apps disappearing - Atrix 4G General

anyone has apps disappearing?
i.e. you're 100% certain they're installed, yet at some point they literally disappear - they're not in the drawer and if you have a shortcut on your home it goes blank (which is how you notice).
I have plenty of space left so its not that. Some are paid, some are free (all are from market).
it happened once or twice on froyo, upgraded to gingerbread OTA today and already happened once.

Yes I've had the same thing, had to restore with Titanium backup, and was frustrated, thought it was just me, but guess I'm wrong.

Never happened on froyo but has done at least 3 times in the last month on gingerbread.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium App

I noticed that apps that I moved to the SD card would appear "disappeared" after I'd connected and removed a USB cable sometimes. The problem was the SD card didn't always remount so the apps looked like they were gone. No icons or anything anywhere but nothing on the status bar to suggest the SD card was still unmounted. However, if I went into Settings - SD Card & Phone Storage, and tapped the "Mount SD Card" option under SD Card, the SD Card would be mounted and all the apps on there would show back up. Just an idea...

if you moved the apps to your SD card, you lose the desktop icon. with froyo and the apps to SD app, it wouldnt disappear until you rebooted. but with gingerbread and the native apps to SD app, icons will disappear rather quickly.

Had this happen one time on 4183 with Galaxy on Fire 2. Haven't seen the problem since.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App

Related

new app2sd on froyo seem buged...

Sorry for the loing post, bare with me
I have installed FRF50 when it came out, after a few day when doing an update of a few app in the market I had one stuck at installation, even after reboot when I tried to update it again it did the same, after a few cleanup of my download folder and retry all the app that where encrypted in the app2sd folder (not sure of the exact folder name) where not properly decrypted by the OS, at the time I taught nothing of it and reinstalled everything (froyo image + reconfig) to do a fresh start with froyo, I also reformatted my SD card to be on the safe side... and had no issue since then...
Then came FRF72, did the exact same problem yesterday and I was able to restart the SD (if I can say so) after a few reboot.
Today same issue is back, but no go so far, all app that belong to flash are there with a generic icon, they appear on the list of app in the SD section but without their icon, it really look like if the OS is not able to decrypt them (If I understand correctly that was the stupid way google decided to implement some kind of DRM on the flash memory)
I am seriously thinkiing about going back to CM and the old way of EXT4 app2sd, it was working ok...
I've had this occur after upgrading to FRF72, it's probably because the OS didn't manage to detect the apps correctly. To solve it, I just plugged in my USB cable, mounted the SD card and then unmounting it after it showed up correctly as a removable drive on my laptop. After waiting a while for the OS to scan the card (check logcat to verify that apps are indeed being scanned one by one), my apps were back.
Another test...
Rebooted the phone without the SD, then shutdown and reboot with the SD, no change but...
If I connect the USB cable, the computer see the new drive right away (it use to take a few second after enabling the USB sharing) but is is not usable and I see no notification of the USB, that's a really weird bug...
if anybody have some idea, I know from my first encounter with this issue that changing the SD card will not fix this either...
@ Zanglang
Thanks for the sugestion, but the PC doesn't see the card, my terminal was on the flash mem and I can not install new app from market
trying a nandroid from the Recovery now... BAD DROID...
I had a problem on Frf50 with app icons turning generic and disappearing from 3d app rolodex. They were still accessible from the generic icons.
Now on Frf72 and issue seems to have subsided. Everything is where it should be. This time around i only added apps to sd they were allowable to move, i didnt force anything. When i first talked about it a while back i heard it was a bug as well as learned that certain things shouldnt go on the SD altogether. Now that i got that straightened out im good and feel like i learned something. lol
crap, no recovery
SBERG117 said:
I had a problem on Frf50 with app icons turning generic and disappearing from 3d app rolodex. They were still accessible from the generic icons.
Now on Frf72 and issue seems to have subsided. Everything is where it should be. This time around i only added apps to sd they were allowable to move, i didnt force anything. When i first talked about it a while back i heard it was a bug as well as learned that certain things shouldnt go on the SD altogether. Now that i got that straightened out im good and feel like i learned something. lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, the funny part is that I did not move rom manager and I did not move anything like widget etc, I am frustrated by Google stupid way of handling memory extension tho... as for not forcing any app i am fine with the idea however too many app are not updated and it piss me off to go thru all app to move them by hand...
What's the point of encrypting the app moved to SD anyway... I can't believe how stupid this is, I hope Cyanogen will find a way to disable this altogether...
P00r said:
Yeah, the funny part is that I did not move rom manager and I did not move anything like widget etc, I am frustrated by Google stupid way of handling memory extension tho... as for not forcing any app i am fine with the idea however too many app are not updated and it piss me off to go thru all app to move them by hand...
What's the point of encrypting the app moved to SD anyway... I can't believe how stupid this is, I hope Cyanogen will find a way to disable this altogether...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well now some of the icons have disappeared again. LOL.
These were all allowable by FRF72. Only one that hasnt changed yet is titanium backup. I tried, thought it was gonna hold.
I managed to do a recovery, I swapped the SD with another one and moved everything from the protected dir of the old card to the new one and all the icon came back.
When checking in the app manager, I noticed a few file marked as flash, I deleted a few and it seem ok but the one in the SD section are still not all there, and some display calculating as in the properties field forever...
So far
Froyo = 7/10 (3 total crash so far all related to the new memory management) since I used the PM setInstallLocation 2 I am not putting 0...
Cyanogen = 9/10
I am really curious to see what he will do with flash memory management!
Now running FRF83 with the first SD untouched, I recovered my nandroid then directly flashed to FRF83 from Paul, all app are there... I am also reverting to setIntallLocation 0 to see if there's improvement...
Having similar issues right now on the latest update with setinstalllocation 2. I guess I have to f around with it to get this to work again. What a pain.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
adb setinstalllocation 2 doesn't seem to do much but make it seem like many apps are actually being installed on the sd card when they are in fact not.
I decided to investigate when I noticed my phone storage at 32mb of internal storage free. Installed flash player. I went to manage applications, installed on sd tab had all 7.7 megs on the sd card. I went to uninstall, the application freed up internal phone storage, all 7.7 megs on uninstall.
I don't believe this method actually does anything useful unless its an app that already allows store to sd.. which is few and far between. Furthermore you don't know what's really an app that supports that now and what isn't because most of the apps now show up in the "on sd" tab of managed applications.
I could be wrong, plan on testing some more soon.. busy for the rest of the day. Will report back
blisk said:
adb setinstalllocation 2 doesn't seem to do much but make it seem like many apps are actually being installed on the sd card when they are in fact not.
I decided to investigate when I noticed my phone storage at 32mb of internal storage free. Installed flash player. I went to manage applications, installed on sd tab had all 7.7 megs on the sd card. I went to uninstall, the application freed up internal phone storage, all 7.7 megs on uninstall.
I don't believe this method actually does anything useful unless its an app that already allows store to sd.. which is few and far between. Furthermore you don't know what's really an app that supports that now and what isn't because most of the apps now show up in the "on sd" tab of managed applications.
I could be wrong, plan on testing some more soon.. busy for the rest of the day. Will report back
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The files are encrypted and placed in .android_secure in the root of the SD card (when I crashed that dir had 350MB size...)
so they are there, but I agree that phone memory still didn't get freed as much as it should as well, I suspect it's the way the OS had to place thumbstone so that they appear in the app manager
Also I noticed that they seem to have some kind of naming convention {com.dooblou.WiFiFileExplorerPRO-2} vs {cn.mobgo.filego-1} where some have -2 and other are -1
either way I reformatted and started again from scratch (well partially, titanium backup is very usefull) this time without forcing usage of the SD card I already feel the pain of having to go thru each and every app to toggle the move to sd and this is when it simply doesn't support the feature yet...
I really think that this app 2 sd implementation sucks big time, oh did I mention that the way google implemented it's memory expansion sucks... Also the way they implemented encryption mean that you could end up with a backup from a broken phone not working on a new phone which is quite something, almost sound like an Apple Feature...
They could have to the very least added a tab in the app manager so that we can easily manage the said so option... and made an external app that could decrypt the app moved to flash for backup purpose
P00r said:
I really think that this app 2 sd implementation sucks big time, oh did I mention that the way google implemented it's memory expansion sucks... Also the way they implemented encryption mean that you could end up with a backup from a broken phone not working on a new phone which is quite something, almost sound like an Apple Feature...
They could have to the very least added a tab in the app manager so that we can easily manage the said so option... and made an external app that could decrypt the app moved to flash for backup purpose
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah it's a pretty terrible implementation. I think eventually it'll be some sort of transparent thing that the user will never see if the app developer enables it but for the time being it blows big time.
Maybe this is why Froyo hasn't yet released.... Wider audience and feedback on A2SD.
I suspect it'll either get fixed or yanked for 2.2.
I had to reinstall all the apps I moved to the SD card.
Had the same problem with FRF76..all of a sudden I couldn't install new apps from the market...soooo, what I did was:
- downgrade to CM5.0.8
- save all of my apps to apps2sd
- deleted app secure folder
- upgrade to rodrigurez r19 rom with older style apps2sd.
- now, I have all my apps n new ones my sd card n yeap..even widgets are working..
khaytsus said:
Maybe this is why Froyo hasn't yet released.... Wider audience and feedback on A2SD.
I suspect it'll either get fixed or yanked for 2.2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope so, A guy has made a great program to move the app to SD, however on my phone I can move like 10% of all I have installed, I just had to delete co-pilot to be able to install swype
What's weird is that their protected folder system even compress the app, but as far as I am concerned I do not need more space on my SD since almost nothing can be moved there anyway... and even if, I could update my SD as needed...

After installing some app i get the memory running out message.

Is there any way to have all the apps installed to sd card instead of phone memory.
Sent from Galaxy S 4G using XDA App
You can go into settings and change ones manually under "applications" and then "manage applications", but it's easier to load an app like "app2sd" and it let's you see what can be moved and makes it "click" simple. There are many core apps that can't be put on the sd card though and you can quickly run out of room on the 4G. I ran out of room with only half the apps I had on my old Vibrant and I had already moved everything possible to the sd card. Problem is you can't put many key apps on the sd card like messaging apps, widgets, launchers and a host of other normal ones.
Thank you.
Sent from Galaxy S 4G using XDA App

Apps to SDCard Widgets Issue

Just recently (like ten minutes ago) I decided I would finally move all my Apps to my sdcard using Titanium Backup. After it was complete, I powered off and back on again just to be safe and noticed all my widgets were messed up, so I removed them and went to add them back on again. Thats when I noticed that none of the apps I originally would see under the widgets menu were there, but they were still installed on my phone. Are all the Widgets that are in Apps placed on our sdcards inaccessible or is it just me? Because if it isn't just me, then having all the Apps on the sdcard is just pointless in my opinion. Anyone else experience this?
You cannot have widgets for Apps that are on your SD card.
It is not just you.
I am not aware of how to fix this.
LemonHead2089 said:
Just recently (like ten minutes ago) I decided I would finally move all my Apps to my sdcard using Titanium Backup. After it was complete, I powered off and back on again just to be safe and noticed all my widgets were messed up, so I removed them and went to add them back on again. Thats when I noticed that none of the apps I originally would see under the widgets menu were there, but they were still installed on my phone. Are all the Widgets that are in Apps placed on our sdcards inaccessible or is it just me? Because if it isn't just me, then having all the Apps on the sdcard is just pointless in my opinion. Anyone else experience this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It isn't pointless to move apps to your SD just because widgets won't work, the whole point of apps to SD is to move LARGE apps to your SD to have more space on your phone for other apps.
guess I'll just move them back then
It's a limitation of googles apps2sd. Just like when you mount the sd card on your pc, those apps become unavailable. Before froyo and native apps2sd, we formatted the sd card with 2 partitions. One fat and one ext, then you union or symlink the ext part to /data/. It worked 1000x better than googles does. Apps where accesible while mounted, and widgets acted normal. Wish we could still do it like this.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

[Q] Possible to install/move ALL apps to microsd?

I just got my Epic 4G and while I did find the way you can move SOME apps to the sd card once they are installed, I was wondering if there was any way to install/move ALL the applications to the microsd card either normally or after the phone is rooted???
Why?
Fill up the space on your phone first. That's what it is for.
Read speeds are going to be much faster coming from the phone space than the SD card.
Additionally, you won't have to wait forever while the media scanner scans all your apps before you can start using them.
If u rooted get titanium back up pro and it can almost do all the apps on the sd
If you are rooted, you can install this app which will allow you to move the majority of apps to the SD card. Some of them you can't (like launchers, for example) and any with widgets you shouldn't because the widgets won't work.
I'm an ex-Tilt 2-Windows Mobile 6.5 user, so if my phone memory got used up, the phone ran SUPER slow...so I had to keep programs stored ENTIRELY on the sd card, keep my txt msgs to a minimum, otherwise the phone started to CRAWL...is that not true for Android?
Well the question you asked is possible. The app is called move2sd enabler and root is required.
Argh, beatin by a typer...
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
zeoran said:
I'm an ex-Tilt 2-Windows Mobile 6.5 user, so if my phone memory got used up, the phone ran SUPER slow...so I had to keep programs stored ENTIRELY on the sd card, keep my txt msgs to a minimum, otherwise the phone started to CRAWL...is that not true for Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe if you fill it to the brink.
Leave ~100 megs for cache. As long as you are not getting any warnings from android about it being to full, then it isn't going to slow down.
If he's asking about backing up EVERYTHING, that's a nandroid backup.
I also wonder if this is a misunderstanding of the concept of app to sd. I know the definition for apps that won't move is service apps right?
I know some stuff wont work because of widgets but when you boot if your card is too full, it takes longer and that is frustrating, well at least to me.

Apps on SD Card Sometimes Disappear

I'm having an intermittent problem where the apps which have been moved to the SD card often (but not always) disappear. They do not show up on my launcher (ADW) and I am also unable to install or update any apps. I haven't seen anyone else reporting a similar problem, but the weird thing is that the same thing happens on my daughter's Epic. Here's what I do know:
1. This only happens with Froyo ROMs. It was happening on my phone with SFR 1.1. I installed a Gingerbread ROM (Swiss Cheese Samsprint) and it went away. However, my daughter is on stock (but rooted) EC05 and the same thing is happening with her phone. Additionally, I installed Urban Inception (a GB ROM) and did not have the problem. But I missed the speed of the custom kernels, so I returned my phone to Froyo (this time SFR 1.2) and the problem is again recurring. So, it seems to be 2.2-specific.
2. I have used Odin to return to stock several times, that has not resolved the problem.
3. I have formatted my SD card (once using Windows and again using the format option on my phone) and that has had no effect.
4. When I boot my phone, the apps on the SD card do not show up in the app drawer. After a few minutes, they often appear, but not always. Again this is true on both my daughter's phone and mine, but only with a Froyo ROM.
5. The phone will usually get through two or maybe three new app installs or updates, then all the rest will fail until I reboot. Again, this occurs on both my and my daughter's phones, and only with Froyo. It doesn't matter if these are market apps or Amazon appstore apps. Once one update or install fails, nothing else will install or update until I reboot the phone.
I suppose I could solve my problem by going with GB, but those ROMs are so much slower than the Froyo ones with custom kernels. Also, I like my daughter being as stock as possible, because she won't mess with her phone and can't always give it to me to fix. I doubt it's a hardware issue because we both have it. But, it also doesn't appear to be a ROM issue, since we have different ROMs. Since it's obviously not common, it must be related to either an app we have installed or something strange that I have done (though her phone has nothing done to it but the one-click CWM 3.0.0.5/6).
Anyone have any ideas for me? I suppose my issue will resolve once we have official GB and custom kernels start appearing for it, but I thought it was very strange that I have two phones that both exhibit a problem that nobody else seems to have.
Thanks for reading all this.
This had been happening to me for a while too. I don't have as many apps anymore and keep it all in the phone and noticed better battery life but still want to be able to use apps2sd
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
Stock sd's?
cd's or tapes?
schnowdapowda said:
Stock sd's?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, on both phones.
I just noticed this yesterday. I saw Angry Birds had updated but I didn't get notified in my market. The app was still in my launcher though. Don't know if it matters but I hadn't played it in a long time.
Reinstalling worked and didn't lose any data.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I've had this problem too on the MidnightRom v5.2. It's especially annoying when my kids want to play Angry Birds and they are all installed to the SD card. I have "fixed" the apps not showing up in the App drawer by creating shortcuts on one of my home screens to the apps I have on the SD card. When the apps don't show up in the App drawer, the icon on the home screen looks like a generic "Android installed app". The apps I have on the SD card are: apps that came with my Rom (Video Editor), Apps installed from the Market and Apps installed from the Amazon App store.
*I've noticed* it's more common the icons don't show up in the App drawer or have the wrong icon if I unlock my phone before it completely boots (finishes the Scanning Media twice in the status bar).
edonnelly- if you are "missing" an App, try creating a shortcut for it to see if it's in the Applications list. That way at least you can launch it if you reboot and the app isn't showing up in the app drawer.
schnowdapowda- I'm also using my stock 16gb Samsung microSD card, and I've also formatted it with the same results.
Fast Boot option may be the culprit
This is actually a long-standing problem in Android OS, going back at least two years (donkey's years in this technology!)
Something about the interaction of the OS and an sdcard formated for holding apps creates odd behaviours.
Lots of complicated suggestions have been made, including reformatting sdcard, reinstalling ROMs, changing launchers (the one suggested here) and such.
None of these approaches seems really to solve the problem even in most cases.
What seems to be working for me (at least for the last week or so) is the following very simple tweak.
CUT TO THE SOLUTION BELOW -- SEARCH FOR ////
Some (not all) of my apps moved to SD (all by Titanium Backup Pro) have begun to disappear and (sometimes) reappear without warning after I began to add and delete large Virtual Machines created in QEMU from my 16GB SanDisc class 10 microSD card on my HTC Droid Incredible running rooted stock Verizon Android Froyo 2.2.3. I know this thread is far from my phone's "home base", but from what I can tell this problem with disappearing apps located on an sdcard is NOT determined by hardware or even Android version.
I also happen to use LauncherPro by Federico Carnales instead of the built-in HTC Sense launcher. I noted elsewhere on XDA that a user had suggested that because at least some (maybe all) launchers start before the SD Card that this may be a problem, especially if changes are made to the sdcard that the launcher did not perform, or was not active during their performance by other apps such as Titanium Backup. That fits my situation, because I unmounted the SD, physically removed it to a PC, and added/deleted large VM files to save (lots) of time. No problems of this sort before I did this, so there must be some connection.
I noted that other users have tried reformatting SD, substituting different brands of SD, using newer/older SD etc. None of these reliably helped. So I skipped these options.
//// The (simple!) solution I tried that SEEMS to work (only time will tell!) is buried in the main Android Settings (accessed from the Menu button while in Home screen). Under "Applications" there is a setting "Fast Boot" that I checked long ago and forgot about (it seemed like a good thing to do at the time). The text warns "Turn off to use some Market apps" (that shows the age of my 2-yr old used phone and Android OS -- ohmygosh!-- because it refers to Market rather than Google Play Store!) Anyway, I unchecked the option and rebooted the phone.
Yes, it took a bit longer to boot (maybe a whole minute!), but after waiting about another minute ALL my home screen apps had normal icons and loaded properly. Titanium Backup Pro batch scenarios confirmed there were no apps in a forced uninstalled state (i.e. I had not done the deed, the system somehow had done it or at least rendered the apps "invisible" to Titanium, which decided they needed reinstallation).
The only odd behaviour was that auto brightness was turned off after I unchecked Fast Boot and rebooted. Going into Android Settings > Display and rechecking "auto brightness" took care of that. No other oddities or strange behaviours thus far (but it has only been about an hour).
I will report anything further on this thread only (Samsung Fascinate > Fascinate Q&A > What just happend? apps on sdcard) if anything else requires reporting. Silence implies success!
link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1873670
(I am copying this post to other relevant threads, but will not post anything further elsewhere -- only there. This is a bit arbitrary (especially now that the chosen thread no longer is the most recent active one on this topic), but I hope this approach pleases the XDA sysops/admins) :angel:

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