Not recognizing anything on internal USB storage

[Readervictoria]

First of all, I do not permit automatic updates so that's out of the way. Last night, I was reading a book app on my phone. This app (as all when possible) is on my phone's internal USB/SD storage. (Not sure of the correct lingo here.) When I woke up 5 hours later, I could no longer access any of the apps stored there. The message I get is "App not installed." The strange thing is that when I look in Settings under Storage, it shows that storage area with the apps and all on it. Yet when I open the app drawer, only some of the apps stored there are missing. it's the inconsistency that stumps me.

I don't know exactly what information is needed to help me figure this out but I'll do the best I can.

Thank you!

Phone: Samsung Galaxy S2 (T-Mobile T989)
Android vers.: 4.0.3
Baseband vers.: T989UVLE1
Build vers.: IML74K.UVLE1

 

[Rukbat]

Reinstall the missing apps. If an app isn't showing in the app drawer it's not installed. It may be sitting in storage, but the operating system isn't aware that it's installed. Its icon may show on the homepage, but tht's just an icon on the homepage, a "shortcut" to the app, it's not the app itself.

How that could have happened is a mystery unless we know what you've been doing with the phone (or it could just be your storage going bad - like a hard drive starting to fail).

BTW, "internal SD card" is like "dry water" - it's a meaningless phrase. But since some apps rely on "sdcard" or some equivalent for data storage, and since Google seems to be intent on eliminating external storage capability in Android, they came up with the nonsense to allow apps to think they're storing data to "the SD card" when they're really storing it in internal storage. I just hope that before the last Android phone with external storage comes out, there are Linux phones that retain the ability to use a card.

 

[Readervictoria]

Thank you. I'll give that a try.