're happening.
So things are better, but I still have some issues without a suitable means to diagnose. I don't get why just having more apps installed, but not running, should affect boot time so much. Hmm...
An inability to troubleshoot certainly rains on my love-affair with Android... not that I'm jumping to another platform anytime soon, but I really want this to work well (as well as be a good salesman to friends and family who often turn to me to show off quality technology).
hey all, i apologize in advance because i am fairly new to the rooting world, let alone the smartphone realm (considering the DROID3 is my first smartphone ever) but i heard about roots, hacks and all the crazy stuff you can do with a rooted phone. so i thought id give it a try.. ive backed up all my files, at least i think so, with titanium backup. i am wondering is there a way to get rid of all that crappy bloatware without going in to the system files and reprogramming it? im a reasonably intelligent person. and im tired of painfully reading through the internet, (been up for 18 hours now) and i really just want to put it to rest. ive already rooted i really just need some help from here. thanks all, and i appreciate any comments, sarcastic or not
Welcome to XDA. The search button is your friend. All of your answers can be found in the first few threads that are stickied at the top of the Development Section.
For root:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1240130
Remove Bloat:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1238472
If you don't want to run the script in the link above to remove the bloatware, you can use Titanium Backup PRO to 'freeze' any bloatware apps that you don't want to use. The freeze feature is only available in the paid version.
thank you friend, i have recently come across gemini app manager it claims to be able to do the same things as titanium backup pro, do you have any experience with this app? i "froze" a couple of my apps and the next thing i know i cant text or view my contacts.. please help
Don't freeze random things which you're not sure what it does, or apps that sounds as if it part of the system framework or phone related.
Zoibster said:
thank you friend, i have recently come across gemini app manager it claims to be able to do the same things as titanium backup pro, do you have any experience with this app? i "froze" a couple of my apps and the next thing i know i cant text or view my contacts.. please help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not used gemini app manager so I can't comment on the app.
As far as freezing goes - as mentioned, you have to be careful what you freeze. Freezing system apps can cause some things to not work properly.
Did you follow the link I listed for de-bloating earlier? If you download the .zip file and open it in a text editor it will show you all the apps that are frozen by the script and you can then use that list to freeze apps manually...
I'm taking an existing rom and removing some bloatware i don't want to run. Since this will not be a published thing, i want to personalize it some.
Is there a way i can have it set to have me logged in to google, and other apps as soon as it flashes? Maybe install few select apps and their settings, like live wallpaper.
I use dropsync paid app to sync entire memory card, say i have to replace device suddenly. That would be one of a few apps i want to have login and settings restored so when i flash rom on a blank phone, it just starts syncing and putting things back where they were on old phone. Also gCloud backup and set it to restore backups?
I could also do full wipes and never really loose anything.
Thoughts, rants?
I got a new wifi S2, installed the permissive kernel and rooted it. I installed TWRP and made a backup. Now I've got an uninstall app and I've removed a few things; primarily Knox and the security logger so that it quits whining at me. I have a strong desire to never ever use the cloud, create a Samsung account, or a Google account. I really just want to load some books onto it and DLNA some music and videos.
So I want to get rid of all the stuff that I'll never be able to use but it's not clear to me how to identify all that. I'm a long time Unix guy but not at all an android guy. If something prompts me to create an account I know I want to uninstall it, but damned if I can figure out how to identify what to uninstall from what icon I touched.
I've found bloatware lists but they're all somewhat old and not for the S2, so it's not clear to me if I should trust them. I'd like to avoid trial and error "uninstall and reinstall if something doesn't work" or the even more dreaded "uninstall and find out six months later that something doesn't work". Can anyone point me at a good list of what I can remove, or where I can figure out how to determine that for myself? Thanks.
Better start freezen apps instead of uninstalling them. I use titanium backup for that, but you can use whatever you like. Just be carefull freezing or uninstalling OS related apps, you can end in a bootloop, but you always have the odin flash method to reflash your system back to normal. Just don't play around with partitions or /dev .
Right now I using my tablet unrooted and untouched, so I can't be more specific which apps you can freeze without problems.
He doesn't need odin as he has a twrp backup.
I take it you are using System App Remover (root) to uninstall system apps? If so you are pretty safe as they are backed up and can be restored any time if something goes wrong.
Also are you aware without a Google account you will lose part of the functionality of an Android device?
Samsungs account you can do without. All that stuff related to it can be deleted, but don't advise removing any of the Google core services from the stock rom.
If you really want a GAPPless rom then you're better off with a non stock custom rom like CM or AOSP.
Not much in that area of development at the moment, but there are a couple of members working on it.
ashyx said:
He doesn't need odin as he has a twrp backup.
I take it you are using System App Remover (root) to uninstall system apps? If so you are pretty safe as they are backed up and can be restored any time if something goes wrong.
Also are you aware without a Google account you will lose part of the functionality of an Android device?
Samsungs account you can do without. All that stuff related to it can be deleted, but don't advise removing any of the Google core services from the stock rom.
If you really want a GAPPless rom then you're better off with a non stock custom rom like CM or AOSP.
Not much in that area of development at the moment, but there are a couple of members working on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, thanks. If I lose functionality to avoid Google watching over my shoulder I'm all for it. I'm old and probably overprotective of what's my business and not theirs. In truth, I bought the S2 because I have a collection of chess book pdf's and djvu's that I want to be able to read while I'm sitting at my chess board. I got the 9.7 inch S2 because the old eyes aren't what they used to be. Anything I can do beyond that is icing on the cake.
I do have the app remover, and I've removed the stuff that was obvious to me (like the Microsoft Office stubs). But there are still lots of things that bring up a prompt for an account when I run them and it's not clear to me how to figure out what app to remove to get rid of that particular thing. On Linux I could use rpm -q to figure out what rpm contained a file I want to remove and I'd be good to go. I've tried googling some of the app names but the "descriptions" I end up finding are particularly unenlightening. And since this is definitely not my area of expertise I don't really want to operate in "let's remove this and see what happens" even if I can reinstall the app from its backup. I've been doing software development and sysadmin for more than 35 years now and that just doesn't seem like the way to approach this.
I was looking at CM, which seems like it might be what I'm looking for, but it's still in alpha and my skill level is probably not up to coping with that so I'm back with the problem of how to decide what to get rid of.
Was wondering if I'm doing this right or not.
Normally when I upgrade to another Samsung device , power on the new device go through the motions then after done I use Samsung smartswitch. Any better methods?
Cheers
Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
If you can its better to do a new setup like only restore photos and contacts the rest do it manually in most cases setting up a fresh clean runs smoothly than restoring from backup
The only thing that get's backed up for me is my contacts and photos from my Google account. I've always liked doing a fresh install on new phones, not really sure if they run better or not. Little more time to set up but I kind of enjoy it.
I usually use Smart Switch to transfer only messages (SMS/MMS) and apps.
I do not have it bring settings across. Contacts, emails, browser book marks are all sync'ed to my Gmail Account. And Samsung internet browser book marks are also sych'ed to my samsung account.
Then I manually configure my favorite settings, widgets, short cuts, and launcher.
I'll use smartswitch, then use Helium to move apps AND their data over after smartswitch has done it's thing. I have a ton of apps that I need the data to migrate and since we can't root the only way to do that now is Helium. It is slow and clunky compared to Titanium, but at least it works (knock on wood don't want to jinx it), or has in the past with some effort and time.
It takes quite a bit of time (many hours) to get everything from my old phone to a new one. Part of me wishes I hadn't upgraded just so I don't have to go through the process. Oh well.
harukara said:
Want to Backup and restore data from note 8, my suggestion is android assistant tool. With its help, you can backup & restore data on note 8 within one-click. And it's easy and safe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why not just use the built in tool the phone maker provided built in? The software you pointed to, probably skims your data and sells it. Their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are sketchy as heck!!! What info do they reserve the right to share and with whom? It doesn't even give clear definition of that info, and they don't even give a list of who their "3rd party affiliates" are.