Encrypting your Android Kit Kat tablet

[Suff]

A couple of weeks ago I bought a cheap Android tablet to use for my work email. They only give me web access on the PC and attachments are off. They wont give me full remote access as I'm a contractor and I would be able to do a lot more on a tablet.

So I get the tablet and when I install the work app suite, the first thing it tries to do is encrypt the tablet to secure it.

Great, go to encrypt and it complains that I don't have enough power. It was 98% or more.
So I charge it and leave the charger in. Great, now it lets me go through the process, add my pin, tell it to reboot and.....

Ta Daaaah

Nothing. No encryption. Just a normal reboot.

OK think I, think windows. Right, try again 20 times.

Nope, nothing. So I do some searching and wind up on a google thread all about encrypting your KitKat phone or tablet. Pretty much exactly what I have been seeing.

So I read and read and read. I do some surmising and then I read some more. Eventually I get to posts which tell me that.

If you keep on trying it will eventually work. OK I've tried that one and it failed
If you switch from Landscape to Portrait it will work
If you switch from portrait to landscape it will work

Ok sounds like luck there.

If you plug the power in until just before you enter your pin then unplug it before you press the final button to encrypt it works.

Ok that sounds like a power fluctuation bug in the monitoring of the power. 2% is not a very large margin to aim for.

If you start in safe mode then it works. Sort of. Well if you are in safe mode and

a) you do the power things
b) you do the landscape/portrait thing

Right, that sounds like running apps.

Then I get a bit further and some guys have been running logging diagnostics whilst the process was running. Now we are getting somewhere. About a dozen different errors telling different things under different circumstances. However one thing is consistent, if there is an app running which blocks the file system, then it fails.

After a bit of thinking, I decided on this course of action.

Charge the tablet
Lock the orientation (no checking if it is portrait or landscape)
Restart in safe mode
leave the power connected
Go to the encryption settings
Get to the pin (pass the power check)
Unplug the power
Finish setting up encryption
Reboot
Encryption starts
Plug the power back in again.

It worked. Perfectly.

Then my work blocked me because it does not like my Android Tablet setup from the manufacturer <sigh>. Another issue to resolve..... I might believe that life was easier but I know it wasn't....

[Aggers]

Do you know, Suff., reading that gave me a perverse sort of pleasure.

Now you know how I feel on occasions.

Bloody technology!

p.s. I love Kit Kat.

[Suff]

Not so much bloody technology but bad software with poor testing.

We come across this all the time. I was fairly stumped until I started reading the google code thread about all the ways people had found to make it work. After reading for quite a while I put some thoughts together and tried out one method which worked immediately.

That is what computing today is about. Information, insight and logical testing. Then, if logic doesn't work do the illogical thing. Like at work when I have to reload the Office365 login page every time I try to go there because the first time it doesn't load and work tries to tell me it's not there...

We all have to suffer it. It's how we approach the problems which makes the difference.