HTC Desire 816: SD card made my phone unresponsive?

pharaohs

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I'm hoping that someone on these forums can tell me what happened.

I own an HTC Desire 816. I've only had it for six weeks, it's worked perfectly fine so far, but today it did something very weird.

I have a 16 GB SD card in the card slot and about 12 GB are free. I tried to download a show through the official Utorrent app, and I set the directory to where the show would download to my SD Card. Perfectly fine, right? The show was still in the queue and it hadn't begun downloading as far as I noticed. In case it's important to know, this is the first time I tried to torrent to the phone. I was looking through my apps and I decided to delete one I didn't use, Plant Nanny. I begun to drag Plant Nanny to the Uninstall option, but then my phone began to lag. I thought, "Forget it, I'll delete it another time," and I instead dragged Plant Nanny to cancel. My phone was still lagging, terribly. I was on my home screen and I couldn't flip between screens. So I hit the power button on the side to put the screen to sleep. I then hit the button again. My phone's screen was not turning on. I held the button down thinking I could just power it off and power it back up but no, the phone was completely unresponsive. I plugged the phone into the charger and the charging light wouldn't turn on, the phone gave no response to anything.

I looked up some ways to fix this, I tried a factory reset (holding down the down volume button and the power button) and that didn't work. I held those buttons down for about twenty seconds but the only thing my phone did was make the little HTC chime sound that the phone makes when you turn it on. The screen didn't turn on, and if I tried a factory reset again it wouldn't even make the noise. For a second there I thought my phone was going kaput.

In some sort of last resort idea, I removed my phone case and removed the SD card. After removing the SD card my phone booted up, almost as if it had previously been in some kind of safety mode protecting itself.

The phone is working perfectly fine, nothing is lost, it didn't do a factory reset or anything. I still haven't re-inserted the SD card, and I wonder if I should. At the least, I'm gonna put the SD card into my computer and remove the torrent files before inserting it back into my phone.

So what happened? Why did my phone do this? The torrent seemed pretty safe, it's from a trusted site, and the torrent had positive comments. Whatever it was, I doubt I'll try to torrent to my phone ever again.
 

Rukbat

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I tried to download a show through the official Utorrent app
The fact that you used µTorrent (that's the Greek letter mu, not U) doesn't mean that the torrent you downloaded can't have viruses, it just means that the program itself doesn't. Probably 80% of torrented content today is full of malware.

The show was still in the queue and it hadn't begun downloading as far as I noticed. In case it's important to know
It's not, but that could be because there are no seeders (people who have it available for you to download from), or there aren't enough seeders, so all of them have all their slots filled.

I looked up some ways to fix this, I tried a factory reset (holding down the down volume button and the power button)
That's recovery mode - just booting to it doesn't do anything.

I held those buttons down for about twenty seconds but the only thing my phone did was make the little HTC chime sound that the phone makes when you turn it on.
Probably because you have to disable Fastboot first.

In some sort of last resort idea, I removed my phone case and removed the SD card. After removing the SD card my phone booted up, almost as if it had previously been in some kind of safety mode protecting itself.

The phone is working perfectly fine, nothing is lost, it didn't do a factory reset or anything. I still haven't re-inserted the SD card, and I wonder if I should. At the least, I'm gonna put the SD card into my computer and remove the torrent files before inserting it back into my phone.
Turn µTorrent download off, then the phone may work, and you can delete any files it downloaded, or you can do it your way if you can find the files.

Or the card may just have gone bad. µTorrent makes thousands of writes to the card for a single file, and that's not healthy for the card. Internal storage can take it better, but aside from the legal aspects (the maximum fine for torrenting copyrighted material that I've heard of so far - assessed against the mother of the kid who did the downloading - was about $19 million), if you're going to torrent, do it on a computer with a hard drive and delayed write (like Linux, MacOS or Windows).

So what happened? Why did my phone do this?
No way to tell without having the phone and the card.

The torrent seemed pretty safe
Seemed. There's no such thing as a safe torrent. All you get from the site is the torrent file. That tells you what servers have the lists of people who are offering (seeding) the file. Any of them could have put a small virus in the file somewhere, and if you get that piece from that seeder, you get that virus.

it's from a trusted site
"Trusted torrent site" is like "trusted liar" - meaningless words.

Whatever it was, I doubt I'll try to torrent to my phone ever again.
You really shouldn't torrent at all. Internet providers (and your carrier is also an internet provider) are mandated by law to stop theft of intellectual content (which is what torrenting is in most cases - although the owner of the copyright could choose to distribute his product through torrents, and some have), up to the point of cancelling your account and notifying the Department of Justice in the US (and other government agencies in other countries). Even Russia, which gave a home to The Pirate Cove, has laws against stealing IC.
 

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