My phone has deleted (almost) everything- please help

[Frybert]

Hello all, thanks in advance for reading.
I am an s2 user from the UK and have had my phone for about 18 months. I am used to my phone restarting itself every couple of days or freezing on me but I love it so much I don't mind!
However when it restarted today it came back on having deleted almost everything. I still have apps and (most importantly) photos but all my texts and contacts have dissapeared. This in itself is an annoyance but I also seem to have lost lock screen and home button functionality and the lock/power button only gives the option of power off or restart. I have tried taking out SD card and battery for 30 minutes but no difference.
I am fairly techno minded but after googling the problem I have to admit I have no idea what rooting or flashing is and so most of the solutions have baffled me. I'm terrified if I reset it I will lose the precious pictures and things I do have left on it (obviously I will put them onto my laptop if reboot is the only option)

Anybody else experienced this?
Any advice will be much appreciated, thanks.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Hello all, thanks in advance for reading.
I am an s2 user from the UK and have had my phone for about 18 months. I am used to my phone restarting itself every couple of days or freezing on me but I love it so much I don't mind!
However when it restarted today it came back on having deleted almost everything. I still have apps and (most importantly) photos but all my texts and contacts have dissapeared. This in itself is an annoyance but I also seem to have lost lock screen and home button functionality and the lock/power button only gives the option of power off or restart. I have tried taking out SD card and battery for 30 minutes but no difference.
I am fairly techno minded but after googling the problem I have to admit I have no idea what rooting or flashing is and so most of the solutions have baffled me. I'm terrified if I reset it I will lose the precious pictures and things I do have left on it (obviously I will put them onto my laptop if reboot is the only option)

Anybody else experienced this?
Any advice will be much appreciated, thanks.

Welcome to the forums.
I have heard of this. I would highly suggest connecting your phone to your PC to save those pictures and such, just in case. Have your contacts come back, or no?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Sounds frustrating. Do you know if you had your contacts stored locally (under the "Phone Account") or if they were stored in your Google account in the cloud and synced with your phone? If they're from the Google account, those contacts aren't lost--they should be able to sync over from Google again. If they were stored locally, it may be hard to recover them if they got wiped for some reason unless you also synced those local contacts to your desktop using Kies or some other sync software.

The text messages may very well be lost, unless you backed them up somehow. You could check your wireless carrier's website to see if they have some kind of web-based texting functionality, where they might also store some of your more recent messaging threads.

If your phone restarts on its own that frequently, it might be starting to fail, so perhaps it's time to look for a new one. In the meantime, you could always try wiping the cache partition, which will not result in any loss of personal data or settings: http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...ing-into-recovery-mode-galaxy-s2-s3-tab2.html

 

[Frybert]

Thanks for the advice, I am just going through the process of copying all existing stuff to my laptop just in case.
I believe my contacts *may* be backed up via Orange (my SP) but I don't think I ever backed them up via Google, which I'm now annoyed with myself about.
To be honest I'm more frustrated about having no home button functionality, from what I've read elsewhere I think this can be solved by downloading something and then typing in some sort of boot command??! That's where I start to feel a little out of my depth, any advice on that?

 

[Frybert]

Also, who knew your phone saved so many screenshots without telling you? I just imported about 500 from the whole time I've had my phone that I didn't know existed-scary!!

 

[B. Diddy]

The phone should not be saving screenshots unless you take them yourself. Something weird is going on with your phone.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Frybert]

On closer inspection they seem to come from before I even had this phone - news articles from january 2012! No wonder my phone's been unhappy!

 

[Golfdriver97]

Let us know how everything goes. The cache clear should help with the restarts.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[Frybert]

I'm probably going to start getting annoying now but I've tried the power button and volume up at the same time for recovery mode thing but it just turns back on I have also tried to locate my orange backup but it makes me do it through 3g and then tells me there's a network failure ( even with full 3g signal) which I think I remember from trying to back everything up in the first place so I think my contacts are lost for sure.
Thank you so much for trying to help me! I'm now worried the alarm isn't going to wake me up in the morning now either- I guess we'll have to wait and see! I'll keep you posted

 

[B. Diddy]

How long did you keep both Power and Vol Up pressed down before you let go? Keep them both down until you see the Samsung logo appear.

If that doesn't work, try holding both Vol Up and Vol Down along with Power, according to these steps: How to clear System Cache - Galaxy S II | T-Mobile Support

 

[Frybert]

I hold them down and the Samsung galaxy sII gt-I9100P logo appears and I let go but it goes into normal start up. I've tried about 15 times with both at the same time or volume button(s) first then power button but it makes no difference.

- - - Updated - - -

Ooh, just did it holding the home button too! Woohoo!

 

[Golfdriver97]

I hold them down and the Samsung galaxy sII gt-I9100P logo appears and I let go but it goes into normal start up. I've tried about 15 times with both at the same time or volume button(s) first then power button but it makes no difference.

- - - Updated - - -

Ooh, just did it holding the home button too! Woohoo!

The S2 underwent a design change. Adding the home button to recovery reboot was among the software changes. How is transferring everything over going?