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Help Fascinate automatically spontaneously performs a factory reset / hard reset

Inphosys

Inphosys

Well-Known Member
Hey there folks -

Long time Droid user, brand new to the Fascinate Forum. I just bought my wife a Samsung Fascinate and I have to say the thing is absolutely phenomenal! It makes my Motorola Droid look like a 1990's flip phone!! Except for one problem ... the darned thing has been automatically spontaneously performing a factory reset / hard reset on itself. And it is happening at completely random times. You're sitting there playing a game, you're reading your e-mail or you just pushed the screen ON / power button to wake the phone up and unlock it and then, all of a sudden ... BANG! The phone reboots to the black and white Samsung startup screen, then recovery pops up and yellow writing appears that says "Formatting FOTA:...", "Formatting DATA:...", "Formatting CACHE:...". Then the phone reboots again and comes up like you just pulled it out of the box; a full factory reset / hard reset. The contents of the SD card are thankfully fine.

Is anyone else having this problem? Does anyone know if there is anything I can do to turn on some sort of logging so that maybe I can figure out what causes it? This is now the second phone that this is happening to. We took the first phone back to Verizon the very same day we got it and they swapped it out right there for another brand new one. The second phone behaved perfectly for three whole days before it went and wiped itself. We thought for sure that the problem was with the first phone, but now it is happening with the second phone.

I am going to start from scratch again, adding one app at a time making sure the thing continues to work. But there weren't any apps on the device in the first place that were really out of the ordinary.

- Gmail
- POP3 Yahoo
- Corporate E-Mail to Microsoft Exchange Server (No, it wasn't the Exchange Admin sending a kill package, I'm the Exchange Admin)
- Angry Birds
- Robodefense
- Facebook
- Beautiful Widgets
- Cal Widget
- Google Maps
- Pandora

I have all of those apps and more on my Motorola Droid (also connected to the same Exchange Server) and my device is behaving just fine.

I'm trying to think of reasons this might happen and I'm drawing a complete blank. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Best regards,
Brad
 
Upon further investigation, I found this thread ... http://androidforums.com/fascinate-support-troubleshooting/178032-accidental-factory-reset.html

Does anyone else use a Fascinate connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server? I'm beginning to wonder if there is a connection to Fascinate spontenously hard resetting itself and Exchange Active Sync.

Please let me know if you are a Fascinate owner connected to an Exchange Server with or without similar problems.

Thanks!!
Brad
 
As you noted the common link does seem to be certain Exchange Servers, while not a universal and overarching problem it is definitely one worth noting. Myself, no I have not personally encountered this issue, but without question you are not alone and there are threads on the subject.
 
Yes, it is a problem with being connected with exchange. When i don't have an exchange account setup, it never happens. As soon as i setup an exchange account, it happens - almost daily. This is a serious bug!
 
Ah ... Guess I should have updated my progress with this. The problem is actually with the Samsung Fascinate (actually the Entire Galaxy S line). The mail reader does not understand how to properly interpret the need for device level security, so even though it makes you turn on a password it's not really done correctly.

To fix this you can do one of three things ...
1. Go find the stock Android Email app and load your Exchange account through that. Throw away the crappy Samsung email reader, you're better off.

2. Use Touchdown. Excellent App, Excellent Security, Excellent Features ... I can't say enough good things about this app.

3. This is last on the list for a reason … the likelihood that your Exchange Admin will even entertain this idea is extremely unlikely. BUT … Ask your Microsoft Exchange Server Administrator to create an exception for you to the security rules. Once they've added the exception, wait about 1 hour, and then add your Exchange Account to your phone. This time, you won't be asked to create a password to control your device and therefore won't run into the Galaxy S spontaneous hard reset problem outlined in this thread.

Happy Droiding!
Brad

P.S. -- The plague is currently used by more than 2/3 of the worlds email system. Just FYI.

 
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