Tech Notes

Clean (some) bloatware from Samsung J3 (30-Oct-2021)

1. Put phone into Developer mode (About Device | About Phone tap Build number seven times)
2. In Developer options enable USB debugging
3. Using ADB from Windows PC with USB cable connected
4. Run adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.samsung.android.email.provider
   and adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.wsomacp
   to remove Samsung Email. At which point available storage showed 1.2GB
5. Then, same command for each of:
   com.samsung.android.app.notes
com.sec.android.app.sbrowser (Samsung Internet)
   com.samsung.android.scloud (Samsung Cloud)
   com.samsung.android.voc (Samsung Members)
   com.sec.android.app.shealth
com.skype.raider
com.sec.android.app.launcher (OneUI Launcher, see below)
   com.microsoft.office.excel
com.microsoft.office.powerpoint
com.microsoft.office.word
com.sec.android.daemonapp (Samsung Weather)
6. Ran adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.samsung.android.app.dressroom (Samsung Wallpapers) which failed saying
   Failure [not installed for 0]
7. Available storage now 1.5GB.
8. Restarted phone (several times) and after logging in constantly showed "Phone is restarting"
9. Started in Recovery Mode (power off, hold down Volume Up and Home buttons, then press Power button until logo appears) and did Clear Cache. Didn't help
10. Lucky guess made me restore the OneUI launcher:
    adb shell cmd package install-existing com.sec.android.app.launcher
Package com.sec.android.app.launcher installed for user: 0
    Which sorted the restarting message. All seemed fine, except that the Home screen has lost all its icons - probably because of the the Cache Clear.
11. Removed M&S app, and available storage now 1.6GB.
12. Also had to disable the upDay thingy which kept popping up all the time

"Upgrade" from Google Backup and Sync to Google Drive for Desktop (30-Sep-2021)

1. Download fresh installer (GoogleDriveSetup.exe) but on running it it said "A newer version of Google Drive is already installed", so did nothing.
2. Log off / on to get the prompt to "Sign in through your browser" - which happens even tho GBaS has started
3. Did that and got "Success! You've signed in to Google Drive." and
   "Google Drive is replacing Backup and Sync"
   "Move your account from Backup and Sync to start using Google Drive for desktop"
   Clicked GET STARTED
4. But, nothing happened. Several GoogleDriveFS.exe's running as J. Logged her out. Didn't help.
5. Opened Google Drive as me to get it! This killed off GBaS and restarted the migrate process (which included option to uninstall GBaS, which I took).
6. 5 errors on various .exe's. Renamed each with -RETRY.exe and they loaded. Cleared the errors, but did not download. Reversed the rename and OK
7. ... but not all files in, eg, cygwin on Drive/Web. After reboot cygwin missing files (at least) now seen on Drive/Web.
8. At end, app shows 6.3 GB of 15GB used (Gdrive web is 6.32 GB). Before, GBaS said 6 GB of 15GB used.

Sue Laptop (Sep-2021)

• She'd tried various circuits round Windows Repair to no avail
• I booted from Ubunto USB and was able to mount and copy off, from C:\Users\SMB:
  - the Sue-created folders and files in Documents and Pictures
  - AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox
• Tried booting from USB with Windows installer loaded on it using the option to keep existing files (saved as Windows.old). Got a good way through before failing with "... the operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors"
  File: \\Windows\system32\winload.exe
  Error code: 0xc000000f
• Started again and this time selected option to format Drive 0 Part 3 (453.8 GB) first
  This then got Windows in OK
• Stopped overnight at the point it wanted me to register/use a Windows account to login with.
  In the morning unplugged Ethernet cable and carried on which let me create a local account instead (thanks to, inter alia, Mauro Huculak)
  The account named SMB, and is Admin user
• Copied Documents and Pictures files to corresponding folder in C:\Users\SMB
  Installed OpenOffice and checked it could open files OK
• Use Edge to download and install Firefox.
  Had some trouble getting the saved Profile used. In the end, having stuck it in the Profiles folder (along with other folders and files I'd tried copying there but which were always ignored), which I found from Explorer using %AppData% (thanks to help.ableton.com) I used the Profile Manager.
  I selected the restored-from-copied-earlier profile as default. The process seemed to clean up redundant folders under Profiles as well as profiles.00.ini and installs.00.ini in parent folder.