Re-written to be more concise and readable:
Long story short: I installed the program "Permissions Denied" from the market and restricted a few games. When I rebooted something was broken and I can't quite figure out what, but it runs deep through the phone.
The phone isn't bootlooping, but when I starts up it will very often become unresponsive immediately after getting to the lockscreen, my theory is that things are trying to load and crashing in the background. The only fix for this is to wait until it appear to reboot itself; the screen will come back on and show me a quick few cycles of the boot animation, then back to the lockscreen. After this, it asks to re-activate on the network. Whether or not everything works after this point has been highly variable. Currently, my phone is on but has no way of signing into a google account (isn't even an option in the list under settings).
If I try to restore a nandroid, at the very end it spits out "Error while restoring /data!". I've done this with a couple nandroids that I've used fine in the past. Fully wiping from CWM and installing a fresh rom yields similar results.
Basically my thinking at this point is to back up anything I want while I have access to the phone and try to do as full a factory reset as possible. Any ideas? Of note is that I've run the "fix permissions" function both in CWM and ROM Manager, and when I run it in ROM Manager the log shows permissions for a bunch of programs that have been wiped. So I'm guessing that permissions settings persist across wipes, but I don't know what to address that with specifically.
Bump? (rewrote OP to make it less of a train wreck of my late-night detective work)
Edit with maybe-progress: I found and installed an older apk for Permissions Denied and even though this is an older nandroid and everything has been wiped time and again, the permissions for the games I changed are still disabled.
Having trouble getting the program to actually undo anything though, and rebooting the phone is a rather tiresome task with all this going on just to find out nothing changed.
Does anyone know
1)Where permissions live, and if I can reflash whatever that is, as it is clearly corrupt here.
2)Where I can get a copy of the v2.9 apk for this app, as maybe it will be better at restoring what it did than the older version I dug up.
Edit2:I eventually just did a factory reset and it fixed everything. I had also emailed the developer of the app and he got back to me with the following advice:
It sounds like the permissions file is locked, packages.xml. Try opening my app, going into the settings, and make sure that the first option is NOT checked.
Then hit the unlock option to unlock the file.
If that doesn't work, try the following in a terminal...
su
chattr -ia /data/system/packages.xml\
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Intuitively this sounds like it may have fixed the problem, so I'm posting it here in case anyone ends up with similar problems and finds this thread searching.
I haven't used my nexus in a couple months, turned it on today and there's a PIN lock.
I don't remember ever setting this up, I tried my usual PINs and none work.
I keep trying but I never get a forgot password log in with google option. I always get 5 wrong entries, wait 30 secs.
I'm at 35 incorrect PINs so far.
-I've also tried going to device manager but my device is always unavailable so I can't send a lock screen to it.
-I can't do a factory reset because my recovery is broken and I can't get into it to erase my data.
-I can't flash a new recovery because my computer isn't a trusted device to access it and I can't allow it because I can't log in.
I'm not sure what else to do.
I have a secondary user on it but I can't turn on the developer options for it because it's not the primary account.
Any ideas what I can do?
If you can get your driver issues figured out, so that the Fast Boot driver works, you can just reflash images from the Bootloader. You do not need to get into Recovery, or get passed the pin lock to reflash. To make it easy, you can use something like Wug's NRT and use the "Bricked Device" option to flash images from the bootloader screen.
Greetings dellow xda dev's, I am currently running a Tmobile galaxy note 3, with the newest stock odexed FOL1 firmware, rooted, running twrp 2.8.5.0, I hav been installing apps and setting things up all day as a recent problem has forced me to factory reset my phone. Due to the way I use tasker to lock my phone (using secure settings to set a password) and restoring the old tasker profiles, my password appears to have been corrupted in some form or another as I have entered it a bunch of times and it won't unlock, claiming that the password is wrong. I have spent most of the evening looking at exploits and bypasses but none seem to work with my phone, there is no password.key file in the data/system folder, and deleting the gesture.key doesn't help. Using android device manager I can send a message to my phone and 'lock' it, but there is no unlock option anywhere on the screen; until I hit the home button and it simply sends me back to the normal lockscreen, and whatever new password I punched in with the manager doesn't work. I have tried several flashable zip files (lockscreen security bypass and pattern password disable), I have also tried everything mentioned in :http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2620456 that article, as well as poking around in adb and in twrp's file manager, as well as some old lockscreen vulnerabilities (sadly copy and paste do not appear on the emergency dialer or the password field).
I am rather desperate to get my phone unlocked without a factory reset, as I just barely recovered from one recently, and need my phone for work tomorrow morning. I do have some tasker and autoremote profiles running that will tell my phone to setoff an alarm through tasker, and that will alert my phone to when my tablets battery life is low, but I don't know if either of those will help. I do not have any trusted bluetooth devices that can unlock the phone, nor do I ever seem to find a password reset/forgot your password option after typing in my password.
Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated and tried come morning before work.
Greetings everyone.
Well, i come here after reading all threads i found about breaking screen lock password.
What can I say... nothing works...
But let's start from begginig. My younger sister was going home asleep and she changed her screen lock password (she loves to do it). As always, she wroted it on some piece of paper, but unfortunetly she lost it.
I've tried to unlock it by adb, but my sister never turns debugging mode on, so i tried and tried and also rooted phone, but when i write "adb shell rm /data/..." i always get "error: closed".
Is it any way to delete screen lock password with USB Debugging disabled?
The data from phone is very important, so wipe data/factory reset is not an option.
EDIT: well, i would be thankful for instructions for "retarded" person - any pointing all operations i must do and sny links to programs i must have will be helpful.
Hey guys -
Need some detective help. I did something to my 10, and I think I did something with the encryption, but I'm not sure how or what.
Follow me here, since I'm not sure what caused it, I'll start at the beginning, and see if anything raises a red flag..
Got phone from HTC, US unlocked version. Got it in.. heck, this past June, I think.
Unlocked bootloader. Got Sunshine, ran it, but never paid and never turned S-OFF.
Never set PIN or Fingerprint.
Installed Viper10 when it was out.
Went to do fingerprint. Got screen saying that for backup, needed to set PIN. Set PIN, then taught it some fingerprints.
Never had data issues, and as far as I know, never encrypted phone. TWRP, when run, did not need me to enter any password or key to access the phone. On bootup, would get PIN prompt, but AFTER Android loaded.
Never got any RUUs, never upgraded Viper10.
Installed CM13 today. Whohoo!
Install went fine, no issues. Restored apps from TiBu, deleted unused bloatware, including the built-in Android keyboard.
Set up other options, and finally got to enter in fingerprints.
It gives me the same screen I got on Viper. This time, though (and I have no idea why), I back out back to Security settings, and enter in PIN there.
Then train fingerprints!
Now, when I reboot system, or boot to TWRP, I get a prompt asking for password (TWRP) or PIN (Android). HOWEVER.. I can enter my pin in TWRP just fine. But not Android. Apparently, since it hasn't booted, Swype doesn't work, and I get no keyboard. Can't enter PIN in at all.
That is my mistake, however, as I removed the built-in Android keyboard. (Something I've done countless times before on other Android versions without issue..)
So I restore Nandroid backup of Viper10. I still get the PIN entry, and STILL have no keyboard.
I see reference in TWRP about PINs not working, so I delete that locksettings.db file (from memory, filename is likely wrong here..)
Phone boots up. Yay. No PIN prompt. Yay.
But now I do NOT have data - as in, it's acting like my phone is unencrypted now.
So, what I'd like to know is -
If NOW my phone is unencrypted, and I'm getting the 'No Data' issue, what was my phone doing BEFORE, when I didn't have to enter PIN, but was getting data?
How can I get BACK to not having to enter PIN and still get data? (In my case, will the instructions for unencrypted work? Or is my phone now 'special'?)
How did I set the PIN the first time on Viper10, and not have it encrypt my phone? I'd like to ultimately get back to THAT scenario - where the lockscreen asks for PIN, but nothing else does (TWRP, Bootup, etc).
Thanks guys!
-Mike
I may be pointing the obvious, but have you do a full wipe before restoring your nandroid? If so, did you try to clean flash your rom to see what happens?
Maybe by removing stock keyboard something got messed up and keeps the keyboard in your nandroid from properly installing.
Yup, I tried restoring the Nandroid several times, some with wiping, some without. Also, I always clean-flash my new ROMs (i.e. ones not restored from nandroid backup, installed new, like going from Viper10 -> CM13)
Going to try again today while at work, see what happens.
During setup in CM13, there should be option to require PIN at startup (It is usually checked by default). Uncheck it and your phone will remain encrypted without requiring a PIN to start.
jackebuehner said:
During setup in CM13, there should be option to require PIN at startup (It is usually checked by default). Uncheck it and your phone will remain encrypted without requiring a PIN to start.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Technically correct (encrypted) but effectively incorrect: encryption is moot if a password is not required to decrypt it. It would be like locking your door and leaving the key in it: it's locked but it's not secure.
You need a system keyboard to be able to enter PIN on bootup; hence, the pre-installed keyboard (Google on vanilla, TouchPal on htc) isn't really 'bloatware' as it's necessary. Google makes a good keyboard; TouchPal, though, yeah, necessary bloatware in this case.
Rolo42 said:
Technically correct (encrypted) but effectively incorrect: encryption is moot if a password is not required to decrypt it. It would be like locking your door and leaving the key in it: it's locked but it's not secure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, so in previous ROMs (both OEM and Viper10, it technically WAS encrypted, I just never set the password? .. Huh.
Rolo42 said:
You need a system keyboard to be able to enter PIN on bootup; hence, the pre-installed keyboard (Google on vanilla, TouchPal on htc) isn't really 'bloatware' as it's necessary. Google makes a good keyboard; TouchPal, though, yeah, necessary bloatware in this case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting, thanks for this; good to know. A shame, but good to know that's just how it is.
coyttl said:
Ah, so in previous ROMs (both OEM and Viper10, it technically WAS encrypted, I just never set the password? .. Huh.
Interesting, thanks for this; good to know. A shame, but good to know that's just how it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Correct. The password is to get at the encryption key; it isn't the encryption key itself.
Bitlocker/SED works the same way. Otherwise, a password change would mean re-encrypting everything.
If you put in the wrong password, it'll look like you have no data.