[SOLVED] Can't restore WhatsApp

[l_r_c_t]

Hi Everybody,

I switched mobile phones – from Asus Zenfone 2 to Sharp Aquos S3.

I did the following:

1. I had all my WhatsApp chats and media backedup yesterday (June 11th) night – one part through WIFI and the rest on cellular data – because I had to go out.

2. When later in the evening I tried restoring from this backup on the new phone, it prompt me with the messages described below:

A. “Looking for backups. This is taking longer than expected. Check your network connection and wait, or skip.”

then, it starts restoring, it gets stuck at 24% and says:
B. “Unable to restore your chats from this backup. Do you want to restore your chats from an older backup?”


3. At this point I just closed the app (through task manager), uninstalled and reinstalled it several times, all giving the same results.


** Trying to solve the issue, I erased WhtsApp from the previous phone..


Questions - please answer by number so it’s easier to follow up:

1. Any ideas on how to solve it?

2. Should I try downloading WhatsApp and restoring on the previous phone?

3. Have the messages that people sent me throughout the last day received? Should I be able to see them once the problem hopefully gets solved?




I’m sure someone has already asked this question but I couldn’t find the solution..


Thank you in advance!

 

[Sagar_20]

You get the restore option only for the first time you are setting it up in a phone. It clearly says if skipped, you won't be able to do it later.

Perhaps you deleted or modified the whatsapp database files in phone or the online drive?

May be switch to some other network and try, (Not mobile data)

For future, make sure auto backup is set to weekly or daily.

 

[l_r_c_t]

Thank you Sagar_20 for your reply.

1. Auto backup was set to daily.. It's just seems that the file stored on Google Drive was corrupt..
2. Originally I didn't modify any file - on Google Drive or locally on the phone.
3. I tried switching between mobile and WIFI networks but it didn't make such difference.
4. It's super important to know, that even if WhatsApp tells you it failed to restore and offers you no other option than to skip - you can simply close the app and uninstall it.. Every time you reinstall, you can try a different solution (restore on another network, restore from local etc)

Anyway, the (partial - almost full) solution, Thank G-D, I found - was to copy the whole WhatsApp folder from the old phone to the new one.
It took many hours because there were around 10,000 files to be copied and the writing speed to the phone's memory is not the fastest.

Then, I reinstalled WhatsApp to new phone, and then removed the Google account that had the backup file.
When I launched WhatsApp, it found the backup file locally stored in the WhatsApp folder I copied to it before.

Notice that usually there are 7 backup files stored locally - in a folder called DATABASE.. If the latest is corrupt you can change the name of a previous backup to msgstore.db.crypt12 and when you reinstall WhatsApp it will try reinstalling from there.
Just don't forget to keep track of which file you're using every time you make an attempt to recover from..

It took quite sometime - I left it even for the night to restore.

The reason I say it was a partial solution is because I had to use a backup file that was around 2 weeks old - meaning all conversations and media between this backup file and date of restoration, unfortunately didn't come up..

Also, something I found out during this process of trying to restore was that you can contact WhatsApp for support via email:
android@support.whatsapp.com (That's for Android, but I'm sure the email for other platfroms can be found as well).


Don't forget to reconnect your Google account to the phone.


Hope I could help good people restore their WhatsApp in case they encounter similar difficulties.