Galaxy Note 10.1 System Recovery Error

[munawar_khalid]

Hi,

I have a 2012 Galaxy Note 10.1. It was working fine until a few day ago when something installed on it without my permission. It started crashing after every few minutes and many advertisements and offending stuff started popping up. I tried hard to kill/remove/disable all the suspicious things but it did not work.

Ultimately I decided to reset it to factory settings and followed the right procedure; it seemed to had gone smoothly but..... As soon as the system was up again, to my surprise, the same advertisements and other stuff started appearing from very beginning and made it hard even to configure the system. I went for another reset and noted down the results; it seemed that the system was not able to remove one .apk that was residing in the /system/app folder. I tried various methods to remove this file but to no gain.

I tried to rewrite the OS with Odin. With Volume Up + Power keys, the system enter the download mode selection window. However, as I select this mode with Volume Up key (as per instruction), they system goes in reboot instead of going to OS download mode. Elsewhere, the volume keys are working fine, e.g. in erasing all the data, formatting etc.

So, I am not stuck up in a strange situation and do not know how to get rid of this crazy stuff.

Please help!!!

 

[webworkings]

Did you try restarting the device in "Safe Mode" at any point? This allows you to let it run without any added software and apps having any access. I would try that.

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.

If this doesn't work try a "Hard Reset". Which I believe is what you were trying to do, but was not working. Follow the instructions below and see if it works for you then.

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.

 

[munawar_khalid]

Thanks a lot for your detailed guidance. I have tried all this but nothing worked unfortunately.
Even in Safe Mode, the crazy application was up and working and it blocked many steps I tried
to take.

Either way, while trying various things, fortunately I could enter the Download mode and was
able to Nand Erase and rewrite the updated OS. This resolved the problem and the system is
now in a good shape with updated OS.

Conclusion: there seems no other way than to erase and rewrite the OS when such a nasty
application gets installed. Unfortunately all those applications that you would trust on for
securing your system do bring something hidden with them.

Thanks a lot for your attention.

 

[webworkings]

Wow. I have to say that is a new one on me. Most apps don't go that far. Scary.