First, sorry for my bad English. Hope I make myself clear enough for you to understand me.
Second, to the moderators: feel free to move this topic if I posted it on the wrong session. But as you will see reading the following, I believe that the issue I will describe is directly related with the Neatrom - correct me if I'm wrong, but I have reasons to believe that.
So, here it goes:
I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 (i9100), running XXLSJ Neatrom Lite v4.0, and this kernell: 3.0.31-Siyah-s2-v6.0b4+
In december 2012, I bought a MicroSD card (model Sandisk Ultra 32Gb class 10) to install in my i9100, and it rocks.
But 4 weeks ago, when I was playing some games on the phone, I ignored the first battery low warning messages, and kept playing to a point that the phone simply turned off. Completely. I recharged the battery and, after powering the phone on again, it showed a message saying something like "blank sdcard" or something. I had many pictures and important movies on that card, so I decided to not format it; instead, I searched for a way to fix it.
I tried to access the files from my computer - on Windows, no success; on Ubuntu, no success; on Mint, no success. Windows and Linux showed the icon representing the sdcard, but when I tried to open it under Windows, it showed a message saying "this disk is not formated. Do you want to format it?". Linux didn't show any message, and didn't opne a single window to show its content. Nothing. Nada.
Then, my cousin (a geek genius) took my card to test it on his own notebook. He made some long research on the net, and installed a software called TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk - linux version) to try to recover the partition (or the MBR, I don't know exactly the tech name of this stuff...). He even entered on the software the number of cylinders, sectors and all that stuff to try to achieve sometuing... But after almost two hours reading tutorials, and trying hard to bring that card back to life with no success, he finally gave up, telling me to RMA the sdcard.
Then, I took the card from his hands, and put it aside, giving up too. Half an hour later, accepting the fact that my files was gone forever, I decided to try to format the card on my phone, to see if it would work after being formated. So, I put the card on the phone again, and powered the phone on... And, for my surprise, the card was back to life! For no reason, it decided to work again! With all the movies, all the pictures, all the games, everything was there, untouched!!!!
So, it worked great in the last 4 weeks, fast and nice - recording long HD movies, taking hundreds of pictures, installing huge data games, etc. It worked fine - until two days ago.
Because, two days ago, I was playing again, and again I ignored the low battery warnings, and it happened again! In the middle of the game, the battery ran out, and the phone turned off. Guess what? Yeah, after recharging it and turning it on again, there came that same message, telling me that my sdcard was blank! Again, no success trying to access it from Windows or Linux. And no geek cousin nearby...
(Of course, I had a backup of my files, created just after that first "death").
so, I sent an e-mail to my cousin, asking him about the software he used, and how it used it. He told me about that testdisk software. I downloaded the Windows version of the software, and give a try - no success. The program didn't recognize the drive letter of my "blank" sdcard, because the filesystem was simply not listed by the program. So, I went to the site, and I read that, under Linux, it was possible to force Testdisk to try to repair filesystems that was not shown in the list, by using a command line telling the software to look for the device through this mounting point (a folder inside /dev/). Linux stuff, I wont go any deep on this here.
So, I decided to restart my notebook, to boot on Linux to try that method. Guess what again? Suddenly, Windows recognized the sdcard again! I just ran the TestDisk utility, with no success - no command was used, I just ran the program, and since it didn't recognize the card, I closed the program. Nothing was done.
But, given the fact that the card was dead twice in the exact circumstantes (battery wearing completely off), and given the fact that the card came back to life after a simple run of the software TestDisk, I refuse to believe that it was a simple coincidence; I am not a geek, not a linux or android expert, nor a hardware wizzard, but my little experience tells me that it is possible that the android system locked the SDcard filesystem in a way that, after a sudden energy cut, it needed some sort of "logical shock" (made by TestDisk, even without any changes or command being called by the user, thats me).
I believe that this issue is part NeatRom's (or maybe kernell's) fault, because in stock roms, the system would close the app and close all sdcard access before turning the phone off to prevent issues like this one.
Again, I must repeat: I am not a technician, not an expert, so chances are I am wrong - very wrong. But I believe that my suspicions makes some sense, and woths to be investigated - or cleared out. And, of course, chances are that the card is deffective - and I already called RMA service from Sandisk. And I made another backup right now. But, I insist: everything is working: no movie corrupted, not a single file is corrupted... So, I still have a doubt here: was this issue cause by a deffective card, or was it cause by the sudden turn-offs?
Before you ask: no, I didn't test playing to the end of battery using another sdcard. By the way, I will never play to this point anymore. And yes, the card is still working!
Sorry for the VERY LONG POST. But I think that this testimonial may be of some value to the rom and kernell developpers.
I can honestly say i have never heard of a Rom or Kernel damaging a memory card, could be yours just developed a fault??
Galaxy s2 said:
I can honestly say i have never heard of a Rom or Kernel damaging a memory card, could be yours just developed a fault??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not the rom itself, but possibly some "features" of this or any other rom related to how it handles battery. I will try to make myself as clear as possible...
I know that in stock roms it is not possible to shoot photographs using flash when battery level is under 15% - this is to prevent sudden turn-off of the phone. And I know that some roms uses some tweaks that allows the user to take pictures using flash under this 15%. This is a thing that most users can think is an improvement - but we know that it is dangerous to use battery in a not-so-controled way. The history I told on the first post is a prove of it!
So, my suspictions is that, in some way, some rom configurations (or kernell configurations) may be allowing the user to play a high-power-demanding game or app to the end of battery charge - when, instead, it should close all the apps after the first warning, and before shutting down the phone. In other words, some roms let the decision up to the user - and if the user is (like me) distracted with some game, and forgot or bypass the first warning, he becomes a victim of this own distraction, wearing all the juice without thinking about closing the apk and shuting down the phone in the correct manner.
So, the question is: are there some rom tweaks that could POSSIBLY be the reason for this kind of issue?
Hope I made myself clear now, despite my horrible "engrich"...
Related
I am having a repeated issue I was hoping someone has seen or could help me with.
I'm on the default rom w/ the TnT Enhancement pack and overall I LOVE the device. One thing that is literally killing me is trying to get data to/from my device.
I have tried USB linking to my Win7 64bit system as well as copying data to/from with Astro and the microSD card and more times than not either during or after any file copy/move activity the device locks up, needs to be hard booted and then I'll get the 'scanning SD card' message in the notifications and the tablet locks up hard, and becomes unuseable until I reboot about 10xs and finally it starts to return to normal.
I've tried formatting EVERYTHING and re partitioning to 2048 & 0 w/ clockwork and doing a fresh NVflash and reupdating/TnT Enhancement, etc...with similar results, so I'm not sure at this point if it's my microSD the internal card, some sort of hardware or overall software issue.
I love this device, but I'm borderline frustrated enough to return it, only problem is ALL the other tabs are WAY too expensive for what you get! ($400 is reasonable $600+ is stupid - I can get a laptop for that much - which I already have, and the tablet isn't nearly as capable/more just convenient)...
tullywork said:
I am having a repeated issue I was hoping someone has seen or could help me with.
I'm on the default rom w/ the TnT Enhancement pack and overall I LOVE the device. One thing that is literally killing me is trying to get data to/from my device.
I have tried USB linking to my Win7 64bit system as well as copying data to/from with Astro and the microSD card and more times than not either during or after any file copy/move activity the device locks up, needs to be hard booted and then I'll get the 'scanning SD card' message in the notifications and the tablet locks up hard, and becomes unuseable until I reboot about 10xs and finally it starts to return to normal.
I've tried formatting EVERYTHING and re partitioning to 2048 & 0 w/ clockwork and doing a fresh NVflash and reupdating/TnT Enhancement, etc...with similar results, so I'm not sure at this point if it's my microSD the internal card, some sort of hardware or overall software issue.
I love this device, but I'm borderline frustrated enough to return it, only problem is ALL the other tabs are WAY too expensive for what you get! ($400 is reasonable $600+ is stupid - I can get a laptop for that much - which I already have, and the tablet isn't nearly as capable/more just convenient)...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm kind if unclear about your problem. Is it hanging only when you're copying stuff between /sdcard and /sdcard2?
I'm asking because you mentioned USB, but I didn't think you could xfer directly to/from /sdcard2 over USB.
If that is the case, have you tried a different microSD card?
Jim
I've tried USB xfer from computer to /sdcard as well as using multiple microsd cards to transfer data to the internal gtab memory, all seem to have the same results, when moveing external data to the gtab, it suddenly seems to cause some sort of file system corruption (as best I could guess). last round forced me to go as far as re-doing the entire device to bring it back to a stable state!
Since you mentioned returning it I would suggest exchange as this sounds like a problem with your device. Could have a bad card reader or the card is just not seating correctly
Hi,
A couple of comments:
- does the enhancement pack you have have that dataloop thing? I've seen some posts mentioning corruption w dataloop. Maybe try w/o the enhancements?
- for the scanning /sdcard2 thing, maybe try adding a file named .nomedia (period followed by nomedia) in /sdcard2. That's suppose to prevent the mediascanner from scanning the dir plus subdirs.
Jim
I'm about done with this thing. I've tried everything I can think of and I can't get away from the thing locking up (from full stock OTA gtab to the TnT custom ROMs).
1)The first Gtab I had the screen wasn't responsive to touch (had to hit it two or three times to get it to recognize you wanted to open an App. returned to SEARS
2)The second Gtab I got, when I powered it on for the first time it had a line across the entire screen in the LCD of bad pixels (dead pixels/whatever - something was wrong with the screen) - took it back AGAIN
3)This Gtab locks up whenever I use the microSD or USB transfering files to the thing. WILL BE RETURNED
I'm convinced that these things are the biggest pieces of sh!t on the planet. I've spent (and I'm not even stretching the truth) probably 40 to 60 hours trying to get this thing to work LIKE A NORMAL DEVICE - all I want is something to: browse the web, view videos and read epubs on - I'M NOT ASKING FOR MUCH, a simple device that can't accomplish THOSE SIMPLE TASKS - SUCKS.
I'm happy to think that the money viewsonic (or whomever) spend to build these three BAD devices is out whatever it cost them, given my trouble. TiD!
how to fix
Go to settings, applications, system applications, media storage and clear data. It worked for me.
tullywork said:
I'm about done with this thing. I've tried everything I can think of and I can't get away from the thing locking up (from full stock OTA gtab to the TnT custom ROMs).
1)The first Gtab I had the screen wasn't responsive to touch (had to hit it two or three times to get it to recognize you wanted to open an App. returned to SEARS
2)The second Gtab I got, when I powered it on for the first time it had a line across the entire screen in the LCD of bad pixels (dead pixels/whatever - something was wrong with the screen) - took it back AGAIN
3)This Gtab locks up whenever I use the microSD or USB transfering files to the thing. WILL BE RETURNED
I'm convinced that these things are the biggest pieces of sh!t on the planet. I've spent (and I'm not even stretching the truth) probably 40 to 60 hours trying to get this thing to work LIKE A NORMAL DEVICE - all I want is something to: browse the web, view videos and read epubs on - I'M NOT ASKING FOR MUCH, a simple device that can't accomplish THOSE SIMPLE TASKS - SUCKS.
I'm happy to think that the money viewsonic (or whomever) spend to build these three BAD devices is out whatever it cost them, given my trouble. TiD!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dude, I've been telling people on here for days. Go buy an ipad and leave us gtab fans alone. My benchmark is at 3000's while having half a dozen apps running and I'm happy with it. My screen is too sensitive to say the least.
I have been using android on an LG optimus one for about a month now, being (really) new to the smart phone world I was really excited about android not only because it's my very first smart phone OS (I had a nokia 5310, I love it but it got too old now ) but also because of the pc-like flexibility that android gives me in terms of messing around with each and every thing in my phone till it becomes exactly what I want unlike other any other OS out there.
If I can only pick one thing I like the most about android it is the fact I can get any freaking "apk" file to install an application whatever it was, no lock down to a special market or waiting for an application to pass any kind of approval in that market, it brings power to the user that I feel has been slipping away so much recently from any kind of computer/mobile software.
Now for the disappointments, the first thing I noticed is a weird bug that cause my touch screen to go crazy and act as it's being touched by itself If I connect my phone to a computer, I tried googling the problem but found no real solution. But that wasn't really a big deal, what really disappointed me is the fact that some applications can't be moved to the SD card, I was going to rely on the SD card for everything when I found out this unfortunate limitation. I don't know why there is no option to simply prevent me to use the phone before the SD card is mounted or during connecting it as mass storage. I don't want to use the phone without a SD card and I wish to use the SD card as internal memory, is it actually possible (I know impossible is not a word in xda or android dictionary )
I was going to type in a much longer post but I think was long enough and anymore it would be really boring to read (If it wasn't already ) so I will leave the rest of my comments to upcoming posts If necessary, thanks for reading!
Mamoun14 said:
I have been using android on an LG optimus one for about a month now, being (really) new to the smart phone world I was really excited about android not only because it's my very first smart phone OS (I had a nokia 5310, I love it but it got too old now ) but also because of the pc-like flexibility that android gives me in terms of messing around with each and every thing in my phone till it becomes exactly what I want unlike other any other OS out there.
If I can only pick one thing I like the most about android it is the fact I can get any freaking "apk" file to install an application whatever it was, no lock down to a special market or waiting for an application to pass any kind of approval in that market, it brings power to the user that I feel has been slipping away so much recently from any kind of computer/mobile software.
Now for the disappointments, the first thing I noticed is a weird bug that cause my touch screen to go crazy and act as it's being touched by itself If I connect my phone to a computer, I tried googling the problem but found no real solution. But that wasn't really a big deal, what really disappointed me is the fact that some applications can't be moved to the SD card, I was going to rely on the SD card for everything when I found out this unfortunate limitation. I don't know why there is no option to simply prevent me to use the phone before the SD card is mounted or during connecting it as mass storage. I don't want to use the phone without a SD card and I wish to use the SD card as internal memory, is it actually possible (I know impossible is not a word in xda or android dictionary )
I was going to type in a much longer post but I think was long enough and anymore it would be really boring to read (If it wasn't already ) so I will leave the rest of my comments to upcoming posts If necessary, thanks for reading!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes there are apps to sd apps in market and if u want to use sd card as internal storage u have to root your phone , install custom recovery, flash new rom and them use darktremors apps2sd or ungazes apps to sd.
read this all your answers are here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1152306
Mamoun14 said:
I have been using android on an LG optimus one for about a month now, being (really) new to the smart phone world I was really excited about android not only because it's my very first smart phone OS (I had a nokia 5310, I love it but it got too old now ) but also because of the pc-like flexibility that android gives me in terms of messing around with each and every thing in my phone till it becomes exactly what I want unlike other any other OS out there.
If I can only pick one thing I like the most about android it is the fact I can get any freaking "apk" file to install an application whatever it was, no lock down to a special market or waiting for an application to pass any kind of approval in that market, it brings power to the user that I feel has been slipping away so much recently from any kind of computer/mobile software.
Now for the disappointments, the first thing I noticed is a weird bug that cause my touch screen to go crazy and act as it's being touched by itself If I connect my phone to a computer, I tried googling the problem but found no real solution. But that wasn't really a big deal, what really disappointed me is the fact that some applications can't be moved to the SD card, I was going to rely on the SD card for everything when I found out this unfortunate limitation. I don't know why there is no option to simply prevent me to use the phone before the SD card is mounted or during connecting it as mass storage. I don't want to use the phone without a SD card and I wish to use the SD card as internal memory, is it actually possible (I know impossible is not a word in xda or android dictionary )
I was going to type in a much longer post but I think was long enough and anymore it would be really boring to read (If it wasn't already ) so I will leave the rest of my comments to upcoming posts If necessary, thanks for reading!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well it seems good that you are out from the cocoon of nokia ,u have got the best os running on ur phone its just u need to spent some time reading and u will never regret on having an android phone .
try some custom rom maybe mik 6.5.7 with franco kernel and u will see the best stuff ever running on ur phn
best of luck
Seems like some of your disappointments are more phone related and not Android OS.
...it really is a quirky device. At least mine is.
The other day, I was trying to use Winamp to sync my (up-to-date, stock, rooted) phone's music playlist using a Windows 7 computer, which I had done numerous times before. Just to eliminate the obvious, yes, the computer has a recent, working version of the HTC usb drivers installed, and yes I had the phone in Settings->Connect to PC->Disk Drive mode. No matter what I did, the computer would not recognize that the phone was plugged connected to it, and likewise the phone would not show that it was connected to a computer.
I was almost out of of options, but, as a last resort, I hooked it up to my linux (ubuntu 11.04) computer, which a couple of months ago had given me symptoms that were identical. Et voila! It recognized the phone with no problems whatsoever. You savvy readers here might remember that I posted about some of my pain with the linux box back then, because I was trying to update one of the botched OTA's that had left me unable to re-root my phone. So I booted it to the version of Amon Ra that I'd had problems with back then. Again, no problem. Go figure.
I then disconnected the phone, and hooked it back up to the Windows machine: No problem. Very, very puzzling.
I did a search here some time ago, and I don't remember seeing anything like this happening to anyone else. Regardless, just to be thorough, I'm going to ask once more: Have any of you characters heard of this kind of phenomenon with a Rezound?
many thanks!
john
I dealt with almost this exact problem of the PC connection with another user. In fact I've supported the user on three devices. His issue we eventually mostly figured out was with the sdcard mounting. In that process which seems so simple of plugging in the phone when it unmounts and remounts then afterwards unmounts and remounts, it would get part of the process and not finish the other part. He ended up thinking it was a faulty device and buying a new phone then eventually saw it on the new phone (different brand different OS). He called the sdcard company because it was a high end sdcard, the tech immediately said "I'm really sorry but almost every call we have had has been for this one problem with this one card. After testing we found a faulty internal chip, so we will gladly send you a brand new card that's bigger and better."
That was his experience, the problem is there's a lot of places in the food chain that could be a hardware failure, software failure or driver issue and would mimic the symptoms fairly closely.
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences on that issue!
I have to say I thought of that some time ago, but since this mounting thing affected the internal one too, I didn't put too much energy into following up on that. I will now.
Cheers!
John
Going to take this a completely different way since I have never had the issues you describe, but had another thought...
I used to WinAmp for a long time, remember that with WinAmp if you have a WiFi network you can sync music wirelessly, it is how I did it all the time and to be honest if you have a solid WiFi network, it is faster than USB. All you really need is WinAmp on your PC and phone and a WiFi network.
acejavelin said:
All you really need is WinAmp on your PC and phone and a WiFi network.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And you need the winamp app installed on your phone; I'm a minimizer.
I appreciate the suggestion, but the winamp thing was only the vehicle that led to my discovery that the problems I had a few months ago connecting my phone to a computer weren't an anomaly. That experience left me with the feeling that my Linux system was somehow screwy.
Now I know that that wasn't the problem, and since I'm going to need to be able to connect reliably to a computer for adb/fastboot access as well, it motivated me to get some help figuring out why that was happening.
Cheers,
John
Thanks for reading this and helping me sort this out.
****Edited to make it short and sweet**** Original below if you want more of the story
Had spyware on my phone from roommate, 100% sure.
Did factory resets, yet he was still getting into it right away (while I had phone in hand)
Got a refurb phone replacement for camera issue. Put old SIM card in new phone for an hour or more, thinking that it was safe.
HEAVILY suspect that it is infected again based on it's behavior and my roommates behavior.
-Should have made clear below that I was 100% on the initial infection surviving, but only highly suspicious for 2nd phone. (Based on his behavior and earlier today, the cursor would move while I was trying to type in my password and certain keys on the keyboard would not work randomly)
I just got a new sim card, unused still. Want to clean EVERYTHING possible. ROMs, kernels, everything. Need advice. Perhaps I am just paranoid for the second part but I don't think so and know the first phone resets not working is true. Thx
******************
My soon to be ex-roommate and ex-"friend" has been spying on me with computer backdoors and spyware on my Droid Maxx (4.4.4-7) I am 100% on this, I can list the reasons why but judging from other threads in random sites, that would be a distraction. I will leave it at knowing special knowledge, his behavior and "real-time" reactions while I use the phone (clearing throat when I do certain things... now coughing since I told him he does that and he can't hold it back), everytime I reset the phone he slams the doors, caused my phone to hang up when I said "fraud" on the credit card phone system. Anyways it's legit. He did the same stuff for my computer he responded to what I typed in even and relayed what I searched for (gloating). He made random sounds play and throttled my PC speed to a crawl.
So I read elsewhere after the stuff with my phone continued to happen that there is software that can survive factory resets... I'm not sure if the ROM or kernel is the issue or some other firmware (relative noob compared to most of you) or if it is the SIM card which provides access. (if you think I am crazy look into it: since I can't post links search "Sim card apps defcon notes" and "the secret life of sim cards" also from Defcon. Also there is a somewhat related story about SIM cards being hacked in the beginning of most sim card hack searches)
He had one of his always precisely timed coughing fits when I started looking into SIM Tookit Hacks so I am suspicious of that. This was after getting a new phone (unfortunately I had the old SIM card in the new one for about an hour, I didn't know they were essentially little computers)
What do I do here? I have stock 4.4.4-7, no root (Droid Maxx is usually impossible to root currently). I have a new SIM card in but I'm afraid that now the new phone and the card are infected.
The computer software he used (backdoor/rootkits) Were mostly undetectable. I got lucky and detected only one backdoor, but later had rootkit activity detected but nothing found. I believe he has access to some new "zeroday" PC/Android software or at least it is pretty advanced. Perhaps the SIMcard has an applet that allows him to install the software over and over again since the card is not formated. This capability has been discussed in I believe both of the two first links.
I want to flash EVERYTHING. ROM, kernels, other firmware... Not sure how that could be done since I don't have root (maybe I am ignorant here) and many Verizon techs I have talked to think factory resets always work. Yes, this stuff is unlikely in general, but he has made a concerted effort to target me. Antivirus has been worthless.
I need to know 100% that everything is clean.
Thank you!
Title says it all. I can't download any large apps, download from the browser. I can sideload my apps straight from google drive. I need a physical SD card to download files from the internet, and to download large apps, like VOEZ. Moving on, there is another issue I have with my unit. USB. I plugged it into my computer many times, and it just never finds it. I was once able to look at the files on the device with ADB enabled, but when I opened up a Windows VM (I run Ubuntu) and fired up Kingroot but could not find it, so I unplugged, and plugged it in again, only to lose the data connection over USB, and only charged from then afterwards. After this, I knew that the USB port was perfectly OK, so there was no damage or any issue to the port itself. When I had this phone as my sole daily driver before I had switched to my iPhone, it was neglected heavily (by me) because of these abhorrent issues that drove me insane. I now want to put some life back into this thing by rooting it, which was my goal from day 1 when I had gotten it, but these issues made such practically impossible. So, with the ramble out of the way, can someone find a way to fix this this internal storage and USB issue? I'd love to give it a chance once again. Oh, and I got this phone for free from a "government lifeline" program, which has its Androids completely restricted in a way where rooting is hard to achieve, but possible.
Model #: PG86100
Before this phone, or even my 6 Plus, I had a N5, which now has a broken display/speaker ZIF connector on the mainboard. I just wanted to point out that this was not my first android, and would really love to relive the days that I had with my N5 before it died.