• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Suddenly nothing's responding

A

Ambee47

Newbie
What to do now that all of a sudden even major Android core components are not responding?

Even fundamental things like Google.com and "Process System" are reporting "Not Responding" error messages. This started out of the blue. The last change I made was to de-root the phone about 6 weeks ago.

My Samsung Galaxy Light is running Android 4.4.2. My carrier is Metro PCS. I've tried removing the battery overnight, but that made no difference.

What should I do? A detailed list of steps would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
I don't actually recognise the "fundamental things" you name (Google.com is a website, and "process system" doesn't mean anything to me, while "system process" could cover many things). But have you tried booting into recovery and clearing the cache partition? It's harmless and might make a difference.

Otherwise, without knowing why it's doing this it's hard to suggest a fix. Are you aware of anything changing before it started? If the phone wasn't completely returned to stock (i.e. flashing a full set of stock firmware) an update could have unpredictable results, but it seems unlikely that a phone that old would have received an update.

Worst comes to the worst there are always the options of doing a factory reset or, if that doesn't work, completely reflashing the firmware, but something that didn't involve possible data loss and a lot of setting up afterwards would be preferable. That's why I suggest trying a cache wipe as a first attempt.
 
It might help if you provide more details on how you originally rooted your Galaxy Light and how you un-rooted it. (Presuming you used the 'Full unroot' option in SuperSU's Settings menu???)

You should try wiping the system cache partition any time some change is done on the base operating system. Boot up into your Recovery Mode and select the 'wipe cache partition' option.
http://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-t399-galaxy-light/recovery-mode/

If that doesn't make any improvement, you could try booting up into Safe Mode. While running in Safe Mode your Galaxy Light is just running a clean Android OS without any third-party apps/services getting autoloaded into the background. It your phone is working correctly in Safe Mode that's an indicator some app you've installed is the problem so then it becomes a matter where you need to determine just which one.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-32681
But this is more of a long shot, your problem doesn't sound relative to this, but it's worth trying.

A final suggestion is to just restore Android on your phone. You can try using Samsung's Smart Switch application. You need to install it on a computer, connect your phone, and run it.
https://www.samsung.com/us/smart-switch/
I'm a little doubtful in this particular situation it will fix your problem but at the very least it will install the necessary Samsung driver onto your computer.
If Smart Switch doesn't fix your problem, you might want to just manually flash a stock ROM,. You can safely download a stock ROM from here:
https://updato.com/firmware-archive-select-model?q=GALAXY+Light&rpp=15&order=date&dir=desc&exact=1
Be sure to pick the appropriate ROM that exactly matches your phone model -- do you have a SGH-T399 or a SGH-T399N? Anyway, on the actual download page there are instructions on what to do to flash the ROM. You'll need to use the Odin utility too. Follow those directions carefully but one item I'll disagree with is the version of Odin that's listed. Try using an older version, ver. 3.09 instead. Odin is not very backwards compatible and you're working with dated hardware and a dated ROM. Download from here:
http://www.droidviews.com/download-odin-tool-for-samsung-galaxy-devices-all-versions/
Also, go into your Windows Task Manager and be sure the Smart Switch utility isn't running in the background. If it is, just kill it so there isn't any conflict with running Odin.
Oh, and if you don't have access to a Windows PC there's also a similar utility, Heimdall, that's available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. You do need to make allowances to those same instructions accordingly but Heimdall is functionally doing the same functionality as Odin.
https://glassechidna.com.au/heimdall/
 
svim said:
It might help if you provide more details on how you originally rooted your Galaxy Light and how you un-rooted it. (Presuming you used the 'Full unroot' option in SuperSU's Settings menu???)

You should try wiping the system cache partition any time some change is done on the base operating system. Boot up into your Recovery Mode and select the 'wipe cache partition' option.
http://www.hardreset.info/devices/samsung/samsung-t399-galaxy-light/recovery-mode/

If that doesn't make any improvement, you could try booting up into Safe Mode. While running in Safe Mode your Galaxy Light is just running a clean Android OS without any third-party apps/services getting autoloaded into the background. It your phone is working correctly in Safe Mode that's an indicator some app you've installed is the problem so then it becomes a matter where you need to determine just which one.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-32681
But this is more of a long shot, your problem doesn't sound relative to this, but it's worth trying.

A final suggestion is to just restore Android on your phone. You can try using Samsung's Smart Switch application. You need to install it on a computer, connect your phone, and run it.
https://www.samsung.com/us/smart-switch/
I'm a little doubtful in this particular situation it will fix your problem but at the very least it will install the necessary Samsung driver onto your computer.
If Smart Switch doesn't fix your problem, you might want to just manually flash a stock ROM,. You can safely download a stock ROM from here:
https://updato.com/firmware-archive-select-model?q=GALAXY+Light&rpp=15&order=date&dir=desc&exact=1
Be sure to pick the appropriate ROM that exactly matches your phone model -- do you have a SGH-T399 or a SGH-T399N? Anyway, on the actual download page there are instructions on what to do to flash the ROM. You'll need to use the Odin utility too. Follow those directions carefully but one item I'll disagree with is the version of Odin that's listed. Try using an older version, ver. 3.09 instead. Odin is not very backwards compatible and you're working with dated hardware and a dated ROM. Download from here:
http://www.droidviews.com/download-odin-tool-for-samsung-galaxy-devices-all-versions/
Also, go into your Windows Task Manager and be sure the Smart Switch utility isn't running in the background. If it is, just kill it so there isn't any conflict with running Odin.
Oh, and if you don't have access to a Windows PC there's also a similar utility, Heimdall, that's available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. You do need to make allowances to those same instructions accordingly but Heimdall is functionally doing the same functionality as Odin.
https://glassechidna.com.au/heimdall/
Click to expand...


Wow, what a GREAT and thorough reply! I'm going to follow your procedure and report back. Thanks enormously!!
 
Wow, what I GREAT and thorough reply!! :)

I'll follow your procedure in order. To answer your question about rootinn, I rooted with Kingo Root about a year ago in hopes of updating my ROM to a later version of Android (even v5 would be better), but I was too stupid, I guess, to get that OS upgrade to work. About 6 weeks ago, I saw a message saying that there was an OS update available but it couldn't be installed because I'd messed up my system, which I thought meant the rooting. That's why I de-rooted, also with Kingo. But then there was no OS update afterall.

Anyway, I'll now get to work on your procedure. GREAT reply!!
 
Ambee47 said:
Wow, what I GREAT and thorough reply!! :)

I'll follow your procedure in order. To answer your question about rootinn, I rooted with Kingo Root about a year ago in hopes of updating my ROM to a later version of Android (even v5 would be better), but I was too stupid, I guess, to get that OS upgrade to work. About 6 weeks ago, I saw a message saying that there was an OS update available but it couldn't be installed because I'd messed up my system, which I thought meant the rooting. That's why I de-rooted, also with Kingo. But then there was no OS update afterall.

Anyway, I'll now get to work on your procedure. GREAT reply!!
Click to expand...
 
My first problem is that I can't get the phone to turn off. I press and hold the power button, the screen goes blank, then it boots right up again!
 
Skipped safe mode because I'd have to uninstall fundamental things that probably wouldn't uninstall anyway. Moving to your step 3.
 
Can't use Switch or otherwise backup onboard data because my computers cannot mount the phone over USB. I'll have to do a factory reset.
 
With older Samsung devices, you're much better off using Odin, installing a custom Recovery, and proceeding onward from that point. Kingo is certainly an option for when there aren't better, more viable alternatives but otherwise should be avoided.

But getting back to your original query, with the revelation of Kingo being involved, I'd skip everything I wrote and just opt to manually flash a stock ROM. This should restore your Light to its original, un-rooted state. If you wish to root your phone again, try this method instead:
https://theunlockr.com/2014/08/17/how-to-root-the-samsung-galaxy-light-t-mobile/
Basically, you do need to remove any remnants of Kingo, get your phone working properly again, and then move on from there.
 
Whew! Finally got it factory reset, then restored whatever I could between my Google and Samsung accounts. But the second most important data doesn't seem to have been backed up by Google OR Samsung: My Auto-Reject phone number List! This is priceless info that took years to generate!

I don't suppose you or someone else knows how I might be able to recover that list?

Anyway, you've been a GREAT help. Thanks bunches!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom