Help Droid shuts off, have to remove battery to restart

[JYo]

Love my Mororola Droid, but in the last week, it has shut completly off without notice. It will not turn back on until I remove the battery and put it back in. I can then power it back on. Is anyone else having this problem? I have 2.0.1 Firmware version and it says my system is up to date.

 

[gentlefury]

mines great.

 

[SinfulDragon]

nope, sorry.... and sorry again but I hope to not have the problem to help troubleshoot first hand either

 

[thecrazing]

What sorts of apps have you been installing?

 

[SimonSays]

Is it happening a lot? That's happened to me twice since I've gotten it (about 2 months ago). Since it's been so infrequent I haven't figured out what's causing it.

 

[MonroeDroid]

If it is happening often, start uninstalling apps. AntiVirus Free from Droidsecurity Inc. was shutting mine down like crazy after I installed one of their updates.

 

[YankeeDudeL]

Before you go crazy uninstalling, see what's running first. Go to Settings > Applications > Running Services. A lot of times, apps will continue to run when you close them. I was having that problem when I first got this phone, and it would restart or simply freeze. Make sure you monitor your apps, and if one is constantly restarting it, even after you close it, then it needs to go.

 

[craigehlo]

This has randomly happened to me about 3 times over the last couple months. Pulling out the battery is the only fix I've found.

 

[thecrazing]

If you guys are like me and don't really care about the text messages you've sent and received, here's what I would suggest.

Get Astro file manager. Go to its app backup tool, and backup all of your apps (it probably won't be able to backup paid apps). Now, there is a way to make the phone backup and sync you settings for things like wifi networks to the cloud. Unfortunately, the only way I've found to do this comes when initializing the phone's setup, like after a factory reset. Which is a shame, because my sales rep at the VZW didn't check that box, and because what I'm going to tell you to do next is..

A factory reset. Yeah, your settings like wifi networks will disappear, and you'll lose some application data like your battery widget's calibration. Luckily, after this factory reset, you can tell it to make sure to back these things up. Alternately, you can download an app from the market like MyBackup.

Anyways, the real things we're looking for here are a fresh start, and a mass culling of your accumulated apps. There's a good chance the Market has already downloaded and installed your paid apps at this point, and now's a good time to go check. If they haven't, they still have kept track of those bought apps. Download those and Astro File Manager again. Mess around with some things, flick the screens a bit. Things should feel around 0.01-0.1 seconds faster. Go to Astro, and install the apps from the backup that you really, really use on a regular basis, like the ones that you know should be on your home screens. Aim for reinstalling around 1 out of 4 apps. Keep it like this for a while, mess around with it. Reset up your homescreens, add some widgets. If everything's working just as fluidly, consider reinstalling a few more apps. Do this slowly and in chunks.

Right about now you'll have realized that the Market app isn't keeping track of what needs to be updated, because it's playing dumb about the apps you installed from backup. Now chances are this isn't a huge deal right away, probably only a handful of them have updates, if any at all, and they're probably minor bug fixes. But wait, minor bugs might be what's causing such an occasional problem.

Get an app called aTrackDog. Now, it won't automatically update everything with one click. But it will stop you from having to remember or write down a list of all those free apps and go searching for them. It connects to its own version tracker, and if a version number of an app you have installed isn't what it thinks the latest is, with a couple of clicks you can be at the Download button in the Market app, for that app.

Now again, this might be a fairly long process for your patience, so if you can live with an occasional error, or if you think you know the one or two apps that just feel intuitively like they're the problem children, just get rid of those and forget it.

But, if you're like me and ended up on the northend of 190 apps because you like to tinker, then tinkering some more to solve the problem is a win-win.

If you can isolate a particular action that causes a bug, you can then isolate what particular app is causing that action to be buggy. But that's where my patience went out too, especially since it was things that wasn't happening consecutively. After a mass culling, my phone runs hiccup and stutter free. And if I'm ever in that one situation that I downloaded a particular, extraneous app for, I know it's sitting there on my SD.

 

[daddyd302]

Hmmm this happened to me yesterday. It turned itself off and I could not get it to turn on. I had to pull the battery to get it to turn on again.

 

[JYo]

Before you go crazy uninstalling, see what's running first. Go to Settings > Applications > Running Services. A lot of times, apps will continue to run when you close them. I was having that problem when I first got this phone, and it would restart or simply freeze. Make sure you monitor your apps, and if one is constantly restarting it, even after you close it, then it needs to go.

Thanks, I'll monitor the apps that are running. I don't have a lot installed, looks like Google, Android keyboard, the weather channel, Power Manager (I don't even know what that is!), Battery Widget, Digital Clock Widget, and Calendar Pad (although it says that it's for Android 1.5...)
This happened before, right after getting the phone, hasn't happened in awhile, now again!
Yes, taking the battery out is the only way to get it restarted again

 

[gooutsidetoday]

Mine has been doing the same thing lately too. And also the screen isn't wanting to timeout always and sometimes my keyboard doesn't light up unless I adjust the screen brightness... Idk what the problem is

 

[jbg25]

This happened to me today for the first time ever...and I just did a factory reset just a few days ago.

Only new Apps I have downloaded since the reset are....
-aTrackDog
-Bubble
-MyBackup Pro
-Sweeter Home2

 

[Bcreekski]

My Droid began shutting down about 3 days ago. It happened 2-3 times per day. Last night I removed "Tech Buzz" which was last app installed. It was fine for about 24 hours and has now shut down again. I do not have a tremendous number of apps installed and very little in the running applications list. The only relatively new app there is "Better Keyboard". Any fresh ideas out there to solve this issue??

 

[tjs5220]

I also have had this happen a few times over the weekend. first time ever happened on thursday, but happened 3 times on thursday and once on friday and twice on saturday. I did uninstall the only app I had installed in about a week, but I did that on saturday after the first time and it still happened once since. looks like I'll be monitoring my apps if it keeps happening...

 

[Bcreekski]

After my last post, I also deleted Finance Widget and have no more shut down problems. Seems like a strange event to me but seems OK for now.

 

[mecheles]

Please list all the applications you have downloaded on your phone. I will list mine as well, maybe then we can find the problem.

 

[Sharpiexo]

I got my HTC Desire Z for Christmas..and only now its starting to shut off randomly..It's shut off 3 times already..I dont know whats wrong? And the chargers plugged in..any ideas on whats wrong?