Factory Reset Questions

[nooter99]

since my phone has decided to turn itself into a piece of crap since the 2.2 update, I have decided to to the dreaded factory reset, but I have some questions:
1. how do I do it? Is it hard to do?
2. how do I get all my apps back?
3. Is there some way I can document all my apps, free and paid, short of writing them all down on paper?
4. Can I remove SD card before doing reset, in hopes of saving anything thats on there? In other words, can I remove SD card, then do the reset, then re-install card
5. How much time can I expect to spend getting my phone back to the way it was before 2.2 screwed it all up
6. will I lose information such as notes, shopping lists, personal writings etc?

It seems really labor intensive, and i'd have to be really lucky to have my phone back exactly the way it was. Don't really want to do it, but looks like I have no choice after 2.2 screwed it up so bad. P!sses me off!

 

[cupfulloflol]

1. It is very simple to do. Power the phone off. Slide open the keyboard and hold the X key, and power the phone on continuing to hold the X key. Eventually you will see an ! inside a triangle or something along those lines. Press the volume up and camera button at the same time. A menu should pop up one of the options is Factory reset.

2. Your apps should sync with your google login, but some people have trouble with this. I recommend downloading Astro File Manager from the market prior to doing the reset. With it you can make a backup of your apps to your SD card. You can also get SMS backup if you want to backup your SMS messages too. The only thing that will get lost in transit is some of your settings, which without root access not much you can do about that.

3. Answered above kinda, Astro can back them up. There are other ways to just get a list, but I assume Astro will be sufficient enough for what you want. There are a couple apps that make a list of apps installed with market links, so you can post on a forum. But you will have to redownload them using that method, Astro will be quicker since you won't have to redownload. Something like appbrain can do this.

4. You can remove the SD card, but it is unnecessary. The /data and /cache partitions inside the phone are the only things that get touched with a factory reset. The /sdcard won't get touched. I have done 100+ factory resets to my phone over the course of the life of my phones life, and never once removed my sdcard to do so.

5. Astro may take a little time to restore all your apps if you have a lot. I believe you will manually have to click "OK" for each app maybe 3 times to install it, so maybe 5 seconds per app. So probably 5 minutes or so for that part.

Settings, this may take some time depending on how far off you are from stock settings. You will have to sign into your google account, update your wifi settings again, change your ringtones again, wallpaper....nothing too major, but it may take some time to remember everything to change.

Screen layout, if you are using an alternative launcher like ADW or Launcher Pro, you can create backups of your screen layout. This will save you some time. Do this after you restore all apps. Your widgets may not survive the restore, but you can just move the "broken" ones off and reapply them. If you use the stock launcher, you will have to restore each shortcut and widget individually. Depending on how intricate your screen setup, and number of screens this could take a short amount of time.

All in all I would think you could factory reset and be back up and running like normal within 30 minutes or so depending on how familiar you are with your old setup, and the menus (how to change each setting).

6. Maybe on these, this you may need to look at the specific app. Some apps sync with a server, some save to your sdcard, and some may do something on your phone. I really don't use these notes or shopping list type apps. I know the stock calendar syncs with your gmail account, as I use that. If I had to guess, most would save off the phone somehow as space is limited in a lot of phones, but then again they aren't saving large amounts of data most of the time. So...I wouldn't know in that case.

 

[Nblufire12]

Theres a video guide to flash it back to factory defaults. then just wipe your SD card in the settings menu! I have done it 2 times alrdy

 

[nooter99]

Cupfulloflol, thank you very much, excellent description!! I owe you a beer. One quick question, I've been running LP for a couple of months, so I am quite familiar with it, but how do I do the "create backups of screen layouts" you mentioned? Everything else was explained nicely, thanks again!

 

[hookbill]

Before you do a hard factory data reset, why not just do one out of your privacy settings. Settings/privacy/factory data reset. That's all you really need to do.

 

[xliderider]

nooter99, what kind of problems are you having with froyo? My droid was freezing and having totally unresponsive screens, softkeys, and even the power button.

I had all kinds of problems with all flavors of froyo, but not with 2.1 roms. After doing it all, Factory Resets, unrooting and waiting (and waiting) for the official OTA, so I could take my Droid in for an exchange, I decided to see if it was a problem with my memory card.

I swapped in a spare 4gb sd card I had and my Droid ran perfect. I tried deleting off a bunch of stuff off my 16gb original sd card and even did a scan and defrag on the card, but it still caused my Droid to freeze on froyo. Ended up formatting the card and my Droid is running perfect now on every rom I've put on it (3 so far). Battery life on Sapphire 1.0.0 with an ulv kernel is amazingly good, better than anything else I've ever used (running at 800/250mhz).

 

[cupfulloflol]

Cupfulloflol, thank you very much, excellent description!! I owe you a beer. One quick question, I've been running LP for a couple of months, so I am quite familiar with it, but how do I do the "create backups of screen layouts" you mentioned? Everything else was explained nicely, thanks again!

Press the menu button, click preferences. Scroll down to the bottom, and click "Backup homescreens and settings". A little popup comes up explaining that it may not be able to restore widgets, you may have to manually reapply them. Then when you restore the app, do the same thing but there is a "restore backup" option.

Before you do a hard factory data reset, why not just do one out of your privacy settings. Settings/privacy/factory data reset. That's all you really need to do.

haha I completely forgot about it being in there. Yeah that is a much easier way. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I am so used to doing it through recovery I forgot about that option being in the menu.

 

[nooter99]

Thanks guys, I'll give it a try tonight when I get home.
Xliderider, phone has been running like crap since doing 2.2 upgrade (more like downgrade) a couple of days ago, been super laggy in all aspects, overall performance is off by about 50%. Tried reboot, battery pull, clearing caches etc. Nothing helped, so time to do the reset I guess. I'm just annoyed that I have to go through all this because of a so-called "upgrade"!! I'm an old guy with very limited tech knowledge, so what seems like something simple to you fellas usually turns out to be not so simple for me...LOL!! Thanks again everyone, I'll report back in a day or two to let you know how many things I smashed around the house!

 

[nooter99]

OK, did the reset! Was pretty painless, took about 45 minutes to get everthing back to the way it was. Performance is better, but I'm still not convinced it's as good as it was before the 2.2 update. The one thing I still notice is a significant lag redrawing home screen, especially when turning from portrait to landscape, I guess I'll just have to learn to live with it. Thanks again for all the help.