New Here...Slow phone...Hard reset??

[Ellie914]

Hi There! I'm new here although I've been lurking for a while. Great info here! So my phone has been super slow, lagging, kicking me out of the internet, no calls when people say they call etc. I talked to Verizon and they want me to do a hard reset. Is this necessary?? It scares me to possibly lose all my stuff. So if I need to do this then what do I need to make sure is backed up??

Would love some help with this b/c my phone is really starting to frustrate me. My husband was in the store yesterday, sent me a txt and when he got back in the car asked me why I didn't respond. By the time I got his text, wrote back and it finally sent he was back in the car! So yeah lagging is such a great thing!!!

Thanks!!!

 

[mc48]

have you cleaned out the cache from your apps and cleaned out your text messages and especially your call log? Are you using the htc stock weather widget? If so, dump it. To me that was a source of many of my problems after the 2.1 ota.

If you have done all you can to clean up your phone, a reset will probably do you a world of good. It did me. I don't think you should lose any thing that you have stored on your sd card (photos, music, books, etc.) but you should probably back it up just in case. Connect your phone to your computer and copy the stuff (photos, music,etc.) on the sd card that you want to backup to a specified folder on your computer. That seems to be the easiest way to do it. I think there are ways to backup your apps, using something like AppBrain, but if you are like me, most of my apps are free and you can just download again anyway. Once you have done the factory reset it will be like getting a new phone from day 1, you will need to set up your email accounts, your preferences, backgrounds, etc. again. It is a pain and takes awhile but you should see lots of improvement, imo. If not, you might have a lemon phone and can take it back for a replacement.

 

[Ellie914]

Thanks! I downloaded Astro and backed up my apps ( I only had like 10 on there). How do I dump the weather widget? I don't ever use it but I like the big clock and the date etc on the main page. Does that go with it? All my pics, music are backed up on my sd card and I did as you said and copied to my computer. So I should be all good. I think I might go ahead with the reset anyway. I have gotten tired of the laggyness (is that a word??) lol

Thanks so much!

 

[mc48]

ha. yeah i originally wrote "lagginess" "laggyness" in my first post and then changed it cause it didn't look right.

when I say dump the widget I just mean pull it off your screen and don't use it, you can't uninstall it unless maybe if you have root. But I think it is just using the widget that is the cause of the "lagginess". anyway, sounds like you know what you are doing. good luck and let us know how it turns out.

 

[AwesomeIT]

For those people who truly want a lag free phone, I would highly recommend rooting the phone and installing a custom ROM. I know this may sound like gibberish to you, but there are plenty of threads on this forums, particularly the sticky at the top of this forum regarding Root that will explain everything.

 

[gospodinwizard]

As far as restoring apps go, you can do it via Astro or My Backup. My Backup is free for the first 30 days. It just restored 30-ish apps and their associated data to my phone with no errors basically at the push of button. Either way you backup/restore works but be aware that when you restore the apps you may not get the market links restored which means you won't get updates to them. I had this problem and fixed it with an app from the Market called "Eris Market Fix" or some such.

You might also consider whether or not to reformat the SD card. If you chose to do so, make sure to mount your SD card to a PC first and copy over important stuffz. For example, you might want to copy the DCIM folder since it contains whatever pics you may have taken. If you use Footprints, make sure to copy the .footprints folder. Also copy any folder which an app you may have installed backs up data to. For example if you backed up your apps using Astro, make sure to copy the "backups" folder....Astro backs up apps to the backups/apps folder (aka /sdcard/backups/apps).

 

[Ellie914]

Alright...did a reset and have been playing around for a while now getting things back the way i liked them.. what a pain!
Dumped the weather widget but miss the large view of the time, date etc. Anything else have the time and date on it?

Oh wow root...hmm I've read a little about it but honestly it scares the crap out of me!! I'm not that technical!! I will think on it though..

Thankfully so far nothing of importance was lost with the reset ( a couple notes I had in color note, just my baby's weights and stuff...which i had most of them written down in his baby book already).

Thanks so much for the help. I'm hoping this helps make things speedy!!

 

[Flyphoenix]

Before hard resetting I download MyBackup free version its easy to use.

 

[Praetorian]

I've been using the weather widget for a long time and I've never had an issue with it. Clearing the cache seems to fix most problems. After reading this post I got rid of it and installed Weather Channel but I missed it so much I switched back within 20 minutes.

 

[gospodinwizard]

The beauty about rooting the Eris is that there is now a working way to get the phone back to stock so that Verizon can't tell you rooted in case you have to return the phone.

As to rooting, I'd suggest having a look at:

http://androidforums.com/htc-droid-eris/125436-detailed-leak-root-tutorial.html

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=649705

I followed the instructions under Windows line by line and had no problem whatsoever. I wish I had rooted a long time ago.

 

[mc48]

glad the reset didn't mess up anything for you and hope it helps with the lag. If you see an improvement, put the weather widget back on if you want and see if it works for you. It seems to be fine for some ppl. I haven't jumped on the root wagon yet either, i am on my first phone that I got in Nov. soon after the launch and I've never really had a problem with it so I haven't seen the need. I saw a post on gizmodo yesterday about someone had written an app with one button root but I think it was for the Droid X maybe. If someone writes one for the Eris I might consider it.