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2 different problems, though likely related.

Sara222

Newbie
Nov 21, 2017
44
10
More like three, but in the beginning it didn't seem like such a big deal. I'd be doing just about anything... scrolling FB, reading an email, browsing a website and my screen would turn black, not timeout but just go black. I would then hit the back button and normally it would turn back to whatever screen I'd been looking at. Sort of like when you go to a link on FB and the link doesn't work so it reverts back to the main page. It was annoying, and I knew it was a bug of some kind but one I decided to live with out of laziness, more than anything.
Then after the last update the secondary issue arose, which in my mind was an offshoot of the old issue but on a much grander scale. Instead of turning black and being able to resume, it just started going black and more or less turning itself off. Or it seems that way. The screen generally goes black and then when it restarts I'm at the main home screen just as I would be on a restart. (It doesn't always go black however. Sometimes it merely reverts to the homescreen, normally after it locks up for several seconds in whatever app or page I was on and then shows where it is restarting everything it normally does after powering up.) This happens sometimes up to 10 times a day at it's worst.
The third thing it does which I feel may be related is it started reporting it wasn't reading my SD card or was reporting that it simply wasn't there at all. I normally noticed this when I'd look at an app that was on it only to discover I wasn't able to open the app as the SD card acted as though it wasn't installed. Generally a restart fixed this trouble but it keeps happening.
 
If you go into your Settings menu, and look in the Display menu what is your phone set for as far as its Sleep setting?

Regarding your microSD card, have you tried just re-seating it in its slot? Sometimes that helps just to make sure the little metal contacts between the card and the phone are in contact with each other.
Another thing to try, if you have access to a Windows PC, is to remove the card from your phone, mount it in the PC and run the chkdsk utility on it to see if it finds any errors.
https://neosmart.net/wiki/chkdsk/
 
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If you go into your Settings menu, and look in the Display menu what is your phone set for as far as its Sleep setting?

Regarding your microSD card, have you tried just re-seating it in its slot? Sometimes that helps just to make sure the little metal contacts between the card and the phone are in contact with each other.
Another thing to try, if you have access to a Windows PC, is to remove the card from your phone, mount it in the PC and run the chkdsk utility on it to see if it finds any errors.
https://neosmart.net/wiki/chkdsk/

I thought it might be sleeping too at first but the difference being it's set to lock after 30 seconds of screen inactivity. And in these cases it's not locking, just a blank screen.
 
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Try deleting your S9's system cache partition. It 'might' help but even if it doesn't it doesn't hurt to at least try. The system cache is different than your app caches, and being a cache it doesn't retain any data or any of your files anyway. It's not something that you can do in your Settings menu, you need to restart your S9 into its Recovery Mode, instructions if you need them here:
https://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-galaxy-s9/recovery-mode/
Once in Recovery Mode select the 'Wipe cache partition' option, and then restart your phone. The deletion process only takes a few seconds (less time than to just read the instructions) and don't be surprised if your phone doesn't even have one. Starting with Oreo the system cache was being phased out so depending on how your phone was originally configured it may or may not even be there.

Another thing to try is start up your phone into its Safe Mode. When running in Safe Mode only the base Android operating system is loaded up into memory, with no third-party apps or services. If those odd screen blanking outs don't also occur while in Safe Mode, that might indicate some app you've installed is creating the problem. Of course then you need to determine just which one but it's a place to start off with.
https://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-galaxy-s9/safe-mode/
 
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