# Cross-posted: Solid, Reliable Workaround for the Settings Bug



## cpurick (Sep 1, 2011)

(Cross-posted from CM4DX, as MIUI inherits this bug.)

The settings bug, or the settings-not-sticking bug is an issue on Droid X phones running CM7, including MIUI. It's present on builds using the Froyo kernel, but I don't know about Gingerbread yet. Only a minority of users experience this issue. The cause is not understood.

Basically, the phone will intermittently enter a condition where several settings cannot be changed. If you try to change one of these settings, the control will appear to change, but if you come back to the settings page you will see that your setting has not "taken." Instead, the original value remains set. (Your change will not take affect until after reboot.) Affected settings include brightness, screen timeout, airplane mode, stay awake, and USB debugging. All of these settings are on a single "circuit," and will fail together. Another circuit includes GPS and mobile data. Either circuit (or both circuits) may fail, in which case none of the settings on the affected circuit will change until the next reboot. The USB port is also affected, though I don't understand how that failure is related.

The issue appears and disappears on startup. Typically, if I shut my phone off I'll have to start it three or more times before I get a session where none of the settings are stuck and the USB port works. In the past, users have SBFd their phones to address this. Unfortunately, none of our developers have seen it.

In any case, *today I stumbled upon a workaround that works every time*:
_Simply reboot the phone in airplane mode_. Of course, airplane mode is one of the settings that fails. So you can't actually _put_ the phone in airplane mode, but if you press the command for airplane mode before you restart your phone, then it will reboot in airplane mode, and all of the controls on both circuits will work. The only catch is that you obviously have to remember to turn airplane mode off before you can use it.

Anyway, I've tested this workaround dozens of times in both CM7 and MIUI, and it's worked every time. Hopefully this will take a lot of pain out of what has been a nasty, nasty bug for some of us to deal with.

Rick

I'm now going to spend some time researching whether this bug still exists on top of the GB kernel.


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## as_daylight_dies (Jul 9, 2011)

Thank u very much for this. I experienced this bug multiple times on froyo miui but have yet to experience it on ginger miui. I will report here if i do

~Sent from my Droid X running MIUI 1.9.16.1


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## cpurick (Sep 1, 2011)

Do you use Weather and Toggle Widget or Batt Stat?


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## as_daylight_dies (Jul 9, 2011)

Ok this actually happened to me today on the Ginger kernal =/ I don't use any of the apps u mentioned

~Sent from my Droid X running MIUI 1.9.16.1


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## cpurick (Sep 1, 2011)

That's too bad. Because I had it happen to me on the GB kernel, and those two were the only things I'd installed.

Did you try rebooting w/ Airplane Mode on?

I've noticed that sometimes GPS and mobile data are still hosed when I use this workaround, but overall it's been the best fix I've found.


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## razorloves (Jun 7, 2011)

cpurick said:


> That's too bad. Because I had it happen to me on the GB kernel, and those two were the only things I'd installed.
> 
> Did you try rebooting w/ Airplane Mode on?
> 
> I've noticed that sometimes GPS and mobile data are still hosed when I use this workaround, but overall it's been the best fix I've found.


did you get my pm? get on irc chat if you can. wanted to talk to you about it.


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## as_daylight_dies (Jul 9, 2011)

cpurick said:


> That's too bad. Because I had it happen to me on the GB kernel, and those two were the only things I'd installed.
> 
> Did you try rebooting w/ Airplane Mode on?
> 
> I've noticed that sometimes GPS and mobile data are still hosed when I use this workaround, but overall it's been the best fix I've found.


Yeah reboot with ap mode works

~Sent from my Droid X running MIUI 1.9.23


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## cpurick (Sep 1, 2011)

Well, as razorloves has hinted here, the D2 guys have pretty much figured this out. Turns out they are much more familiar with the sticky settings bug over there.

They're working through some issues, but I'm sure that when this is fixed we'll see the same changes in our codebases.

In the meantime, they have a better workaround. Set airplane mode, then reboot into Clockworkmod Recovery. From there, fix permissions. I also wiped my cache and Dalvik cache.

The difference in doing it this way (with the added step of fixing permissions) is that it actually _fixes_ something. In three reboots since doing this I have not used airplane mode again, and everything came up working correctly each time. So far, it's as if the problem isn't even there.


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