With Android devices, when in doubt, do a factory reset

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
11/02/2015 at 12:47 • Filed to: None

I !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . You may remember it from Lenovo’s stupid commercials where they imply that Ashton Kutcher designed the thing. It was giving me some weird problems that I thought might lead to needing warranty service. But no, it just needed a factory reset!

My tablet has been working totally fine since I got it. There’s nothing particularly fancy about its specs or screen, but it does what I ask of it, the battery lasts a long time, and the silly built-in kickstand is actually pretty useful!

Things went a little screwy when I started using a microSD card a couple months after I bought the tablet. The tablet kept losing connection with the card. I’d get “SD card removed unexpectedly, please make sure to unmount SD card before removing to avoid data loss” notifications all the time. I’d have to flip down the kickstand that Mr. Kutcher is demonstrating above to access the little cover over the microSD card slot, and try a few times to re-insert the card so the tablet would actually recognize it.

Sometimes the card would stay connected for a good long while, other times it would disappear from being recognized a only a few minutes later. It was totally random but eventually, I’d get the dreaded,

SD card removed unexpectedly, please make sure to unmount SD card before removing to avoid data loss

This was really annoying! I started thinking there was something physically wrong with the card slot and I’d have to get Lenovo to fix it. Then, for some reason the wifi stopped working.

I went to Lenovo’s support site to see about warranty service. Then I thought, “when I contact Lenovo, they’re probably going to make me do a factory reset.” So I did. Not even the kind where you do some weird sequence of button pressing to access the recovery menu, just the plain old one Android settings menu “reset tablet” option.

After the reset, I quickly re-downloaded all my apps, which is a painless process since Google Play keeps track of all these things. BOTH OF MY PROBLEMS DISAPPEARED. The microSD card works totally fine. The wifi works totally fine. My tablet is once again fully functional and not giving random glitches. I have no idea how these problems developed in the first place, but hey, at least there was an easy fix.

So remember folks, if you have an Android device that has random inexplicable problems, back up your data and try a factory reset. It’s easy. Because like when you call the cable company to reset your modem and they make you unplug and re-plug it, it’s probably the first thing tech support will have you do anyway.

DISCUSSION (11)

Rico > Textured Soy Protein
11/02/2015 at 12:53

Just set a schedule to do this every few months, that’s what I used to do when I owned an Android device.

Textured Soy Protein > Rico
11/02/2015 at 13:00

I usually just wait until I get some random inexplicable problem that doesn’t make any sense. Which is often less frequent than every few months.

BeaterGT > Textured Soy Protein
11/02/2015 at 13:05

I was almost at this point with my Nexus 5. Turns out Lollipop is just shit.

E92M3 > Textured Soy Protein
11/02/2015 at 13:24

Probably a 3rd party app causing the problem. When you have 10+ apps that have been updated frequently you’ll start having issues. It’s impossible for app developers to test their apps on a device that could have an unlimited combination of apps and versions. Upgrading an app 10 times leaves a different footprint compared to installing it fresh. It happens to Apple devices too.

McLarry > Textured Soy Protein
11/02/2015 at 13:30

I’d say this applies to most devices, regardless of OS.

Textured Soy Protein > E92M3
11/02/2015 at 13:45

I have a theory that maybe Avast Mobile Security was causing it but I can’t confirm that. I do know that Avast Mobile Security is super-annoying because every time an app auto-updates, Avast gives you a stupid “this app is safe” notification in addition to the “app auto-updated” notification.

Rico > Textured Soy Protein
11/02/2015 at 14:04

What’s the over/under on that?

Textured Soy Protein > Rico
11/02/2015 at 14:11

Usually it’s a good long while, like 6-12 months. Needing to do a reset on this tablet only 3 months into owning it was definitely outside my usual need for a reset. But it shipped running KitKat and the first thing I did after taking it out of the box was apply two system updates, one that stayed on KitKat and one for Lollipop. So those updates could’ve introduced some glitches waiting to happen that were unleashed when I started using the microSD card.

E92M3 > Textured Soy Protein
11/02/2015 at 17:25

Could of been. It’s possible it was scanning the SD card for viruses, and making it unavailable. It’s not designed to do that, but maybe it had an old file from a previous version that didn’t play nice with some of the updated files. Do you have your apps set to auto-update or to prompt you to update?

Textured Soy Protein > E92M3
11/02/2015 at 18:03

They auto-update over wifi, which is all the time because it’s a wifi-only tablet.

RazoE > Textured Soy Protein
11/02/2015 at 22:34

I bricked the fuck out of my Nexus 7 (2012) about a year ago to the point where even my computer didn’t recognize the device. I wasn’t able to fix anything until recently where Windows 10 was able to download some newer drivers. I was then finally able to factory reset it, and I installed Lolipop. Waiting on a stable Marshmallow build, but I’m in no rush.