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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My launcher that is stuck in the loop is ADW. D:
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.
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?
Thank you for posting this solution!!
Legend!! my phone is back in operation again…no need to do hard reset or anything…
Oh thank you! This saved my night
Thank you so much for this tip!!! My phone was blocked because of it and you saved it!
If you can still access your Settings then go to “Applications/ Manage Applications/ All” click on “ADW.Launcher” then click on “Clear Data” click “Ok”. When you return to your Home screen, your ADWLauncher would be as good as new. It worked for me. I hope it works for you all too.
If you can’t access your settings then don’t worry. Just long press on your home screen (for a second or two). A window titled “Add to Home Screen” will pop up. In it click on “Shortcuts. A “Select Shortcut” window will pop up. Scroll down in it to find “Settings” and click on it. It’ll be added to your Home screen. Now you can carry out the process that I stated above in my earlier comment.
Also kudos for this solution, albeit in my case it was a little different! Due to a buggy theme, my ADW Launcher was in a crash loop. Installing the first free alternate launcher available on Google Play, allowed me to regain control of the phone and uninstall the faulty theme!…
my fone is still stuck in the loop HELP !!!!
Thank you for this solutin. You saved me. It worked very well