Ok, so this information is probably buried in a few threads, but I suspect it should be called out, because people are going to have this happen, and not find the info easily.
PROBLEM
You got your update to Gingerbread, and now it seems a bunch of apps are missing. You may not see any connection as to why certain apps are missing and others are not--however, the issue is related to apps that reside on the SD card. You may have moved some on there, or they may have moved themselves (some apps just install to SD card, without user intervention).
QUICK NOTES:
When I refer to internal storage, I mean the ~6.5 GB internal storage, NOT the ~750 MB app storage. Both reside inside your phone, but one is available only for apps (app storage), the other mounts as a drive (internal storage), just like the SD card, when you connect your phone to a computer and mount the drives (three show up, two drives and a CD rom). This internal storage is also known as emmc storage, so you might see me refer to that as well.
SOLUTION
1) Mount your internal and SD drives on a computer
2) Move the contents of the SD cards ".android_secure" folder to the internal storage drive, in the same location, at the top level.
3) Then unmount your drives
4) Reboot your phone. [reboot may not be necessary; you can just wait a few minutes and see].
Hopefully many or all of your missing apps will come back. This has been reported by a number of people as fixing some or all of their missing apps. Once you do this, you should be "fixed" permanently. For new apps, you can still move apps to SD with impunity. Just be clear, you need space on your internal (~6.5GB partition) not SD card.
CAVEATS
Anything that causes just your SD card to be unmounted and mounted will revert the .android_secure from the internal to SD, causing missing apps again (temporarily). So if you either:
- Eject or pull out your SD card and reinsert it
- unmount and remount it from the settings menu
it will cause the SD card to become your secure partition incorrectly, and you will temporarily loose access to all apps that have been "moved to SD".
To solve this, you need to either
- connect to a PC and mount drives then unmount,
- do a hard reboot: (turn off fast boot and reboot, boot to recovery if you have root, or pull the battery--which I don't recommend).
Either of these will cause the secure partition to be taken from the internal storage again.
(Alternate) Temporary Solution
If you are looking for an alternate solution to the problem; perhaps if you don't have access to a computer to plug your phone into (incidentally, file managers on the phone can't solve this problem, as the .android_secure directory is not properly available unless the drives are mounted to your computer), an alternate solution is to force the SD card to remount, as mentioned above in caveats section. To be clear, this is what CAUSES problems if you have moved your .android_secure folder over...but it will SOLVE the problem temporarily if you haven't.
OTHER COMMENTS
- I have seen people say they have just reinstalled all the missing apps. This will work, as it puts them correctly on the internal storage. However, without understanding what is going on, you will still be subject to the above CAVEATS.
- Some people are pulling their SD card out before the update, and then inserting it after. This is equivalent to the above temporary solution. Any full reboot or mount/unmount of drives with the computer will reset you (to broken).
- I have lived with this for a while, and honestly, it isn't that big a deal once you know what is going on...once you move your apps, things generally work as they should.
- If you really want to do this "perfect" such that you never have any app issues, then before you upgrade, you should create the .android_secure folder (if needed) on the emmc and copy (not move) the contents before the upgrade. After the upgrade, you can then clear the contents of the folder off the SD card...
TECHNICAL DETAILS
The problem, if you care (if you don't, stop reading, you are done), is the new update incorrectly mounts the internal storage for the Apps2SD functionality, and therefore, all your apps that were moved to SD are suddenly on the wrong drive.
This is clearly wrong for a number of reasons, and will also result in other bugs. For example, when you go to the Settings/Applications/Manage Applications menu, and choose the On SD Card, it shows at the bottom of the screen the space available ON THE SD CARD, even though when you move the app, it will be going to internal storage, which may or may not have free space, totally unrelated to the info shown. I'm sure that won't confuse anyone, when their internal space is full, but they have space on the SD, and it shows the space, but they can't move. Nice.
Anyway, this bug has been around since the April leak and been called out in a few places, and had already been fixed in cyanogenmod as issue 2470.
If only VZW or HTC developers read xda or here! Sigh. I had hoped the last minute delay was to fix this issue. Guess not. I wonder if we will get an update for this update
Cheers,
RoboCuz
PROBLEM
You got your update to Gingerbread, and now it seems a bunch of apps are missing. You may not see any connection as to why certain apps are missing and others are not--however, the issue is related to apps that reside on the SD card. You may have moved some on there, or they may have moved themselves (some apps just install to SD card, without user intervention).
QUICK NOTES:
When I refer to internal storage, I mean the ~6.5 GB internal storage, NOT the ~750 MB app storage. Both reside inside your phone, but one is available only for apps (app storage), the other mounts as a drive (internal storage), just like the SD card, when you connect your phone to a computer and mount the drives (three show up, two drives and a CD rom). This internal storage is also known as emmc storage, so you might see me refer to that as well.
SOLUTION
1) Mount your internal and SD drives on a computer
2) Move the contents of the SD cards ".android_secure" folder to the internal storage drive, in the same location, at the top level.
3) Then unmount your drives
4) Reboot your phone. [reboot may not be necessary; you can just wait a few minutes and see].
Hopefully many or all of your missing apps will come back. This has been reported by a number of people as fixing some or all of their missing apps. Once you do this, you should be "fixed" permanently. For new apps, you can still move apps to SD with impunity. Just be clear, you need space on your internal (~6.5GB partition) not SD card.
CAVEATS
Anything that causes just your SD card to be unmounted and mounted will revert the .android_secure from the internal to SD, causing missing apps again (temporarily). So if you either:
- Eject or pull out your SD card and reinsert it
- unmount and remount it from the settings menu
it will cause the SD card to become your secure partition incorrectly, and you will temporarily loose access to all apps that have been "moved to SD".
To solve this, you need to either
- connect to a PC and mount drives then unmount,
- do a hard reboot: (turn off fast boot and reboot, boot to recovery if you have root, or pull the battery--which I don't recommend).
Either of these will cause the secure partition to be taken from the internal storage again.
(Alternate) Temporary Solution
If you are looking for an alternate solution to the problem; perhaps if you don't have access to a computer to plug your phone into (incidentally, file managers on the phone can't solve this problem, as the .android_secure directory is not properly available unless the drives are mounted to your computer), an alternate solution is to force the SD card to remount, as mentioned above in caveats section. To be clear, this is what CAUSES problems if you have moved your .android_secure folder over...but it will SOLVE the problem temporarily if you haven't.
OTHER COMMENTS
- I have seen people say they have just reinstalled all the missing apps. This will work, as it puts them correctly on the internal storage. However, without understanding what is going on, you will still be subject to the above CAVEATS.
- Some people are pulling their SD card out before the update, and then inserting it after. This is equivalent to the above temporary solution. Any full reboot or mount/unmount of drives with the computer will reset you (to broken).
- I have lived with this for a while, and honestly, it isn't that big a deal once you know what is going on...once you move your apps, things generally work as they should.
- If you really want to do this "perfect" such that you never have any app issues, then before you upgrade, you should create the .android_secure folder (if needed) on the emmc and copy (not move) the contents before the upgrade. After the upgrade, you can then clear the contents of the folder off the SD card...
TECHNICAL DETAILS
The problem, if you care (if you don't, stop reading, you are done), is the new update incorrectly mounts the internal storage for the Apps2SD functionality, and therefore, all your apps that were moved to SD are suddenly on the wrong drive.
This is clearly wrong for a number of reasons, and will also result in other bugs. For example, when you go to the Settings/Applications/Manage Applications menu, and choose the On SD Card, it shows at the bottom of the screen the space available ON THE SD CARD, even though when you move the app, it will be going to internal storage, which may or may not have free space, totally unrelated to the info shown. I'm sure that won't confuse anyone, when their internal space is full, but they have space on the SD, and it shows the space, but they can't move. Nice.
Anyway, this bug has been around since the April leak and been called out in a few places, and had already been fixed in cyanogenmod as issue 2470.
If only VZW or HTC developers read xda or here! Sigh. I had hoped the last minute delay was to fix this issue. Guess not. I wonder if we will get an update for this update
Cheers,
RoboCuz