Xperia Z5 compact - Notification bar, home and app buttons awol.

[HunterWatts]

Title pretty much says it all.
The phone ran out of power a few hours ago, put it on change and when it came back on (there is nothing unusual about any of this), for some reason a number of settings had changed slightly and I'm now no longer able to use my home button, the square app button, or slide my notification bar down.
- No recent update
- Definitely not a hardware issue (the buttons make the click and vibrate when pressed)
- No access to a pc
- Prefer not to factory reset

Additionally several system processes don't work. For example when I try to back up the phone, I get an error message saying that backup has stopped.

Cheers in advance,
Hunter

[Lord_viridis]

Can you press the reset button in sim port and see if the system fully resets correctly.
Hold the button for 3 seconds

[HunterWatts]

Ah man thank you for the suggestion, I was so excited to try it - no dice.

Any other ideas?

Should say as well that the phone appears to be working perfectly in every other regard. The problem buttons even appear to press (white fade and haptic response), the notification bar up top slides down far enough to see the date.
I'm thinking this may be a settings issue? It's just bizarre.

Anyways thanks again, shame it didn't work.

[Uliwooly]

Do you experience the same in >>> safe mode

[HunterWatts]

Yes, same problem.

[Uliwooly]

You might have to repair the phone with XC 

Xperia Companion (XC)

Software Repair Guide

Alternatives on How to backup Xperias

http://talk.sonymobile.com/thread/36355

[Lord_viridis]

I agree with Uliwooly, if the reset or safe mode fails to fix it, back it up in Xperia companion (don't backup settings to be safe though) and perform a repair installation.

[HunterWatts]

-- I'm ever so sorry but as per original post, I have no access to a personal computer.

I was rather hoping for a bit more information on the bug/issue, followed by informed solutions, rather than generic stab in the dark snake oil fixes and suggestions.

If you don't know what you are talking about, or have little understanding regarding the problem at hand, let us keep our genericisms to ourselves.

[Lord_viridis · Accepted solution]

Sorry you feel that way.
I came to that conclusion AFTER reading up on the issue and found that a bug in ota software updates on all Android phones will once every now and then, eventually throw up this bug.
The actual solution is to open up ADB and enter the following code:

adb shell am start -n com.google.android.setupwizard/.SetupWizardTestActivity

This will cause the phone to go into the Google setup mode which will first bring back the taskbar, then on reboot, the buttons.
However, the buttons may still disappear again if whatever caused the corruption in the Shell OSD UI, happens again.
This led me, along with the fact that you confirmed it also happens in safe mode, to recommend bypassing this solution and just rewriting the software, eradicating the corrupted file and replacing it with a new version via repair installation.
As you have no access to a pc, you can copy any important files you need to an SD card and then perform a factory reset, I know this is not what you would prefer, but in the long term will be the better solution for your issue.

http://www.androidjunkies.com/how-to-fix-missing-soft-keys-and-notification-bar-after-android-update...

http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/08/07/how-to-fix-missing-home-and-recents-buttons-and-notification...

[dandy63]

HunterWatts......these are not 'stab in the dark/snake oil fixes' but genuine information on how best to proceed with fixing your problem.....this is a user based forum, people give their valuable free time to help others like yourself so show a little bit of respect.

I'm sorry about the issues you are experiencing but the information offered above is the best way forward