Problems with HTC Thunderbolt Update - Loading old text messages

I updated my Thundebolt last night and it seems like if you have a long history of text messages with someone, those messages won't load. I can't create a text message or drag the notification down and open it to reply to that person either. Anyone else having that problem? I've rebooted 4 times now and taken the battery out twice and let it sit for a few minutes before rebooting. Nothing seems to be working and I'm afraid I'm going to have to do a hard reset and I'll lose ALL my texts.

Accepted answers

RosieG

Ok, so I finally got mine to work after nearly 24 hours of insanity and cursing Verizon. Here is what I did, step by step:

1. Backed up all SMS/MMS to app SMSBackup+

2. Backed up all contacts to Verizon

3. Removed SD Card

4. Hard reset the phone

5. Restored text messages thru SMSBackup+

6. Restored contacts

7. Restored all other apps.

8, LAST reinstalled the SD card.

This is the only way I could access texts. They actually loaded fairly quickly too. PS - I had over 20,000 texts restored in the new format. Hope this helps!

All comments

siglerwm

I've been having the same problem (and many others since this update) since yesterday morning. I've contacted HTC since Verizon doesn't seem to have any answers yet, but HTC has yet to come back with anything useful either. I can't text at all. Rebooted and restarted and tried everything I can think of at least a dozen times in the last 24 hours. I haven't tried a factory reset yet only because I've read others posts saying that it doesn't really help.

Ann154

The text messages are displayed in a new format. It might take some time for the application to apply the new format on the old messages.

You can use a SMS backup and restore application from the Play Store to backup your text messages to the SD card. After you factory reset, reinstall the application and run the restore option.

Frensg

my phone received the forced update this morning. messaging doesn't work at all "please wait" for the past two hours!

the touch screen response time on all parts of the phone are EXTREMELY slow now, the phone worked great before the update now it is basically usless.....

any suggestions? i have turned off twice, and taken out the battery. nothing helps either problem

tikibar1

ICS is a major update; if your TBolt responds like other phones did when they got the update (such as the Bionic), it takes a few days for the new update to optimize your phone ... performance can be sluggish and battery life can be worse. The best advice is to let the phone do its job, be patient for a couple of days, and see if things then improve once the optimization is complete (can take 48 hours or so).

Russ74

I left my phone on letting my old texts load for 2 hours and only a quarter of them loaded so i reset my phone and all were gone and stuck on the same problem since my phone has never been cleared of the messages since the day i got the phone. Go to your contacts and compose a new message to send them. But does anyone know how to manually delete all the saved text ? so i can just have it blank be4 it trys to load them?

kapok6

This sucks. Same here. Phone did auto update this morning, now I can't load any of my texts. I click on the widget, and it gives me a "processing" circle and nothing happens. Why can't we live by the old saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." My phone worked fine before this crap.

elliewhitt93

My phone is doing the same thing, everything else is working fine, but the my messages will not load. i tried restarting my phone and quickly accessed my messages it worked for half a second. I just put my phone in safe mode and it only took fifteen minutes to load. i just hope it will stay loaded when i take it out of safe mode

Russ74

i think i have figured it out!!!!!! ok so what i did was take out the micro sd card and went to the messager quick app and it loaded all the messages qucik havnt put it back in yet but i am going to delete the 10000000 of messages i have saved

Frensg

i called and it was a pretty easy fix. simply go into settings, apps, running, messages, stop. restart and you should be good to go!

Russ74

i did that too did not work for me but found a different way

silverwolfchild

I had the update start at 9 am mst this morning and now I cannot get it to even turn back on. I have tried to pull the battery and as far as it goes is the HTC screen and vibrates twice and nothing. I have pulled the SIM card as well and still nothing.

DanceMama13

Well, I plugged in my phone, turned off the sleep feature and allowed the phone to just go through its lengthy updating process of my text messages. After about 45 minutes it was done and so far things are working OK. Still seems like the battery is draining faster than ever. I can't find where to turn off the background data option that conserved battery life so well. . . not sure I like this new OS update. . . seems we lost a lot of simple controls to keep things private. All of a sudden apps are auto synching and when I try to turn that option off - it doesn't seem to actually WORK to turn things off. The phone wants to have EVERYTHING defaulted to auto on for synching, for running location, background data, etc. Not happy about this at all. :-(

Ann154

The background data options probably move to Settings > Usage. You need to set a data limit to access the data restriction options.

You can also check Settings > Accounts & Sync.

breezymw2002

So I did the same as dancemama13 and it worked! Only took my phone about 15 mins. Took my phone off sleep and went to text messages and just let my phone load the text messages! Good luck!

Jmscreen

After reading these threads... it seems like the only option is to wait it out?

amyy615

I was able to retreive my text messages by turning on the airplane mode then going to my messages and just letting it load it only took about 10 mins then it was fine after I turned airplane mode off. And works great now may not work for all but did for me and a few others. Worth a try

Gman_NJ

I updated my HTC Thurderbolt last evening. When I woke this morning and wanted to start texting I was having the same issues. What I did was backup all my messages and then start deleting threads. I also had one thread that had about 5K messages so I trimmed that down to about 2K and things started to work.

As usual Verizon screwed us again. If this does not get resolved I will be switching to the Samsungs Galaxy 2.It can't be any worse than this and it just seems a lot cooler.

HTC get out of the smart phone business.

mrford49

Both of my HTC thunderbolts stopped working! When making calls I can hear who I call but they can not hear me.And the apps are gone and in the wrong place. Also it keeps spinning when you try to move an app to another page. They are now junk to me! I have a warranty on the phones and Verizon tryed to fix the issue but they could not and are sending me two phones. After this i do not trust verizon or HTC.

morlin71

It's amazing that with a standard phone that has been out for over 2 years Verizon can't put out a software update that doesn't mess the phone up.

I have 2 Thunderbolts. One loaded and works fine. My wife's downloaded first and the messaging doesn't work. This is bull. Verizon doesn't read these or they would have an apology or something on the blog and say that they are working on it.

camato1999

OMG - took your advice and it worked!!! SOO happy I didn't do a hard reset! I just turned my screen's sleep mode off so that the msging "please wait" was up for a while and then all of my msgs showed up (after over 24 hours of trying to figure this out)! Takes a while but is so much better than resetting phone . . . Thank you!

kevkev

I have the exact same problem. If I had to guess i have between 8-10 thousand txts. I found that you can go to people and see who sent you a text. There will be a green 1 next to the contacts name if they text you and you can open their contact then open their text thread. Only problem is texting people not on your contact list!

kivon123

Mine has done the same thing. My texts eventually returned, though. Along with the problem of the text messages issue, I can't talk on the phone! A friend of mine as well as others had called me last night. I could hear them perfectly, but when I speak, no one hears anything. It's not even a phone anymore! It's acting as my iPod now... We aren't beta testers! Please fix! *PS Please stop the automatic update thing.*

garbler

After this update, I can't access my texts at all - the Please Wait screen just thinks and thinks. It's going to be hard to justify keeping my text plan or this phone. How tempting must it be for a device/carrier to put out an update like this that motivated people hanging on to an old device to get a new one?

RosieG

Ok, so I finally got mine to work after nearly 24 hours of insanity and cursing Verizon. Here is what I did, step by step:

1. Backed up all SMS/MMS to app SMSBackup+

2. Backed up all contacts to Verizon

3. Removed SD Card

4. Hard reset the phone

5. Restored text messages thru SMSBackup+

6. Restored contacts

7. Restored all other apps.

8, LAST reinstalled the SD card.

This is the only way I could access texts. They actually loaded fairly quickly too. PS - I had over 20,000 texts restored in the new format. Hope this helps!

ellaspike

I've been finding that the more texts I have with a particular contact, the longer it takes to load -- like 8000 texts with my daughter took overnight. I think someone earlier in this string said that the problem is that all the texts in the string have to be reformatted with the new look for the string to open at all. If this is the case and you don't feel like waiting overnight for your texts to load, the approach in the previous string makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is to require customers to accept a software update without any explanation of what the update will do, and without allowing them to decline. Does anyone know if this update came from Verizon or HTC? Doesn't really matter -- it's Verizon's problem in the end because we're their customers. This is an object lesson in how not to manage a software update, and I hope someone from Verizon is paying attention. They owe us an apology, which we won't get.

poffroyally

I too experienced the HTC meltdown post update. Unacceptable!

2dive4

I had the same issue as everyone else and spent hours on the phone with Verizon Saturday and yesterday. Verizon sent me to HTC. HTC didn't know the fix. They told me it was Google who wrote the app and distributed it. HTC sent me back to Verizon as they said, they don't have access to our accounts, so it would be a Verizon issue!

I did a temporary fix with the text messages. I went to the Play Store and downloaded an app called, "Go SMS Pro." It's a free app that I installed for now. I'm not used to the new app but at least I can receive texts and respond. After reading the threads, I will go with DanceMama13's suggestion and just let the messages program run its course. I will uninstall the Go SMS Pro first and I don't need double text messages on my phone.

In addition to the text message problem, I now have my phone "notifying" me every 5 mins. In the notification area (top left of screen), I see an envelope with an exclamation mark on the right side. When I pull down the notification menu, it reads:

"Emails were not sent. 1 Unable to send mail. (Gmail)" I did not send any recent emails from my phone. I clicked on the verbage and didn't see any emails. This happened on the 9th, same time the update occurred. I am unable to delete this. The notification is annoying and getting old. I thought it would be a quick and easy fix by turning the email notification off. I proceeded to go to settings, sound, volumes and learned with the new update, they combined notifications along with ringtones. So if I turn it down or off, I don't hear my incoming phone calls.

I'm frustrated and tired of dealing with this Thunderbolt (on my second one). I'm tempted to go with an iPhone. Ugh!

DanceMama13

Try going to settings, accounts and sync and turn the option to OFF. This may help w the unsent mail notification. The notification option under ringtones only handles the sound of notifications. Hope this helps. It worked for me. Good luck!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4GLTE smartphone

ellaspike

've been wondering whose bright idea this whole debacle was, and what is the most appropriate punishment for them. Can we bring back the stocks, or maybe public stoning? I'm not usually given to conspiracy theories, but as I was pondering why the powers that be would have gone about this update in such a stupid way, it occurred to me that it's rolling out exactly the way they want it. If you have a Thunderbolt, it's going on two years old now, and Verizon thinks it's about damn time you upgraded. I just told someone who called from Verizon to discuss "optimizing my account" that I had no intention of upgrading when my contract expires at the ned of the month because my T-bolt is working great and none of the new phones had two of the features I like best about it, the FM tuner and the kickstand. Next thing I know, my T-Bolt is no longer working great!

I was reduced finally to deleting the longest text message strings, and now my texts are working fine. I'm going to wait a few weeks to pass judgement on ICS; I've read in other forums that people who got this update earlier found that their phones booted faster and had better battery life. For now, though, the only differences I can see are cosmetic, and I really don't care what font my text messages are in as long as they work, so this has been a net loss.

wilsonGTi

Reading the post here there seem to be many different things that can cause this issue. The issue with my wife's phone was a duplicate contact. About 10 seconds after deleting the contact online in Gmail Messages came right up.

cassapill

I typically decline software updates but succumbed this time and severely regret doing so. Text messages suddenly wouldn't load, for starters, and email formatting less functional. Ditto Google search. Went to local VZW office and was told there was no going back to pre-upgrade status but "hard reset" might help. Was assured contacts would be retained. Well, they were all lost, as were all text messages from last year, many with personal significance. Messaging now functional but I need to go to the trouble to recover numbers for half the people I routinely text.

And that's not all. My screen is now prone to freezing. I have to close it down and restart to get it going again. I use vibrate instead of ringtones but my phone won't vibrate, except when I type on the screen, which I don't want. Have tried repeatedly to restore vibrate for incoming calls and messages and disable it for screen-taps, to no avail. My phone went from functional and trusted to an untrusted piece of trash. I want to flush it down the toilet. Having vented, I will now attempt to get some answers by phoning VZW.

ToniTP

I had the exact same issue after never erasing some 3000 texts from the same sender.

I went to the verizon store and the very informative rep suggested going home and downloading a program to upload texts from the phone.,,,cant remember which one it was, just google it. I plugged the Thunderbolt into my computer followed the prompts ..and done!! I had a word doc with every text ! This cleared the texts from that sender and my phone worked perfectly again. good luck!!!

hermindseye

So, this doesn't solve the problem with the phone, but will save your text messages. I just downloaded an app that is sending all my text to my gmail.... sms backup +. It seems to be working really well. Even if I have to do a full reset - I'm so glad I still have my texts. I wish they were all on my phone, but this is better than nothing.

I'm furious with Verizon for this - but the fact that my text messages are saved was important and the tech support woman did everything she could - and then suggested this. Was on the phone for about 30 minutes with her. IN the process of backing up over 16000 texts and picture messages - so I'll update again after that's all done.

Ann154

This one will backup only SMS messages to your SD and restore them on the device.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore

Ihatetexting

Thank you so much DanceMama13! Yesterday I was so depressed and SOOO ANGRY about this update... After spending hours on the phone with Technical Support and going into a Verizon store yesterday, I was getting ready to do a hard reset until I saw your post! Turning off the Sleep function (basically allowing the screen to stay on) and opening the messages and just waiting it out for about 20 minutes WORKED!!!!! So happy I didn't have to do a hard reset.

Were you all getting all of your text messages before the update? I wasn't. So hope this update works. Also, messages from iPhones were getting cut off, so hope this fixes this.

Also, did the update send a random picture from your phone to a random email address? This happened to me.

Thank you everybody from the forum. Next time I'm going to save myself hours of anguish and consult you all first. What's your next phone going to be?

Thanks,

Grant

pistolpete66

SOLVED! Dancemama13 had the solution. My fiance has a TBolt and had the issue with messages for 2 days. She could read new ones but old ones just said "Please wait". She let it run for hours but because it was "sleeping", it really wasn't doing anything.

Follow DanceMama13's recommendation. I turned off sleep mode, plugged the phone into power and went to messages and let it sit at Please Wait. After about 30 minutes, all the old messages had been converted and it is working again!

VERIZON: POST SOMETHING SAYING YOU HAVE TO LET THE MESSAGES CONVERT AND LET YOUR EMPLOYEES KNOW!!! THIS IS A MAJOR ISSUE AND YOU HAVE THUNDERBOLT USERS GOING BACK TO FACTORY IMAGES FOR NO REASON. GET THE WORD OUT.

Thank you Dancemama13!!!

DanceMama13

I am so glad my solution worked for you and so many others!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4GLTE smartphone

Verizondosenotcare

Ok last two weeks ago on a thursday night to friday morning verizon automaticaly updated my Thunderbold(That was working perfectly fine prior to this). Come morning I colud not make any calls using the regular phone I had no audio out at all. Speaker phone was the only function I could make a call on. I recieved numerious text mesasage from last Sumer????? and then text from folks I do not know for other people. Called verizon and complianed about it , my phone was fine before the freaking update. So they sent me on of there tarrific refurbessed thunderbolts. After going throught all the head achs of transfering all my data over to the new device. This Phone started doing the same wierd text, Had a delay when recieving calls had to say hello about four times before anyone heres me.Phone shuts down during calls and i am rebooting all the time. the other night over night the phone started called people ..I talked to our local verizon store they advised yes there has been all kinds of trouble since the update??? They advised to call verizon and see what they were going to do about it... Will guess what verizon is denies any trouble and don care about the update. The update has messed up hunders of phone and they do not want to admitt it ,, but hey they will sell you a new phone,,,,,How about that!!!!!! My plan runs out in May Iam gone I have called three times and complained and they don want to do a thing ,, I have been with verizon since 1999 and i guess they do not value me as a customer.I am sure ATT will like my business VERIZON DOSE NOT CARE ABOUT THERE CUSTOMERS GO ELSEWHERE !!!!!!

>Creative editing to remove profanity<

Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

HawaiiBKC

Just remember that Verizon doesn't create the software, so they are not the ones to blame here.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure they're trying their best to solve the crisis, because not only you are having problems with the Thunderbolt. It's quite a large selection of people with the problem.

and,

Guessing by your grammar, you don't think that there might be any alternatives until then? Maybe an upgrade, or another Verizon phone on hand?

Verizondosenotcare

>Abusive attacking post deleted<

Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

tami1029

For a week and a half I have been fighting with this update. I have done 2 hard resets on the first phone,Hours and hours, days and days on the phone with tech support. Htc and verizon could not fix it. Sent me another phone. Hard reset. Did not fix the message problem. I have backed up and restored my messages several times. Took me 8 hours to backup. 15,000 messages. 12 hours to restore. Keep in mind that the backup programs only save sms messages, not mms, I lost all attachament and pic in the text. I took 2nd phone to the store. The first guy said he fixed it, before he could walk around the counter, it was stuck again. They did a hard reset without backing up. Lost all my info. I was told that they know about the problem. But you need to just sit back and wait for them to send out a repair patch. Whenever that might be..... I was so done with all this mess, I walked out of the store without my phone. I dont know if they will throw it away or not. I can not go back in the store. I get so angry, I am going to have a stroke in there.

tami1029

I had all the same problems plus more. No results. My contract is up in a few weeks on 3 lines. I going to wait and let them call me to find out why I have NOT paid my bill. No help.No money.

ruchtm

Thank you SO MUCH 2dive4 for posting this response! I have an HTZ Rezound and was having the same problem with not being able to retrieve texts. I downloaded Go SMS Pro as you suggested and it works perfectly! I too am getting used to a new program, but for now it's awesome not to be stressed and irritated not being able to view my text messages.