Hello clever people.
I posted this 2 days ago on androidforums.com but have had no replies. So I am turning to the experts and hope someone here has the patience to help me out.
I am very computer literate and an electronic service engineer but not very Android knowledgeable. I have spent hours researching this problem and trying every suggestion and have now admitted defeat.
I have a Tesco Hudl tablet, (not the Hudl 2), running Android 4.2.2. It has been running slowly for some time but basically all was working fine until a few days ago.
It is not rooted and has only ever had software installed from Google Play.
Last week I installed 2 apps - A game called Push the Ball (which I don't suspect) and an app called Virgin Beam for playing movies on Virgin Trains. 4 days ago, I travelled to London and back and accessed the internet from both Manchester and London Euston's first class lounges and onboard the trains. I suspect I may have been hacked on one of these connections.
The first symptoms were repeated pop-up messages saying Google Play app or process was not responding or something similar. This quickly degenerated into endless messages for all sorts of apps and processes (including some I have not used in ages but presumably have some background task running). The tablet was still working, receiving emails and playing games etc but I was constantly interrupted with dismissing these messages.
I tried several times to uninstall the recent two apps. The tablet would either crash, needing the pin in the back to reset it, or say that the apps were uninstalled but they were still there after a restart.
Two days ago, a new problem arrived. Two warning triangles would appear saying that I needed to re-enter my gmail password. One I think was for email and the other for the Google account. It was however still receiving emails. Entering the password did not seem to help and was either rejected or it would just ask again. Fearing that my account had been compromised, I changed my Google password using my iMac. I have to re-enter the new password on the Hudl to access Google Play (when it doesn't crash) but can't get rid of the triangles. It is still receiving mail even before I re-enter the password it claims to need.
I am sure that I had a virus scanner installed (Avast I think) but there is no sign of it being there now. Maybe I deleted it a while ago when I had a tidy up trying to make it run a bit faster. I tried installing it again and also a backup app but had similar problems to the apps I tried to remove. Either they said they had installed but were not there or the Hudl crashed and they were not there after a forced reboot.
I have tried many times to restart into Safe Mode using the long hold on Power Off method. It never restarts in safe mode. I have not found any button combination to force safe mode from a cold start. The Hudl just has power, volume up and down and the pin-hole reset on the back.
I removed the additional SD card but that has made no difference. Last night I used DroidNAS to copy everything I could to my iMac. No problems doing that apart from regularly dismissing messages for various bits of software that the Hudl reckons are not working.
As there is nothing I care enough about losing, the obvious next thing was to do a factory reset. I have tried using both the option in Settings and the Power and Vol Up startup method. Both bring up the recovery menu which I navigate with the volume buttons and select with the power button. I have selected factory reset and clear cache LOADS of times in the last two days. Every time the Hudl reboots as though nothing has changed. All apps are there, email still comes in, the 2 warning triangles, incessant "this, that or the other has stopped" messages and I still can't get into Safe Mode.
So as a last resort, I tried using Android Device Manager on my iMac to send a remote erase device command. Now, the tablet will boot into the recovery menu from where I can try to reset to factory or just select reboot. Then it will restart as normal. When it restarts, everything is still there but after 20 seconds or so it will now shut itself down and restart into the recovery menu. Using the pin reset on the back just makes it restart to the recovery menu too.
My hunch is it has one of two problems:
a) I have either been infected with something very nasty, probably while on a public network on the train or station.
b) There is a hardware issue preventing writes to the solid-state storage. This could explain why no app installs or removals will stick and the factory reset and even the command to reboot in safe mode get forgotten when it reboots.
Sorry this was so lengthy. Can anyone help?
Martin
I posted this 2 days ago on androidforums.com but have had no replies. So I am turning to the experts and hope someone here has the patience to help me out.
I am very computer literate and an electronic service engineer but not very Android knowledgeable. I have spent hours researching this problem and trying every suggestion and have now admitted defeat.
I have a Tesco Hudl tablet, (not the Hudl 2), running Android 4.2.2. It has been running slowly for some time but basically all was working fine until a few days ago.
It is not rooted and has only ever had software installed from Google Play.
Last week I installed 2 apps - A game called Push the Ball (which I don't suspect) and an app called Virgin Beam for playing movies on Virgin Trains. 4 days ago, I travelled to London and back and accessed the internet from both Manchester and London Euston's first class lounges and onboard the trains. I suspect I may have been hacked on one of these connections.
The first symptoms were repeated pop-up messages saying Google Play app or process was not responding or something similar. This quickly degenerated into endless messages for all sorts of apps and processes (including some I have not used in ages but presumably have some background task running). The tablet was still working, receiving emails and playing games etc but I was constantly interrupted with dismissing these messages.
I tried several times to uninstall the recent two apps. The tablet would either crash, needing the pin in the back to reset it, or say that the apps were uninstalled but they were still there after a restart.
Two days ago, a new problem arrived. Two warning triangles would appear saying that I needed to re-enter my gmail password. One I think was for email and the other for the Google account. It was however still receiving emails. Entering the password did not seem to help and was either rejected or it would just ask again. Fearing that my account had been compromised, I changed my Google password using my iMac. I have to re-enter the new password on the Hudl to access Google Play (when it doesn't crash) but can't get rid of the triangles. It is still receiving mail even before I re-enter the password it claims to need.
I am sure that I had a virus scanner installed (Avast I think) but there is no sign of it being there now. Maybe I deleted it a while ago when I had a tidy up trying to make it run a bit faster. I tried installing it again and also a backup app but had similar problems to the apps I tried to remove. Either they said they had installed but were not there or the Hudl crashed and they were not there after a forced reboot.
I have tried many times to restart into Safe Mode using the long hold on Power Off method. It never restarts in safe mode. I have not found any button combination to force safe mode from a cold start. The Hudl just has power, volume up and down and the pin-hole reset on the back.
I removed the additional SD card but that has made no difference. Last night I used DroidNAS to copy everything I could to my iMac. No problems doing that apart from regularly dismissing messages for various bits of software that the Hudl reckons are not working.
As there is nothing I care enough about losing, the obvious next thing was to do a factory reset. I have tried using both the option in Settings and the Power and Vol Up startup method. Both bring up the recovery menu which I navigate with the volume buttons and select with the power button. I have selected factory reset and clear cache LOADS of times in the last two days. Every time the Hudl reboots as though nothing has changed. All apps are there, email still comes in, the 2 warning triangles, incessant "this, that or the other has stopped" messages and I still can't get into Safe Mode.
So as a last resort, I tried using Android Device Manager on my iMac to send a remote erase device command. Now, the tablet will boot into the recovery menu from where I can try to reset to factory or just select reboot. Then it will restart as normal. When it restarts, everything is still there but after 20 seconds or so it will now shut itself down and restart into the recovery menu. Using the pin reset on the back just makes it restart to the recovery menu too.
My hunch is it has one of two problems:
a) I have either been infected with something very nasty, probably while on a public network on the train or station.
b) There is a hardware issue preventing writes to the solid-state storage. This could explain why no app installs or removals will stick and the factory reset and even the command to reboot in safe mode get forgotten when it reboots.
Sorry this was so lengthy. Can anyone help?
Martin
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