A Programmer with Friends

After hacking around my HTC Thunderbolt, which is quite old for the times, things started to go bad. A quarter of the touchscreen died, the right quarter. Aside from being generally annoying, the biggest problem was my lockscreen pattern went onto the right side of the screen. So here I am, stuck, can’t get into my phone… Until ADB comes to save the day!

!–DISCLAIMER: THIS IS FOR USE TO ACCESS YOUR OWN PHONE AS A LAST RESORT. I ASSUME NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY HARM YOU CAUSE TO YOURS OR OTHER’S PHONES–!

First of all, big shout out to this guy for the video that contained the information I needed.

If you haven’t already, try to enter your gmail account and password, as that will let you in, but if you just can’t do that, or in a similar situation as me, read on!

1. MAKE SURE USB DEBUGGING IS ENABLED ON YOUR DEVICE. If not, you may just be s.o.l. If you don’t have this problem yet, make sure to enable it. (Enabling it will allow hackers to follow the below procedure to access your phone as well. It’s a risk/reward you will have to consider)
2. If not already installed, download and install the Android SDK
3. When asking about packages to install, just make sure “Android SDK Tools” and “Android SDK Platform Tools” are selected. Everything else is for app development, which is not necessary here.
4. Once installed (on Windows) open up cmd and enter

    cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools

   -or on a 32-bit machiene-

    cd C:\Program Files \Android\android-sdk\platform-tools

5. Plug your android phone into the computer, and wait for all drivers to load (you may need additional drivers depending on brand of phone, a quick Google search will help you!)
6. Into cmd type:

   adb shell
   rm data/system/gesture.key

7. It was at this point, any combination would unlock my phone, and my problem was solved. If you still have trouble then reboot your phone (still plugged in), and repeat step 4
8. Into cmd type:

   adb shell
   cd /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases
   sqlite3 settings.db
   update system set value=0 where name='lock_pattern_autolock';
   update system set value=0 where name='lockscreen.lockedoutpermanently';
   .quit

9. One more reboot and your phone should be unlocked again!

Again only use this in a case of emergency! For those who haven;t faced this yet, take great consideration into enabling USB debugging, as it may save you as it saved me.