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[Q] How does one restart the core USB service(s)?

Hello,
The Android 2.1 RUU update from Sprint ("HTC Sprint Hero MR 2.27.651.6.exe") caused USB connectivity between my Sprint HTC Hero and my PC to stop functioning. I followed all directions while performing the RUU update (and I'm fairly tech-savvy). Everything functions perfectly well with the exception of USB connectivity. The menu that normally appears when the phone is connected to the PC (options for "Charge only", "Disk drive", etc.) does not appear on my phone. The phone charges while connected, however, and USB connectivity DOES indeed function in FastBoot mode. So, it's not the USB cable or the phone's hardware.
I am not the only individual with this problem. There is a lengthy thread about it on Sprint's official community forums: google.com/search?q=sprint.com%3ALoss+of+USB+connectivity+from+HTC+Hero+to+Windows+PC+after+Android+2.1+update
I was able to root my phone and install a custom ROM without the ability to connect my Hero to my PC. I did this with the use of another Hero (I have two identical models in my household). I intend to post instructions for others to follow, once I find reliable solution.
I installed the "EXTBLUE_04SEP.zip" ROM using the "recovery-RA-heroc-v1.6.2.img" image. Surprisingly, I still have no USB capabilities, even though USB continues to function as expected when the phone is in FastBoot mode.
When I first called my local Sprint service location about this problem (several months ago), they said, "We're aware of this problem. It will take a couple of hours to fix. We need to restart the USB services on the device." I'm not exactly sure to which services he was referring, which is why I've come for help. It's worth noting that one customer in the sprint.com thread said that the store could not fix his phone (big surprise) and that they had a new phone shipped to him.
Having the phone replaced seems silly. With root access to the device, there must be some diagnostic process I can follow in order to determine which USB-related services are failing to start.
I find it odd that the lack of USB connectivity would persist across different ROMs, but after all, they are based on the same Android builds.
I even formatted the ext partition, cleared all user data, etc. before updating the ROM. The ROM works beautifully... except for USB.
I am deeply appreciative for any insights that the experts here may be able to offer.
Thank you in advance.

If you are running 2.1 I would try usb switcher from the market. There are some other usb mount widgets, some are free and some are paid. I do not know if usb switcher works on the Hero, but i was using a widget that I just clicked on to enable usb. If you are on 2.1 do a search in market for usb and you should find some.

Go download PDANet from here: http://www.junefabrics.com/android/
Install that on your computer, and then when it wants you to connect your phone, connect it. It should install the drivers for you. Then you should be able to use your phone with your comp

Thank you both for your replies.
I tried downloading the only free USB mounting app from the Market, but it crashes on launch. Others have complained about the same behavior in the app reviews.
Further, it seems as though such apps are simply replacements for the included "USB switcher" app that asks the user what to do when the phone is connected to a computer. Given that my core USB functionality is "dormant" (or outright busted), I suspect that these apps will have no effect, even if they worked as designed.
PDANet brought no joy, either. I installed the software and it never detects that the phone is connected.
I should clarify on a couple of points. I have another HTC Hero (also Sprint CDMA) that I also updated to 2.1 (via official RUU) and its USB port functions absolutely fine on the same computer. This fact indicates that it's:
a) not the USB cable
b) it's not the PC (and therefore not HTC Sync, drivers, etc.)
In other words, the drivers are installed on the PC, and function as expected with anyone else's Hero. My Hero never "presents itself" to the computer, so the result is the same, whether or not drivers are installed on the PC.
Any other thoughts? Thanks again for your responses.

I found the following information regarding the USB kernel module in Ubuntu. Perhaps unloading the module would be useful in this situation, too. In Ubuntu, it's
Code:
# modprobe -w -r usb_storage
# modprobe usb_storage
I suspect that the USB kernel module in Android goes by a different name. Does anyone know what it might be?
Thanks again.

I decided to go a different route here.
I thought about attempting to restore the phone to the condition it was in when I received it, to see if USB would once again function with the older software. After all, USB was fine until I ran Sprint's RUU for Android 2.1.
The phone shipped with "RUU_Hero_C_Sprint_1.29.651.1.exe" or similar, I believe. But when I tried to run that RUU in "FastMode", the installer failed with "Bootloader version mismatch" (error message may not be verbatim).
So, I decided to try installing the same software that "bricked" my USB functionality in the first place (downloaded from Sprint's website). Surprisingly, that RUU executable ("HTC Sprint Hero MR 2.27.651.6.exe") actually worked for restoring my phone to a suitable condition in which to bring it to a local Sprint store.
It looks like replacing the phone is the only real option when the 2.1 update wrecks the phone's USB functionality.
The most curious bit is that RUUs install perfectly fine over FastBoot. The USB-related hardware is obviously functional if it works in FastBoot mode. The question is why doesn't USB function in ANY ROM (including the official Sprint ROMs)?
I've given-up. I'll report back after I return from the Sprint store. (In other words, there should be no means by which the store is able to determine that I rooted my phone at any point, and thus my warranty should still apply.)

The only reason I mentioned an app to toggle mounting the sdcard is that when I was messing with apps on my phone I deleted one that toggled the choice of charging, mounting, etc. I have extended controls and they have a switch for mounting the sdcard and it worked. There was also some others that i have that worked, but are no longer available in the market.

Makes perfect sense, unCoRrUpTeD. It was a solid suggestion, and I do appreciate your willingness to assist.
I just returned from the Sprint store and they told me that a) the liquid submersion strip had been tripped (it was bright red) and that b) there's a crack at the base of the phone, immediately adjacent to the USB mini port. The technician stated that either of those items could be the cause of the "malfunctioning" USB port.
In other words, they blamed me, told me that my 1-year limited warranty that covers manufacturing defects does not apply (because of the submersion strip and crack) and that I'll have to file an insurance claim if I want a fully-functional phone. I don't feel like I should have to pay a $100 deductible to replace a phone that Sprint's own update wrecked. I sincerely doubt that the USB port ceasing to work immediately after the 2.1 update was a coincidence.
Given that this phone has never been exposed to any type of liquid, and that it's never been dropped (it lives in a silicon case that protects it heavily from both types of damage), I'm a little irked. The silicon case probably traps moisture, hence the tripped submersion strip, and my buddy's Hero cracked in the exact same spot, next to the USB port.
I guess the case on this one is closed for now: I'll have to live without the ability to connect to the phone to the PC. At least FastBoot ROM installations still function.
Thanks again for the help.

You might want to try this and then run the 1.56 RUU and see if it fixes the problem.
Another thing you could try is adbwireless. This will work if you have a wireless router. Download it from the market and then connect your phone to your wireless router. Start adbwirelss and it will give you an ip address. You type this into either the cmd window or terminal and then you can use adb to push or pull crap from your phone. You might also be able to use droid explorer if you are using windows and just do the adb connect xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:5555 and then use droid explorer to see everything.

Air card is it possible

let me first start off by telling you that in no way shape or form am I skilled enough to be a developer nor am I asking the deleloper with the skill to take this on. I have searched a few forum and I really can't find any info about this subject.
I have a siearra wireless card USB598 the service is provided by Sprint, Does anyone know if it would be possible to make this work on the gtab? Or is it even possible to make it work in an android system?
When I plug the card in it powers up and seems to be doing what the card does but like you could guess it does nothing else. I didn't expect it to do anything else but I didn't think it would even power on.

I am not a developer either, but off the top of my head (devs feel free to correct me):
You would need drivers for the AirCard (no idea, but maybe the Linux drivers [if they are made for the card might work])
You would also need some sort of software to have the AirCard connect to the mobile network and to have the GTab use the Aircard as a means of communication
Dan

Velcro a mifi onto the back. : -)
Sent from my GTablet-TnT-Lite using Tapatalk

I have an air-card, as well. It's on my list of to do's but it will be tricky at best.
I had a sierra air-card a few years back, and got it to work with Ubuntu using some ppp commands. I figure that would be the most likely route in Android, since it has some *nix similarities, but I haven't gotten very far.
If you look at "dmesg", your card might be loading up. But the problem is actually getting old modems commands to it to get it running. I think.

ultimind said:
Velcro a mifi onto the back. : -)
Sent from my GTablet-TnT-Lite using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YES! Sprint Overdrive 4G! WooHoo!

It'd be a lot easier to try one of the 3G/4G-to-local wireless "boxes" available through many wireless providers (I use MyWi on my jailbroken iPhone 3GS though I'm looking into clear.com's service on the go). That way not only your GTablet, but your laptop and other devices can connect to the same connection and even your friends.

The air card is provided by my employer so I'm kind of stuck with it and getting into a myfi device isn't an option.
It's not really a huge issue I can always tether to my phone, It would just be nice to pop in the card and be up and running. The card also has gps built into it and I could see some use in that too.
I think drivers are going to be the biggest issue the MFG only supports MS and MAC, but there are some threads out on the web were people have gotten them to work in ubuntu. Beyond the driver issue there still needs to be some type of dialing software. On a windows box you can use a simple dialing software and dial a #77 and it will connect.
One other thing that this card has the ability to do is NDIS where the card becomes a network card and as soon as it's inserted into a pc it connects automatically but I'm almost 100% sure that it is still software based.
Thanks for the feed back.

greyspacealien said:
The air card is provided by my employer so I'm kind of stuck with it and getting into a myfi device isn't an option.
It's not really a huge issue I can always tether to my phone, It would just be nice to pop in the card and be up and running. The card also has gps built into it and I could see some use in that too.
I think drivers are going to be the biggest issue the MFG only supports MS and MAC, but there are some threads out on the web were people have gotten them to work in ubuntu. Beyond the driver issue there still needs to be some type of dialing software. On a windows box you can use a simple dialing software and dial a #77 and it will connect.
One other thing that this card has the ability to do is NDIS where the card becomes a network card and as soon as it's inserted into a pc it connects automatically but I'm almost 100% sure that it is still software based.
Thanks for the feed back.
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Click to collapse
For the ZT-180 tablets we got a number of these going as they looked like serial modem interfaces using ppp via the USB (might need to turn off/disable) any builtin diskstore... there sometimes required a build.prop edit to set the tty correct... I'd normally say look over on Slatedroid at our zt180 section as there were a few threads for different 3G dongles but mostly similar instructions... except slatedroid's been bottom up the last 30 or so hours... the zt-180 thread here is HUGE but I suspect you could find most of the same info scattered throughtout there also as maybe a starting point...

Novatel Ovation U727
The Ovation U727 supports Linux in addition to Windows & MAC. Data sheet indicates it has built in GPS-A in addition to 3G. Anyone tried one of these? I might get a used one & give it a try.

[Q] Windows Explorer not seeing External SD

Hello
For some reason, when I plug the tablet to my PC I can only see the internal SD Card. Does someone know how to see the external SD card? Other posts have suggested to copy the files to the internal SD and then copy from here to the external SD. That would be a huge pain. Does anyone know how to tackle this?
Thanks!

If you know how to use ADB you can access it at mnt/external_sd
You will have to learn ADB commands but it is acccessable through that.

In the "First start information" document that came with my Acer, it states:
Transferring files from a microSD card (optional) to your PC
Remove the card from the tablet and use a card reader or USB adapter to access the card as an external storage device.
That works, but it is a pain. What I've done instead is:
(1) Root Acer
(2) Install cifs.ko module (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1058713)
(3) download cifsmanager from Marketplace
Cifsmanager can then be used to mount disks on your Windows PC via a network connection. You can then use any application to access files on the PC (so use a file manager like Astro to copy files back and forth). Personally, I find I just leave the files on the PC and access them via the network (play movies, read books, etc.).

Thanks for the information. Other than that issue, this tablet rocks.

guilleaguirre said:
Thanks for the information. Other than that issue, this tablet rocks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Acer overlooked the MicroSD I think. Since it can be seen by adb I'm assuming the fix is easy for a team of programmers to write in.
If enough of us email their support or call them and drop the Asus bomb, they may include it in the next big update.
That's what I did. I said "I'm not able to access the microsd card in the unit from the PC as I would normally my phone and it's extremely inconvenient. I'm aware the Asus EEE Transformer does so it doesn't seem to be an OS limitation".
Once enough people complain it will hopefully get noticed. Hopefully it's in their agenda anyway.

This issue is one of the reasons I sold my gtab and switched to the Acer. At least I can store data on the acer's sdcard. The gtab erases all data on the sdcard every time you reboot.

Neoprimal said:
Acer overlooked the MicroSD I think. Since it can be seen by adb I'm assuming the fix is easy for a team of programmers to write in.
If enough of us email their support or call them and drop the Asus bomb, they may include it in the next big update.
That's what I did. I said "I'm not able to access the microsd card in the unit from the PC as I would normally my phone and it's extremely inconvenient. I'm aware the Asus EEE Transformer does so it doesn't seem to be an OS limitation".
Once enough people complain it will hopefully get noticed. Hopefully it's in their agenda anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please let us know how this turns out. I've emailed support for other issues (cell standby mostly), and keep being told my unit is defective and I need to send it in via mail (which conveniently would take me past the return/exchange date) ... so I'm not really happy with support.

this is something i never understood. my 1st tablet (and android anything) was an archos 101, and when plugged into usb, 2 drives would appear in windows. internal and external drives. i thought that was the way android did things. grabbed a gtab expecting the same thing as well as the iconia.the gtab went back and i bought the iconia and plan on keeping it, but it is the 1 big thing that irks me about it. everything else is perfect.

I just picked up my Acer this week, and today when I set it up to transfer music via Airtwist to my A500 I noticed that there seems to be no way to set it up to store the music on my microSD card; it comes up saying it needs to store it on the internal. Probably the same issue that keeps it from showing up in Windows. Now I just have to figure out how to set it up to transfer into the microSD so I don't have to drag it all there the hard way.

vcs111 said:
This issue is one of the reasons I sold my gtab and switched to the Acer. At least I can store data on the acer's sdcard. The gtab erases all data on the sdcard every time you reboot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's simply not true. Why would you want to discredit a device like that, I don't get it. Maybe you had a mod/rom on there that wasn't working right but I had stock on there 80% of the time and TnT lite on there 20% and I've NEVER had anything being erased on my SDcard.

Dalrimple said:
Please let us know how this turns out. I've emailed support for other issues (cell standby mostly), and keep being told my unit is defective and I need to send it in via mail (which conveniently would take me past the return/exchange date) ... so I'm not really happy with support.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've gotten some reps that made me want to pull my hair out and some that actually 'SEEM' to try. I was able to call and make the report (for free!) I actually have reported several things since I got the unit now and when I write back about it I'm told that they're working on a bugfix - this is a BIG upgrade from before where I was told the same thing as everyone else so they're not ignoring us. We just have to be patient and consistent. In the next week I'm going to post a list here with some known issues and see if we can get it validated.
One thing I hate is when people post their issues as 'fact' like I see a few people doing. We have to try to coordinate and work out what are really issues and what are more, individual problems (like people complaining about weak wifi, etc.).
Then I'm going to make a list and give Acer a call and see what exactly they have in their systems as 'known', etc.

Neoprimal said:
That's simply not true. Why would you want to discredit a device like that, I don't get it. Maybe you had a mod/rom on there that wasn't working right but I had stock on there 80% of the time and TnT lite on there 20% and I've NEVER had anything being erased on my SDcard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1. Ran several diff ROMs on mine, it never erased my SD card.

S7 Edge (Verizon) - Difficulty transferring files on Mac

Hey all,
Didn't really know where to put a question like this, but since I got my S7 Edge as of two or so weeks ago, I've had an annoying time trying to transfer files over through Android File Manager, Smart Switch, and even a VM running Windows 7 on my Mac. My current OS on my Mac is Yosemite 10.10.5, my S7 Edge has the latest update installed, and yet I still have major difficulty transferring even more than one or two files at once before AFM locks up and claims my device is not connected/is locked, Smart Switch locking up completely until I disconnect and reconnect my S7 Edge, and the VM can't even recognize the phone being connected to it.
I have tried AFM with and without Smart Switch installed at the same time, and as for the VM, I've installed all the latest drivers.
I'm at a complete loss as to where to go next, as while this is so far the only problem I've had with this otherwise great phone, it's absurdly annoying when it comes time to transfer new music and shows.
One thing I have experienced in the past is that my previous Samsung devices never played nice with SanDisk memory cards, and the current MicroSD is a SanDisk 128 GB, but the transfer problem is also a big issue even when copying to the phone's onboard storage.
Thanks for any help or resources in advance!

jokerstyle00 said:
Hey all,
Didn't really know where to put a question like this, but since I got my S7 Edge as of two or so weeks ago, I've had an annoying time trying to transfer files over through Android File Manager, Smart Switch, and even a VM running Windows 7 on my Mac. My current OS on my Mac is Yosemite 10.10.5, my S7 Edge has the latest update installed, and yet I still have major difficulty transferring even more than one or two files at once before AFM locks up and claims my device is not connected/is locked, Smart Switch locking up completely until I disconnect and reconnect my S7 Edge, and the VM can't even recognize the phone being connected to it.
I have tried AFM with and without Smart Switch installed at the same time, and as for the VM, I've installed all the latest drivers.
I'm at a complete loss as to where to go next, as while this is so far the only problem I've had with this otherwise great phone, it's absurdly annoying when it comes time to transfer new music and shows.
One thing I have experienced in the past is that my previous Samsung devices never played nice with SanDisk memory cards, and the current MicroSD is a SanDisk 128 GB, but the transfer problem is also a big issue even when copying to the phone's onboard storage.
Thanks for any help or resources in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bump

Grand Prime SM-530AZ Problem

Hello, for the past few months on each boot I get prompted with
Android System​There's an internal problem with your device, and itmay be unstable until you factory data reset
Maps then proceeds to crash

Well Windows 10 64bit has been creating problems for many many people in the forum and I have seen people running vm and win 7 for the best results. And something very important I must say is that most of the new computers do have USB 2.0 ports but they are limited in numbers, so you should find one on ur PC, to us it specifically for phone tweaking softwares. I would suggest you find another PC or laptop around,
michael5323 said:
Hello, for the past few months on each boot I get prompted with
Android System​There's an internal problem with your device, and itmay be unstable until you factory data reset
Maps then proceeds to crash
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

I hope you realize I'm talking about a physical phone that has nothing to do with my desktop computer.

bump