jbarrington

I have a question(s) regarding widgets that stop working. Although I have a droid phone and a droid tablet, this seems to affect me more with the tablet, so I'll keep all of the questions direct towards the tablet. The tablet is rooted and has ICS on it.

I guess maybe because I have more display real estate on the tablet, I use far more widgets on it. The first time that I had a problem was when I installed a widget that would allow me to reboot, and reboot into clockworkmod. The first time that I tried going into clockwork mod, the tablet had no issue rebooting and working, but all of the widgets would stop working. I should say that they would display any changes or information, but they did seem to work. For example, one widget would stop and start the wifi, but wouldn't indicate whether the wifi was on or off.

Since all the various widgets stopped working, I felt trapped, and so I uninstalled and reinstalled all of the apps with the widgets. That didn't make them work.

I decided to try and restore the tablet, but I found that I had never made a clockworkmod backup to restore it, so I completely wipe the tablet by resetting the tablet from all apps and data, and then completely reinstalling all of the apps that I had. The widgets started working again.

After I had all my favorite apps reloaded and the widgets working, I decided to make a full clockworkmod backup. When I rebooted back after the backup into the tablet display, I found all of the widgets had stopped working. All that I could think of was that I was going to need to wipe and reinstall all the apps again. I powered off and on. I rebooted and rebooted. I powered off and on. Nothing seemed to get them working. I finally decided to just leave the tablet alone for the evening and try to mess with it again in the morning, even if it meant wiping it again with a fresh install of ICS. When I got up the next morning, I found the widgets working again. I should also say that it has been two weeks since those incidents.

It has been a long while since I had ever rooted and rebooted into clockworkmod since I first put it on my tablet, so did that reboot widget screw things up, or was there something else that screwed it up? I don't know, so I guess I have two general questions; What typically prevents all widgets from working, and what are some easy tips to try to get widgets working again?

BigRedGonzo

It almost sounds as though you have the apps with the widgets installed on the internal SD card. Widgets don't like being installed on "external" memory. However, you said that they started working again, which I've never seen. Of course, that doesn't mean it can't happen. If you have the apps with widgets moved to sd card or external memory, try moving them back to the phone memory and replacing them on your home screen. Remember, there are typically three main segments of memory on newer android devices. There is Phone Memory where the OS and stock apps are located. External or SD Memory, which is an extension of the main phone memory and finally the actual, physical SD card, which you installed. Android can run apps from the Phone Memory or the External Memory, but widgets only like to be installed on the Phone Memory.

BigRedGonzo

jbarrington

Thanks for replying! I'm glad that you brought that up. I totally forgot to include within my post that none of my installed apps, that have widgets, were moved to the external SD card.