Help Difficulty Uninstalling Third Pary Apps?!

[jlunny]

Galaxy Tab, SPH-P100, 2.3.4 (EF17)
It started with trying to delete the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) app since the background update service would regularly fail and popup a "force close" message. I decided the web site was better and went to uninstall the app.

I uninstalled the WSJ from "Manage Applications". Clear data, force close, uninstall. Gone. All good. But on reboot it showed back up?!

Then I tried deleting a couple of other apps, and they would come back after reboot as well?!

Then I got desperate and tried a Factory Reset, and it still didn't get rid of the WSJ app completely!!! The app seems to be broken as a result of the Factory Reset, but the icon is still there. In fact, most of my other third party apps are in the same state, the icons are there, but they don't work (Pulse, Asphalt, FreeNote, a few others.)

I'm stymied that the Factory Reset didn't work. I'm willing to root the device to fix it, but I'm not sure what I would need to do after I rooted it.

Any ideas?

 

[jlunny]

Apparently Sprint doesn't support the old Galaxy Tab anymore and referred me to Samsung. Samsung gave up on the phone and gave me an RMA number to send it back.

I don't know what I did to get it in this state. I've only had it for a few months and only installed about a dozen apps from the market.