Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Android: android.process.acore has stopped

I've started to receive the infamous message: The process android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. Is this the android counterpart of the blue screen of death ?


Lately I'm receiving this annoyingly often. Googling for it you can find some links giving some solutions I found unacceptable like hardware resetting the phone.

Notice: There could be many causes for this problem, so follow the steps presented here to determine if you are in this case.

Hence, I decided to take some action and find the reason. After some debugging this is what I've found:
09-23 16:32:13.798: DEBUG/Sync(110): skipping photo edit for unsynced contact
09-23 16:32:13.938: WARN/dalvikvm(110): threadid=37: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x4000fe70)
09-23 16:32:13.938: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(110): Uncaught handler: thread SyncThread exiting due to uncaught exception
09-23 16:32:13.948: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(110): java.lang.NullPointerException
09-23 16:32:13.948: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(110): at com.android.providers.contacts.ContactsSyncAdapter.cursorToContactsElement(ContactsSyncAdapter.java:846)

Unfortunately the problem, a NullPointerException, is in ContactsSyncAdapter.java, a piece of Google maintained code AFAIK and we can only watch it happens and no much more than finding a workaround. Before introducing the workaround let's analyze one of the possible reasons for this problem.

Last message before the exception is

skipping photo edit for unsynced contact

so the problem might be an edition of a contact photo that can't be synced.

On possible workaround is to disable Auto-sync for Google data.
Try to synchronize Gmail, Calendar and Contacts and check if you receive the android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly message.

Fortunately you can just disable Contacts synchronization. You should remember to synchronize manually your Contacts data until you find another solution, an upgrade is provided by Google, you can delete all of your Contacts and hope for the best or hard reset your phone.


Hope this helps.

12 comments:

Erik Andrén Zachrisson said...

I've got the same issue but unfortunately no solution to it.

Diego Torres Milano said...

Hi Erik,
YOu can also try (AT YOUR OWN RISK):
1) disabling synchronization
2) deleting contacts data (Settings->Applications->Manage applications->Contacts Storage and then Clear data)
3) enabling synchronization again

Hope this helps

Erik Andrén Zachrisson said...

did it work for you?

Diego Torres Milano said...

It was a bit too late for me when this came to my mind, I was tweaking the database ...

Shawn C. said...

Recently this issue began appearing on my HTC Magic as well.

So far the only time the "android.process.acore" error appears is [consistently] on power up.

After a Force Close, it sort of works ok... meaning there are so many other issues with this phone (dropped calls, voice dialer doesn't work, poor interface, terrible call log, lousy widgets, poor home screen lacking vital information, etc.).

Unknown said...

Good article and keep writing

Thanks
http://www.onlinedocumentconversion.com

Unknown said...

I have a G1 and have recently been getting the android.process.acore has stopped.. message. I've disabled auto sync like you recomended but why is the problem linked to contact photos? This error message comes up whenever I'm in an app and press the home screen or back arrow, its as if my phone lags out then the screen goes black and the error message pops up. Wtf is going wrong?

Spiffo said...

Found this entry from a success story. http://androidforums.com/samsung-moment/21853-process-android-process-acore.html

Unknown said...

Try to delete all data from system apps. U ll have to redo all ur settings and phone seems a little laggy at the beginning (fixes itself after reboot). But it should fix it and u keep all ur apps. (there might be some data loss like kontakrs sms...)

Unknown said...

Just had a nightmare of a time with this exact same issue. I didn't want to do a full wipe, so I tried every other intermediary step, and deleting the contacts data fixed it immediately. Ironically, I can't recall making any changes to any contacts in the last 24 hours or so. Anyway...


THE SOLUTION FOR ME..was to go to home>settings>applications>manage applications>RunningTab> click on contacts Data or Storage (I'm not 100% sure which one)>Clear Data>Then Force Stop within that process(aside from the recurring force stop I had to hit every 5 seconds) I'll update if there are any spillover effects as well. Thanks Diego and all the other contributors!

Diego Torres Milano said...

Thanks a lot for your contribution.

Unknown said...

john's last comment worked for me too - just a pain to get through all the force closes to eventually force close on contacts and clear storage.