Help Phone resets,wipes out ringtones&playlists

[ericrlowther]

I seem to have a combo of problems in other threads, so sorry if this problem has been answered in another. I have a Note I, and every few days it simply restarts on its own. It's only off for a few seconds. When it comes back up, all of the individual ringtones I have assigned to contacts are cleared and I have to reassign them. It also wipes out my playlists (not the music, just the songs listed in my playlists) on two different music apps. I use Handcent for my SMS, and the text tones I have for individual contacts seem unaffected by this, though. I have tried keeping my music and ringtone files on the SD card, in the phone memory, and duplicating them as well but it still wipes the assignments (not the actual sound files etc, just the assignments). I have also tried assigning ringtones through both the handcent app for the phone contacts and through the standard contacts app and they get wiped regardless through which app I assign them. Having to constantly rebuild playlists and reassign ringtones to contacts is really getting frustrating. Help?

 

[Mikestony]

Is this restart random? And when it comes back on, does it act as if it was shutdown normally and then restarted? i.e. the splash screen comes on, then the bootanimation etc and finally the OS.

Or when it come back on, is it in the OS right away?

How old is the battery?
Do you have some app installed that will reboot the phone?

 

[Mikestony]

I also moved your thread here to the Note forums.

 

[ericrlowther]

Thanks, Mike. The restart is completely random and doesn't have the splash or usual hallmarks of a restart. It just goes black for 3-4 seconds then comes back up like nothing happened, save for what I've noted. Phone is less than 2 months old, brand new on ATT. The only reboot app I have is the stock one, OS is Android 4.0.4

 

[Mikestony]

Well, although I am not familiar with your device, I do have a Samsung device, so, unless others here who know your phone have a better solution, perhaps a factory reset is in order.
But, I would hold off on that in case someone else has better advice.

Otherwise, I am sure ATT can assist. Although, a factory reset will probably be the first thing they would advise


Just for giggles, check the battery contacts and see if they are clean. Perhaps clean them with a pencil eraser. Who knows, maybe the battery loses contact for a second or so.

 

[ericrlowther]

I'll do that. Thanks Mike!

 

[ericrlowther]

Well, I got a back-up program and did two different factory resets and the problem still remains. I don't know now if I have an app that's causing the crashes or what. I don't have a lot of apps, and I really can't trace when this problem started back to any apps I have. Anybody know of any apps that have a bad habit of causing momentary shut-downs?

 

[Mikestony]

hmmmm...after 2 factory resets, the random reboot occurs huh?

As far as apps causing this? I really don't know but, after the factory reset, you could just leave it without downloading any apps and see if it reboots on its own.

 

[ericrlowther]

The only app I've downloaded in the last 2 weeks was the backup program so I could do the factory resets. I checked to make sure there wasn't an OS update I missed as well. I went through and deleted any apps that I've downloaded in the paast 30 days and did a battery and sim card pull. I'm doing an experiment now by creating a test playlist in my two music players and putting specific ringtones to only 1 contact then backing everything up clean. What I can't understand is that handcent is completely unaffected by this and retains all the contact-specific notifiers etc but the music players, the alarm clock, and contacts get their specific ringtones cleared and I have to reassign.

Now, I wait for it to happen again. When it does, if both music players lose their playlists and the contact no longer has a specified ringtone the phone is going to the ATT store (it's barely 3 months old and I have extended warranty and insurance). I did some research that says apps generally can't crash an android phone like this and the issue is usually at the kernel level or a hardwarde problem.

 

[Mikestony]

Let us know what happens k?
Thanks for posting back

 

[ericrlowther]

Will do. I carried Blackberry exclusively for the past 9 years and this is my first foray into Android so there's been some growing pains. I like everything else with Android so far except that Blackberry is much more customizeable right out of the box without needing a lot of after-apps. Now if Handcent just made a straight contacts app...

 

[Mikestony]

Well, I can understand your frustration towards Android now. What a first impression eh?
Not to worry, Android is a fantastic platform that I hope you soon realize with a functioning device

Good luck !!

 

[ericrlowther]

Well, it's been a week and it hasn't reset itself. I'm hoping I got rid of whatever was causing it.

 

[Mikestony]

Well, it's been a week and it hasn't reset itself. I'm hoping I got rid of whatever was causing it.

Fantastic!! Did you factory reset a third time or just twice?

 

[ericrlowther]

Just twice. The first reset was with all the apps and settings I'd been using. Before I did the 2nd one, I deleted a few apps that I had downloaded in the last month. I don't know if there's a connection, but it hasn't done it since. They weren't anything I can't live without (and I don't want to list them here without being able to prove one or more was the cause), so I'll leave them off.

 

[ericrlowther]

Well, at week 2 it did it again. It's going back to AT&T...

 

[Mikestony]

Well, at week 2 it did it again. It's going back to AT&T...

Sorry to hear that, but maybe it's for the better.
Post back how it went and how your new device works out

 

[ericrlowther]

AT&T was actually not as painful to deal with as I had thought they would be. They sent me another (reconditioned of course) phone and only took about 4 days with regular shipping to arrive. I was using MyBackup and had trouble with it in that they never gave me a pin code and wouldn't recognize my new phone so I had to buy the app all over again to be able to get my backups off of the sd card (I'm an old man, I still don't trust these "cloud" and on-line backups). Had the phone for two days now and so far so good...

 

[Mikestony]

Well, glad to hear it wasn't a big hassle to get an exchange.
Good luck with this device

 

[RockChalkers]

I'm having the same problem, but my phone doesn't reset. I have the Note 2 for AT&T but on StraightTalk. I have custom rom, NOTEorious Prime on it. But I've noticed that if I just reboot the phone, then everything is fine. But if I turn the phone off then power back on, my text message ringtone that was custom is now clear and any playlists I have are completely empty. So my problem is different than the original listed, as it's only when I trigger the power down.

I figured maybe it's something with my custom rom, so figured I will back up and try a new rom and see if problem persists. Anyone have any thoughts until I do that though?

 

[RockChalkers]

I found this, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1093262
and i'm going to give it a try. Makes sense, but you figure that the SD card would get mounted first thing on start up and it would be able to read the files for the ringtones. I'll get back on if it worked.

***Editted after***
Well after a phone restart to have it pick up the change in folders of the ringtones I went to select the new ringtone, but now it makes no noise. So I wouldn't do the above just yet.

 

[RockChalkers]

ok, just moved them over the the "Phone" drive under sdcard0/media/ringtones and seems to be working again, maybe the phone won't let MP3s play from the system folder. All the ringtones in the system folder were .ogg or something like that. I will come back and update if doesn't work. Not sure still why it calls the internal hard drive sdcard0 but it does on my phone. The real SD card is extSdCard.

As for as playlists, I guess I will make try to make the playlist on a pc and not from the phone and see if that makes any difference.

 

[Mikestony]

Hello RockChalkers!
Welcome to the forums
I am just kinda following along with what your are doing there.