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Help All Home Screen Icons disappearing

Mine is random as well, but doesn't seem related to keyboard. Today I hung up a call and all icons disappeared, shut off and turned on phone, and they are back, not the first time it has happened.

How do you report bugs to google?
 
I just had this happen to me when I powered off my Motorola Droid and powered it back on. I added a few icons to the main page and them powered off and powered back on again to find all my normal icons back with the three I added placed on top of the old ones. I was able to remove the three new ones and leave the old ones they were covering, but I hope this bug gets a fix soon. Maybe we all have a common app?
 
Well I had the same problem everyone started having right after the update. It happened once and then started happening daily. I took it to Verizon and they never heard of such a problem. The lady called tech support and was shocked to hear how many problems calls they were getting on this. So she did a factory restore and now my phone shuts off randomly and the icons just started disappearing again about a week or so. O, and the docking station is useless because it really serves no purpose except for wiping your phones icons. I am sick of the soft reset. I am seconds away from selling this thing or dropping it off the top of the Key Bank building downtown. I love the operating system so much. More than the iPhone. I am just sick of the bugs. I understand that it is first generation and the iPhone is on its 4th release in 3 years. My patience is dwindling
 
its a software issue not hardware. I posted a fix to it on my blog but most likely the home screen process is freezing due to some faulty widget. You can force stop the home process to get your icons back but you probably will need to remove any newly installed widgets.
 
i downloaded handcent too and ive been experiencing the same problem now too! i uninstalled but the problem continued. im trying to find the associated files on ASTRO to delete them but im having a hard time... any ideas?
 
thedupuisner said:
i downloaded handcent too and ive been experiencing the same problem now too! i uninstalled but the problem continued. im trying to find the associated files on ASTRO to delete them but im having a hard time... any ideas?
Click to expand...

What widgets do you have on your screens? I'm pretty certain its due to a widget freezing the Homescreen process
 
indeed - if your home process locks up and FCs, then closing it should restore it and everything *should* be OK. If not, try rebooting....

In effect, in this scenario, the icons are not disappearing, the Home process is locking up, so it *seems* they are disappearing....so if that is what is happening to you, then you need to see what is causing the lockups and FCs.
 
thedroidgeek said:
What widgets do you have on your screens? I'm pretty certain its due to a widget freezing the Homescreen process
Click to expand...
I have the google search widget, the power control widget, the weather bug elite widget, and the tunewiki widget (which now that you mention it I added recently). Do widgets glitch and cause this problem often?
 
yup - what happens is hat the widgets are live, always on, and (from my own experience, this may not be accurate) they eat a lot of memory up - so when yo come out of an app all of a sudden all your widgets are waking back up - and the home screen appears to freeze (although if you let it sit long enough, they *should* come back, as long as the Home screen hasn't actually FC'd).
 
Do you know if any of my widgets may be causing my home screens to disappear? Are there any app widgets that are notorious for such issues?
 
I think it is not one single widget so much as having many widgets on there.

That being combined with a high number of apps can cause problems quickly, especially if you have everything running 24/7.

I'll have screen shots up in a minute of my current install of blackdroind's Ultimate 3.7 ROM - I have lots of widgets but rarely any slow down - b/c I have most apps not running unless I need them to....
 
This seems to be related to widgets on the homescreen, usually - did you recently install an app or widget, especially a 'notification' type of widget? When these lock up, they appear to 'stall' home, which keeps waiting for a response from the widget, and as such never moves on to redrawing the desktop as it should.

I'd say go through any widgets on your home screens, remove and see if the issue recurs.

If you encounter the issue, just restart the 'home' process (settings > applications > manage applications > filter 'running' > select 'home' and force stop). That will restore the icons and you can go about the process of removing any other components that you think might be causing the issue.
 
I just noticed this thread go's back to January. I just started having this issue.
It first started when Gesture Search App started acting up. I kept getting the window that says the app needed to close. This happened when I hadn't used the app in weeks. So I deleted Gesture Search and then this started.
When I hang up a phone call screen go's blank.
When I use the camera the phone won't return home or view gallery.
Screen won't restore after soft reset and haven't been able to power down a couple times.
I don't use widgets really and have task killer pro running.
Power doesn't seem to be the issue here.
The phone has also completely locked up a couple times since this began too.
I tried a couple ideas in this thread and grellanl's suggestion above and it still happens.

Thanks for any help in advance :)
 
i have been having this issue ever since i OTA upgraded to 2.1 whenever i use the Dock, going in or coming out... my home screes lose all icons. I had noticed it acting a littler slower as well. I thought it had something to do with the live wallpaper, but i went back to my one from 2.0.1 & still had the issues.

Deleted my widgets & it seems to have cleared up. Speeds are back up as well. Im using a live wallpaper again & still all is ok. In my case im thinking it was the weather channel widget that was jamming things up

Kreick
 
I had the same problem listed here. Since I haven't found a reason behind it (Other than the Home service freezing) I installed the app 1Kill. It stops the home app, which restarts automatically. Saves you from having to locate it manually. Saves me from having to reboot/pull battery, etc...
 
I've seen this a couple times before, but it just got like 20 times worse today. I only have one widget, it's a screen brightness widget, and I've had it for like 6 months.

The two apps I installed today were QuickOffice and the Wii Controller IME, neither of which were running when the issue occured.
 
I can pretty much make it happen at will. and I dont' have any advanced Home ++ apps or whatever. If I click to run any app that requires keyboard- like messaging - and then slide open the motorola key board before the app is fully started, the icons disappear. i've had it happen opening browser, messaging, google search, anything. if i open the keyboard while the app is loading, it will happen. occassionally it happens if i close the keyboard while closing an app at the same time. This should give the droid programmers some help in debugging this issue? It's very annoying.
 
I've been having this problem for quite a while now. The first time it happened, i had no idea what to do, so i put all the icons back. Then a day later the phone rebooted and now I had two layers of icons. Since then I've learned that a soft reset will fix it. It seems to happen whenever i take it out of teh alarm clock dock. But i've also had it happened randomly. I was also using the weather bug elite widget, and so far thats teh only app most of us seem to have in common. I was also getting a weird beyond pod bug that would reboot teh phone if beyond pod was running and you put it in the car dock, but that has since been fixed. If they could fix this glitch, whether its weather bug or google, this droid would be amazing. I'm kinda hoping this happens again so i can try the home service kill trick. I hope that works, it's very annoying having to reboot the phone everytime the icons disappear.
 
Same Problem as described. I have no widgets turned on and i can make it happen by sliding open the keyboard. Force stopping the Home app does fix it, at least temporarily.
I don't think it is memory or Widget related, I think it is a bug.
Since this has been happening for almost as long as the phone and operating system has been on the market, is there any where to notify someone who can actually fix the core software of the issue.

Also what does the Home app do?
 
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