B1-A71 no storage space and cant move any content to internal/external SD

My B1-A71 is android 4.1.2, Kernel 3.4.0, with a 16Gb External Sd card. Only downloaded and installed one security App to it. After a few weeks it won't download emails because 'storage space is running out' so I deleted ALL the emails and looked at moving any/some apps to the Sd - in App Info on every App the box marked 'Move to internal Sd' are greyed out, so how do I get round this? Now the News/Weather App also won't run 'unless you update Google Play Services' - but when I try this it tells me there is 'insufficient storage space' taking me back to where I started. Catch 22. Anyone know how a tech novice can fix this,?

thanks,

Pallet

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billsey

It sounds to me like you have an app that's writing something like a log file that eats up storage space... You might check that out and reconfigure it if you can find the culprit.

pallet

Thanks for the suggestion but I have no idea how to check that. It seems to me that having filled up my tablet with at least thirteen variations of Google App (none of them wanted by me) Acer has bloated it to such an extent that every time I switch it on it is forever updating them, taking up all the space on the 0.98Gb internal storage (only 117Mb left). I have over 12 Gb empty storage on the internal SD and over 13 Gb empty storage on the external SD but with the 'Move to SD card' buttons greyed out on ALL Apps and inaccessible to me I cannot move apps anywhere, as it persistently suggests: my tablet is almost completely empty but still it tells me there is no storage space to update Google Play services. I (perhaps inadvisibly) emptied the Cache on a few apps to see if that made a difference and it did allow me to recieve two emails but still no updates are permitted. When the tablet tells me to fix the problem by doing something that its own system prevents me from doing it is not exactly helpful. surely I am not the first person to have come up against this?

Thanks again for the reply.

billsey

IIRC there was something involving the GPS writing logfiles that filled up internal storage with some of the Android versions around 4.1, there was a patch available for some phones and tablets. You might try Googling around that to see if your model was affected and if there was a workaround.

pallet

Thanks for the suggestion: perhaps this touches on what you remembered?

“Using the app SD Maid (Explorer tab) on a rooted Samsung Galaxy Note 1 (N7000), Android 4.1.2, LT5 Build, I found 900+ log files in /data/log. After clearing the literally hundreds of dumpstate* files, I got my internal memory back from only 207mb up to 1040+ mb! Now I can complete all the missing updates. These files were dated back over more than 1 year and seemed to serve no valid function any more. Afterwards the device booted, was faster and no functionality was lost. Looking at the dates of these files they coincided with some system crashes and SD card mounting problems I had received in the past.
But in order to even see these files you will need a rooted device.
Using the clean master app on a rooted device also found a lot of files which could be deleted.”

This was found on another forum from 2013.

Seems to indicate that with 4.1 versions 'dumpstate' files are being written unnecessarily (ties in with previous comment?) but exhaustive searches show no way to batch delete 'dumpstate' files from a B1, and I have no doubt there will not be 'sufficient storage space' to allow me to download either of these Apps to fix the problem if it can't download a simple update! . I just manually emptied the cache from every App to see if that makes a difference. Incidentally, does anyone else see the irony in being told by your tablet to delete Apps when said Apps are all installed at factory and cannot be deleted? I am slowly being drawn to the need to Root this thing. As it stands all it is is a repository for my holiday photographs (All in the external SD I hasten to add!)

pallet

I am getting the distinct feeling that the 'Acer community' is unwilling to address the main issues implicit in my question.

1. The tablet is 'as bought': FULL of factory installed bloatware I didn't want and will never need. THERE ARE NO ADDITIONAL Apps ON IT -EVERY App is unpinned so, how can I possibly 'Delete unwanted Apps' to regain storage? Acer made sure I could not do that.

2. Google Play Services will not update because of 'Insufficient storage,...' etc BUT, Google Play music updates every time I switch it on, much the same goes for Google Maps and all the other useless Google branded rubbish the factory installed.

3. I an not allowed to delete any of the Apps installed and the 'Move to Sd Card' buttons on ALL APPS are greyed out and unavailable to me, so what is the fix for this? IS there even a fix in existence? Am I the only person ever to have had this dismal experience? I sincerely doubt it but no-one here seems able to bring themselves to confront these questions.

I use this thing to store some photos (on the external SD), to check my emails via Wifi late at night, to read the News and Weather and the BBC news, and sometimes browse specific websites that I need to check. That's it. No games , no music, no films, no youtube, nothing, nada. I still have my photos, the Google browser and - intermittently - I get to see an incoming email or two, and THAT IS ALL. Between the internal and external SD cards it has, reportedly, at least 25Gb of completely empty storage space and I am unable to use or even access any of it while constantly being informed that there is 'Insufficient storage'. I seem to have bought a ready made 'Brick' stock from the factory.