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Ringtones dissappeared

C

CybrGuy

Member
Something very strange is happening with the ringtones on my GS3. The ring tones in my ringtone folder, and therefore in the phones settings dialog itself, have disappeared and have been replaced by two notification sounds. The default ring tones must still be on the phone, however, because one of them that I associated with a caller still plays when I receive a call from that person. So they are still there and are apparently still associated with callers, but I cannot find them in the folders or use them to make a new associations..
I don't know whether it matters but I am using T-Mobile, the phone is rooted, and I am still on android 4.1.2.
Anyone's help with this issue is appreciated.
Thanks in advance..
 
Turn the phone off. Turn the phone on. Ringtones are picked up by media scan, which runs when you turn the phone on (and is supposed to run any time you make a change to media, which it doesn't always. (There are also apps you can install to turn scan off [it takes a few seconds] or force it to scan.)

See if the scan picks up the ringtones. They could be in an mp3 folder, a subfolder of that, a Ringtones folder - and on the phone or on the SD card. Ringtone Maker may also pick up the missing ones. Clicking on the arrows to the right of a ringtone will bring up a menu that has "Music info" on it - part of the info you get is where that ringtone is located in storage.

A few ways to skin that particular cat.
 
No joy. I had tried restarting the phone but tried it again just to be sure. I've looked in nearly all the folders on the phone and can't seem to find them. I have tries both ES file explorer as well as some other tools to look around. The only items in the ringtone folder are 2 sound files from "hangouts".
How do you force the "media scan"? I have looked on the external SD card and they aren't there either, tho I don't know why they would be.

This cat still has all it's fur...
 
i had a similar issue only difference was i lost contacts thankfully had backups but anyways i think its a sd card issue rather than rom/software issue, so id recommend using a freeware program called photorec to possibly restore them, and just thought to that seeing how your rooted you could make a nandroid backup and then install the rom you have and rip the ringtones fromthat to sd then go reinstall your backup and then copy tones over to phone
 
I have backups, nandroid as well as Titanium (tho I have never tried to recover only part) so I should be able to restore them, but I am concerned about what happened and how I can keep it from happening again. This is something of a pain in the butt. I don't know what caused it to begin with.
While I have TB Pro, I have never really used it other than to make a full backup. I guess it is time to learn to use it...
 
idk what happened just know that sd cards and s3 have a love hate relationship, theres been many debates about the cause and fixes for it, your not alone in the problem you have. just be thankful you rooted your phone and can backup anything on your phone
 
would also like to say for future use keep a backup of ringtones on sd so u can copy and paste to correct phone folder using whatever root explorer you use
 
OK, so now it's getting weirder. The ringtones are there in the ringtones folder, but they don't show when I look in it. I went in with Kies and saw them all, then just to be sure, changed my default to one of the invisible ones and IT CHANGED. So, they are there in the folder, just invisible to Android...

My default ringtone is a custom one I made as an MP3 and it resides in the media folder. I have one number with a custom MP3 in the download folder. I wonder if the problem Android is having is a path problem rather than an invisible files problem...
 
dmcjr22 said:
idk what happened just know that sd cards and s3 have a love hate relationship, theres been many debates about the cause and fixes for it, your not alone in the problem you have. just be thankful you rooted your phone and can backup anything on your phone
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have fried one SD card with all of it's data. That is why I make sure I have a copy of the SD card data...
 
If anyone is reading this thread <g> this may be useful to you, but it is bizarre to me. The ringtones are visible and changeable in Kies, but they are invisible in Jelly Bean AND IN ES FILE EXPLORER. Sorry to yell, but this is kinda weird. What makes looking from the computer with ES File explorer different than looking from the computer with Kies?
 
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