Develop Bugs

[Q] Cyanogen Mod 7 wont keep apps

Okay i have cyanogen mod 7 on my phone with a backup of my phone. i rooted with unrevoked, i have installed TB and i backed up all apps and data, i also have busy box. I moved TB to my sd card. and that is all i have moved over to the sd card.
I changed over to cyanogen mod 7 and it saves nothing, no contacts, no apps, when i install TB it always force closes before even starting. I get upset because i cannot use any of hte apps i have, and i cannot find the market on it to download it.
i tried to move busy box over to my sd card and cannot.. any help is great help! thanks!

Did you wipe data and cache when you flashed? It is normal that your phone will reset like this. Use Tom manager and run the fix permissions script then reboot to recovery ans wipe the dalvik cache and reboot from recovery. It will take a while to boot this time but once up again most fc. Issues should be resolved. I suggest you also make sure you downloaded CM's google apps and choose what google applications you want if you haven't done so. Once you setup your google account any apps purchased from market should install. Then anything that didn't restore use TB and install any other apps. I suggest only installing the apps and not the data since you transfered from a sense rom to cm. It could cause more fc.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

When I do Rom Manager i click "Install Rom from SD Card" and then go to the rom download of CM7 and install it.. i checked both Backup Existing ROM and WIpe Data and Cache. The first time i did this i also downloaded google apps. which until you said that, i totally forgot i had done that (my bad).
How do i install google apps after I update to cm7? do i have to go into file explorer?
(sorry for the weird questions i have searched forever and cant find anything, but i probably missed this)
thank you for the super quick reply

Its a one time thing that starts after you set up your google account. It asks what apps to install like voice maps earth etc. To reinstall g apps you can use rom manager and choose install from SD choose the clockworkmod folder then download then goo-inside.me you should have the google apps zip there.
Upon reboot you should be prompted for what apps you want.
If you still have issues I suggesst you use rom manager and choose download rom then cm thencm7 rc2 make sure to do g apps and then just do the delete data and cache just remember choosing that wipes everything but to me it sounds like nothing is reinstalled so its not really an issue right now.
Good luck I'm out for the rest of the night. Hopefully you wont have anymore issues but otherwise I'm sure someone else will help you out.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

Okay, i am able to boot into cm7 RC 1 which i have downloaded.. should i downlaod rc2?
After that I go to ROM manager and i do the fix, then install google apps. i have done with both none checked and the data and wipe checked.
without it went into a bootload, and would pop up a green android guy and it says click the android guy, i go to click it and it bootloads again.
with it, i actually got it to start up, when i went to unlock it, it went into the bootload again, and the green android guy comes up and says click, when i try, it bootloads again.
What am i doing wrong?

I attempted to install RC2, it sat at the loading screen for minutes with nothing happening.
So i went back to RC1, got it to install, fixed permissions, installed gapps, this gave me the market app, and a few others (no gmail) but when i started it up, the google apps never actaully ran, and none of those apps work. Also, i cannot get things like handcent or most of my other apps to work, but some apps do work.
I am pretty puzzled.
thanks!

Okay, so have you went to settings>accounts>add>google? And logged in with your GMail yet? If so you can goto market and search for Gmail and it should download. The "Google apps" did run if you got the Green Android Guy. All it is a script to kick off the download from the Market, so they won't install till you get your Google Account logged in.

Im sorry if i was unclear,
Yes, at one time when i would install gapps the green guy would pop up, but would restart every 2-3 seconds. I saw a post from a guy who had this happen, and he said to update to the newest gapps. So i upgraded to rc2, and i could not even get rc2 to boot, i waited well over 20 minutes on the boot screen, and it never once actaully went into a bootload where it kept restarting.
After that i went back to RC1, and installed the newest gapps. the problem that persisted was that after i installed gapps, the green guy never came up, but i noticed a few things were installed like market.
I tried to load market and it would not work (even after permissions fix) but i got TB running and added apps on there to see if they would work. I could not get apps such as Handcent or most other apps would not work, and i could never actually log into gmail even though i had tried.

butler_007 said:
Okay i have cyanogen mod 7 on my phone with a backup of my phone. i rooted with unrevoked, i have installed TB and i backed up all apps and data, i also have busy box. I moved TB to my sd card. and that is all i have moved over to the sd card.
I changed over to cyanogen mod 7 and it saves nothing, no contacts, no apps, when i install TB it always force closes before even starting. I get upset because i cannot use any of hte apps i have, and i cannot find the market on it to download it.
i tried to move busy box over to my sd card and cannot.. any help is great help! thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
a couple issues need to be addressed here. One you can't use HTC (Sense) apps with Cynaogen. In most instances Cyanogen has replaced them with an app that is similar and works for CM7. Otherwise you have to find something in the Market that you like to replace it.
The second issue is when you do a full wipe of the phone such as is required when installing CM7 all user data and apps are lost. What you end up with is basically a new phone as if it came out of the box for the first time. In most instances you will need to activate it and then put in your google account information. If you had google backup your apps they will download automatically once the phone is setup, which can be a pain and takes forever.
Also I personally don't use ROM Manager to install my ROMs, I do it through the recovery console. I do download the ROM (and gapps) with ROM Manager but cancel the install once its downloaded. I then move the ROM and gapps files from the clockwork folder on the sdcard out into the parent directory of the sdcard and install them from there.

I know i cant use the htc stuff, and i have figured out the contacts problems.
What i cannot get is first google apps to work, such as when i start up it either bootloads or the one time i did it and it just automatically added market and stuff.
I have never had to call vzw and redo anything.. so idk if i am just doing it wrong or what.

okay, in order to do this correctly, in the recovery mode do i do the wipe/factory restore to it to make it work correctly?

anyone? sorry i must be alot worse at this than i thought i was going to be.

Lol, we all have been noobs before, so don't worry too much if your still having trouble. So what are we trying to accomplish now? Factory reset with cm7 rc1 installed so you can start over?
It seems to me that you've been successful in getting cm7 installed just not up and running the way you want it. That and the fact that you lost all apps in the process right?
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

Some people have reported problems with ROM Manager not wiping the phone properly and thus not getting CM7 to run properly. I had this problem too. So I just installed it through recovery. Select the option "wipe data/factory reset" and that will wipe all the folders on your phone that need to be wiped. Then select "install zip from sdcard" and the option to "choose zip from sdcard" which will allow you to scroll down to the CM7 zip file stored on the sdcard (must be in root directory not clockwork folder). After flashing the ROM before rebooting also flash gapps doing the same install zip method then reboot. If this doesn't work something else is wrong.
Once you have a working copy of CM7 installed you don't need to wipe the phone to install newer versions of CM7. You can install right over the old one this way you lose no data. Some people recommend doing a dalvik cache wipe before updating but I don't and haven't had any problems.

cannot restore backup with twrp2.2, touch screen not recognizing swipe

Hello,
I'm having a problem where my touch screen is no longer recognizing where I touch. I have been in the process in rooting my kindle, flashing the CM10 jelly bean ROM with SGT7 enhancements, and trying to install access to the Google Play. I did a backup before I rooted the kindle, but I haven't done any additional backups along the way.
Everything seemed to be fine until I started trying to install access to Google Play. I did not have it by default with the ROM so I went looking for it. I read the forums and tried a few things that other people had done but had no success (the google framework would not install) until I tried a procedure I found on youtube that someone else had had success with. After I installed it, I had two new icons "Market" and "Market Opener". When I selected either one of them, I was prompted to create an goodle account for my device, but the request always returned with an error saying the connection could not access the google server. So, I began looking around in all my settings to see if I could find a setting that might affect the success for failure of trying to do this, and I started having a lot of trouble with the touchpad responsiveness as I tried to navigate around the menus. It was very frustrating. So, since I had not done a back up before installing the market apps, I tried to uninstall it. But, the touch screen was just not cooperating. So, I went a step further and rebooted to recovery to see if I could uninstall the apps from there. But again, the touchpad was still not cooperating. It was very inconsistent and would respond to very few touches. So finally, I decided the heck with it and want to restore my backup to the stock kindle and start all over again. However, the touch screen won't recognize the swipe to confirm restoring the backup. So now I am hosed and I don't know what to do.
Is there any way to restore a backup through my PC using adb?
Here's what I think I have installed:
fff-u-boot_v1.4a.zip
KFU v0.9.6
openrecovery-twrp-2.2.0-blaze.img
cm-10-20120817-2143-SNAPSHOT-otter-sgt7-linaro.zip
ROOTexplorer.apk
GoogleServicesFramework.apk
KindleFireAndroidMarket.zip
MarketOpener.apk
I'm pretty new at this, so any hand-holding you can offer would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Valerie
P.S. It's also very puzzling to me why it seems to hard to find the right stuff to install in order to get access to Google Play. Any idea why it is so hard? I'd just like to understand. Thanks.

No replies
Wow, no one has responded to my post. This must be a problem no one has seen before. Leave it to me to find new ways to screw up!
Well, I've made a little progress getting my system back to a usable state. I was able to set the system back to factory defaults. Of course I lost all of my customized settings, but at this I don't really care. The touch screen works much better now. If I had to guess (but I could be wrong) I would say that my touch screen troubles were due to having played with the wallpaper settings (and maybe combined with placing widgets on the home screen). There might be something screwy going on there, but I don't know for sure, and I don't want to go back and attempt to recreate the problem right now.
Now, I still have the problem of not being able to connect to the market. I also have read other people's posts where they refer to the "google play" app. I have not seen a google play app. All I have is a "market" app. Where do I get the google play app?

vmallder said:
Wow, no one has responded to my post. This must be a problem no one has seen before. Leave it to me to find new ways to screw up!
Well, I've made a little progress getting my system back to a usable state. I was able to set the system back to factory defaults. Of course I lost all of my customized settings, but at this I don't really care. The touch screen works much better now. If I had to guess (but I could be wrong) I would say that my touch screen troubles were due to having played with the wallpaper settings (and maybe combined with placing widgets on the home screen). There might be something screwy going on there, but I don't know for sure, and I don't want to go back and attempt to recreate the problem right now.
Now, I still have the problem of not being able to connect to the market. I also have read other people's posts where they refer to the "google play" app. I have not seen a google play app. All I have is a "market" app. Where do I get the google play app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to flash a gapps archive appropriate for the ROM you have flashed on your system. Those other packages you have installed are for getting google play to work on the stock system. For a custom ROM, you just need to install gapps.
http://goo.im/gapps
Again, make sure you match the right gapps package for the system you are running. CM10 is JB, CM9 is ICS, etc. I'm not sure how the play/market packages you've already installed would affect the ROM. Just to be safe, I would just go back to TWRP, use factory reset to get back to a clean slate, reflash the ROM and then the gapps package. Then a reboot will take you straight into google's configuration wizard. Register your google account and you'll find google play ready for use among the installed applications.

Thank you!
kinfauns said:
You need to flash a gapps archive appropriate for the ROM you have flashed on your system. Those other packages you have installed are for getting google play to work on the stock system. For a custom ROM, you just need to install gapps.
http://goo.im/gapps
Again, make sure you match the right gapps package for the system you are running. CM10 is JB, CM9 is ICS, etc. I'm not sure how the play/market packages you've already installed would affect the ROM. Just to be safe, I would just go back to TWRP, use factory reset to get back to a clean slate, reflash the ROM and then the gapps package. Then a reboot will take you straight into google's configuration wizard. Register your google account and you'll find google play ready for use among the installed applications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much kinfauns, I am now up and running. Your help is very much appreciated!

Having some bazaar issues

I'll cut to the chase with my issues and explain where I am now. Then I'll go through some if the previous issues leading up to this...
I got tired of the problems and flashed back to stock FC09 with Odin.
Booted up and made sure it worked...
Flashed CWM 5.0.2.7 with Odin.
Rebooted
Flashed CWM 6.0.2.8 with CWM...
Booted up to make sure nothing broke.
Data, dalvik, and cache wipe
Flashed a CM 10.1 nightly from a couple weeks ago.
Flashed goo.im's latest jelly bean pack (2013-03-01 iirc)
Booted up and went through the normal setup.
Only google apps that showed up are search, play, talk, and voice search. No Gmail or Maps or others. Gallery I'd there but force closes right away. So it and the camera do not work.
I haven't tried recreating the rest of the problems yet since I ran into a problem there.
The rest of the problem started after finally deciding to try the nexus radio hack. I got it working then had a hell of a time getting it working again after flashing a newer nightly. What should have worked didn't. Got it working then decided to revert back to the factory modem and CM 10.1 kernel. Wasn't worth the hastle for me.
After all that I got it working again. Then after the next nightly I lost all my apps, Google apps, and contacts.
Since then I was able to manually flash the Google apps and get it working but even then, it would not sync automatically though I set it to do so. It would forget my contacts and would not sync with gmail unless I did so manually.

Looked at to goo.im zip... realized gmail and maps were not in there.
While I was confused... that does not change the fact the phone seems broken in bazaar ways.
Losing my contacts randomly, refusing to automatically sync to Google, losing my apps after flashing an updated rom (also changes my background to an old one) and other weirdness.
Restored my latest nandroid backup after realizing the camera was broken last night. Everything worked perfect before making that backup. Now the camera and gallery force close...

thedumbass said:
Looked at to goo.im zip... realized gmail and maps were not in there.
While I was confused... that does not change the fact the phone seems broken in bazaar ways.
Losing my contacts randomly, refusing to automatically sync to Google, losing my apps after flashing an updated rom (also changes my background to an old one) and other weirdness.
Restored my latest nandroid backup after realizing the camera was broken last night. Everything worked perfect before making that backup. Now the camera and gallery force close...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go to Settings->Apps->All : Find and click on Gallery then hit the button that says "Clear Data". That should fix the force close problem.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2

jeffreyjicha said:
Go to Settings->Apps->All : Find and click on Gallery then hit the button that says "Clear Data". That should fix the force close problem.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope...
Tried that and also cleared the cache and dalvik in CWM.
Neither helped.
Thank you though...

Well, if anyone else runs into similar and finds this via a search here is where I ended up...
I re flashed to stock again with Odin. Only I set it to re partition this time. Then flashed can via Odin.
Finally, I flashed CM 10.1 and gapps.
Everything worked...
Restored the data out of my latest nandroid backup.
Everything was good.
Ran cyandelta to update to the latest nightly and all hell broke loose again.
Think it is because we are butting so close against a full system partition. I had less than 100k free.
I ran my "remove useless junk" script via a CWM flash. I now have almost 100mb free and everything is working as it should. I'm betting I won't have any more issues if I set cyandelta to flash it after updating from now on.
The flash removes a bunch of stuff from CM that I don't need and/or never use like wallpapers, sound files, videos, a few apps and other random things. Need to update it for 10.1 since I made it for 10.0 though...

And today it forgot my Google account...
Noticed my contacts were missing and then saw gmail wouldn't open.
Settings> accounts did not have Google listed.
+ Add account did not have Google listed to add it back.
Had to flash gapps again and set my account back up...
This is one of the original problems...

[Q] Need advice for flashing GApps onto stock Desire 816t

I got the phone as a gift from my uncle in China, it's working fine except I need google apps. From what I've read here and elsewhere I can download the correct version of GApps for my version of android and simply flash it by saving it going into the SD card and entering recovery mode.
I have some questions:
Is there a specific GApps file for the Desire 816 or can I just use any one such as from team android for 4.4 KitKat?
Will this procedure void warranty and how risky is it?
Should I do a back up of the stock OS? Nandroid requires root access and I don't want to root the phone unnecessarily. Also the methods for system back up without root such as holo backup seem unreliable for some devices. Has anyone done a back up for the Desire 816 with holo/Ultimate Backup Tool?
Device Specifications
Android Version: 4.4.2
HTC Sense 5.5
ROM 1.31.1403.1
Kernel Version: 3.4.0-g77ac3fc
[email protected] # 1
SMP PREEMPT

Chiarro said:
I got the phone as a gift from my uncle in China, it's working fine except I need google apps. From what I've read here and elsewhere I can download the correct version of GApps for my version of android and simply flash it by saving it going into the SD card and entering recovery mode.
I have some questions:
Is there a specific GApps file for the Desire 816 or can I just use any one such as from team android for 4.4 KitKat?
Will this procedure void warranty and how risky is it?
Should I do a back up of the stock OS? Nandroid requires root access and I don't want to root the phone unnecessarily. Also the methods for system back up without root such as holo backup seem unreliable for some devices. Has anyone done a back up for the Desire 816 with holo/Ultimate Backup Tool?
Device Specifications
Android Version: 4.4.2
HTC Sense 5.5
ROM 1.31.1403.1
Kernel Version: 3.4.0-g77ac3fc
[email protected] # 1
SMP PREEMPT
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want to install the Gaaps, you should have clockworkmod recovery for sure, which requires unlocking your bootloader and rooting. Once you do that you will loose warranty. But do you really think that you ever claim for warranty ? I have used 11 smart phones so far and never went back to the vendor for any issues. I completely relied on XDA forum and never got disheartened. Anyways, thats your choice, whether to live without google apps in your smartphone until your warranty period expires and live like a king by rooting and installing the gapps? If you choose the later option, then start with unlocking the bootloader, followed by rooting, followed by custom recovery installation and then gaaps zip installation.
Btw, use the gapps from the following link http://www.androidfilehost.com/?w=files&flid=10238 rather than the one you found that are for cyanogenmod roms.

vbrsekhar said:
If you want to install the Gaaps, you should have clockworkmod recovery for sure, which requires unlocking your bootloader and rooting. Once you do that you will loose warranty. But do you really think that you ever claim for warranty ? I have used 11 smart phones so far and never went back to the vendor for any issues. I completely relied on XDA forum and never got disheartened. Anyways, thats your choice, whether to live without google apps in your smartphone until your warranty period expires and live like a king by rooting and installing the gapps? If you choose the later option, then start with unlocking the bootloader, followed by rooting, followed by custom recovery installation and then gaaps zip installation.
Btw, use the gapps from the following link http://www.androidfilehost.com/?w=files&flid=10238 rather than the one you found that are for cyanogenmod roms.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the advice. I wound up rooting the phone with Clockwork Recovery Mod. I've tried flashing the gapps-kk-20140606-signed.zip file that you linked, the flashing completes successfully and the phone boots. However as soon as I try to go past the lock screen the error message "Setup wizard has stopped working" is repeated on loop. I did a system restore, tried a package from here to the same effect. I saw a post where someone had a similar issue and did something along the lines of wiping user data and dalvik however for the life of me I can't find it again.
EDIT******
Nevermind, I did a full system restore, wiped Dalvik, Cache, User Data then flashed the modular gapps package I got from the second link I mentioned. I then wiped everything again and started the phone. Went through initial set up and now everything seems fine. Will update if google apps starts playing up.
EDIT # 2
Play store doesn't work properly Will try again in the morning using the package you suggested.

Chiarro said:
Thanks for the advice. I wound up rooting the phone with Clockwork Recovery Mod. I've tried flashing the gapps-kk-20140606-signed.zip file that you linked, the flashing completes successfully and the phone boots. However as soon as I try to go past the lock screen the error message "Setup wizard has stopped working" is repeated on loop. I did a system restore, tried a package from here to the same effect. I saw a post where someone had a similar issue and did something along the lines of wiping user data and dalvik however for the life of me I can't find it again.
EDIT******
Nevermind, I did a full system restore, wiped Dalvik, Cache, User Data then flashed the modular gapps package I got from the second link I mentioned. I then wiped everything again and started the phone. Went through initial set up and now everything seems fine. Will update if google apps starts playing up.
EDIT # 2
Play store doesn't work properly Will try again in the morning using the package you suggested.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry to note the hiccups you are facing dude. I should have told you about setupwizard thingy, which I learnt about it ages ago. My sincere apologies. Flashing gapps on chinese roms will corrupt the existing setup wizard. So the work around for this is to, backup that system apk, using titanium backup or any other popular ones and then reinstall it once the gapps are installed. But now that you confirmed it working, I am now bit relaxed. But yeah so sorry for that.
Re your play store apk, Google has updated his play store apk recently. Try the new version apk from http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/0...issions-bigger-buttons-and-more-apk-download/ and then go to Apps, playstore and delete data and cache. Wipe dalvik cache (optional) from the recovery and then try if it works. I am sure it should work without having to delete all this caches and data, but yours being chinese version mobile and had troubles before with it, try those tricks.
All the best.

vbrsekhar said:
Sorry to note the hiccups you are facing dude. I should have told you about setupwizard thingy, which I learnt about it ages ago. My sincere apologies. Flashing gapps on chinese roms will corrupt the existing setup wizard. So the work around for this is to, backup that system apk, using titanium backup or any other popular ones and then reinstall it once the gapps are installed. But now that you confirmed it working, I am now bit relaxed. But yeah so sorry for that.
Re your play store apk, Google has updated his play store apk recently. Try the new version apk from http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/0...issions-bigger-buttons-and-more-apk-download/ and then go to Apps, playstore and delete data and cache. Wipe dalvik cache (optional) from the recovery and then try if it works. I am sure it should work without having to delete all this caches and data, but yours being chinese version mobile and had troubles before with it, try those tricks.
All the best.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks again, I followed your advice and my apps now seem to be working ok. I think play store is a little unstable still, I occasionally get errors attempting to download apps (Error 904 I think) but those go away if I just restart the download. I had Facebook messenger force close once but that was when it was going through its tutorial mode. It's now also working fine.
Unfortunately this process seems to break the FM Radio app which is a minor blow, attempting to back up and restore with Titanium Backup gives the message "App was not installed". Same applies when restoring setup. I'm not sure if having a corrupt set up wizard will create problems for me in the future.
The only thing I can think of which would cause the problems restoring system apps is that I didn't apply the wp_mod.ko which is recommended as part of this root procedure. That's meant to allow me to write to the system. The instructions for doing so weren't particularly clear and everything else seemed to be working at the time so I skipped it (I know, probably not the best idea).
Any advice would be appreciated, however right now I'm pretty happy with the rest of my phone working with google apps! I'm also investigating whether spiritFM will work as an alternative to the stock radio app.

Chiarro said:
Thanks again, I followed your advice and my apps now seem to be working ok. I think play store is a little unstable still, I occasionally get errors attempting to download apps (Error 904 I think) but those go away if I just restart the download. I had Facebook messenger force close once but that was when it was going through its tutorial mode. It's now also working fine.
Unfortunately this process seems to break the FM Radio app which is a minor blow, attempting to back up and restore with Titanium Backup gives the message "App was not installed". Same applies when restoring setup. I'm not sure if having a corrupt set up wizard will create problems for me in the future.
The only thing I can think of which would cause the problems restoring system apps is that I didn't apply the wp_mod.ko which is recommended as part of this root procedure. That's meant to allow me to write to the system. The instructions for doing so weren't particularly clear and everything else seemed to be working at the time so I skipped it (I know, probably not the best idea).
Any advice would be appreciated, however right now I'm pretty happy with the rest of my phone working with google apps! I'm also investigating whether spiritFM will work as an alternative to the stock radio app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for updating us with your issues. I think by your description, i can see that it could be cache's problem. What I usually do is, when you install any rom via backup, I try to do factory reset twice from the systems setting and security. This will eliminate all the cache issues that you are facing with google play and fmradio. If you cannot restore the factory settings for any reason, I would then try going to settings --> Apps --> find google play app - -> delete the data and clear cache. This will make you to re enter your google account again. Hopefully, your google play should work fine. Apply the same trick to your fmradio too and see if it makes any difference ?
Hit thanks if it works, so that others would learn from your experience and know that this trick worked.

vbrsekhar said:
Thanks for updating us with your issues. I think by your description, i can see that it could be cache's problem. What I usually do is, when you install any rom via backup, I try to do factory reset twice from the systems setting and security. This will eliminate all the cache issues that you are facing with google play and fmradio. If you cannot restore the factory settings for any reason, I would then try going to settings --> Apps --> find google play app - -> delete the data and clear cache. This will make you to re enter your google account again. Hopefully, your google play should work fine. Apply the same trick to your fmradio too and see if it makes any difference ?
Hit thanks if it works, so that others would learn from your experience and know that this trick worked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately it didn't fix the radio. Play store was working though.

[Q] Can't get flashed ROMs and restored apps to play nice. What to do?

I posted something similar in the general questions subforum but of course there was no response.
I'm on stock rooted 4.3. If it matters, I ALWAYS get a message about gapps crashing.
Basically, I'm sick of ****Wiz and its continuous bulkiness and slowness. Tried a few ROMs, settled on PacMan. Trouble is there just seems to be NO way to restore my apps.
Titanium is no good because it breaks push notifications for any app that uses them - unacceptable.
The Play Store just refuses to act right. At first it wouldn't restore anything at all, then on one of my million flashes, I started restoring from Titanium one-by-one, then got even MORE frustrated and stopped. Now that list of about six apps is what the Play Store tries to "restore".
I've flashed and Nandroided back so many times because of this. And no matter HOW many times I manually sync, or how long I leave my phone on Wi-Fi to do it itself, when I flash it's those same six apps restoring.
Today I thought to make an update.zip in Titanium before flashing. Flashed the ROM, then Gapps. Tried the update.zip and it wouldn't work. Booted, then tried it. It worked, but didn't "reboot in 5 seconds"... had to battery pull after 10 minutes. Then the apps didn't have data. Titanium restored them and recommended a reboot. When I did that, the menu button no longer worked. At all.
I'm really ****ing sick of this. What am I supposed to do? If I have to stay on TouchWiz I'm getting rid of this phone. It's counterproductive at this point.

Are the custom ROMs based on the stock Samsung kernel? If not, that may be why your apps are crashing after being restored.

audit13 said:
Are the custom ROMs based on the stock Samsung kernel? If not, that may be why your apps are crashing after being restored.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, they're not crashing. When I restore them with Titanium, everything works fine about them except push notifications and that just can't happen.
And the ROM I've chosen for now is PacMan. I don't think it is?