"Unfortunately, TouchWiz Home Has Stopped"- Potential Solution

jcole0023

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Feb 5, 2015
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While using my Galaxy Tab S 10.5, running KitKat 4.4.2, I started getting the dreaded "Unfortunately, TouchWiz Home Has Stopped." message. I browsed forum after forum and ran every Google search I could think of. There were a lot of theories out there. Anything from switch the home screen to easy mode (not an option on the Tab S) to a hard reset. Some people even suggested 'rooting' the device. I don't believe in modifying a system's OS, or loading another one on top, or using a launcher, just to get the f******g thing to work like it's supposed to. I retraced my steps from when I first got the tablet. Obviously, I opened the box and went through the steps of setting up and transferring accounts. Then I changed a few base settings, such as Auto-Brightness and WiFi. Once I was happy with the settings, I addressed the god-awful home screen set-up and shut off every bloatware program that I would never use. Deleted all the widgets, extra home screens, and changed the wallpaper. All was well with the world. Then it happened. Not on the first, or the second, but the third time I turned the device on, I got a pop-up message on the home screen "Unfortunately, TouchWiz Home Has Stopped." After I hit 'ok', the homepage launched and everything was fine. From there on, every time I turned the tablet on, I would receive the same message. Ok, we're back where we started. I realized that if it says "TouchWiz HOME"; it must be a problem with the home screen itself. I looked and looked and looked. I tried loading ALL the widgets and gizmos and gadgets. This decimated my battery life and bogged down the performance, but the error remained. While removing all the extra screens I had created, I noticed the little "home" icon at the top of the screen while in edit mode. I had never payed any attention to it before. This time, I deleted all screens except one and clicked the icon. It changed from a dull background hue to a highlighted blue. I reset the tablet and, much to my surprise, there was no error message. Had all of my grief been caused by a simple, insignificant choice that I had failed to make when deleting all the original home screens? More to the point: why would Android not just tell me to "Choose a Home Screen" and save me all this first-world grief? I submit this in the hopes that it might help someone out there having the same issue:

1. Open the edit function for your home screens (long-press on any screen after hitting your 'home' button'
2. Select a home page by highlighting the 'home' icon (looks like a little house) at the top of the page.
3. Reset the device.

With any luck, the error message will be gone, and gone forever. I theorize that the problem started when I removed the 'home' from the TouchWiz UI and gave it no designated starting point for start-up. Without this critical piece of information, it was merely logged as an error and the system was required to let the user know there was a problem. I cannot promise that this will work on all devices experiencing the issue, or that it will work on any version other than 4.4.2 KitKat. Please, if you're having this issue (regardless of device/OS), let me know if this works for you. Oh, and thank you for having the patience to make it through this entire post. It's a good thing I don't work in a field that requires extreme detail... Thank You.
 
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