Whatsapp Restore stuck at 24% , restoration failed / google drive and local back up

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Casualnooblord

Casualnooblord

Member
Dec 7, 2020
12
3
Albert83BCN said:
Yep, I have been having problems with my chat history since looong ago, seems that something must be corrupted because every day at 2AM when it performed the local backup always crashed. So I ended up with the habit of powering down the device before 2AM so that it would not crash every day.

But from time to time I would forget to power down, and also being too much time without performing the backup is also call for trouble in case something goes wrong again, so from time to time I would let it do the backup and then crash, because I learned that at that point when I was prompted to restore a backup I could always succeed by clicking OK, let it do it's work with the latest msgstore.db.crypt14 file in the Databases folder and when the WhatsApp internal storage reached a certain amount of data I knew it was ok (1.03 GB in my case), force close the app and the chats would be magically there, all of them that I can tell, back to 2011 (I posted about this in this thread or some similar back in 2019 and also many other people confirmed this).

However since early July I just cannot do this anymore. Now it seems as there is an additional 'preparing data' step (in the "post-activation" state of the app, more on this later) where it checks for integrity or something, and I would never succeed with the force-close method again. I also noticed that the storage used during the restore goes beyond what I used to see before. I don't have a clue about how the WA works internally but to me it seems as if previously this worked because chats where actually restored during the 0-24% portion of the process, and from 24%-31% and/or beyond it was about the references to media, and the two processes were somehow separated and force-closing during the 24% allowed to get up and running again, but now it wants it to complete all the process or otherwise it rolls back (?). It's either this, or my backup just got even more corrupted than before, I don't really know.

The other thing that I noticed (fortunately?) is that if you try the force-close method during the "pre-activation" step, it can still work and you end up with the chats restored... but in that case the app will only run OK for as long I have it in memory. As soon as it closes and the process restarts, does this kind of check again and the chat gets corrupted again... the problem here is that activating every day is not possible as you know because of the cumulative delays that WhatsApp imposes in each attempt... I have been trying to get it to work for a few days days now without success (even trying to restore the unencrypted msgstore.db in an Android VM to see if I can extract a "clean" backup again, without success) and now I have to wait for 36h to activate again and I do not have much hope that I will be able to come up with a solution this time.

Guys, a lot of people has trouble with restoring their/our chat history as you all know first hand, we need to keep this updated or come with a megathread or something, with whatever procedures that any of us find that might still work post July 2022.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My ""solution"" for this issue is that I automatically backup the whatsapp data partition using swift backup (paid version is 7 euros and allows you to set a daily automatic schedule). The backup happens every night at 1:30 pm, then at 2:00 pm Whatsapp crashes. Unfortunately, swift backup does not have an automated restore function, so I used macrodroid app to automatically unlock my screen at 4pm , open swift backup, navigate to the whatsapp backup and restore it.

I've disabled the notifications of these apps, and even used macrodroid to navigate to homescreen, kill background apps and relock my screen after the restore.

Result: swift backup makes a whatsapp backup of the chat history of today (and everything before it), whatsapp crashes an halfhour later, and then after that the chat history gets restored again.

In the morning when I wake up whatsapp works perfectly fine again, all chats are there. And I dont have to actively be bothered by it again, there's not a trace of all the **** that had happened while I was asleep.

It's ridiculous that I have to take these steps because whatsapp has such a ****ty restore process.
 
L

lolcoelhoo

Member
Sep 8, 2022
7
0
I don't know jwat happened

I restored my backup (8 gb) but said my whatsapp was using 32 gb, now says 63 gb (I didn't restore any media, and even couldn't find those big files on my phone) any idea?
 
L

lolcoelhoo

Member
Sep 8, 2022
7
0
also for me isnt backing up to google drive =(

I would back up my 9.5 GB ( i have space on google drive) reinstall and download the backup from google, but keep on "Uploading 0.97 MB of 9.5 GB (0%) and doesnt go futher =(
 
5

5uryawanshi

New member
May 29, 2018
4
0
Pune
it seems there's a bug, so before you get stuck all the restore is completed but this bug reverts everything.
worked for me and restored everything

Follow these exact steps :

1 - install a fresh copy of whatsapp
2 - auth and login using your number
3 - select option to restore using google drive backup and select your account
4 - start the restore
5 - the moment it reaches 24% or whatever % you get stuck on FORCE STOP whatsapp! (this is very important)
6 - reopen whatsapp and your chats will be restored! :D
 
C

CharmB_16

New member
Oct 2, 2022
4
0
Singapore
Hello! Could you advise how long it took for yours using the Drive restoration?

I tried the Google Drive restoration method (23GB) and it goes into 100% in a few minutes (i then go into force stop) but it still shows 'unable to restore' and goes to search for Older Backups.

I have tried for several days (google Drive - 23GB, goes to 100% and fails very fast) and 2 local backups (25 Sep 550MB , 24 Sep 232MB)

5uryawanshi said:
it seems there's a bug, so before you get stuck all the restore is completed but this bug reverts everything.
worked for me and restored everything

Follow these exact steps :

1 - install a fresh copy of whatsapp
2 - auth and login using your number
3 - select option to restore using google drive backup and select your account
4 - start the restore
5 - the moment it reaches 24% or whatever % you get stuck on FORCE STOP whatsapp! (this is very important)
6 - reopen whatsapp and your chats will be restored! :D
Click to expand...
Click to collapse


Also, can anyone advise if for the failed attempts did the media files show up as files but 0 bytes on your phones?

TIA everyone!
 
5

5uryawanshi

New member
May 29, 2018
4
0
Pune
CharmB_16 said:
Hello! Could you advise how long it took for yours using the Drive restoration?

I tried the Google Drive restoration method (23GB) and it goes into 100% in a few minutes (i then go into force stop) but it still shows 'unable to restore' and goes to search for Older Backups.

I have tried for several days (google Drive - 23GB, goes to 100% and fails very fast) and 2 local backups (25 Sep 550MB , 24 Sep 232MB)




Also, can anyone advise if for the failed attempts did the media files show up as files but 0 bytes on your phones?

TIA everyone!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine was 150mb so it was pretty quick! Try force closing just after it gets stuck, good luck!!
 
bbsilva

bbsilva

New member
Oct 4, 2022
3
0
CharmB_16 said:
Hello! Could you advise how long it took for yours using the Drive restoration?

I tried the Google Drive restoration method (23GB) and it goes into 100% in a few minutes (i then go into force stop) but it still shows 'unable to restore' and goes to search for Older Backups.

I have tried for several days (google Drive - 23GB, goes to 100% and fails very fast) and 2 local backups (25 Sep 550MB , 24 Sep 232MB)




Also, can anyone advise if for the failed attempts did the media files show up as files but 0 bytes on your phones?

TIA everyone!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Hey, my whatsapp looked exactly like this when I tried to restore backup from google drive!

It reaches 100% and appears to be unable to restore. Files are also 0 bytes in size.

I thought my backup might be corrupted, but it looks like it's a problem involving a lot of people.
 
bbsilva

bbsilva

New member
Oct 4, 2022
3
0
My backup is 5.2GB and the conversations backup is 600MB, much smaller than yours but the exact same errors still appear
 
bbsilva

bbsilva

New member
Oct 4, 2022
3
0
CharmB_16 said:
Hey yes the Drive restoration totally gets stuck at 'restoring messages' and moves to local back up.

When is the date of your drive backup may I ask? Does your local backups work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

My Google Drive backup was taken on 9/26/2022. I don't have a local backup, I urgently need to restore this one from the Drive. I thought it would be corrupted, but I think it's an error of the application itself, there is a bug blocking the restore.
 
C

CharmB_16

New member
Oct 2, 2022
4
0
Singapore
bbsilva said:
My Google Drive backup was taken on 9/26/2022. I don't have a local backup, I urgently need to restore this one from the Drive. I thought it would be corrupted, but I think it's an error of the application itself, there is a bug blocking the restore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw some people comment that the last option worked for them? To not allow access to media and another forum was to not allow contact access.


Do try and let us know if it works for you? I haven't been able to restore from Drive/local too...
 
itsmanask

itsmanask

New member
Oct 14, 2022
2
2
Just one simple solution - Force Stop the WhatsApp app as soon as it reaches 24%
And when you'll reopen it, your chats would have been come back.
Don't worry, just trust me, and do it.
It works like magic.
The only catch is that your Media won't recover, only your chats will.
But you can redownload the last 30 days media manually by clicking on each Photo/Video separately. I'm sorry, but till now, I've found no way to recover the media beyond 30 days.

I've researched through hundreds of articles and videos but this is the ONLY solution that worked for me.
I even contacted WhatsApp Support but they said that my "Chat Backup is Corrupted" and there's no way to recover it. Finally I found this solution on YouTube and got my chats back.

Come back and tell us if it worked for you or not :)

Thank me Later.
 
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MinaMikhail

MinaMikhail

New member
Nov 15, 2022
2
0
WA.JPG
Hi All

I had same issue however after reading tons of reviews and a lot of Trial of error I FIXED THE ISSUE !!
Let me break down what happened :

> Quick Brief
- My old phone is dead all of a sudden ; I do not have a local backup stored on a harddrive and I do not have access to the old phone to get the latest local backup therefore I was totally defendant on the Google Drive backup for WhatsApp
- Old Phone - Pixel 3 XL / New Phone - Pixel 6a
- Tried restoring the google drive backup for whatsApp and it does not work

Steps :
1. install WhatsApp and start the process of restoring with Google Drive ; as soon as it reaches 24% and gets stuck Force Stop WhatsApp and close it .
2. Open WhatsApp ; you will find your chat / message history restored without any media
3. Take Local Backup from the restored Chat DB and stop the backup with google drive ( this is IMPORTANT )
4. Copy the local backup from the phone to your an external location ( PC / external hard-drive )
5. Uninstall WhatsApp and wait for a while then install it again and prompt the restore from the Google Drive again .
6. The Google drive restore will get stuck at 24% ; wait and do not force stop or do anything and give the process its time.
7. The restore will fail and ask you if you want to restore from an older version of DB or you want to skip ; choose skip
8. WhatsApp will open with the groups you were added to only and without any message history however you will find at the top of your chats "Restoring Media" ( image attached )
9. The restore Media process will take its time ; at my case it was restoring 5GB of media .
10. After the restore media finishes connect the phone to the PC and copy all restored WhatsApp media ( images , voice notes , videos , documents , .... ) to the PC / external hard-drive WA
11. Now you have on your PC/hard-drive the local backup from WhatsApp ; the DB with message history along with the restored media
12. Uninstall WhatsApp and repeat steps 1 & 2 to get your message history
13. Copy manually all your media from the PC to the WhatsApp media folder on the phone
14. Now you have both your message history and your media restored .

I tried it and it worked for me ; it is tiring and will consume time but it is worth it

P.S : Make sure each time you uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp that you leave a bit of time or WhatsApp will think you are a hacker and will not allow you to register your phone for sometime ( 1 hour / 24 hours / .... )
 
itsmanask

itsmanask

New member
Oct 14, 2022
2
2
MinaMikhail said:
View attachment 5762081Hi All

I had same issue however after reading tons of reviews and a lot of Trial of error I FIXED THE ISSUE !!
Let me break down what happened :

> Quick Brief
- My old phone is dead all of a sudden ; I do not have a local backup stored on a harddrive and I do not have access to the old phone to get the latest local backup therefore I was totally defendant on the Google Drive backup for WhatsApp
- Old Phone - Pixel 3 XL / New Phone - Pixel 6a
- Tried restoring the google drive backup for whatsApp and it does not work

Steps :
1. install WhatsApp and start the process of restoring with Google Drive ; as soon as it reaches 24% and gets stuck Force Stop WhatsApp and close it .
2. Open WhatsApp ; you will find your chat / message history restored without any media
3. Take Local Backup from the restored Chat DB and stop the backup with google drive ( this is IMPORTANT )
4. Copy the local backup from the phone to your an external location ( PC / external hard-drive )
5. Uninstall WhatsApp and wait for a while then install it again and prompt the restore from the Google Drive again .
6. The Google drive restore will get stuck at 24% ; wait and do not force stop or do anything and give the process its time.
7. The restore will fail and ask you if you want to restore from an older version of DB or you want to skip ; choose skip
8. WhatsApp will open with the groups you were added to only and without any message history however you will find at the top of your chats "Restoring Media" ( image attached )
9. The restore Media process will take its time ; at my case it was restoring 5GB of media .
10. After the restore media finishes connect the phone to the PC and copy all restored WhatsApp media ( images , voice notes , videos , documents , .... ) to the PC / external hard-drive WA
11. Now you have on your PC/hard-drive the local backup from WhatsApp ; the DB with message history along with the restored media
12. Uninstall WhatsApp and repeat steps 1 & 2 to get your message history
13. Copy manually all your media from the PC to the WhatsApp media folder on the phone
14. Now you have both your message history and your media restored .

I tried it and it worked for me ; it is tiring and will consume time but it is worth it

P.S : Make sure each time you uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp that you leave a bit of time or WhatsApp will think you are a hacker and will not allow you to register your phone for sometime ( 1 hour / 24 hours / .... )
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wish you had posted this 30 days ago. I was facing this similar issue last month and managed to get back my chat history using the Force Stop technique, but failed to get my media back. Unfortunately, I guess that now it's too late and there are hardly any chances left that I could recover it back.
Anyways, I thank you from bottom of my heart for your help. You took out your time and typed such a long answer just to help others. Most people don't even bother to do it once their issue is resolved.
It'll surely help many people to recover their chats and maybe help me too incase I face this issue again. Most people don't understand the intensity of how valuable WhatsApp chats can BE for someone.
The world needs people like you Mikhail. Keep it up 👍
 
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MinaMikhail

MinaMikhail

New member
Nov 15, 2022
2
0
itsmanask said:
I wish you had posted this 30 days ago. I was facing this similar issue last month and managed to get back my chat history using the Force Stop technique, but failed to get my media back. Unfortunately, I guess that now it's too late and there are hardly any chances left that I could recover it back.
Anyways, I thank you from bottom of my heart for your help. You took out your time and typed such a long answer just to help others. Most people don't even bother to do it once their issue is resolved.
It'll surely help many people to recover their chats and maybe help me too incase I face this issue again. Most people don't understand the intensity of how valuable WhatsApp chats can BE for someone.
The world needs people like you Mikhail. Keep it up 👍
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the encouraging words !
 
C

crisdurx

New member
Jan 24, 2018
1
0
instructions to recover files and chats

I managed to solve this problem, they are long and somewhat large steps, also specific.

To put them in context whatsapp gave me an error out of nowhere, I was using it normally, I was going to answer a message and out of nowhere I get an error and it closes, I try to restore and could not.

Then I deleted all my data and uninstalled to restore my backup (at this moment I lost all my data).

The backup went from 24 to 100 (%), and there were two options, omit or try to restore with another account, I gave omit and I noticed that although it did not restore the chats above if I managed to restore the files because the load came out at the top of the app.

I went to many sites and this was the best, I used stuff from here in the steps below.



1. Start restoring your data, it doesn't matter if it stays at 24%, let it load until it gives an error.

2. Click on skip and it should come up loading your files at the top, you can also check in gallery or file explorer, if so let it finish, you also need to remove your automatic backups, change the journal option to only when you press the save button (danger, don't press it).

3. When you are done go to the whatsapp folder and inside it has a folder called media that contains all the files (photos, videos), copy this folder to a safe place.

4. In this step what I did was delete the database folder, but actually I think this does not matter, after I had my files in a safe place I deleted the whatsapp data, I think also the com.whatsapp folder, uninstall the app and reinstall it (so that I got back the login and ask if I want to restore with drive).

5. Install the app again, say that if you want to restore with your Google drive account, you have to be aware, when you finish downloading the data and you see that reaches the number in which it stays (in my case 24%) immediately you have to go to applications, then whatsapp and force stop, in this step even not open whatsapp but the chats should be restored after doing this.

6. Go to where you saved the previous whatsapp media folder with your files and paste it into the new com.whatsapp directory, if you open whatsapp it should be working correctly with your chats and files.
 
Lampe2020

Lampe2020

New member
Jan 11, 2023
1
0
Småland, Sverige
I have found a very easy solution to the backup-stuck problem: just wait.
When my backup got stuck at 58mb of 61mb I force-quit the app and emptied the cache, however the problem persisted. WhatsApp uploaded the first 58mb very quickly and then got stuck again.
I put my phone away because I didn't want to bother about it at the moment and two hours later my smartwatch alerted me that the backup was now at 99%. Another hour or so later my smartwatch alerted me again, saying that the WhatsApp backup is complete.
With restoring it, that's most likely also just a matter of waiting and if it fails, retrying.
 
S

Simon_29

Senior Member
May 22, 2015
244
121
Hamm
Force stopping WhatsApp a few seconds after it reached 24%, fixed the problem for me aswell!

Thanks everyone!
 
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    Albert83BCN
    Hi guys!

    I have been facing this issue this whole week while trying to move all my chats to a new phone I just bought as with the old one the charging port was dying and I could not bear it anymore. So almost everything restored smoothly from Google Backup and it was like being in my phone again with a few wizard steps but then I Installed WhatsApp (WA) and gone through the typical activation and restoring process and. as many, I got stuck at the 24% sometimes, some others 31% and 39%, and never got past the 39%.

    I Tried almost everything: restoring from Google Drive, transfer all WhatsApp directory to internal storage and trying to restore from there, etc. Going back to the old phone to create fresh backups just in case they were corrupted as many people suggests, getting every time more delay to be able to activate WhatsApp again up to 12h for both SMS and call activation... just to mess again and feel back at square one, I guess you all feel the pain.

    Well, the good news is that I finally managed to restore all the chat history!!! (well, cannot be certain that 100% was restored but I do not miss anything ATM and I can go back up to 2012 chats so I guess that qualifies as "everything" hehe).

    So, I'm posting here because I've been searching a lot on the forums and the reddit and for all the people that is having this issue recently, almost no body came back to report success and I know it feels really discouraging :( It certainly gives the impression that this issue has no fix at all, and that you should accept losing all the chat history and starting from the start again. But from all the data I've been gathering during this week, at least two or three people reported to eventually being able to restore the chat; they fell in one of these two categories: they either transferred to a different phone where the backup seemed to restore okay, and then exported and restored in the target phone with success (something like a "bridge" restore mode, most of the cases I've read did it this way) or they finally succeeded by sheer brute force by trying again and again and again.

    I fall in this 2nd category. In the most recent attempt I was doing what I've been doing again and again and again with just minor variations in the workflow and finally succeeded. TL; DR; I think in reality in many cases attempts could succeed by just letting the phone restore the backup endlessly, by not giving up and assuming the restore process went wrong when it has been stuck forever at either 24, 31 or 39% and force closing..

    But I know in the midst of desperation OCD kicks in and you want step-by-step success case scenario reproduction so I will tell you all the steps that I followed that I can remember that got me to finally have the backup to end successfully:

    0. First of all, in the winning attempt I had already uninstalled WA from the new phone and removed totally the WA folder in the internal storage / sdcard storage. Not sure this is mandatory but just to tell this was the case.

    1. Since I got WA working perfectly on the old phone at every moment, I backed up locally for the Nth f%!?&·( time. This left me with the latest local backup plus a few others in the databases folder as a result of keep messing up.

    2. I copied the full WhatsApp directory from the internal storage of the old phone to a safe place. This could be the PC or whatever, but PC transfer via USB seems too sloppy. You maybe could do it via ADB, whatever, I went by the route of coping it to the external SD with some random explorer utility like ES File Explorer. It does not matter, the point is to be able to backup the full WhatsApp folder in order to restore it as similar as possible as the original. What we are more interested right now is in the database folder but having all images, videos etc in place will help in getting it like before the easiest way. (Disclaimer: Ok guys sorry if some steps are too obvious to XDA users which usually are highly educated in the matter, but I was thinking of sharing/linking this text on the reddit and others, so please bear with it).

    3. I installed latest WA in the new phone, opened the app (I intended to not open but I somewhat forgot) and got to the welcome screen, immediately closed the app at that step.

    3. I restored the full folder to the new phone internal storage, pure copy/paste style (as said, in my case via the SD since both phones have SD slot and was very convenient, but via USB, cloud, etc. can be done).

    4. I went to the databases folder and only kept the msgstore.db.crypt12 file and the latest backup with a date (ie: msgstore-2019-11-21.db.crypt12), deleted the rest. Honestly I do not think this is crucial but I somewhat wanted to make it easier for WA to know which one to target, I thought about keeping only the msgstore.db.crypt12 but some random dude pointed that the one with the date was needed. I was under the assumption that file structure is identical in both but just wanted to get done with this and keep both, just in case.

    5. Before opening again the WA to try to activate and restore with this full local copy, I opened the Android settings app and went to applications > whatasapp > storage, as suggested by user redweaver, thanks for the tip! by keeping looking at the storage usage of the app during the restore process we could get insight about if it was really doing something or the app was really stuck. Keep open for now. In my case, I saw also on the old phone that my data used for the app was 780+ MB, so I had an idea of what should be on the new phone by the time it finished (if it did!).

    5b. I don't think this is really necessary but I did it just in case. I was planning to go to work and let the thing running as long as it would need, and I would make sure that the process would get maximum uptime and nothing would get in the way. So I went to Applications > WhatsApp > Battery usage (or something like it) and disabled the battery optimizations for this app. I also went to the developer mode settings and enabled do not lock the phone while it is charging and everything that looked like it might be relevant. Again, most likely this has nothing to do, but reproducible steps, right? :)

    6. Now open WA and activate it as usual, but when it seems that the activation step ended and you go to the next screen, immediately put the phone in air plane mode or disable data/WiFi, whatever. The goal is that it cannot reach Google Drive to look for the online backup. Honestly maybe in the end is not the culprit of GDrive but many people states that the GD backup is broken at this time and suggests going the local route, so we will do it like this.

    7. WA should tell you that looking for the backup is going too slow and to skip this step (sorry to not have exact message, I have it in Spanish, but something in these lines, BTW excuse my somewhat limited English :D). The point here is to click on the link that says skip the step and when you are prompted with a popup, click also on Skip.

    8. WA will display the typical restore / transfer-like screen where the process starts. At this point you have to enable again data plan / WiFi at least or exit air plane mode, don't know really but even if restoring from local it complains about not having internet connection, maybe needs it to encrypt with the key or something? don't know.

    9. Now is the feared moment! Even this time, I got somewhat stuck at 31% again. I left it do its thing, and some time later, it prompted for the popup that has a progress-bar from 0 to 100 (honestly, what is the difference between both?!) which also got stuck at 31%. If you let it be, it starts going back and forth many times, I guess maybe its going chat per chat and the progress-bar represents each one? Dunno. Thing is, even in the prior attempts I got at this point and the backup did not finish successfully. But this time I was decided to let it do its thing as much time as it would take, until the end. In the process the phone might display a pop up saying that WA does not respond. I clicked a few times in the 'keep waiting' option, then I just forgot because I did not have time to mess with it and hoped that it was still working on the background, which bring us to step 10.

    10. While we are contemplating the backup process, we can go to the settings app again and look how the internal data is going for the WA. In my case, after some time under the restore process, when I went there I saw WA had occupied 0.91 GB of data space. After going back and forth again between WA and settings, the usage keep growing: 0.96, 1.03, 1.10... I thought it was on the right track, and encouraged me to keep waiting. Maybe in the end the process is too slow for old databases. Note that some people speculates that having messages from very long ago might be the culprit here due to changes in the table structure and that this might be the reason breaking the restore process. And maybe it is the case, but even if it is, in my case I finally succeeded where previously I didn't and without deleting anything, so this does not seem to be a deal-breaker or I would have never succeeded. I say it because some people reported that deleting old conversations and trying again finally made them succeed. Now I suspect the true reason was simply that by making the database smaller the process finished earlier, but YMMV.

    11. Cannot be totally sure, but in my case, I noticed that leaving WA on the background and clicking on the WA icon again might stop the process for true and bring a message about not being able to recover the chats, I got this previously, do not try to open the WA normally, only leave it temporally to look to the space usage in the settings to get back to it by swyping between recent apps to keep the same instance open and working, this was a key point in my success trial that did not happen during the previous ones.

    12. And finally, while I kept switching between WA and the settings and when I last saw like 1.30GB of space used (almost twice the space compared to the old phone, maybe it leaves a lot of temp data) I don't know if I either messed with the app-switching or it really finished, but then I got prompted to the screen where you enter your name or nickname. And when I completed this step, I finally got to the chats screen and everything was like in the old phone! Where previously I would get to a lot of empty chat rooms with maybe 40 total messages restored according to WA. Hurray!

    Notice that in my case it was still reporting 31% on the WA background screen under the progress bar popup when it finished!! so it seems that is not really mandatory to experience the 100% complete to have it work in the end, but YMMV.

    OK, maybe not the most elegant "guide" out there but I wrote it in a hurry and my english sucks, I just hope it might help someone to not lose their WA chats forever.

    Good luck!

    Edit: I almost forgot but, for the sake of completeness. I also tried a certain script that can backup WA from the phone and retrieve the encryption key, it will also leave an unencrypted copy of the chats database that can later be viewed with a WhatsApp viewer like this. The script is called WhatsApp Key/DB Extractor, and it still works as of 2019, just look at the latest posts in the thread. Guys here on XDA most likely know about it but if not, you might give it a try. I tried it because I assumed that maybe I could circumvent the restore issues by going that route and pushing the backup via ADB, but turns out the legacy WA won't prepare the database due to the time out of sync issue, or at least the data seemed to be lost after performing the restore process, and the unencrypted database on the PC cannot be digested by WA latest versions by just putting it into the internal storage directly according to what other users commented. But, if you finally give up trying the restore process, it still could be relieving to know that you keep a local copy in the PC that can be viewed with another PC tool, at least you get a backup and the conversations are there, in a different way though. Maybe in the future there's a process that can restore them again to a different phone, and you could then merge the new chat database with the older backup with tools like Merjeapp.
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    iqmyst87
    Well, i figured that whatsapp has actually completed the restore at 24%. There are just something preventing the apps from loading normally.

    What i did was let it load at 24% for about 10 minutes, then i force close the apps and restart the phone.

    Once restarted, open back whatsapp, and it will continue with initialising process and once completed, all chats are actually restored. Wasted almost a month to figure this out.
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    Dutch078
    Hi Everyone,

    After several try outs, I finally succeeded to restore my local backup of Whatsapp. I also discovered and tested some tricks to find out what really works. I hope this information will help you to solve the 24, 31, 35 or 100% backup restore stuck problems of Whatsapp efficiently.

    Before starting the whole process: On several websites is given the advice to delete all your Google accounts on your new phone and to delete all your WhatsApp backups made with Google Drive. In my case I did NOT. Probably, this had no important effect on restoring of my local backup of 1,9 GB with Whatsapp.

    During the whole process it’s also important that your new phone is always in the active mode. Therefore, in the Settings of your new phone you have to disable the sleeping mode. Your battery should also be charged to 100%. With an adapter your phone could also be connected to an electrical wall socket.

    To restore my local backup successfully, my steps were:
    1. I deleted my Google Drive backup on the internet with my personal computer. Then I made a new local backup and a new backup with Google Drive with my old HTC Desire C phone of all my chats, documents, images, video’s and other media, etc. without deleting anything.
    2. On my (new) Samsung Galaxy A5 phone I deleted all the Whatsapp folders and files.
    3. With Play Store I installed the most recent available version of Whatsapp (= 2.21.20.20) on my new phone and opened it only a few seconds. Without pressing on the button Agree & Continue in the Welcome screen of WhatsApp, I closed Whatsapp immediately.
    4. With a USB-connection I copied the whole Whatsapp folder of my old phone to my personal computer. Additionally, I copied the same Whatsapp folder of my personal computer to the internal storage of my new phone. This second step took about 45 minutes.
    5. With a File Manager on my new phone I went to the map WhatsApp/Databases and kept only the 2 most recent local backups. These files were: msgstore.db.crypt12 and msgstore.2021-10-18.1.db.crypt12. All other (backup) files in the folder Databases were deleted.
    6. Via Settings and Apps on my new phone, I went to the app(lication) of WhatsApp and opened the screen App-info of Whatsapp. Being there, I opened the Storage display of WhatsApp. It’s important to monitor the data shown in this display. By frequently sweeping to the Restoring screen and sweeping back to the Storage screen you could monitor what is happening during the restoring process. Earlier, I had noticed, that immediately after the start of restoring my backups the amount of MB’s was quickly increasing and decreasing several times. Without any new actions WhatsApp resulted in a very low amount of MB’s (in my case about 14,75 MB) and an endless during restoring process.
    7. With this new insight, I started (again) to activate Whatsapp on my new phone. After entering my phone number, activation code and confirming the 2 questions of WhatsApp about using my contacts, documents, media, etc., Whatsapp started to search for backups. Sometimes Whatsapp started with my Google Drive backup. But most times with my local backup. It did not matter, as I found out that I could interrupt this process with step 12.
    8. As Whatsapp found my local backup for the first time, I confirmed, that I wanted to restore this local backup. By frequently sweeping to the Restoring and the Storage screen, I discovered what the maximum peak of MB’s of my local backup was, before Whatsapp was decreasing this amount of MB’s. In my case my peak was nearly about 312 MB’s. But on my old HTC phone the amount of data in the internal storage of WhatsApp was only 215 MB’s. It’s an indication that WhatsApp tried to read my (local) backups. The extra temporary MB’s on my new phone were probably necessary to process the whole (local) backup.
    9. After reaching it’s lowest point of MB’s and without reaching the 100% restoring level (= it stopped restoring my messages at 24, 31 or 35%), Whatsapp was showing the message: “Sorry, your backup can not be restored. Would you like to restore another backup?”
    10. After pressing on the buttons “Yes” and “Restore”, WhatsApp started to restore the next backup.
    11. As WhatsApp tried to restore my Google Drive backup, I saw it succeeded to download it. In my case this was 41 MB’s. That’s the same amount of MB’s, that was uploaded with my old phone to Google Drive. But Whatsapp did not succeed to get my Google Drive backup into the internal storage. Finally, this process was endless going on without showing how much % of the messages were restored.
    12. After reaching the endless restoring stage, I interrupted this process in the Storage and Data screen of Whatsapp by pressing on the button “Manage storage”. You could repeat this step every time when you reached the endless restoring process. Please, do not do this in an earlier stage. Otherwise WhatsApp could finish the whole process.
    13. Avoid also pressing on the pop-up of Whatsapp telling you that the Whatsapp App will start again. Too often pressing on that button could also finish the whole process and then you have to start all over again with a new activation code. Instead, just change your screen by sweeping to the Restoring screen.
    14. As a result of step 12: Whatsapp will ask in the Restoring screen to agree to restore another backup. Before confirming that choice, it’s important to clear the cache in the Whatsapp App-info display.
    15. In my case Whatsapp also tried to restore a backup that Whatsapp had never found. Despite this curious message WhatsApp started directly at 24% and continued to 35% and 100% restored messages. But without any result Whatsapp also stopped restoring the never found backup by asking me again to restore another backup.
    16. Now again Whatsapp showed me the information of my local backup (including the time that it was made). After first cleaning the cache in the Whatsapp App-info display again, I confirmed that I wanted to restore this local backup. But now something different happened. In this step Whatsapp started from the beginning directly showing me that 100% of my messages were restored. So everything was there, but Whatsapp could not transform it into it’s own (storage) system. Without any new actions this would also result in an endless restoring process.
    17. Finally, my solution was: “After the start of restoring my local backup, just a few seconds before Whatsapp will reach it’s highest peak of MB’s (= in my case nearly 312 MB’s) shown in the WhatsApp Storage screen, I quickly went to the WhatsApp App Info screen and pressed on the button “Force Stop” (= in my case when the amounts of MB’s were in between 280 to 312). In the following pop-up, I confirmed that choice immediately.
    18. Next I went quickly to the Restoring screen. There was WhatsApp showing me the screen where you have to fill in your (WhatsApp) name.
    19. After typing and confirming my name, WhatsApp started the initializing process. After a few exciting moments Whatsapp showed me all my chats, media, etc..
    20. After checking everything, I found out that all my chats, documents, images, video’s and other media, etc. were 100% complete. Nothing was changed, lost, damaged or corrupted.
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    Mzasif
    Hi, I got to step 9 and it got stuck at 31% as prev but now its asking to either skip or restore from older backup? The storage went up to 1.3gb at one point but is now back to 58mb. Do I skip or restore from older or just leave it idle until it prompts with something else
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    itsmanask
    itsmanask
    Just one simple solution - Force Stop the WhatsApp app as soon as it reaches 24%
    And when you'll reopen it, your chats would have been come back.
    Don't worry, just trust me, and do it.
    It works like magic.
    The only catch is that your Media won't recover, only your chats will.
    But you can redownload the last 30 days media manually by clicking on each Photo/Video separately. I'm sorry, but till now, I've found no way to recover the media beyond 30 days.

    I've researched through hundreds of articles and videos but this is the ONLY solution that worked for me.
    I even contacted WhatsApp Support but they said that my "Chat Backup is Corrupted" and there's no way to recover it. Finally I found this solution on YouTube and got my chats back.

    Come back and tell us if it worked for you or not :)

    Thank me Later.
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