Cricket Wireless Samsung Galaxy S4 (SGH-I337Z) - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I need help fixing what seems hopeless.
My Cricket Wireless Samsung Galaxy S4 (SGH-I337Z) is the victim. I was the assailant. Aprox. 1 week after purchase I decided I'd attempt to install network tethering /w Mobile Hotspot which at&t and cricket had removed from their phones. Well the root procedure went well and now it was getting the tethering.provisions.apk into the system/ apps directory after renaming the existing apk and the odem files of the same name. Well, I tried dozens of times to copy paste, move, change permissions but no matter what I tried this file would not go into the systems/apps directory. Well out of impatience, frustration and of course ignorance I extracted the tethering.provisions.apk that I had downloaded. That is when the proverbial "poop" hit the fan. In a horrifying tenth of a second dozens upon dozens of error messages upon error messages skipping across the screen. All used the same syntax “Unfortunately the process com.android.phone has stopped.” Only the process i.e. phone was replaced by other processes in the many other error messages. Finally it was down to 2 repetitive messages, that was the phone and messaging. Being rooted I was able to look and I notice that the entire /system/app folder was empty where there once was probably over 50 files along with sub folders. . . all gone. I quickly found I had no keyboard, no voice or Wi-Fi excetera excetera excetera. By now I am in a complete panic! I navigated to settings and observed that 90%+ of all that was missing as well. Being old school and with only touch screen control and no keyboard I'm crippled. I rebooted and attempted a hard recovery but recovery could find no files or folders with recovery data. Now what? You guessed it. I went out and bought a new phone. Not any phone but the exact same model. I believe I had it in mind that if I put these phones side by side somehow I could cut and paste the good phone content to the bad phone and all would be well. But then I realized I can't poop fairy dust. Well I'm on disability and I get $488.67 monthly along with $32 in food stamps. So now I'm broke. Started out that way really. But now I have a phone and a expensive" battery charger".
So this was nagging at me and I decided to look and see what this phone could do. Well it boots to the home screen. That's good! I can navigate anywhere there is anything that is also a good, but lack any input ability except pressing touch screen. It might connect to Wireless but I can't input the password so that’s an unknown.
Well I believe this phone is fix or repairable. Is there anyone that agrees? More important to me is there anybody out there that might be able to help me or walk me through this? I have some technical skills just not in wireless phones and my Linux is real rusty. Please if anyone can help reply or email me @ [email protected]

Need a PC and use Odin to get a recovery installed. Then use of PC to download a Cyanogen ROM and gapps, transfer those zip files to SD card and go from there. No need to throw out phone. Start with CM 11 ROM jfltexx unified variant which I know will work on the edge cricket S4.

Appreciate you taking the time to reply and give me the advice

That's pretty much what I'm goin to do.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using XDA-Developers mobile app

rivnyak said:
Need a PC and use Odin to get a recovery installed. Then use of PC to download a Cyanogen ROM and gapps, transfer those zip files to SD card and go from there. No need to throw out phone. Start with CM 11 ROM jfltexx unified variant which I know will work on the edge cricket S4.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're sure that will work on the i337z? I have a friend with that phone who wants to do it.

Worked for me. Cricket i337z. Good luck. I ended up using CM 13 jfltexx and also used AICP jfltexx. Went back to CM didn't need the xtra bells and whistles.

Related

PLZ Help... TOTAL NOOB

I want to start off with a pre-apology for not keeping up on this Android / Smartphone stuff.
Here's the deal:
Never really used my Droid X2 much until it started acting weird after I let a "friend" use it. I find out a little later, Said "friend" used my roommate's computer to help him "cleanup" his files and help secure the wifi. After realizing what might have happened I checked out the roomies PC. I have no idea what he did specifically, but now im trying to download device drivers, look at files through an explorer, etc. and I can't do any administration stuff. I tried using my restriction lock for outgoing calls cuz Skype is goin NUTZ now but I dunno if its actually working when I see the "calls disable" prompt pop up randomly like someones trying to use the line. I have all these program package installer apps running in the background as well as Motorola service apps that I've never downloaded myself.
After research I think he setup his own driver while using my phone and my roomies comp (i honestly was asleep & I trusted chillin wit the kidso I'm sure he saw my unlock code... TOTAL mistake) that has something to do with android SDK and writing code for it and then continuing his "project" (my Droid x2) remote from wherever he was after while somehow maintaining a good network connection either through my Droid or my roomies wifi, which I used everytime I'm home cuz it saved data.
I've learned, or read, a lot... but I don't understand the basics or the foundations here. And everytime I try to follow a step by step process, I'm somehow not permission denied
Plz help
Sent from my DROID X2
I'm not really clear on the issue. But if your friend messed something up on your phone and now you cant do anything on it, I would use this link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1317707
Basically, you need to do a full factory reset on your phone. Thats the best I can do without knowing what exactly is wrong with your phone.
Im also not sure what your getting at but sbf and a factory reset will set anything back to right. And also most of that stuff you were talking about is part of the phone to begin with.
Rolling AOKP in the north.

[Q] Galaxy S3 boof loop.

So, just want to say; I have pulled the battery out and left it out and such, can enter recovery and download mode.
The problem occured today when my friend had ahold of my phone and was checking out my apps and saw "Root Browser" and I said it browses all my files. I guess he wanted to see if he could find any form of porn on my phone. Any who, he fiddle farted around, foumd a document that was 157MB or 175MB and was like hey do you want to delete this? (my phone kept saying I only had 200mb freespace left and a bunch of files were taking up like 11GB idk how.) and I told him sure to get free space and he didn't say what the name was. He later told me it was firmware that he had deleted. But before I had any idea it was deleted I powered my phone off for about an hour or two and went to class. I turned it on, and it would vibrate ~3 seconds, say Galaxy S3 and then boot loop again, and won't go any farther. Is there any way to put firmware back on my phone with odin or anything? Because my parents have no idea my phone is rooted, so I really want to avoid contacting Verizon and trying to get a new phone. Also I want to try and keep all files. I could factory reset, but with common sense it's telling me that will delete every photo, text, contaxf etc.
Thread closed because it is a duplicate post.
Please use this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2665296
Thanks!

Need help badly please not even sure if im in right thread if im not im sorry

So a week ago my galaxy s7 edge from ATT thats now on straight talk was hacked somehow very badly and not even 2 hours later so was my whole home network which was my desktop my laptop and my sons tablet. I have all the things i need to rid whatever vile thing/person/persons that infected me home network wise but my phone is a different story i was told by a local phone shop i could factory reset it using recovery and it would prolly fix the problem but as soon as i went into recovery and seen the little android guy i instantly got booted out of recovery and went right to my lock screen and quicker then id ever gotten to it so i restarted my phone again in recovery mode and instead of seeing the normal android recovery stuff i was greeted with about 4-5 swirling circles for about 2 mins then it took me straight to a blue screen that said odin and it immediately started to download something i had to hold the power and home button down for like a good 45 secs before it finally powered off. When i turned it back on it thankfully went back to my phone but i no longer had control of anything my radio band had been switched i couldnt access any of my folders like gallery, music, videos etc. for like a good 30 mins and i was denied access to google play store and i couldn't make or receive a phone call or a text for like 30 mins then my phone restarted itself 2 times on its own and when it came back on after the 2nd restart i could access my files and google play but the only browser i could use was Chrome. Dolphin which i have set as my default and have used for almost 2 years now without a single issue and the stock Samsung browser would force close on me soon as i opened them and alot it was in chinese like home icon and tab icon etc. and i had like triple the apps running in running services then normal and alot of the normal android system apps you would see running had a 2 at the end of the app name now and i couldn't do anything with them as far as force stopping them or disabling them and not just system apps either but normal ones too like my camera or memo app and the ones i could disable which was very few came right back undisabled and running as soon as i did it. I downloaded 3 different apps just to be thorough to see if i was rooted and all 3 said i wasn't but yet i could go into my files app and go all the way in my recovery file system and see my /sys/ priv-apps folders and others too im pretty sure a non rooted phone would never have access too and i also seen a directory named fake libs and a directory that had a bunch of apps for listening through the mic and turning the front and back cameras on and live broadcasting apps and an app for logging of every keystroke i made and lots of crazy txt files one of the txt files said downloaded mobicore hidden apps and the list of apps looks like they downloaded a whole repositories worth of stuff i was told by another local phone place that the first ones i talked to were idiots and even a full factory reset wouldnt fix anything and id need to flash it or have it flashed if i didn't know how which costed 90 bucks that i didn't and still do not have so i transferred everything i had access to and wasn't denied from to my sd card and did a full factory reset which actually fixed my radio band problem i can now make and get phone calls but still cant text and or receive them even thought straight talk has fixed it on their end like 4 times now so today i decided id try and learn to flash and flash it but was told if it was rooted and i did it a certain way id screw the phone up completely and if it wasn't rooted and i did it a certain way the same results would happen. I actually downloaded win rar and went back into the recovery system directory and the sys/priv-apps/ section and /fake-libs/ section and took like 16-17 screenshots of like only a 10th of all the crazy stuff apk wise and txt document wise that was in there id seen and rar'd it up so i could email it and post them along with this post but every email address i tried to send it to immediately sent me an error email response back saying it didn't exist or the person was not allowed to recieve emails even my own email account that i was sending it from because i thought id send it to myself and download it off my computer but soon as i sent it to myself i got the email doesn't exist error email i also tried sending it to a friend in FB messenger but messenger would force close on me every time id click on it to send it and at the moment i can still access my FB messenger but now can no longer send a message it sends out but never changes from the greyed out check mark so the person on the other end isn't receiving it i also tried calling people this evening but every call i made went straight to busy signal oh also the screenshots are still sitting there in my screenshots folder and i can access them and click on them etc. but im now denied access to win rar i go to click on it and it says access denied and google play says the same thing once again so i cant download another archiving apk and the RAR archive i made to begin with that was in my screenshots folder is gone now just disappeared like that and if i plug my phone into anything to try transfer them that way it says that my s7 edge is not equipped for data transfer but i can unplug it plug it back in and try to transfer a normal picture or an mp3 song or something like that and it will transfer just fine after about a 10-15 second hang/wait time. All i know is i want my phone back from these A-holes and i am willing to flash it just downloaded the newest odin and got the stock ATT android 7.0 rom but im at a loss after that as i do not understand the whole if its rooted do/don't do this or if its not rooted do/don't do that stuff plus seeing as how 3 different apps off google play have said it isn't rooted but yet i have been as far as the folders right before my boot sector and can see hidden system apps and a crap ton of /0/ folders and stuff and somehow have odin for a recovery even though the first time ive ever even been into recovery mode in the almost 2 years i have owned it was when i tried to factory recover it the first time a few days ago and if they have control of my phone like this and i do need to root it how would i even accomplish it without them stopping me?????? Please help me i'm tired of not having control over my phone and being listened too watched and logged by whoever if they might just actually be doing it since i seen the apks and such with my own eyes so anyone that may have any info advice tips or can help me in any way please please please do!!!!
Okay so from first :
1. You say that when you tried to go in Recovery mode it comes blue screen with Downloading text written on screen .
So instead of Recovery mode you went in Downloading mode , so that problem is wrong key combination .
Right way to enter in Recovery mode is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxJis11Ze3U
and if that didnt resolve the problem , download Smart switch and do this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QhJngOuLQ4
Good luck

Whatsapp Restore stuck at 24% , restoration failed / google drive and local back up

Hi All,
I have been trying to restore my whatsapp back up chats for few days. I have extracted them from google drive using the whatsapp extractor tool.
When i get to restoring it, the file continuously gets stuck at 24% then fails.
When restore the data from google drive, it will stuck at 24% and say that whatsapp unable to restore the message, try to restore the older backup? then click yes, it will show up success restore but end up only show the group with empty message. I had try local backup and google drive backup, all same.
Any ideas on a fix for this??
I really need the messages as they are very important.
Any help would be highly appreciated.
Stuck in the same situation as you friend! My phone is pixel 2xl, even though I don't think it is a phone thing!
Same problem, stuck at 24% as well. Tried everything, Google Drive backup, Local backup, no avail.
Celestias said:
Same problem, stuck at 24% as well. Tried everything, Google Drive backup, Local backup, no avail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Due to trying so many times, i cant get my verification code already. it says wait for 36 hours.
Whatsapp needs to do something about this issue!
Same problem
Help!
Did anyone get it fixed? Facing the same issue
Same problem, Whatsapp support doesn't help
Same problem here. Contacted whatsapp support but i think they are aware of the issue and are just ignoring it as they doesnot have a fix. Got a reply "this might be due to corrupt backup database we cannot get your chats back."
i am trying to explain that i am still using my old device because its not being restored to a new one. Waiting for the reply.
But am sure that this is a software issue of whatsapp and i have cane across other forums also where the chat history is too long say 3 or 4 or 5 years this problem is there. Hope this reaches whatsapp and they can fix it.
Stuck
Same issue here. I reported this. Did a factory reset and all of sudden not able to restore messages anymore. I'm really annoyed, there was 4 years of message history backed up in Google Drive, no local backup
Hey all
I have exactly the same problem
I tried on 4 different device but no issues
Does anyone fixed that?
I have 3.5 gb and 150.000 messages that I will lose ?
Same problem how to fix this issues ? Please, there a thousands chat is important
I have same problem today. VVVimp chats restore stuck and failed at 24%. Please help someone.
Yes, I same too
Anybody for Help
same here, I am trying to restore from my Old Phone (XiaoMi Redmi 2) to Huawei P20, stuck at 24%, show "unable to restore from backup ...." , then can only choose to restore from "local backup", at the end completely no restoring from the actual backup. Been trying so many ways still not able to restore it.
But I found a trick, it seem it helps, the whatsapp back up can be restore from Samsung Android Phone, I am trying with Note 4, then only it can be restore to my new Huawei. Something wrong with the latest version of Whatsapp. Redmi2 > Samsung Note 4 > Huawei P20
Has there been a solution for this yet?
Trying to get my Mums phoen working. It is only 663MB of back up and it gets stick at 24%.
Frustratingly whatsapp blocks from reverifying for 3 days now.
Please Help guys!
What I do in this kind of instance is when i'm restoring, I open a file manager that gives me a view of my storage usage.
As whatsapp is trying to restore the usage will increase for a while. Once I see that it has stopped increasing and has started reducing, I just restart my phone.
I probably lose some chats, but i don't know for sure. What I do know is that i have most (if not all) of my messages back
Hi guys!
I have been facing this issue this whole week while trying to move all my chats to a new phone I just bought as with the old one the charging port was dying and I could not bear it anymore. So almost everything restored smoothly from Google Backup and it was like being in my phone again with a few wizard steps but then I Installed WhatsApp (WA) and gone through the typical activation and restoring process and. as many, I got stuck at the 24% sometimes, some others 31% and 39%, and never got past the 39%.
I Tried almost everything: restoring from Google Drive, transfer all WhatsApp directory to internal storage and trying to restore from there, etc. Going back to the old phone to create fresh backups just in case they were corrupted as many people suggests, getting every time more delay to be able to activate WhatsApp again up to 12h for both SMS and call activation... just to mess again and feel back at square one, I guess you all feel the pain.
Well, the good news is that I finally managed to restore all the chat history!!! (well, cannot be certain that 100% was restored but I do not miss anything ATM and I can go back up to 2012 chats so I guess that qualifies as "everything" hehe).
So, I'm posting here because I've been searching a lot on the forums and the reddit and for all the people that is having this issue recently, almost no body came back to report success and I know it feels really discouraging It certainly gives the impression that this issue has no fix at all, and that you should accept losing all the chat history and starting from the start again. But from all the data I've been gathering during this week, at least two or three people reported to eventually being able to restore the chat; they fell in one of these two categories: they either transferred to a different phone where the backup seemed to restore okay, and then exported and restored in the target phone with success (something like a "bridge" restore mode, most of the cases I've read did it this way) or they finally succeeded by sheer brute force by trying again and again and again.
I fall in this 2nd category. In the most recent attempt I was doing what I've been doing again and again and again with just minor variations in the workflow and finally succeeded. TL; DR; I think in reality in many cases attempts could succeed by just letting the phone restore the backup endlessly, by not giving up and assuming the restore process went wrong when it has been stuck forever at either 24, 31 or 39% and force closing..
But I know in the midst of desperation OCD kicks in and you want step-by-step success case scenario reproduction so I will tell you all the steps that I followed that I can remember that got me to finally have the backup to end successfully:
0. First of all, in the winning attempt I had already uninstalled WA from the new phone and removed totally the WA folder in the internal storage / sdcard storage. Not sure this is mandatory but just to tell this was the case.
1. Since I got WA working perfectly on the old phone at every moment, I backed up locally for the Nth f%!?&·( time. This left me with the latest local backup plus a few others in the databases folder as a result of keep messing up.
2. I copied the full WhatsApp directory from the internal storage of the old phone to a safe place. This could be the PC or whatever, but PC transfer via USB seems too sloppy. You maybe could do it via ADB, whatever, I went by the route of coping it to the external SD with some random explorer utility like ES File Explorer. It does not matter, the point is to be able to backup the full WhatsApp folder in order to restore it as similar as possible as the original. What we are more interested right now is in the database folder but having all images, videos etc in place will help in getting it like before the easiest way. (Disclaimer: Ok guys sorry if some steps are too obvious to XDA users which usually are highly educated in the matter, but I was thinking of sharing/linking this text on the reddit and others, so please bear with it).
3. I installed latest WA in the new phone, opened the app (I intended to not open but I somewhat forgot) and got to the welcome screen, immediately closed the app at that step.
3. I restored the full folder to the new phone internal storage, pure copy/paste style (as said, in my case via the SD since both phones have SD slot and was very convenient, but via USB, cloud, etc. can be done).
4. I went to the databases folder and only kept the msgstore.db.crypt12 file and the latest backup with a date (ie: msgstore-2019-11-21.db.crypt12), deleted the rest. Honestly I do not think this is crucial but I somewhat wanted to make it easier for WA to know which one to target, I thought about keeping only the msgstore.db.crypt12 but some random dude pointed that the one with the date was needed. I was under the assumption that file structure is identical in both but just wanted to get done with this and keep both, just in case.
5. Before opening again the WA to try to activate and restore with this full local copy, I opened the Android settings app and went to applications > whatasapp > storage, as suggested by user redweaver, thanks for the tip! by keeping looking at the storage usage of the app during the restore process we could get insight about if it was really doing something or the app was really stuck. Keep open for now. In my case, I saw also on the old phone that my data used for the app was 780+ MB, so I had an idea of what should be on the new phone by the time it finished (if it did!).
5b. I don't think this is really necessary but I did it just in case. I was planning to go to work and let the thing running as long as it would need, and I would make sure that the process would get maximum uptime and nothing would get in the way. So I went to Applications > WhatsApp > Battery usage (or something like it) and disabled the battery optimizations for this app. I also went to the developer mode settings and enabled do not lock the phone while it is charging and everything that looked like it might be relevant. Again, most likely this has nothing to do, but reproducible steps, right?
6. Now open WA and activate it as usual, but when it seems that the activation step ended and you go to the next screen, immediately put the phone in air plane mode or disable data/WiFi, whatever. The goal is that it cannot reach Google Drive to look for the online backup. Honestly maybe in the end is not the culprit of GDrive but many people states that the GD backup is broken at this time and suggests going the local route, so we will do it like this.
7. WA should tell you that looking for the backup is going too slow and to skip this step (sorry to not have exact message, I have it in Spanish, but something in these lines, BTW excuse my somewhat limited English ). The point here is to click on the link that says skip the step and when you are prompted with a popup, click also on Skip.
8. WA will display the typical restore / transfer-like screen where the process starts. At this point you have to enable again data plan / WiFi at least or exit air plane mode, don't know really but even if restoring from local it complains about not having internet connection, maybe needs it to encrypt with the key or something? don't know.
9. Now is the feared moment! Even this time, I got somewhat stuck at 31% again. I left it do its thing, and some time later, it prompted for the popup that has a progress-bar from 0 to 100 (honestly, what is the difference between both?!) which also got stuck at 31%. If you let it be, it starts going back and forth many times, I guess maybe its going chat per chat and the progress-bar represents each one? Dunno. Thing is, even in the prior attempts I got at this point and the backup did not finish successfully. But this time I was decided to let it do its thing as much time as it would take, until the end. In the process the phone might display a pop up saying that WA does not respond. I clicked a few times in the 'keep waiting' option, then I just forgot because I did not have time to mess with it and hoped that it was still working on the background, which bring us to step 10.
10. While we are contemplating the backup process, we can go to the settings app again and look how the internal data is going for the WA. In my case, after some time under the restore process, when I went there I saw WA had occupied 0.91 GB of data space. After going back and forth again between WA and settings, the usage keep growing: 0.96, 1.03, 1.10... I thought it was on the right track, and encouraged me to keep waiting. Maybe in the end the process is too slow for old databases. Note that some people speculates that having messages from very long ago might be the culprit here due to changes in the table structure and that this might be the reason breaking the restore process. And maybe it is the case, but even if it is, in my case I finally succeeded where previously I didn't and without deleting anything, so this does not seem to be a deal-breaker or I would have never succeeded. I say it because some people reported that deleting old conversations and trying again finally made them succeed. Now I suspect the true reason was simply that by making the database smaller the process finished earlier, but YMMV.
11. Cannot be totally sure, but in my case, I noticed that leaving WA on the background and clicking on the WA icon again might stop the process for true and bring a message about not being able to recover the chats, I got this previously, do not try to open the WA normally, only leave it temporally to look to the space usage in the settings to get back to it by swyping between recent apps to keep the same instance open and working, this was a key point in my success trial that did not happen during the previous ones.
12. And finally, while I kept switching between WA and the settings and when I last saw like 1.30GB of space used (almost twice the space compared to the old phone, maybe it leaves a lot of temp data) I don't know if I either messed with the app-switching or it really finished, but then I got prompted to the screen where you enter your name or nickname. And when I completed this step, I finally got to the chats screen and everything was like in the old phone! Where previously I would get to a lot of empty chat rooms with maybe 40 total messages restored according to WA. Hurray!
Notice that in my case it was still reporting 31% on the WA background screen under the progress bar popup when it finished!! so it seems that is not really mandatory to experience the 100% complete to have it work in the end, but YMMV.
OK, maybe not the most elegant "guide" out there but I wrote it in a hurry and my english sucks, I just hope it might help someone to not lose their WA chats forever.
Good luck!
Edit: I almost forgot but, for the sake of completeness. I also tried a certain script that can backup WA from the phone and retrieve the encryption key, it will also leave an unencrypted copy of the chats database that can later be viewed with a WhatsApp viewer like this. The script is called WhatsApp Key/DB Extractor, and it still works as of 2019, just look at the latest posts in the thread. Guys here on XDA most likely know about it but if not, you might give it a try. I tried it because I assumed that maybe I could circumvent the restore issues by going that route and pushing the backup via ADB, but turns out the legacy WA won't prepare the database due to the time out of sync issue, or at least the data seemed to be lost after performing the restore process, and the unencrypted database on the PC cannot be digested by WA latest versions by just putting it into the internal storage directly according to what other users commented. But, if you finally give up trying the restore process, it still could be relieving to know that you keep a local copy in the PC that can be viewed with another PC tool, at least you get a backup and the conversations are there, in a different way though. Maybe in the future there's a process that can restore them again to a different phone, and you could then merge the new chat database with the older backup with tools like Merjeapp.
Albert83BCN said:
Hi guys!
I have been facing this issue this whole week while trying to move all my chats to a new phone I just bought as with the old one the charging port was dying and I could not bear it anymore. So almost everything restored smoothly from Google Backup and it was like being in my phone again with a few wizard steps but then I Installed WhatsApp (WA) and gone through the typical activation and restoring process and. as many, I got stuck at the 24% sometimes, some others 31% and 39%, and never got past the 39%.
I Tried almost everything: restoring from Google Drive, transfer all WhatsApp directory to internal storage and trying to restore from there, etc. Going back to the old phone to create fresh backups just in case they were corrupted as many people suggests, getting every time more delay to be able to activate WhatsApp again up to 12h for both SMS and call activation... just to mess again and feel back at square one, I guess you all feel the pain.
Well, the good news is that I finally managed to restore all the chat history!!! (well, cannot be certain that 100% was restored but I do not miss anything ATM and I can go back up to 2012 chats so I guess that qualifies as "everything" hehe).
So, I'm posting here because I've been searching a lot on the forums and the reddit and for all the people that is having this issue recently, almost no body came back to report success and I know it feels really discouraging It certainly gives the impression that this issue has no fix at all, and that you should accept losing all the chat history and starting from the start again. But from all the data I've been gathering during this week, at least two or three people reported to eventually being able to restore the chat; they fell in one of these two categories: they either transferred to a different phone where the backup seemed to restore okay, and then exported and restored in the target phone with success (something like a "bridge" restore mode, most of the cases I've read did it this way) or they finally succeeded by sheer brute force by trying again and again and again.
I fall in this 2nd category. In the most recent attempt I was doing what I've been doing again and again and again with just minor variations in the workflow and finally succeeded. TL; DR; I think in reality in many cases attempts could succeed by just letting the phone restore the backup endlessly, by not giving up and assuming the restore process went wrong when it has been stuck forever at either 24, 31 or 39% and force closing..
But I know in the midst of desperation OCD kicks in and you want step-by-step success case scenario reproduction so I will tell you all the steps that I followed that I can remember that got me to finally have the backup to end successfully:
0. First of all, in the winning attempt I had already uninstalled WA from the new phone and removed totally the WA folder in the internal storage / sdcard storage. Not sure this is mandatory but just to tell this was the case.
1. Since I got WA working perfectly on the old phone at every moment, I backed up locally for the Nth f%!?&·( time. This left me with the latest local backup plus a few others in the databases folder as a result of keep messing up.
2. I copied the full WhatsApp directory from the internal storage of the old phone to a safe place. This could be the PC or whatever, but PC transfer via USB seems too sloppy. You maybe could do it via ADB, whatever, I went by the route of coping it to the external SD with some random explorer utility like ES File Explorer. It does not matter, the point is to be able to backup the full WhatsApp folder in order to restore it as similar as possible as the original. What we are more interested right now is in the database folder but having all images, videos etc in place will help in getting it like before the easiest way. (Disclaimer: Ok guys sorry if some steps are too obvious to XDA users which usually are highly educated in the matter, but I was thinking of sharing/linking this text on the reddit and others, so please bear with it).
3. I installed latest WA in the new phone, opened the app (I intended to not open but I somewhat forgot) and got to the welcome screen, immediately closed the app at that step.
3. I restored the full folder to the new phone internal storage, pure copy/paste style (as said, in my case via the SD since both phones have SD slot and was very convenient, but via USB, cloud, etc. can be done).
4. I went to the databases folder and only kept the msgstore.db.crypt12 file and the latest backup with a date (ie: msgstore-2019-11-21.db.crypt12), deleted the rest. Honestly I do not think this is crucial but I somewhat wanted to make it easier for WA to know which one to target, I thought about keeping only the msgstore.db.crypt12 but some random dude pointed that the one with the date was needed. I was under the assumption that file structure is identical in both but just wanted to get done with this and keep both, just in case.
5. Before opening again the WA to try to activate and restore with this full local copy, I opened the Android settings app and went to applications > whatasapp > storage, as suggested by user redweaver, thanks for the tip! by keeping looking at the storage usage of the app during the restore process we could get insight about if it was really doing something or the app was really stuck. Keep open for now. In my case, I saw also on the old phone that my data used for the app was 780+ MB, so I had an idea of what should be on the new phone by the time it finished (if it did!).
5b. I don't think this is really necessary but I did it just in case. I was planning to go to work and let the thing running as long as it would need, and I would make sure that the process would get maximum uptime and nothing would get in the way. So I went to Applications > WhatsApp > Battery usage (or something like it) and disabled the battery optimizations for this app. I also went to the developer mode settings and enabled do not lock the phone while it is charging and everything that looked like it might be relevant. Again, most likely this has nothing to do, but reproducible steps, right?
6. Now open WA and activate it as usual, but when it seems that the activation step ended and you go to the next screen, immediately put the phone in air plane mode or disable data/WiFi, whatever. The goal is that it cannot reach Google Drive to look for the online backup. Honestly maybe in the end is not the culprit of GDrive but many people states that the GD backup is broken at this time and suggests going the local route, so we will do it like this.
7. WA should tell you that looking for the backup is going too slow and to skip this step (sorry to not have exact message, I have it in Spanish, but something in these lines, BTW excuse my somewhat limited English ). The point here is to click on the link that says skip the step and when you are prompted with a popup, click also on Skip.
8. WA will display the typical restore / transfer-like screen where the process starts. At this point you have to enable again data plan / WiFi at least or exit air plane mode, don't know really but even if restoring from local it complains about not having internet connection, maybe needs it to encrypt with the key or something? don't know.
9. Now is the feared moment! Even this time, I got somewhat stuck at 31% again. I left it do its thing, and some time later, it prompted for the popup that has a progress-bar from 0 to 100 (honestly, what is the difference between both?!) which also got stuck at 31%. If you let it be, it starts going back and forth many times, I guess maybe its going chat per chat and the progress-bar represents each one? Dunno. Thing is, even in the prior attempts I got at this point and the backup did not finish successfully. But this time I was decided to let it do its thing as much time as it would take, until the end. In the process the phone might display a pop up saying that WA does not respond. I clicked a few times in the 'keep waiting' option, then I just forgot because I did not have time to mess with it and hoped that it was still working on the background, which bring us to step 10.
10. While we are contemplating the backup process, we can go to the settings app again and look how the internal data is going for the WA. In my case, after some time under the restore process, when I went there I saw WA had occupied 0.91 GB of data space. After going back and forth again between WA and settings, the usage keep growing: 0.96, 1.03, 1.10... I thought it was on the right track, and encouraged me to keep waiting. Maybe in the end the process is too slow for old databases. Note that some people speculates that having messages from very long ago might be the culprit here due to changes in the table structure and that this might be the reason breaking the restore process. And maybe it is the case, but even if it is, in my case I finally succeeded where previously I didn't and without deleting anything, so this does not seem to be a deal-breaker or I would have never succeeded. I say it because some people reported that deleting old conversations and trying again finally made them succeed. Now I suspect the true reason was simply that by making the database smaller the process finished earlier, but YMMV.
11. Cannot be totally sure, but in my case, I noticed that leaving WA on the background and clicking on the WA icon again might stop the process for true and bring a message about not being able to recover the chats, I got this previously, do not try to open the WA normally, only leave it temporally to look to the space usage in the settings to get back to it by swyping between recent apps to keep the same instance open and working, this was a key point in my success trial that did not happen during the previous ones.
12. And finally, while I kept switching between WA and the settings and when I last saw like 1.30GB of space used (almost twice the space compared to the old phone, maybe it leaves a lot of temp data) I don't know if I either messed with the app-switching or it really finished, but then I got prompted to the screen where you enter your name or nickname. And when I completed this step, I finally got to the chats screen and everything was like in the old phone! Where previously I would get to a lot of empty chat rooms with maybe 40 total messages restored according to WA. Hurray!
Notice that in my case it was still reporting 31% on the WA background screen under the progress bar popup when it finished!! so it seems that is not really mandatory to experience the 100% complete to have it work in the end, but YMMV.
OK, maybe not the most elegant "guide" out there but I wrote it in a hurry and my english sucks, I just hope it might help someone to not lose their WA chats forever.
Good luck!
Edit: I almost forgot but, for the sake of completeness. I also tried a certain script that can backup WA from the phone and retrieve the encryption key, it will also leave an unencrypted copy of the chats database that can later be viewed with a WhatsApp viewer like this. The script is called WhatsApp Key/DB Extractor, and it still works as of 2019, just look at the latest posts in the thread. Guys here on XDA most likely know about it but if not, you might give it a try. I tried it because I assumed that maybe I could circumvent the restore issues by going that route and pushing the backup via ADB, but turns out the legacy WA won't prepare the database due to the time out of sync issue, or at least the data seemed to be lost after performing the restore process, and the unencrypted database on the PC cannot be digested by WA latest versions by just putting it into the internal storage directly according to what other users commented. But, if you finally give up trying the restore process, it still could be relieving to know that you keep a local copy in the PC that can be viewed with another PC tool, at least you get a backup and the conversations are there, in a different way though. Maybe in the future there's a process that can restore them again to a different phone, and you could then merge the new chat database with the older backup with tools like Merjeapp.
Click to expand...
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Many thanks ...
Flagging this thread just in case I need it. Hopefully, I will never need to go through such steps.
Tarek
@tarekahf there is a subscribe button, no need to post. if you have something to ask or post, use the reply button, no need to useless full quote. you can also edit your post
Hi, I got to step 9 and it got stuck at 31% as prev but now its asking to either skip or restore from older backup? The storage went up to 1.3gb at one point but is now back to 58mb. Do I skip or restore from older or just leave it idle until it prompts with something else

Regain access to old data of mine

//Sorry for double posting. This same text is in the S7 section aswell, but i think it will get more attention here
Hey Guys
Im in a bit of a situation here
It sounds a bit odd, but when making up my electronic stuff, i dug out my old Galaxy S7 and several other phones and i got a bit nostalgic about those times and what i did back then.
So i started charging them up and scrolling to the photos and messages of that time. (im not the type of guy who has everything synced, i mostly start from scratch on a new phone).
However on this device, i was not able to figure out the PIN Code nor the Google Account i was using back then.
So i am now trying to get access to this data by working around the pin code or something like that.
I thought that with the ADB shell i could do this and i found some hints on google about it. However as it looks, you need to have USB debugging enabled to get the shell access. Which of course i haven't and i cannot set as i am not able to get into the system the usual way.
There is no custom recovery or similar flashed on the device. Stock. I might even have wiped it back then but just curious And searching solutions for problems like that is in my nature.
So does anyone know a way how to get there?
I am not interested about the os or something, just my old personal data.
Is unlocking through odin still a thing? and can i get a custom recovery on the device that way WITHOUT loosing the data on the phone? so through that recovery i cloud get a shell to bypass the lockscreen?
Or is there just no solution to that?
I found that there is some SD Card installable flashes to bypass the lockscreen, but here i would first have to buy an SD Card. Since this is just a project i dont want to waste money. Do you guys know if this works for sure? I mean, can i even install this tool without a custom recovery? I have the menu option to apply updates from sd card in the standard recovery, just not sure if this does the trick.
Any other approach?
And yeah, i would probably find it out one day by just trying the codes, but it locks you for 60 minutes after every try now, so this would take ages ^^
no clues?
Thread closed as duplicate of https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s7/help/regain-access-to-data-t3925940

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