Windows Phone 8.1 Sudden Crash/Hang/Reboot. Solved when SD card is removed.

[Rangan Das]

The SD card seems to be messing with my Lumia 1320 running WP8.1. I do get frequent requests to scan the card on reboots and I do. Since today, I my phone would freeze at glance screen. After a soft reset, it takes a long time to reboot, after being stuck in the "Nokia" screen for a while. I removed the SD card and did a soft reset again and my phone started up normally.

There are a lot of apps on my SD card (Sandisk 16GB Class 10), like the large Gameloft games that are free on my phone and more. Almost over 6GB is used up for apps. Then there are tons of music files and documents. There are some video files too. Now that I have isolated that the SD card is the problem, an anyone tell me what in the SD card is causing the problem?

P.S. I put the card in my PC using a card reader and ran chkdsk /offlinescanandfix on it. There were no errors found.

 

[Makm]

Honestly speaking I don't think your SD card is the problem, I think it's your phone! My aunt has a 1020, and the 1020 doesn't support any SD card. Few weeks ago her phone got stuck at the glance screen and it was TOTALLY hung, no buttons were working, the phone was totally unresponsive! After an hour or so somehow by pressing the hardware buttons the phone started to work again. After that she turned off the glance screen and she didn't face the problem again till now.

Now I'm pretty sure Nokia also knows that their glance screen is faulty. No wonder why they didn't give the new 630 and the 930 a glance screen!

 

[DaT Franchise]

Possible an app you have installed on your SD isn't playing nice?? Move all apps back to phone then try again with the SD installed??

 

[Guytronic]

A little tough to determine why these SD cards glitch occasionally.

Those Sandisk cards are generally reliable.

From what I've learned SD cards are biased toward burst data reads.
Meaning they will feed data at a higher transfer rate on a buffer call then slow on large files i.e, video files.

I try to stick to the UHS type cards in devices for photo/video these seem to maintain file transfer speeds at an acceptable rate.

Sometimes simply rubbing the contacts on the card with an eraser will help.

Any chance you have a different empty card to try?

 

[Rangan Das]

Honestly speaking I don't think your SD card is the problem, I think it's your phone! My aunt has a 1020, and the 1020 doesn't support any SD card. Few weeks ago her phone got stuck at the glance screen and it was TOTALLY hung, no buttons were working, the phone was totally unresponsive! After an hour or so somehow by pressing the hardware buttons the phone started to work again. After that she turned off the glance screen and she didn't face the problem again till now.

Now I'm pretty sure Nokia also knows that their glance screen is faulty. No wonder why they didn't give the new 630 and the 930 a glance screen!

The glance screen itself is a bit glitchy. But here, the SD card is the culprit. With the card in, boot time takes 3-5 mins...without it...30 seconds...

 

[Rangan Das]

A little tough to determine why these SD cards glitch occasionally.

Those Sandisk cards are generally reliable.

From what I've learned SD cards are biased toward burst data reads.
Meaning they will feed data at a higher transfer rate on a buffer call then slow on large files i.e, video files.

I try to stick to the UHS type cards in devices for photo/video these seem to maintain file transfer speeds at an acceptable rate.

Sometimes simply rubbing the contacts on the card with an eraser will help.

Any chance you have a different empty card to try?

An empty Transcend 4GB Class 4 worked fine. I got it fixed and here's how.
The SD card is UHS-I. Now, I ran a benchmark using HD Tune Pro on PC. Apparently the sequential reads were much faster than random reads.

I checked the card for errors twice using chkdsk.

Next, using Defraggler command line, I did an analysis. Defragmenting SD cards are useless, I heard, but there were major file fragmentations (over 150 fragments per file).

Removed/Backed up all files except app files.

Defragged the memory card using Defraggler command line once, and then ran a free space consolidation using Windows Defrag command line.

Rechecked file system for errors. And put the SD card back to the phone. Things are pretty stable now. Will put the media files and all back later and will post again if there is an update.

As of now, it seems fixed.

 

[Guytronic]

An empty Transcend 4GB Class 4 worked fine. I got it fixed and here's how.
The SD card is UHS-I. Now, I ran a benchmark using HD Tune Pro on PC. Apparently the sequential reads were much faster than random reads.

I checked the card for errors twice using chkdsk.

Next, using Defraggler command line, I did an analysis. De-fragmenting SD cards are useless, I heard, but there were major file fragmentation's (over 150 fragments per file).

Removed/Backed up all files except app files.

Defragged the memory card using Defraggler command line once, and then ran a free space consolidation using Windows Defrag command line.

Rechecked file system for errors. And put the SD card back to the phone. Things are pretty stable now. Will put the media files and all back later and will post again if there is an update.

As of now, it seems fixed.

Great news!
HD Tune Pro is about the best IMO for testing firm memory.
Good job!

 

[DaT Franchise]

A little tough to determine why these SD cards glitch occasionally.

Those Sandisk cards are generally reliable.

From what I've learned SD cards are biased toward burst data reads.
Meaning they will feed data at a higher transfer rate on a buffer call then slow on large files i.e, video files.

I try to stick to the UHS type cards in devices for photo/video these seem to maintain file transfer speeds at an acceptable rate.

Sometimes simply rubbing the contacts on the card with an eraser will help.

Any chance you have a different empty card to try?

I can understand that as well but when 8.1 first came out I had all kinds of problems with apps on my SD card, moved them back to phone and no more crashes. 32 SanDisk c10

 

[David P2]

Also, some SD cards bought over ebay or amazon could be telling porky pies about their speed and capacity. they can be "told" to show a higher capacity than they truly have. For example, a 32GB card going for say, $1.99 I would call *very* suspicious. You stick it in, and it throws up error messages when you copy files of certain sizes across - it could receive a 512MB file fine, but kick up a stink if you copy something over 2GB.

 

[simon 4]

I'm starting to worry I have bought a dodgey sd card as when I install apps on it they quite often refuse to load music and videos are fine. Or is it a case of the apps not being 100% compatible with the 8.1 preview

 

[colinkiama]

Remember to buy your micro SD cards from Amazon, make sure they are at least class 6 or higher (class 10 recommended)

 

[simon 4]

I think it was ebay, does say class 10 on it. Is there any decent apps that can test speed ect I don't have a pc with card reader

 

[deansmilk]

My Lumia 1020 disagrees that it hangs because of a SD card. Something else is going on and I don't think it's glance either.

 

[darkest.white]

My Lumia 920 has issues with this hanging and rebooting so I don't think this is SD card related. For me at least it has started happening after the last update of clock hub. Every morning I pick up my phone and try to use it but its frozen, or if its not, ill open WPce tral and it will then freeze. I have to hold the power and volume down for 10 se ones to reboot and then even then, the start screen sometimes will be missing, or the notification centers icons will be blank, or it will just be frozen still. I then have to lock it, and leave it be for a few minutes and its fine. Weird.

 

[Rangan Das]

Like I said, sequential reads are faster than random on the SD. I guess it is the same on phone memory too. Also, there might me extreme fragmentation, like it happened in my case. But you cannot run a defrag or chkdsk on the phone memory. That's why only a reset works.

 

[deansmilk]

Like I said, sequential reads are faster than random on the SD. I guess it is the same on phone memory too. Also, there might me extreme fragmentation, like it happened in my case. But you cannot run a defrag or chkdsk on the phone memory. That's why only a reset works.

The reset only works in what way? What reset are we talking about here? For me the volume/power reset works to get the phone out of its frozen/hung state. A complete phone reset works for a few days then the phone starts to hang again. There are others who have sent their phones in for repair only for the phone to do the same thing a few days later. The repair shops are not finding any thing wrong. Do you think its just bad memory, software, or both?

 

[DaT Franchise]

The volume +power is nothing more than a reboot, it has the same affect as turning the phone off then back on. It is in no way a soft reset.

 

[deansmilk]

The volume +power is nothing more than a reboot, it has the same affect as turning the phone off then back on. It is in no way a soft reset.

The problem however is that regardless of how it gets soft reset/hard reset or turned off/back on the issues still persists. No matter what, at least for me. The phone eventually freezes or becomes unresponsive in some sort of way. Others also have had the same issue as myself with no solution, including sending it in for repairs. This happens with 8.1 and 8.0. I have heard numerous things as to why this is happening ( Glance, apps, memory, sd cards, wifi, charging plates, etc ). Everybody has a different thought of what it could be, but any solution didn't help. The memory fragmentation is the first I heard of causing this. So I am curious if this could be the issue and if there is another solution, because resets does not fix it...

Basically I am confused with the " that's why only a reset works" comment. Works at doing what?

 

[Rangan Das]

The reset only works in what way? What reset are we talking about here? For me the volume/power reset works to get the phone out of its frozen/hung state. A complete phone reset works for a few days then the phone starts to hang again. There are others who have sent their phones in for repair only for the phone to do the same thing a few days later. The repair shops are not finding any thing wrong. Do you think its just bad memory, software, or both?

It happens in all phones, I guess. Android has all these memory and junk cleaner apps. You'll see almost everyone using them. That somehow keeps the phone in shape. In Windows we do not have those options. The memory is fine. But WP8.1 needs a good maintenance option...which means SSD defrag + user requested chkdsk scans + junk files cleaning.

However, the reason they do not put this is because more read/writes reduce flash memory life.

 

[deansmilk]

It happens in all phones, I guess. Android has all these memory and junk cleaner apps. You'll see almost everyone using them. That somehow keeps the phone in shape. In Windows we do not have those options. The memory is fine. But WP8.1 needs a good maintenance option...which means SSD defrag + user requested chkdsk scans + junk files cleaning.

However, the reason they do not put this is because more read/writes reduce flash memory life.

Ahh makes sense. So would an actual reset help? Every time I have done a reset it seems to happen again fairly quickly. Assuming that a hard reset would clear anything left on disc, why would it get fragmented so soon after? Soon being in a few days.

I guess I should just bite the bullet and send it in *sighs*.