Home icons disappear after unmounting SD card or connecting to PC

[kevinkar]

I know several people have had icons disappear from their home screens from time to time and some replies I consider to be "snake oil" talk about conflicting apps, memory hogs, apps that are too big, or wallpaper sizes etc. None of those make sense to me as they should not cause icons to disappear. They should just be a set of shortcuts in a folder that show up on the screen, end of story. Of course this is a Linux based OS so who knows.

Anyway, I wanted to back up some data to my PC last night and, when I connected the X and finished the transfer, I disconnected the phone and saw that several game icons on the far right screen were missing. I put them back and thought "Hmmm, I just unmounted and remounted the SD card. I wonder..." I then simply unmounted the SD card on the phone and the icons disappeared again. Tried it again by connecting to the PC and they disappeared. So every time the SD card is unmounted, those specific icons disappear.

I have not specifically installed or moved any apps to the SD card since the phone memory still has several GB of space. No need to make room. However, using the X's Application Manger, I see these games have installed at least a portion of themselves onto the SD card. Interestingly, those are the app icons that disappear. So the question is not necessarily why this happens (if you unmount the SD card, I can see the OS losing track of the icon and it disappears) but why they fail to show up again when you remount the SD card or reboot the phone. They are gone for good until I place them back.

This seems to be a Gingerbread issue as I never had this problem under Froyo or before. I guess my current test will be to completely move them to the phone and see if it still fails in this manner. I doubt it will. Just another Gingerbread annoyance.

Any thoughts or solutions?

Kevin

[nubcat01]

Hey Kevin, I'm having the same issue with my phone ever since I updated it to Gingerbread. I noticed that apps would disappear randomly without even bothering the the memory card. But just a few minutes ago, I connected my droid 2 to my pc and when I disconnected it, all the apps and games that I had moved to my SD card were gone. It's just a little annoying to have to pull those apps and games back to the home screens. I just moved from a blackberry (of 5 years) to a droid 2 and this was the first snag I've ran into in the 2-3 weeks that I've had the phone.

[Droid Firefighter]

When you unmount the SD card you can compare it to uninstalling the app from your phone. When you uninstall the app the icon will disappear from whatever screen it is on. Totally normal and expected right? When the phone detects the app info is gone (uninstalled or SD unmounted) it removes the icon. Wouldn't you get angry if you uninstalled an app and the icon remained until you physically removed it from the screen?

This post is Incredible 2

[nubcat01]

I completely understand the sd card thing. But how do the apps disappear when you don't even do anything with a sd card at all? That is what I am questioning. There are times when apps would disappear randomly. For example, I would be at work and not touch my phone for hours but when I wake my phone apps are missing.


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[Droid Firefighter]

That I cannot answer. Sorry :-)

This post is Incredible 2

[kevinkar]

While Firefighter's explanation holds water, it's a bit silly to expect the phone to "assume" the apps are removed when the SD card is unmounted or connected to the PC in mass storage mode. The app icons on the home screens are simply shortcuts that shouldn't disappear unless the user specifically uninstalls the app and should be "reconnected" once the SD card is re-mounted or the phone is disconnected from the PC.

Unmounting a directory in Linux or Unix does not do this and, if it did, we'd have a lot of disgruntled computer users at work! In fact, we have a lot of applications served from a common share that's mounted to all our workstations and, if the network has a hiccup or the share is taken off line, the app icons on the user's home screens do not simply disappear. Sure, while the network share is down the app can't start but, once it's restored, the startup icons all work fine.

That's what should happen. I think someone in Android Land has done some incorrect programming on these phones.

[leftspin]

While Firefighter's explanation holds water, it's a bit silly to expect the phone to "assume" the apps are removed when the SD card is unmounted or connected to the PC in mass storage mode. The app icons on the home screens are simply shortcuts that shouldn't disappear unless the user specifically uninstalls the app and should be "reconnected" once the SD card is re-mounted or the phone is disconnected from the PC.

Unmounting a directory in Linux or Unix does not do this and, if it did, we'd have a lot of disgruntled computer users at work! In fact, we have a lot of applications served from a common share that's mounted to all our workstations and, if the network has a hiccup or the share is taken off line, the app icons on the user's home screens do not simply disappear. Sure, while the network share is down the app can't start but, once it's restored, the startup icons all work fine.

That's what should happen. I think someone in Android Land has done some incorrect programming on these phones.

I agree with this, when I have an app on the SD card and it is unmounted it just says "could not launch the requested activity"

[rherron]

Having the same issue. Also seen them disappear when changing profiles. Stated when I got gingerbread.

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