People/contacts icon disappeared

[Android Central Question]

I have spent a couple of days trying to sort out my problem; hope somebody out there is able to assist. Recently HTC M8 had problems and I was forced to do a factory reset. This seems to have worked OK with two important exceptions. The people/contacts icon and the phone dialer icon have disappeared completely from home page and apps page. The contacts data is installed on my SD card, perhaps there are a few on the sim card. I down loaded another dialer from Google Play, however when I try to add a contact I receive this message, native contacts app is disabled, open devices settings-apps= contacts app; there is no contacts app available. Any assistance would be appreciated.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Go to Setting>Apps. Are there any headings at the top for Installed, All, and Disabled? If so, look under Disabled. If you don't see those headers, then tap the Menu button in the Settings>Apps menu, and look for a Show System option. Tap that, and now look for the Contacts app. If you find it, make sure it's Enabled.

 

[colc]

That was fast thank you; there are no headings for installed, all or disabled. in the show system field there is an option for contacts storage, the only options are force stop and disable; disable is greyed out

 

[B. Diddy]

Are you able to install the HTC People app?

 

[colc]

There is not one available in the app section, is there a compatible app on Play and if so will it find the data?

 

[B. Diddy]

Ok, so that link doesn't show up in your phone's Play Store? That means it's not compatible.

What kinds of problems was the phone having prior to the factory reset? If the firmware got corrupted somehow, a factory reset wouldn't necessarily fix it, since the phone would just be resetting to use that corrupted firmware.

 

[colc]

A bit of a story required to answer your question. Last year I acquired another phone, took the sim card from the phone in question to use in the new phone it was working perfectly at the time. A couple of days ago I had reason to use the old phone and removed the sim card to use in the old phone. For some reason it did not recognise the sim, after a lot of trying I decided a factory reset was required, hence the problem in question. As for the link; the original icon was a head and shoulders alongside 3 horizontal lines, is this what I have to look for?

 

[colc]

Update, I downloaded a contacts app (Google LLC) tried to sync; message "this might take a while" but nothing happens. Downloaded dialer(simpler) which seems to working and has loaded all my contacts; hoping for the best. for some reason, since my searching for alternatives I have to swipe a full page ad away before I can open the phone, is there a way I can identify the app that has caused that annoyance? Thanks for your replies.

 

[B. Diddy]

Try this method: https://forums.androidcentral.com/a.../901497-full-screen-ads-how-find-culprit.html

A last resort might be to reinstall the stock ROM. I'm not sure how difficult it is, but see this article: https://geeksocket.in/blog/restore-htc-one-m8/. You can find the ROM files here: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...2Fsupport%2From-downloads.html&token=R0YtDRXC

 

[colc]

Thanks for all that; most appreciative

 

[colc]

I'm back!!!
The gremlins have certainly got to me; I have resolved all the problems mentioned above, now the phone will not ring or vibrate on incoming calls; any ideas?

 

[B. Diddy]

Oh yeah! And oh no!

To be clear -- did you resolve the previous problems by reinstalling the stock ROM? Does the phone make any sounds at all, like notification tones and media sounds?

 

[colc]

No I did not reinstall the stock rom, I it took a factory reset and many soft resets; finally worked, yesterday afternoon I went to use the phone and found all these missed calls and messages. Sounds? yes the alarm works and so do the ringtones when you go into the sound and notification area.
I am about to bite the bullet and surrender to a new phone, I have had it with dearer phones, have not done a lot of research, but considering something like the Huawei Y7 2019 PRO, unless someone has a better suggestion.

 

[B. Diddy]

Ah well. If you're feeling adventurous, it still may be worth reinstalling the stock firmware.

For cheaper phones, consider a Nokia. They've been pretty impressive lately in terms of build quality, and they're all Android One, which means timely updates.

 

[colc]

Well after all that I did bite the bullet and purchased a new phone. It is a Moto G6 Plus, it is a good phone, has two features I required; headphone jack and NFC. One feature that was a bonus, in that the screen does not time out if you are looking at it, very happy with it so far. One thing it does lack is a LED notification for messages etc.
Thanks for your assistance.