Database Users

Constant Phone/Touchwiz reboots - help if you can

Hello everyone, I've got an interesting problem that I want the experts here at XDA to help me troubleshoot. Feel free to ask questions as I know there's probably a million variables at this point with stuff installed, uninstalled, gps, root, task killers, etc.
alrighty with that said, I did the e-wrecked gps fix (changing the operation mode and server location+port). That seems to work great in terms of time to lock on my position as well as improved accuracy. Over the next couple of days I noticed some really choppy and lengthy phone start ups after the fix.
Eventually it got to (and currently is at) a point where it kept rebooting the phone, or at least touchwiz. It would load up, scan media, search for the network, do all the start up stuff, then lock up, and turn the screen off. Hitting the lock button/power button does nothing while it resets itself. Then it resets to the lock screen, the screen lights up and it goes into "searching" for the tmo network while doing the storage preparations, and other boot up stuff. It does not restart from cold (with the vibrant, tmo, and galaxy animations, only the lock screen and OS boot process)
Anyone else got any funky restarts going on, for whatever reason? I basically want to start seeing what would trigger this behavior. I started uninstalling stuff one by one trying to figure out why its doing that but sometimes it boots up fine, sometimes it boots but doesn't ever find tmo's network, and sometimes it just does the above.
Observations:
1. It will always boot up fine if the SIM card is out.
2. The last time it did it was today while I was at work, listening to music while the phone was charging. Im noticing that the phone gets pretty hot while charging and really hot if you're using while its charging (getting apps, surfing the web, playing games, etc)
So any thoughts from the tech gurus here? anyone have similar behavior in the past on other phones? is the heat affecting the sim card negatively? I can (and have) put my simcard back in my treo 680 backup phone with no issues whatsoever.

New observation, it consistently does the reset process as soon as the "Adjust Time and Date" as it registers/syncs with the network.
UPDATE: so, i did some research, ended up at the setCPU thread and saw that when set to OnDemand some people's phones experienced similar tendencies. Problem is, mine was already set to auto-detect and "Conservative". I un-checked start at boot, and tried again. Same problem. I uninstalled setCPU completely and my phone appears to be back to normal.
I'll update again if anything changes.

so one of the things that i removed during my troubleshooting was my corporate exchange account. When i added it back. it did its initial sync fine and gave me my calendar and contacts. I then rebooted and the problem came back.
I removed the account and rebooted. it went through two cycles of the restarts and on the third one, it worked. I left it alone after that.
I then was showing my friend some things (browser differences) and had 3 browsers open. It froze as i went to close Dolphin HD. Rebooted and now its back to the cycle.

Mine did this also. Installed several apps, woke up to find a slow phone. Resets galore. A quick reset to defaults and app restore fixed it, sans setcpu of course.
From XDA App on SGS-Vibrant

my phone resets itself also as described above, but not really doing anything in particular. i dont have a whole lot of apps installed. i even was using google maps the other day and after it started up the screen went black and the device was unresponsive until the screen came back and it said searching and the media scanner was running.

well first off thanks for responding lol. i thought i was by myself out here.
secondly, i found that if i leave it alone and let it go through its cycle, it does eventually boot up ok (this is recently, before, it was endless). i havent restarted my phone (im afraid to lol) since it did it on its own yesterday (showing my friend the browsers).
since yesterday, i've used it for navigation (motonav), serveral installs, downloaded podcasts, rss feeds, etc and its been ok (even while charging and wifi on). again, havent actually restarted it since yesterday because its actually functioning for once.
Lastly, i unchecked the auto update time and date from network in the settings just to see if that makes a difference because based on previous expereience that is the point where it freezes and resets. Thanks for chiming in and let me know if there's any other advice you have

I'd suggest a reset as mentioned above.

Been checking out this site for awhile but this is my first time posting, today my phone started to have this problem and it just bootloops touchwiz if i have a simcard in the phone.
It works fine without a simcard but my problem is it will not let me turn of auto update of time and date, i have tried disabling this setting and it just enables itself again. I have also noticed that if I started messing around with time and date settings even without a sim touchwiz reloads once. I guess im gonna give a reset a go.

martin0641 said:
Mine did this also. Installed several apps, woke up to find a slow phone. Resets galore. A quick reset to defaults and app restore fixed it, sans setcpu of course.
From XDA App on SGS-Vibrant
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heygrl said:
I'd suggest a reset as mentioned above.
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sorry, noob question (i came from winmo and a touch pro 2), what does "a quick reset to defaults" mean? is that like a factory wipe i.e. phone will be brand new again, gotta root again and reinstall everything, change settings, etc?

jblade1000 said:
sorry, noob question (i came from winmo and a touch pro 2), what does "a quick reset to defaults" mean? is that like a factory wipe i.e. phone will be brand new again, gotta root again and reinstall everything, change settings, etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Root will stick but settings and apps/app data will be gone. It briefs you on what is and isn't lost when you do a factory reset.

Smae problem, its setcpu!
SetCPU with any settings will do this.
It needs an update, the auto detect some how loses and
will set the cpu to 19mhz max and min.
This is too slow to process. I rebooted and pressed settings and uninstalled it
while I could. Seems to behave once out of touchwiz.

For me it was another app not setcpu I never used it. After i did a reset i restored all my apps with titanium backup and once i restarted my phone it looped again. So i did another restore and left off all the apps that i installed right before the problem started and so far i think for me at least one of these caused it
Google maps update
google translate
the extra language pack for translate
barnacle wifi tether
hero of sparta
these are apps that I installed right before the problem happened and without these my phone works fine I am going to see if i can find that one that caused my problem.

It's not the maps update because my phone works fine with it.

It was hero of sparta a gameloft game from there web market funny thing is its suppose to work on the vibrant while dungeon hunter which works fine would only give nexus as a check out option. Anyway im going to try to get a refund tomorrow.

I get the same touchwiz reboot but for me it has only ever happened while using google maps. I do not use set cpu, but I have applied the gps fix. It is more than a little annoying. I have done a system wipe but the problem persists.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

yes, if you have setcpu, uninstall it - its buggy with the galaxys
- sometimes you can't wake your phone (if you set a screen off profile), forcing you to do a battery pull
- constant launcher restarts

Judgement5 said:
For me it was another app not setcpu I never used it. After i did a reset i restored all my apps with titanium backup and once i restarted my phone it looped again. So i did another restore and left off all the apps that i installed right before the problem started and so far i think for me at least one of these caused it
Google maps update
google translate
the extra language pack for translate
barnacle wifi tether
hero of sparta
these are apps that I installed right before the problem happened and without these my phone works fine I am going to see if i can find that one that caused my problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
and this is why i started the thread, to make sure i wasnt all alone. i have everything you have installed as well, but it was doing it before i picked up hero of sparta (and nova, and asphalt 5, man those guys make some good phone game lol).
anyways i just installed barnacle wifi tether yesterday so thats not it either (at least for me). That leaves the google stuff, out of the apps in your list, all of which were installed when i first got the problem, and are still on there after I've removed setCPU

heygrl said:
Root will stick but settings and apps/app data will be gone. It briefs you on what is and isn't lost when you do a factory reset.
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Click to collapse
ok so, contacts, text messages, etc stay? Meaning if i do a factory reset, root stays, and all app stuff can be taken care of by, say, AppBrain since it has a running list of everything installed and knows where to get it to install it again? I apprecicate the advice, but this would still be a last resort sort of thing. my phone has worked fine for the past few days but I also havent restarted it yet either

just a quick update, my phone still does this if i reboot my phone (which is never now that i got my 32gb sd card), but for the first time ever hero of sparta caused it to happen while the phone is on. I uninstalled it so we'll see.

Vibrant Google Maps Problem

I've had my Vibrant since launch day and coming from the G1, I'm absolutely blown away.
I do have on gripe though and that's with Google Maps.
At first, like many, I have/had GPS problems (poor/slow/no connectivity) which was seemingly somewhat corrected by the fix in this forum (thanks!).
I'm still having another problem though. About 1 out of every three times I open google maps, the phone begins to locate via GPS then freezes (zero functionality). A few seconds later the screen is black with the soft keys lit up. I've had this happen upwards of 20-30 times now. Holding the power button to kill the phone is necessary. The reason it seems like Google maps is not other GPS app has done this.
Today, using navigation, it was working good, until I lost GPS signal (due to river bluffs), and Maps never re-acquired the GPS signal, although a quick check using GPS status revealed a full lock. I had to close (task manager style) maps and re-do the navigation. Then it worked fine again until all of a sudden it locked like usual and completely froze. Hard re-boot, reopen maps, froze, hard re-boot, reopen maps, froze....and this happened 4 times before I was finally able to get in and kill the navigation request. Of course by this time I had missed my turn by about 2 miles.
I also thought it was latitude (before today's incident), since I had never used latitude on my G1; but the girlfriend got a Vibrant (her first smart phone) so we tried out latitude for kicks. But after trying it with Latitude on and off, there doesn't seem to be any ties as if will freeze both ways.
I've also tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Google Maps updates three times now with no changes.
Talking with a guy at the T-Mo store today was no help, other than he said a fix was coming within days to correct the GPS connectivity issue. For my problem though, which the phone faithfully recreated in-store to him (much to my pleasure) he recommended a new phone.
I'm not too crazy about getting a new device or doing a master reset (since I've heard this has helped some folks), so I thought I would ask for any suggestions from this fine community.
Any help or ideas would be appreciated.
EDIT: Just enabled SkyHook out of curiosity, and I haven't been able to replicate this problem yet since doing so. Even doing an immediate operation upon opening Maps its ok. Inside house got a 10m lock withing 15-20 seconds every time. I'll keep trying it some more tomorrow.

I have the same exact problem and it just recently started... want to see if anyone else has a fix or an idea.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

timafey said:
I have the same exact problem and it just recently started... want to see if anyone else has a fix or an idea.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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Same exact problem? Frozen with black screen shortly after opening?

Have you both tried a reset? This is due to the GPS because the phone will get overwhelmed when it can't get a GPS lock.

I have noticed when my wifi is on I cannot receive a gps lock. Once I turn off wifi the gps is functional and will lock quickly; ~10 secs. I still may only lock 2-3 satellites indoors and accuracy is about 20'.
Also I am using the stock GPS settings.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

I had the issue with google maps and gps when turning gps on will freeze the phone and if it happened that the phone screen is locked you are sol.haven't had the issue since the reset though.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

I had this problem as well. Maps and sometimes Navigation would lock up my phone entirely, just as you described. I did a Factory Reset and that fixed the freezing problem, but my GPS problem was still there. I finally did an exchange and the new phone seems to be working better. I'm crossing my fingers that it will remain that way.

Same exact problem here. It happens with and without the GPS fix applied. I think the only solution is to wait and hope Samsung addresses the bigger GPS issue as I am sure it is all related.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

I have the exact same issues with my phone locking up.
I'm going to do a master reset when I get home from work. If that doesn't work, I'm going to exchange the device at T-Mobile (and hopefully extend my 14-day period, while we wait for the firmware fix).
I love this phone, but if these problems can't be fixed, I'll go back to the stone age.
I'll report back with the master reset / phone swap success rate on my end.

Ditto here. Happened to me last night.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

+1 here. Although I never had a problem with Google Maps/Navigation. It's My Tracks that caused the phone to lock up when recording a track.

medler said:
I have noticed when my wifi is on I cannot receive a gps lock. Once I turn off wifi the gps is functional and will lock quickly; ~10 secs. I still may only lock 2-3 satellites indoors and accuracy is about 20'.
Also I am using the stock GPS settings.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
I have the same issue with "use wireless networks" enable. And wifi turned on... Something wrong with gps and wireless... I have applied the fix...
Now with wireless off I still have an issue:
Gps Test is taking 20-30 seconds when GPS has not been used in awhile. After the first lock, it then only takes 2-5 seconds for a lock.
So what's going with then initial lock?

yeah, the screen turns black and cant do anything... So Factory reset seems to fix the problem? is that the general consensus?

I have the same issue after doing a factory data reset. Just fyi.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Same here. Even after factory reset, it still does the black-screen crashing act. It's quite annoying. Actually, that happened to me while typing a text message. Samsung messed up royally. The software on this phone is pure trash. I really like this phone, but the issues are just pathetic.

I'm having the same problem on my Vibrant. It has happened before and after a factory reset, before and after the GPS fix. Without the GPS fix, I couldn't even lock onto a satellite. After running Google Maps for a few minutes, the screen goes completely blank. Sometimes, it would reset itself. Sometimes, I would have to hold the power button for a few seconds to get it to reboot. Hope they fix this soon. This makes the GPS completely useless for this phone.

Etrnaly said:
I'm having the same problem on my Vibrant. It has happened before and after a factory reset, before and after the GPS fix. Without the GPS fix, I couldn't even lock onto a satellite. After running Google Maps for a few minutes, the screen goes completely blank. Sometimes, it would reset itself. Sometimes, I would have to hold the power button for a few seconds to get it to reboot. Hope they fix this soon. This makes the GPS completely useless for this phone.
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I haven't tried the factory reset, but for everything else mention my vibrant has acted the same exact way.

I've had the same issue on both the pre-release ROM and the shipped ROM. As others have said, it seems to cause problems with all of the Google Maps-based apps (Navigation, Maps, and My Tracks). You loose signal and next thing you know, black screen with the buttons lit up.
I'm waiting for an opportunity to test it with Maverick and Trimble Outdoors to see if it's just a Google-app problem or not.
Also, a master reset (aka wipe) didn't influence it one bit. About the only thing I didn't try was removing the bundled-in maps apk and replacing it with a market one.

Report these issues!
+1 Just wanted to add that everyone should report this issue (and ALL others ie. compass, GPS, dropped calls) to T-Mobile and most importantly, Samsung. I am now on hold with Samsung level 3 tech support to update my issues with the phone. The more they hear from us, the more likely they are to come out with proper fixes in a timely fashion. If these issues stay on the forums and nowhere else, we're SOL. Do it now!
UPDATE: Eric, a L3 techie, was very appreciative of the info I gave him regarding the inaccurate GPS, GPS crashing, and compass issues. He did state that these were becoming common complaints. The compass issue was said to be less popular but he was able to reproduce the inaccuracies I and many others have, so that's a good thing. He did not have any info regarding a coming fix on anything. Regarding dropped calls (which could be a radio problem) he said, as I assumed, that it is probably a service issue that T-Mo should be notified of.

I and most others have no problems with dropped calls but the only time I get that dreaded screen is when I mess with lbstestmode
Sent from my SGH-T959

Google maps keeps force closing

hey guys, I don't know what happened but about 30 min ago, every time I try to open Google Maps I get the Force close notification.....anybody have any ideas of how I can fix this? I tried restarting the phone and uninstalling and reinstalling updates but nothing has helped

It's happening to me too. Started about an hour ago. It doesn't happen every time, but pretty often. Since we're not alone, it sounds like google has changed something server side that's sending data that kills the client.

oh pheww.....I thought I was alone lol
not to seem like an a-hole and be happy it's happening to you....but just sayin....haha

Thanks... I was a little worried myself, I installed the wifi tethering mod earlier today and thought I might have screwed the phone up.

Weird! Just started happening to me too. Thanks god for this forum and the search button, because I almost just began the nightmare of trying to figure out which new app or kernel I installed was causing this issue. Guess ill wait now since I'm not the only one. It's probably a Google server causing a problem.....

Same here, just started a little bit ago ... I don't think I can leave the house safely if I don't have access to google maps!$%!
edit: Just a possible fix ... I uninstalled and reinstalled and so far so good...

Are you guys using a modified rom?
Sent from my 1 gigahertz quake 3 playing, Quadrant bustin telephone

I uninstalled/reinstalled didn't help, but if I use WiFi it works fine. Weird.

Me too, except worse - my entire phone freezes up and I have to pull the battery. Not an east or safe thing to do while driving. Started happening about a week ago. Anybody know why?

Forgot to say. Stock ROM on my Vibrant.

shrasmyl said:
Forgot to say. Stock ROM on my Vibrant.
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Stock Rom here too. Just started doing this to me today also, but only when I use it on the wifi on 3g its fine.

uninstall the google maps update and it will work for now. Google broke it and they will fix it.

Elite GunnerX said:
uninstall the google maps update and it will work for now. Google broke it and they will fix it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah thats what I did.

Same here...Stock Rom started doing this a couple hours ago.
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant
RIP my beloved rooted G1

Same is happening to me...rooted with stock rom. I kind of stop using google maps because of gps issue.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Have you guys tried factory data wipe and reset?
*2767*3855#

I got the crash only when WiFi was turned on . I uninstalled all the updates and am not getting it anymore.

Mine not forcing close, but a black screen "force me to shut down and boot the phone manually".
Everytime I opened google map with GPS on, the phone hanged and I needed to long press the power button to boot..

That is an issue I have seen with lag fix installed...i had to odin back to stock install lag fox then install apps...fixed all my fc issues on stock and other roms...anyways food for thought.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Updated today but still black screen when GPS is on...need to restart the phone manually everytime!!

Force Closes on multiple ROM'S

Okay, so I initially rooted and was running Bonsai on DK28 and everything was great. When EB13 came out I installed syndicate frozen 1.0.1 and after the fixes for email and maps everything was once again great, for 3 days.
Today I started getting force closes for my wireless tether, email and messaging apps. Rebooted a couple of times and it still was happening. So I flashed Bonsai 3.0.1 and the same thing was happening. The only thing I installed today was the Angry Birds update and Startup Auditor, although I never opened and set anything up with that.
What do you guys think I need to do to get it back to "normal"?
_________________________________________________
Uninstalled startup auditor and rebooted. Still force closing.

Neckberg said:
What do you guys think I need to do to get it back to "normal"?
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It sounds like your data was corrupted. When you installed bonsai, it backed up the corrupted data and restored it. I would use AppBrain to sync your apps, wipe data 3 times in recovery, and then flash a new rom and reinstall your apps (from appbrain).

i have almost same problem except i did a fresh install of eb13 with odin , day 1 everything worked and then day 2 stuff kept crashing like messaging, email and some others

Did you ever pull your battery while the phone was still on? I did that twice and it did the same thing. The newer roms have journaling disabled so you have to be gentle and let them turn all the way off before pulling the battery.

Neckberg said:
Okay, so I initially rooted and was running Bonsai on DK28 and everything was great. When EB13 came out I installed syndicate frozen 1.0.1 and after the fixes for email and maps everything was once again great, for 3 days.
Today I started getting force closes for my wireless tether, email and messaging apps. Rebooted a couple of times and it still was happening. So I flashed Bonsai 3.0.1 and the same thing was happening. The only thing I installed today was the Angry Birds update and Startup Auditor, although I never opened and set anything up with that.
What do you guys think I need to do to get it back to "normal"?
_________________________________________________
Uninstalled startup auditor and rebooted. Still force closing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope you didn't Advance restore your data from a previous DK28 rom...

Has anyone made any progress with this? I have the same issue of getting FCs on pretty much every ROM I use. It pulling the battery a problem?

strausmega said:
Has anyone made any progress with this? I have the same issue of getting FCs on pretty much every ROM I use. It pulling the battery a problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very much so. If you pull the battery on a no journal ROM your data gets corrupted because it gets no chance to close files and write back to the phone data. Journaling keeps and compares a copy of data to prevent this. Easiest way to get rid of FCs is factory data reset then enable journaling. Also if you keep restoring corrupted data you will get FCs all the time.
Try clearing data in all the apps that are FCing and clear data in Google Services Framework. If on a GB ROM you have to use Titanium Backup for rhis.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

If your G1 is constantly rebooting, Google Maps might be the reason. (Fix)

2 days ago, my G1 started acting up. Randomly rebooting too often, middle of a call etc. I was digging around, even checked log cat without much luck. Then I seem to have isolated the problem. In the past Google Maps updates usually borked things on my old Enom rom. So I went in and checked. After I loaded it, it gave me a message saying it updated itself. Then I went into settings for it and cleared the cache and map tiles. Since then no more reboots or odd issues.
I had tried to "Clear Cache" in recovery too which didnt do anything. So it does seem to be just google maps related stuff. So I wanted to post this in case anyone else had the same issue. Been using my G1 for 4 years now. Would hate to stop using it heh.

It's a conspiracy--they're trying to force you to upgrade your phone already.

Happening across all devices
Ace42 said:
It's a conspiracy--they're trying to force you to upgrade your phone already.
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This isn't specific to the G1, I had to uninstall maps on my sensation because it was causing reboots.

Yea now its all doing it again.. I may just uninstall maps. Then reinstall it and leave the "auto update" off. Its very annoying, cause Maps is one of the 1st things that loads on bootup.
Edit: Ok things of interest.. took sim out (that later using airplane mode with sim in) no more rebooting. How odd. T-mobile issue somehow I wonder? Or one of their apps.
Well I wondered if it had been Visual Voicemail.. but thats been inconclusive since right after I rebooted, Google Maps decided to download itself again after I had just uninstalled it... >.>