[Q] Media Scanner causing phone to continually reboot?

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A weird issue manifested on my phone today ... the phone started, upon boot up, to spontaneously reboot. It would boot up within 30s, at which point I unlock it an pulldown the notifications screen (to see what was going on).

I saw several instances of "media scanner running" occurring - over the course of various trials I would see the following messages alternate on the top status bar.

Media scanner running... (system storage)
Media scanner running... (SD card)
Media scanner running.... (USB storage)
Media scanning completed

...while below in the notification areas I'd see the "Media scanning", "Media scanning...USB storage" etc messages periodically appear.

The phone would first lockup, then reboot perhaps 3 out of every 4 startups. Several of those times the last message I saw prior to the lockup was Media scanner running.... (USB storage).

I pulled out the 32FB Sandisk SD card, then tried booting the phone several times, and this time no issue - booted up fine, no lockups nor auto-reboots. Note though that I've had the SD card installed for over a week, and the problem only cropped up today.

There were two SD card-related changes I'd made last night: 1) used ES File Explorer to cut/paste ~400MB of video from the onboard camera storage to the SD card and 2) copied 1.75GB of MP3 files to the SD card.

The MP3s I had copied to /media/music (direct from laptop to SD, using a microSD-to-USB adapter), while the videos (MP4s, created by GS2 camera app) were moved by ES File Explorer to /DCIM/Camera.

So at the moment my phone is working fine (4 clean boots), though sans SD card - any ideas why "media scanner" may be choking upon scanning the SD card? Should I move the SD content to a different directory, or just kill media scanner?

I've seen issues like that but usually with no name low quality SD cards, with them either bad or modified to register as larger.

I'd backup what you have on the card and format it using the phone. If it's still giving you issues try it on a computer and download a program to check the memory sectors to make sure there are no read write errors.

A good free one is ariolic diskscanner. Can't remember if it can scan SD cards though, though I'd be a little surprised if it couldn't.

You don't want to disable media scanner, not even sure if that's possible. Many things require it to be working.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App

thanks for the tip - I mounted the SD on my PC and backed everything up, then tried deleting the ~2GB Media directory ... no dice, still locked/booted on the first boot up. Going to next clear the other large diretory (DCIM) and see what happends, and then finally reformat the card entirely. Will report back...

so i wiped and formatted the card in the phone ... rebooted several times with the newly empty card, and so far the lock/boot issue hasn't recurred.

Copying all files save the media stuff onto the card, will repeat the test; and then finally will put the media back and see how things go; will report back.

Good deal. Hope that's the last time it gives you trouble.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App

This is so weird. I've had this problem as of yesterday.

I'm having the exact same issue... but with a Galaxy S 4G.
I tried re-flashing my phone but I realized it was the SD card causing the problem because the internal phone storage scans just fine.

I've tried 2 different SD cards (one Samsung, one Kingston) - backed up my files on my Mac and tried formatting both cards, putting the files back on the SD cards and booted the phone.

Same problem was happening.

The phone boots up fine without the SD card but I am at loss what to do considering most of the apps I use need the SD card to run.

Try formatting them using the phone.

Could be a corrupted file on your SD card. If after the format the phone works fine, put the files back on one at a time and see if that's what's messing it up.

Try also changing the format type. Seems androids like fat32 a little better.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App

Originally Posted by netarc

so i wiped and formatted the card in the phone ... rebooted several times with the newly empty card, and so far the lock/boot issue hasn't recurred.

Copying all files save the media stuff onto the card, will repeat the test; and then finally will put the media back and see how things go; will report back.

so far so good ... went a day w/o any spontaneous reboots, thought I do want to do a few more startup trials, but fwiw, formatting the SD card (in the phone) seems to have done the trick.

I do realize now that when I first inserted the card in the phone, I just started using it, I didn't bother formatting it - doh!

Originally Posted by netarc

so far so good ... went a day w/o any spontaneous reboots, thought I do want to do a few more startup trials, but fwiw, formatting the SD card (in the phone) seems to have done the trick.

I do realize now that when I first inserted the card in the phone, I just started using it, I didn't bother formatting it - doh!

I have this same issue -- when my MiscroSD card is in, and it goes to media scan, the phone just keeps resetting... SO annoying

question: how do I format the external SD ?

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