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Help Dock icons keep moving

GiggityGiggity

GiggityGiggity

Android Enthusiast
Hey all. I did a search for disappearing icons and most threads I read related to all icons vanishing or them vanishing when the phone has been rooted. My problem is different. The phone is standard (running 2.3.4) and less than a week old.

The problem I have is the icons in the dock keep moving or removing themselves. I like to keep the same 4 icons in the dock: Messaging, Phone, Settings and Applications, in that order. I've set them up 5 times now and I've just checked and they've changed again. The icons in the dock now are Phone, Messaging and Applications (they've changed order), and the Settings icon has gone completely. I have no idea why. Does anyone have any idea what's causing it?
 
Hello Giggity, and welcome to Android Forums.

If you've moved the apps that those icons are links to to the "media area" or the sd card, sometimes the link will be broken and the icon will either move off the dock and onto the main screen, or just vanish.

That can be remedied by leaving the apps in "phone," rather than moving them in application manager.

If you've not moved them, and the icons are coming up missing, it could be a launcher issue. I'd restart the launcher after first clearing cache and data in the launcher app itself, then reboot and set up the dock from scratch.
 
Hi. I haven't moved anything as I've just started with the phone. The first thing I did was to change the dock icons. Presumably the four icons (Messaging, Phone, Settings and Applications) are in the phone memory as I haven't moved them. Now I'm gonna sound like a total moron as I have no idea how to do what you suggested. :(
 
This is rapidly becoming a well documented bug GiggityGiggity, has nothing to do with moving apps or storage locations.

I'm assuming you've recently upgraded the phone to 2.3.4? Because this is when it happens. No clear reason why, logic dictates it's something to do with the new firmware conflicting with remnants of your old firmware - hence causing little glitches. Of which this one is the most well documented. There is a complete fix though, so put that smile back on your face :).....

You need to go Settings--->Privacy---->factory reset (make sure the 'format usb' option is checked) and erase everything on your phone. - I'm assuming you don't really have anything on your phone as it's new, but if you do then obviously back it up.......(or just let it be deleted and put it all on again manually).

The hard reset will flush out all the old firmware, but will retain your new firmware. So you'll remain on 2.3.4.

After phone reboots this glitch (and a few others you prob havent noticed yet) will be gone.

Let me know if this does the trick.
 
Hi paddylaz. I did update the firmware of the phone but I thought the Android version was already at 2.3.4 out of the box. I guess it can't have been if there was a firmware update available and it's now on 2.3.4 after the update. I'm finding things a little confusing with Android versions, baseband versions, kernel versions etc.

If doing a factory reset will sort it then I'll happily do it. All I've done so far is add contacts and calendars and put a few pics and vids on the memory card. I have installed several apps though (both free and paid for). How do I back these up? And if I back the phone up and restore it am I just going to cause the same problem again? I hate being so UTTERLY clueless with a new phone but I guess everyone has to start somewhere. :o
 
Calm yourself my son ;)

As a wise-man once said, 'worrying is like a rocking chair..it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere.'

I'm nearly 100% sure that all gs2 international models are STILL to this day being shipped with 2.3.3. So i think thats what you got and you then upgraded to 2.3.4.

Don't worry too much about kernels and basebands etc unless you become curious about rooting/using Odin and other things that better men than me can talk you through.

In terms of backing up, you can just use the samsung KIES software - you can download it for free from samsung website. It's pretty easy to use and can backup all that stuff. In terms of apps downloaded from the market, you won't have to pay for them again, just redownload them.

In terms of your last fear, no. Hard resetting will send the last remnants of 2.3.3 back to the hell from whence it came (i figured I'd make this post nice and profound). You shouldn't encounter this problem ever again. Although when I say backup your stuff - do it MANUALLY. do not do the backup/restore thing. Just transfer the stuff you care about to your pc desktop or something, then chronologically transfer them back using kies once you've hard reset
 
I'm calm! ;) I'm already running Kies on a MacbookPro. There's no need to back up the pics and vids as they're already on the external sd card and the contacts and calendars are sync'd from my Google account.

If I move all the apps I installed to the external sd will that save me from having to redownload them again or will I have to do that regardless to reinstall?
 
ok just checking ;)

To be honest mate I'm not entirely sure about that - assuming you have a wifi connection and you didnt download an outrageous number of apps, I would just redownload them (i guess it just seems 'cleaner' to me). Obviously I will let someone else chime in here if theyve got a confirmed answer to your question...i dont want to speculate!

Also...........this is not really related to your problem, but I find it interesting you say you have a macbook pro. I have one too, but I, like many others, have found the mac version of Kies to be a bit dodgy (translation: s***) when it comes to detecting updates for firmware. Did you download 2.3.4 using the mac version of kies?

I would recommend in the future (if you can be arsed) to download windows onto a bootcamp partition and use the windows version of kies as its much better. Obviously dont have to do that now, but it might be advantageous in regards to future updates and your software detecting them for download. Just a thought.
 
You ain't wrong about Kies. I updated it earlier and now it won't recognise the phone at all. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling with the same results. Quality! In the meantime I've reset the phone and reinstalled everything. So far so good, no disappearing icons.

As for Windoze on a partition, already have one running XP Pro so maybe I'll install the pc version of Kies and see if it's any better. Cheers for the help!
 
Yeah I mean I'm not sure if general functionality is better or not, all I know is Kies for Mac is notorious for either not detecting your phone or not detecting an available update when in fact there is one.

Anyway, no worries mate glad things worked out x
 
Thanks Frisco and Shotgun. I had the same problem. Icons kept disappearing from my dock when I rebooted my phone. I kept adding them back but after the next reboot they would disappear again. Clearing the data from tw launcher set all the icons back to original and after that, the changes I made stayed after rebooting. So glad I didn't do a factory reset as someone above said.
 
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