[Si_Crewe]

Just installed Kies on my laptop to suck some downloaded files off my phone and have encountered a bit of a strange problem.

The phone is (still) a Samsung Galaxy Ace which has been rooted and fitted with a 16gb SD card to give it a useful amount of memory and a lot of software, as well as all my files, are stored on the SDC.

So, installed Kies as instructed by the Samsung website, using all the default options.
After several minutes of installing drivers and whatnot I get a "Files" explorer window pop open on my laptop that seems to show directories etc, as it should.

Then (while connected to my laptop via USB) my phone suddenly tells me that a bunch of app's have shut down and when I try to re-open them I get a "This app is not installed" message.

Kies then opens and tells me that there is 16gb of 16gb available on my phone's SDC and the memory manager on my phone also confirms that the SDC is completely empty.

A few seconds later, all the stuff in the explorer window vanish so it looks like there's no files, at all, on the SDC.

I had a bit of an moment, thinking that Kies had done an "iTunes" and decided to format my SDC as part of the sync'ing process.

Unplugged the USB lead in a bit of a panic and everything on my phone returned to normal.

Seems like Kies is turning the SDC into some kind of USB storage device when it's connected to my phone rather than simply allowing access to it.
As a result of this, I can't actually transfer anything off my phone to my PC cos as soon as I plug the USB lead in the entire contents of my SDC "vanishes" and only reappears when the cable is disconnected again.

Anybody got any suggestions (other than "buy a better phone you cheapskate")?

[artnada]

Go into menu, settings, about phone c(device), tap on "build number about 7 times, failry quickly.
It will tell you, you have enabled developer mode."

Press back, press developer mode, scroll down until you see "enable usb debug"...press then then go back to main screen.

Plug phone back into pc. Try again.

[TheSloth]

I'd question why you are using Kies at all, as it's a bit flakey at times. I'd uninstall it and install just the Samsuing USB drivers (or they may survive the uninstall anyway). Then yoiur phone should act as an external drive with drives for the internal and external storage available in My Computer.

Note that when plugging the USB in, you may get a dialogue/notification on the phone to allow a PC connection (an orange Android holding a USB I seem to recall from my Galaxy S). Tap that and all should be well usually (the Android goes green once successfully connected).

[Si_Crewe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheSloth

I'd question why you are using Kies at all, as it's a bit flakey at times. I'd uninstall it and install just the Samsuing USB drivers (or they may survive the uninstall anyway). Then yoiur phone should act as an external drive with drives for the internal and external storage available in My Computer.

Note that when plugging the USB in, you may get a dialogue/notification on the phone to allow a PC connection (an orange Android holding a USB I seem to recall from my Galaxy S). Tap that and all should be well usually (the Android goes green once successfully connected).

I'm not entirely sure it's Kies, itself, that's causing it.
As soon as the USB lead is plugged into the phone it seems to show the SDC contents in a pop-up explorer window (as you'd expect) for a couple of seconds but then all the app' icons on the phone turn into a generic "android" icon and nothing works any more and the explorer window turns blank and there's no sign of there being anything at all on the SDC.
This happens regardless of whether Kies is running or not although, admittedly, I suppose Kies could still be doing something behind the scenes to screw it up.

I'll try Artnada's advice (thanks for that) first but if that fails I'll then try uninstalling Kies and see if that changes anything.

*EDIT*

FWIW, I often use my phone abroad, in countries where there's often no 3g available or, even if there's no phone signal at all, I still use it as a PDA to run work-related spreadsheets etc.

Because of this I like to be able to keep everything self-contained so I can back up pictures, documents and calculations onto a local PC rather than relying on clouds and google+'s etc.

I just plugged my phone into my laptop and I got a message on the phone screen telling me to install Kies so I was just following orders.
Once I've got a better idea of what's going on I'll decide whether or not I actually need it.