Dreaded 'To Start Android, Enter Password' after reboot. PLEASE HELP

[canonBoy]

Last night I got home, threw my phone on my charger with and realized I hadn't restarted my phone in quite some time, so I decided to power down. Upon powering on, after the lenovo/droid splash screen, I get this black screen with a prompt to enter my password to start android. I never set a password, just a pin. Entering the pin doesn't work, entering my main google account password doesn't work either.

There were 2 times where I entered a password and instead of the usual 'wrong password' message, it said 'To start Android, turn the device off and then back on'. Following the directions only gets me back to the original black screen prompting a password entry.

I've gotten to the point where it says I have 8 more attempts at the password at which point the device will be wiped.

I also tried to boot into safe mode to no avail. Pressing the down volume button and power gets me to the Android boot/recovery menu where I have options for 'Recovery Mode' and 'Factory Mode', what's the difference between factory and recovery modes?

Has anyone successfully gotten past this screen without having to wipe the phone? ANY advice is appreciated!

Thanks

 

[kmf1]

The Recovery mode is normally used to wipe the cache partition, which gets rid of unnecessary files and cleans things up. The Factory data recovery resets the phone to new, erasing all data, etc. Do a Google search for your issue, as others have run into this predicament. Hope this helps.

 

[canonBoy]

Thanks, yeah, I've Googled it and it looks like its most common among people that have rooted/unlocked bootloader/or flashed a rom, none of which I've done. The only thing close to that that I've done is running a line of code via ADB for the Tasker Plugin AutoTools. Last night was the first reboot since running the ADB. I don't think there is a way to get past the password screen, and am thinking I'll have to reset.

 

[Ry]

Odd. I thought this should be your PIN.

 

[1Coopgt]

Do you download anything outside of the Google play store ? Wondering if your phone got infected with something.

 

[canonBoy]

Ended up calling Verizon tech support. They walked me through clearing the cache (he pronounced it casháy... smh) partition, which got me past the password blockage, but it did reset my phone too, which neither of us thought would happen, but it did.

I thought it was maybe the AutoTools plugin for tasker that made the phone hiccup, but I can't seem to repeat that.

This similarly happened to my wife's Nexus 6P about a month ago, hers had a message saying the password was wrong and because of the device being encrypted, it would have to be reset. The only common circumstance I can think of was that both phones were plugged in (USB-C) when powering on. I wonder if all the kinks have yet to be ironed out with USB-C standardization across the different android manufacturers.

 

[doogald]

This similarly happened to my wife's Nexus 6P about a month ago, hers had a message saying the password was wrong and because of the device being encrypted, it would have to be reset. The only common circumstance I can think of was that both phones were plugged in (USB-C) when powering on. I wonder if all the kinks have yet to be ironed out with USB-C standardization across the different android manufacturers.

Do you use only apps from the Play Store, or do you side load some apps? I'm thinking that some app had administrator privilege and somehow encrypted the phone with its own PIN. I'd almost also wonder about Android Device Manager and remote locking, but that's obvious that it is ADM doing the locking. Do you have any other security apps on the phone?

 

[canonBoy]

Do you use only apps from the Play Store, or do you side load some apps? I'm thinking that some app had administrator privilege and somehow encrypted the phone with its own PIN. I'd almost also wonder about Android Device Manager and remote locking, but that's obvious that it is ADM doing the locking. Do you have any other security apps on the phone?

I use tasker coupled with the Secure Settings plugin to set PIN access. I've been doing it for a while on several different devices though, and never had this issue. My wife had the same thing happen to her, but she doesn't use the Secure Settings plugin. I don't sideload apps except for my own that I create from Tasker.

 

[raghav18]

I guess you should see the below link before you res-set the phone.

How to Bypass ‘To Start Android, Enter Your Password’ Message, If You Set a Pattern Lock (No Root) - techtrickz

I landed to a similar issue when my phone had an android update, this is the very annoying thing from android.

 

[doogald]

I guess you should see the below link before you res-set the phone.

How to Bypass ‘To Start Android, Enter Your Password’ Message, If You Set a Pattern Lock (No Root) - techtrickz

I landed to a similar issue when my phone had an android update, this is the very annoying thing from android.

If you look at the photo in the first post, that's Android asking for your passphrase in order to unlock the encrypted file system. If you cannot supply that passphrase, the only way to restart the phone is to factory data reset it.

 

[canonBoy]

If you look at the photo in the first post, that's Android asking for your passphrase in order to unlock the encrypted file system. If you cannot supply that passphrase, the only way to restart the phone is to factory data reset it.

Where does this passphrase get set? On both phones this has happened to, the PIN was not the passphrase. The main gmail account password was not the passphrase. And I've never set up any pattern security feature. I think next time I read somewhere that 'default_password' might work. I actually get really anxious every time I restart my phone now. I make backups of all my apps that can. It's a real headache.

 

[doogald]

Where does this passphrase get set?

When you encrypt your phone, it requires that you have PIN or passphrase security before it does anything else. The PIN or passphrase that you would use to unlock the phone also unlocks the encryption key at boot up. I'm not sure what happened on your phone, though, if your unlock PIN did not decrypt the full disk encryption key.

 

[Ry]

When you encrypt your phone, it requires that you have PIN or passphrase security before it does anything else. The PIN or passphrase that you would use to unlock the phone also unlocks the encryption key at boot up. I'm not sure what happened on your phone, though, if your unlock PIN did not decrypt the full disk encryption key.

As far as I know, these phones ship with encryption on.

 

[kmf1]

I just checked in Settings/Security and it appears that my phone is encrypted with no option to do otherwise. Hadn't noticed that before. There is an option to encrypt the memory card, but I have not done that. Interesting.

 

[Ry]

I just checked in Settings/Security and it appears that my phone is encrypted with no option to do otherwise. Hadn't noticed that before. There is an option to encrypt the memory card, but I have not done that. Interesting.

I believe all phones that are capable and shipped with Marshmallow and above are encrypted by default.

 

[canonBoy]

When you encrypt your phone, it requires that you have PIN or passphrase security before it does anything else. The PIN or passphrase that you would use to unlock the phone also unlocks the encryption key at boot up. I'm not sure what happened on your phone, though, if your unlock PIN did not decrypt the full disk encryption key.

I never executed any encryption function on either of my two phones that this occurred on. The phone was encrypted to start with apparently. No PIN or password that I ever used on the phone allowed me to access the phone. Always have had to do a factory reset.

 

[canonBoy]

I believe all phones that are capable and shipped with Marshmallow and above are encrypted by default.

So then what is the default passphrase? If the devices are encrypted by default, it's kind of silly that when something goes wrong on the software (or hardware) side, it requires some passphrase that is unknown to the user. This is a major flaw, and it sucks when it happens to unexpecting customers.

 

[Ry]

So then what is the default passphrase? If the devices are encrypted by default, it's kind of silly that when something goes wrong on the software (or hardware) side, it requires some passphrase that is unknown to the user. This is a major flaw, and it sucks when it happens to unexpecting customers.

Looks like it's supposed to be default_password.

http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/127076/how-does-marshmallow-encryption-work-technically

Once a pattern, PIN, or passcode is set, that also gets set as the key.

 

[yayerobe]

Looks like it's supposed to be default_password.

http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/127076/how-does-marshmallow-encryption-work-technically

Once a pattern, PIN, or passcode is set, that also gets set as the key.

My zenfone 2 did not enter I asked for a password after the flash and your recommendation I unlocked greetings thanks