Access Denial on Interop Unlocked ATIV S. System Apps Fail to Start. SD Card Issue?

[Exotic Hadron]

Howdy,

Lately I started experiencing access issues with the phone. One of these is the screenshot issue. The screenshot gets taken, although the phone says Couldn't take screenshot and saves the screenshot. The screenshot does not get shown in the Photos app like the app can't access the file.

Here are all of the access issues I experience, I believe they are connected all together and have the same root cause.

1. Whenever I press WindowsKey+Turn off button to take a screenshot, the phone says Saving to Screenshots... and then Couldn't take screenshot. The screenshot does not get saved to Screenshots folder. If I check this same Screenshots folder via Windows Explorer, it shows the taken screenshot is there

2. No camera app, including the built-in one, can save the taken photo. Whenever I start the camera and press the Camera button, the Camera app either disappears as if it crashed (and Start screen is shown) or the Photos app is shown instead of just taken photo. Checking the Camera roll section in the Photos app does not reveal the photo as if it wasn't taken. If I check this same Camera roll folder via Windows Explorer, it shows the taken image is there!

So the phone does take the photo and screenshots but can't read them! Why?

3. Most of the time Photos app fails on start. You tap photos, it shows Loading... and then the app closes and Start screen gets shown. The other time it shows Loading... then Resuming... then Loading... again and does that multiple times. Sometimes it starts well but shows only old photos and screenshots that were taken before I started experiencing issues with taking screenshots and starting system apps.

4. Often so the Phone storage app available in Settings doesn't start either and closes after showing Loading...
5. Music app fails to start every now and then. When it starts, it does not return to album view when you click Play on a song in an album. The app just freezes.
6. Finally, my System section in Settings|Phone storage|Phone now shows 4.29 GB (!) although it consumed 2.12 just before I started experiencing these strange issues.

It appears the issues arisen when I replaced my 32GB Transcend UHS-I QSDXC card with a 64 GB by ?SDXC from Sandisk and attempted to synchronize photos via Zune application and both WinRT and Desktop versions of Windows Phone apps.

More detail:
1. I interop-unlocked the phone and it worked for a while.
2. My 32 GB SD card ran out of memory and I replaced it with a 64 GB SD card.
3. The 64 GB SanDisk SD card appeared incompatible with Samsung ATIV S and looked as if it had been dismounted every now and then. The phone had been rebooting every 10 minutes or like and CPU was heating high.
4. I removed the 64 GB card and started the phone without the card. It worked well. The phone stopped heating and rebooting ever since I removed the card.
However, I noticed that I no longer can start the Photos app. Moreover, Phone storage also was failing start and Camera app did not make screenshots and photos.
5. I inserted the 64 GB card to my wife's Nokia Lumia 620 and it worked fine there. I put the 32 GB card back into my Samsung ATIV S but access issues are still there.

How do I fix this? Any clue is highly welcome.

Once again, the phone is developer unlocked and interop-unlocked.

I plan to hard reset but am worrying of getting my phone bricked. What if re-imaging or whatever the phone does when it resets itself (I assume it applies a WIM file like Windows 8 does it on PCs)?

 

[WP8Expert]

It seems like you are using a Class 10 32GB Micro SD card while your wife is using a Class 4. Class 10 cards are buggy on Windows Phones. Especially the ATIV S. Get a refund or get it changed. Its better to use a Class 4 or Class 6 at the moment until Microsoft gets its **** together and fix this issue

 

[Exotic Hadron]

It seems like you are using a Class 10 32GB Micro SD card while your wife is using a Class 4. Class 10 cards are buggy on Windows Phones. Especially the ATIV S. Get a refund or get it changed. Its better to use a Class 4 or Class 6 at the moment until Microsoft gets its **** together and fix this issue

Nope, I meant to say that the same Class 10 card works fine on my wife's Lumia 625. As for the denial issues, the culprit seems to be the Full file system access via USB, I'd post back if I manage to solve it.

 

[neo158]

It seems like you are using a Class 10 32GB Micro SD card while your wife is using a Class 4. Class 10 cards are buggy on Windows Phones. Especially the ATIV S. Get a refund or get it changed. Its better to use a Class 4 or Class 6 at the moment until Microsoft gets its **** together and fix this issue

I don't think the class of SD Card has anything to do with it, I use a Class 10 SD Card in my ATIV S and haven't had any problems. I did reformat it as exFAT though so that might be the reason it works.

 

[Exotic Hadron]

I don't think the class of SD Card has anything to do with it, I use a Class 10 SD Card in my ATIV S and haven't had any problems. I did reformat it as exFAT though so that might be the reason it works.

Looks like the issue was the Full File System access mode that I turned on using WPH Tweaks tool. It seems, this option turns on a special mode in some driver used by Windows Phone. When turned on, this change cannot be undone, instead, turning the Full Access off reverts access settings and prohibits access to file system for some Windows API functions.
Why I think it's a driver issue:
1. Phone started to heat dramatically.
2. Applications started to lag and worked as if the phone's CPU (the phone SoC) was busy all the time.
3. Applications were crashing all the time; in fact they we crashing even without the ?SD card.
4. Phone stopped being correctly identified by Windows 8 OS.
The phone disappeared from the Removable devices list in Windows Explorer and no Samsung ATIV S entry was being shown any longer in the folder and disk tree. The phone only showed in the list of USB devices and was being recognized as an MTP USB device. I wasn't able to access its file system anylonger even its Pictures and Documents folders. The phone stopped showing on Windows Phone app.

Attempts to disable the Full file system access mode via SamWP8 Tool made things even worse. I had to hard reset the phone.

By the way, could somebody please explain the differences between resetting the phone via Settings|About and resetting it via a combination of hardware buttons?

 

[neo158]

Looks like the issue was the Full File System access mode that I turned on using WPH Tweaks tool. It seems, this option turns on a special mode in some driver used by Windows Phone. When turned on, this change cannot be undone, instead, turning the Full Access off reverts access settings and prohibits access to file system for some Windows API functions.
Why I think it's a driver issue:
1. Phone started to heat dramatically.
2. Applications started to lag and worked as if the phone's CPU (the phone SoC) was busy all the time.
3. Applications were crashing all the time; in fact they we crashing even without the ?SD card.
4. Phone stopped being correctly identified by Windows 8 OS.
The phone disappeared from the Removable devices list in Windows Explorer and no Samsung ATIV S entry was being shown any longer in the folder and disk tree. The phone only showed in the list of USB devices and was being recognized as an MTP USB device. I wasn't able to access its file system anylonger even its Pictures and Documents folders. The phone stopped showing on Windows Phone app.

Attempts to disable the Full file system access mode via SamWP8 Tool made things even worse. I had to hard reset the phone.

By the way, could somebody please explain the differences between resetting the phone via Settings|About and resetting it via a combination of hardware buttons?

Good to hear that you figured out what it was.

They do the same thing, despite what others might tell you. The hardware button combination is used when you can't get the phone to boot.

 

[Exotic Hadron]

Good to hear that you figured out what it was.

They do the same thing, despite what others might tell you. The hardware button combination is used when you can't get the phone to boot.

Thanks. I wondered if these two approaches are different, since they looked 100% identical.

Flashing the phone to GDR2 solved the issue, no more overheating, lags or problems with Photos app not starting, failing to save photos and screenshot, everything works smooth (knocking on wood).

Now I don't know whether to install the GDR3 preview again or not. I like its feature to close app screens a lot and I like the feature to limit background data in roaming as well (in Russia there's an internal regional roaming so that the phone doesn't sense roaming where you're already in a non-home area). On top of that, the GDR3 preview supports interop-unlock. On the other hand, GDR3 preview does not support hard reset. When you hard reset it, you end up with a black screen and your phone becomes unusable, since there's no UI after reset.