Looking for help with rebooting my tablet or a replacement

[Ashley_37]

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab A and it's like the tablet is shut down but it's really not! My lockscreen is on, it's showing as if it's charging at 75% but it's not. As in, it's not connected to the charger at all. It is Friday night and my tablet has been like this since yesterday, Thursday morning between 7 or 8. I've had it since August 2015. The screen won't shut off, I can't get it to actually power off. Please help!

 

[webworkings]

Well turning it off is the first step.

Have you tried holding down the power button for oh 15-20 seconds? If not, I would try this first to see if it will shut off. If it still doesn't turn off, you are going to either have to remove the battery to cut the power, or wait for it to run out of power and turns itself off.

If you choose to remove the battery (which is not as simple as it sounds on a tablet) then you can go straight to the "Safe Mode" info, once you have put the battery back in. If you choose to wait until it runs out of power, you would then have to plug it in to charge a bit before you try to enter "Safe Mode".

Now, once it is actually off, you should try restarting in "Safe Mode". This will allow the device to start, without any of the apps that have been added. This allows you to see if it was an app that was causing your problem. If it boots in "Safe Mode" it was something you installed or updated recently that is the problem. If it doesn't boot in "Safe Mode" and goes right back to being stuck, you may have to then do a "Hard Reset", but I suggest you leave that for last, as it will wipe your personal data off the device.

To get into "Safe Mode" please do the following.


1. First turn off the tablet.

2. Next press and hold "Power" until you see the manufacturers logo on the screen, then release the power button.

3. "Quickly" press "Volume Down" and hold it for few seconds until you see the message "Safe mode: ON" or something similar.

4. If you wanted disable safe mode, simply repeat the steps above, and you should see "Safe Mode: Off" rather than On.


NOTE: Doing this will clear the data on your tablet, so it is suggested you not choose this option unless you have to, or aren't worried about losing anything on the device.

Be sure you back up any data you want to keep, to a computer or cloud account, before doing the reset.



To "Hard Reset" the tablet...

1. Make sure that the tablet is actually powered off.

2. Press the "Power" and the "Volume Up" buttons, together, until you see the start-up logo on the screen.

3. Once you can see the logo, release the buttons and allow the device to enter the "System Recovery Mode".

4. Next use "Volume Down" button to get to the "wipe data/factory reset" option When in recovery mode the "Volume Up" and "Volume Down" buttons are how to can navigate and highlight what option you need.

5. Once you have selected the "wipe data/factory reset", press the "Power" button to select that option.

6. On the following screen, repeatedly press the "Volume Down" button until the "Yes - delete all user data" option is what is selected.

7. Then press the "Power" button to hard reset the tablet.

 

[Saga Lout]

To add to webworkings' good advice, it's worth looking round the device for a pinhole which when poked with a pin, might turn the device off. Not all tablets have one but it's worth a shot.