"XXXX has stopped working"

[silvercue]

New to Androind - Nexus is my first device (well my third now as two have broken)...anyway, I see error message, very often saying "xxx has stopped working"  with options to report or click ok.

Now this bothers me because of the frequency of it...it happens very often and I have gamas that I can't play anymore

It is because Android is a multi platform OS, or is it Nexus related, or have I just been unlucky?

Don't run a lot of backgrounds apps, but do have "living wallpaper".

[JayJ]

Okay, first what's the comment about not running lots of background apps! Are you killing them with a TaskKiller?

Being more specific would help too, what app is the "Stop working" message appearing on?

[silvercue]

Yes, I sometimes force apps to close, or kill them. But I don't tend to use many anyway between restarts.

Latest game to suffer from this is Tower Defence which is otherwise very polished. It starts now but will crash very quickly.

[JayJ]

With Tower Defence does the developer support Jelly Bean because this could be the problem.
There's also a warning when you tap force stop on an app, heed that warning because there"s no real benefit to force stopping apps unless you really have to...

[birdastrompgman]

The reviews of that game include many complaints about it crashing.

[arborij]

I have found that the task killers are more harm than good.  In the beginning (Eclair and earlier) the task killers would help, but in the newer versions, that was rectified.

[limbot]

Try going into Recovery mode and clearing your cache.  This works sometimes, worth a try

[silvercue]

Thanks, I will try the cache clearing suggestion.

When I look for reviews I see that many things are said to crash, so I don't worry too much, but assume it is harder making apps work consistantly on the multitude of devices Android is used on.

Tower Defence was the example I gave as it is the most recent, but I have had it with numerous apps.....though it mainly seems to be games. 

[silvercue]

Can't seem to get into recovery mode now.  It just loads up normally when I try.

I have tried uninstalling Tower Defence and reinstalling - crashes straight away.  Went to look at my reviews on Google pLay and within seconds I got "Google Play has Stopped Working".  This is happening with multiple apps now and really frsutrating.  Other than web browsers I would say I get this on 50% of other apps unless they are simple torches or incredibly basic apps.  I certainly get in on over half my games.

I have had 3 Nexus 7s now and not one has lasted much more then 4 weeks!

Seriously considering selling this and getting an a pad with an OS that actually works. 

[JayJ]

This isn't right, I don't have these issues with my N7.
Sounds harsh but I think your best bet is a factory data reset, back up your internal memory and do a reset either through recovery or settings...

As for entering recovery, is your N7 updated to 4.1.2?
Power down your N7, hold volume down and then hold the power button as well. Your N7 should boot into the bootloader, use the volume rocker to choose recovery and the power button to select that option.
Your N7 should reboot to recovery, first displaying the Google splash screen before entering recovery. If at the point you get an Android laying on it's back with a red exclamation mark above, hold the volume up and press the power button.

[loociddreemr]

I rarely get force closes until I flash a custom ROM, or make changes to build.prop. This seems to match up with the issue about not getting into recovery. The update should hand fixed that, . Unless you have run a custom ROM at some point. I think you might have to freshen things up a bit with a clean install. I can also agree that task killers are rarely the solution, and since 2.2 they are doing more harm than good.

[bjs229]

Never have seen that type of error message.
If you have owned many Android based devices you should probably be aware that force closing apps is dangerous to your health.