Rooted Sprint Hero 2.1...VVM suddenly stopped working?

[stealthpaws]

Hi everyone... I've been lurking here for months attempting to learn about my phone. I've had my Hero since the day after they were released, and I finally broke down and rooted a few months ago. I got rid of the bloatware and basically that was all I thought I wanted to do...then I read about Apps 2 SD, and got all excited, only to learn you can't use it on a stock ROM. See, I USE my Scenes...which if I understand it, is part of the Sense UI. I'm actually not sure what Sense UI is, or does, exactly, but I don't want to lose it if it controls my Scenes. So....I have not tried ROMS, etc. I like my phone the way it is...EXCEPT...I have about 10 MB's of memory left, it's slow as ...well...you know...and I keep deleting apps because I can't move them without a custom ROM (again, that's what I've been reading). Soooooo.... I had more or less decided to live with it until I realized on the 16th of July that I hadn't received any Voice Mail notifications since July 7th. I haven't deleted any "com.whatevers", nor anything else in the last couple of weeks that I can recall. It just quit working. I called Sprint, they gave me instructions for resetting the MSID/Network ID, etc... and told me if that didn't work the only thing left to do was to hard reset my phone. Ok... I see in my Clockwork Recovery a place to do that. My questions are...

-If I do a wipe from Clockwork, will I lose Root?
-Does it set me back to 1.5 (that's how it came from the factory) or is the firmware unaffected?
-Has anyone ever found a way to keep the stock ROM and use Apps 2 SD?
(I have a new 16 gig card ready)
-Is there some way to download just the VVM code?
-and finally...WHAT is a "kernel"??????

I have been reading posts and searching...literally for 5 nights...hours a night. I don't know what half the initials stand for, and when I tried to join XDA Developers' forum, after sitting through that video (which made me laugh so hard I had tears) it informed me that people on a Sprint wireless connection were not welcome. Grrrr. I have an aircard...it's my only internet connection as I live in the woods and there is no cable or such here. GRRRR

Can anyone help me? Thanks so much

ahHA! I finally found an explanation of the Sense thing...& I definitely wish to keep it. I thought all Androids had widgets that displayed updated info & such...I use them constantly. Yep...staying w/Sense.

 

[LBPHeretic]

Moving thread to the root section. If you do a factory reset, that does not remove your root privileges as far as I know.

You will stay on Android 2.1 and not go back to Android 1.5 if you do a factory reset. You may need to update your Sprint Visual Voicemail app to get functionality back. A kernel, in the simplest terms, is a bridge between applications, including the operating system itself, and the hardware. Android kernels usually offer advantages or changes in how the operating system interacts with the hardware, like overclocking the CPU for example.

 

[stealthpaws]

Thanks LB... I went ahead and put on my big girl panties and did it. Still had my root, my SU permissions, and it didn't put the Sprint TV, Football, etc back on the phone. That was odd. I got my VVM back though, & that was my primary concern. Now for some reason, I'm unable to get my 2nd Google account set back up. I recall reading about ppl having issues w/this, so now I'll be combing through here trying to find a fix for that.

I'm still hunting a way to get Apps 2 SD to work on this phone w/out having to go to a ROM w/no Sense, so I'll be lurking around for a bit. I appreciate you're answering me tho. Thanks again.

2nd Google acct fixed... task killers are great programs, but they can sure mess up stuff sometimes! Turned off Advanced Manager & acct went right through. I think it kills the Google Partner setup.

 

[LBPHeretic]

Thanks LB... I went ahead and put on my big girl panties and did it. Still had my root, my SU permissions, and it didn't put the Sprint TV, Football, etc back on the phone. That was odd. I got my VVM back though, & that was my primary concern. Now for some reason, I'm unable to get my 2nd Google account set back up. I recall reading about ppl having issues w/this, so now I'll be combing through here trying to find a fix for that.

I'm still hunting a way to get Apps 2 SD to work on this phone w/out having to go to a ROM w/no Sense, so I'll be lurking around for a bit. I appreciate you're answering me tho. Thanks again.

2nd Google acct fixed... task killers are great programs, but they can sure mess up stuff sometimes! Turned off Advanced Manager & acct went right through. I think it kills the Google Partner setup.

I am glad you figured it out. I am going to get on my soapbox for a second now.

The issue you had is why I advise most people to discontinue their usage of task managers or task killers. They end up causing more problems than they solve. Some experienced users do get decent results by using them, but more often than not, they can cause a lot of headaches. They also often end up using more battery than if one just did not use them.

 

[stealthpaws]

I am glad you figured it out. I am going to get on my soapbox for a second now.

The issue you had is why I advise most people to discontinue their usage of task managers or task killers. They end up causing more problems than they solve. Some experienced users do get decent results by using them, but more often than not, they can cause a lot of headaches. They also often end up using more battery than if one just did not use them.

Yah...I've been using Advanced Manager for about 1 year & 1/2 after discontinuing ATK when they put that weird autokill option in. I don't run it so much for the kill as I do for the other functions it performs very well.

Meantime, I have an interesting discovery to share...

I had the phone all set up, & everything was working just fine- at least I thought it was. Then, yesterday I got one of those text messages informing me that vvm.coremobility had sent me a voice message. To my knowledge I had done NOTHING to the phone. No upgrades, no tinkering, notta.

I reset the phone again. 7 hours and 28 phone calls later, it was done. As I restored EACH app from RootUninstaller's back-up, I called (or my b/f did) and left a message, then waited to see if VVM was working, the theory being that one of the programs was not playing well with VVM, AND making periodic backups of my set-up w/ROM manager so I wouldn't have to go through this again. I suspected the task manager, so didn't install it. I was going to get it all done, back up one final time and THEN install the task manager and see what happened. Everything worked fine. I went about messing with the phone settings...ringer, preferences for programs, etc. to personalize again, and again, testing with a phone call after each change I made. I found it.

Just before all this became apparent the first time, I had updated Handcent Messaging to the latest build, which has the "great new feature" which allows you to disable the native messaging program and use Handcent as the default messaging, Since HC is a far superior program for handling sending photos, I usually use it as I need to send a lot of photos in my work. I had never actually gone into the preferences there and told it to disable the native app, but each time it gave me a choice as to whether to make Handcent default, I chose it. I've been using Handcent for a long time. It always played well w/the native app...I didn't even suspect it. I decided as I was setting things up I'd go ahead and give it the default status so I wouldn't be bothered with all those pop-ups. My phone message test failed. It seems that disabling the native messaging program also disables Sprint's Visual Voice Mail. The GOOD news is, that I did not have to start over. Simply removing Handcent's default status, and allowing the native messaging service to run fixed it immediately.

I did a lot of searching on this subject before I posted here the first time. I saw quite a few other people had the same issue...getting the error message re: VVM. Sprint techs respond with resetting the network ID (phone number) and the MSID. If that fails "the only thing you can do is factory reset". That does not seem to be the case in this situation. I hope that posting my experience here that it will help. Sprint apparently either has no idea or it doesn't want to tell people...who knows. Anyhow, thank you for the information you provided! I'm back to lurking & learning.

 

[LBPHeretic]

Wow. It sounds like you had a lot of "face time" with your handset recently to narrow all of that down.

That sounds like very useful information as I know others have experienced this issue too. Thank you for being so concise in your description of your methodology and thought process because that goes a long way towards helping others understand how you arrived at your conclusion.