Author Topic: Anti-Theft "soft-bricked" my phone?  (Read 1802 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline c4berens

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 3
Anti-Theft "soft-bricked" my phone?
« on: January 21, 2018, 09:43:14 PM »
Hi, I have an old Sony ST21i that I had Avast Antivirus and Antitheft on (I would tell you the android version, but... well, see below).

I just turned it on again (without a SIM) and been wondering why I couldn't access my system settings. I couldn't even do a factory reset!
Eventually, it dawned on me that AntiTheft had an option like that. I opened Avast, deactivated AntiTheft, disabled all options like "force wifi", "force data", "restrict access to system settings" etc - and it worked again. Hooray, I thought...

Now I could successfully complete a factory reset - all apps and data are gone.

But: somehow the AntiTheft behaviour is back! I know there was an option "survive factory reset" - but since I disabled AT (proven by the fact that I was finally able to access my system settings before) that shouldn't be happening. And Avast isn't showing up as an installed app obviously, so I can't check the settings anywhere.

So I now have the following problem: I cannot access my system settings at all, meaning that I cannot:
1) do a factory reset
2) connect to a Wifi and install avast remotely (although it is forced active, it doesn't connect even to an open network)
3) enable usb debugging mode and flash the thing

Please help! How do I get my phone back?