Android 4.0: Encryption Unsuccessful

[nickdalzell]

Never saw this one before. One of my tablets started freezing where I had to hold down power until it rebooted. Shortly after it came up with this screen with a hard reset button and basically told me I HAD to factory reset it. Crying out 'BS!' I held down power again until it rebooted again only this time I got the Android robot with red triangle Icon like no OS was installed. Then I got frustrated and threw the tablet onto the floor assuming since it was bricked I might as well break it. Well it didnt break and started booting normally again but now my apps are all gone as if i just opened the box. I managed to get them installed again but how did this happen in the first place? I never enabled any encryption! I'm afraid to reboot it again and while it currently works (better in fact it runs faster) the thing is unstable and the lower half of the screen responds oddly probably from my abuse

 

[Digital Controller]

What tablet is it? with this information we can definitely assist you better.

 

[nickdalzell]

A budget Emerson with ICS and a 4.3 inch screen. The error is new to me but all I did was reboot and the encryption unsuccessful error came up. Then second boot the green Android lying down with red triangle as if booting without an OS then booted like it was new out of the box. Pretty reliable until that. It basically formatted itself

 

[EarlyMon]

You may have gotten malware, or triggered something to enable encryption, or shorted or opened your motherboard upon impact.

Hard to say.

 

[nickdalzell]

The impact was after I got this screen. I DIDN'T want my stuff erased so I tried rebooting when it came up hoping to bypass it and boot anyway and that got me the green Android with tummy open and red triangle screen telling me its dead so figuring ot bricked itself I intended to smash to bits

It froze. I hard booted. Got encryption unsuccessful and now all my apps are GONE. IF this is an ICS bug I'm swearing Android 4.0 off my list and going back to gingerbread. Never has this level of instability since Android 2.1. No operating system is going to force me to delete all my stuff like that

 

[EarlyMon]

It's not an ICS bug, I did follow the sequence of events.

Your stuff may be invisible due to encryption partially completing, or due to some other hardware failure, or malware.

Now that you've thrown it on the floor, there's little point in trying to guess. It's not like there's much we could trust coming off the thing at this point.

Sorry.

 

[nickdalzell]

Well for th moment it works and after much exhaustion I got most of my apps back. Honestly never saw this error in my life. There isn't much about it in Google searching about it except for it coming up when either flashing a ROM or upgrading OTA. I did neither of those things, I just hard rebooted when it froze and trust me in my experience Android does this quite often no matter if its eclair, Gingerbread or Jelly Bean even. It erased itself and im not happy and this could happen again. I don't think this error existed until ICS so that is why I called it an ICS bug. I cannot even find anything regarding encryption in settings

 

[EarlyMon]

In my experience, Android has only acted that goofy on a defective device I once had, and I go back to Donut.

I don't throw things around when I get upset, I watch for malware, so your mileage may vary.

They make ruggedized devices, maybe you'll want to look into different hardware in the future.

 

[nickdalzell]

I am regrettably having so much trouble from Android on various devices lately and I've tried to love it and tried to give it a chance but no matter what I find that Android just isn't for me. Never have any problems out of my iPad but tons out of Android. Now for some reason Android runs perfectly on my phone (it runs Gingerbread that is pretty much the only stable version IMO) but it is only used occasionally and mostly for music download or playback. It seems Android thrives on occasional use but trying to use any Android tablet as a laptop replacement (my iPad excels in this which is nice since I hardly carry a bulky laptop anymore) the heavier the use the more unstable it gets, not sure why though. as a tablet OS Android sadly fails while iOS succeeds.

Using ICS for a few weeks while it looks nice they put back a lot of what I just hated from the old Eclair platform that was missing in Gingerbread. The annoying ANR dialogs were a nightmare in Eclair and so were the random crashes that dumped me back to the scrolling boot animation again, these were gone in GB but seem to have been added back to ICS, and now ICS even forces me to erase all my apps and settings with no way out so sadly that was the final straw.

 

[EarlyMon]

I understand.

None of these makers are our friends and we all get varying mileage. Not our fault.

If you have a brand and strategy that works for you, great, go with that.

PS - personally, I would appreciate it if you didn't go telling others that ICS made you lose and encrypt files. I get that's your opinion, but it's simply not true.