Tip: how to fix a launcher that is stuck in Force Close loop

I personally have never ran into this problem, but a friend of mine just did and found a very nice solution which is worth sharing. The launcher on his Verizon Samsung Fascinate (a variant of Samsung Galaxy S) went into a permanent Force Close loop, which means that the launcher would crash every few seconds  not allowing to launch any apps, including settings. The displayed error message: “The process com.sec.android.app.twlauncher has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.” Rebooting and removing the battery did not help.

In this case, however, notifications did work. The solution was to go to market.android.com in the computer’s browser and install a 3rd party launcher to the phone (ADW.Launcher in this case; LauncherPro is another popular option). He was then able to pull down notifications on the phone and start ADW.Launcher and forget about the stock launcher.

Not only did this solve a problem of the stock launcher being stuck in the Force Close loop, but he is now enjoying multiple advantages of the ADW.Launcher and wondering why he didn’t try it earlier. For few examples of the ADW.Launcher niceties see this post.

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6 Comments

  1. Tayler
    Posted May 9, 2012 at 7:36 pm | Permalink

    My launcher that is stuck in the loop is ADW. D:

    • Jenn
      Posted June 2, 2012 at 9:11 pm | Permalink

      I had the same issue with ADW. What I did was click,report,when the force close issue came up,then when the page popped up,with a link to a google site,I clicked it,opened it,opened search (Within the browser.) Googled, “Google Play Store app” then clicked the first app that popped up. When it gave me the option of which app i would like to use to open it, (Browser,google play,etc.) I clicked google play,searched for “ADW Launcher” from within google play,then hit uninstall.

      • Guin
        Posted December 29, 2012 at 3:05 pm | Permalink

        When I click Report, Google Play crashes, then any app that was open crashes in succession (I have to click OK for each one, often multiple times), and then com.gapps.google process and android.process.acore both crash (again, multiple times), rendering my phone useless.

        I’ve tried wiping and resetting to factory, reinstalling the manufacturer’s recovery program…I still haven’t gone as far as rooting/reflashing, since I’m totally afraid I’ll brick my phone but it’s basically a brick now. Can anyone help me?

  2. L.Thomas
    Posted October 14, 2012 at 1:17 pm | Permalink

    Thank you for posting this solution!!

  3. jatt22
    Posted October 16, 2012 at 1:51 pm | Permalink

    Legend!! my phone is back in operation again…no need to do hard reset or anything…

  4. JGB
    Posted March 27, 2013 at 6:46 pm | Permalink

    Oh thank you! This saved my night

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