[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Al.Gray:
Google Services (Play Store, Google Search, etc) stopped functioning on my S3 -repost

Hello there,

I'm not entirely sure if this problem has been covered before, so my apologies if I'm asking something already covered elsewhere, but I really need you experts' help, please.

I'm in the UK and rooted my Samsung Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300) well over a year ago, using, the CF Root method from these very forums.

All had been working just fine until about a week ago, when I (stupidly) installed an apk that was 'supposed' to add KitKat features to my stock 4.1.2 ROM. It was from this article "http://androidcritics.com/get-android-4-4-kit-kat-android-devices/" that I installed two of the provided apk's, namely 'Google Home' and 'Google Velvet' (an apk that claimed to add 'Google Now' features to my ICS ROM). Now, I so regret taking the risk of installing those two apk's, as now, as soon as my SGS3 has booted up and detected the 64GB SD Card (running with Directory Bind), I get a message that states 'Unfortunately Google Search has stopped'. When I try to open Google Search, it says unable to load data, and trying to run Google Play now always says 'No Connection, retry?' All was fine before I installed those 2 apk's. Even when I try to download something via the Play Store in Firefox on my PC and try to send that to my SGS3, that now fails too. In-game purchases won't connect either (No Connection, again) :( I'm really confused, because some apps connect to the Internet via WiFi, such as Dolphin Browser,Yahoo Mail and facebook; but, ANYTHING to do with Google, including GMail seems not to or just plain won't connect, although Google maps does connect.

After this problem started, I immediately, using Odin 3 v1.85, successfully flashed my SGS3 with CF-Root-SGS3-v6.4.tar, but that has made absolutely no difference and has fixed nothing. My phone is way past its warranty, so getting it fixed by Samsung is out of the question, and my only (hopeful) solution is to ask you guys for a working fix/solution, please?

I've connected my SGS3 to the latest version of Samsung KIES (via USB) on my PC and KIES states there is a software update for my phone available (it doesn't however mention what the software update is or what for), but it says I may lose data on my phone, and I don't want to lose my data and settings; so, somehow, I'm going to need to make some kind of backup, yes? What would be the best application for backing up my internal SD to my PC, as I unfortunately don't even have space on my PC's HDD to make a backup of that at this time.

My SIII states there are 600 installed applications (of which the vast majority still function just fine, except some that need to connect to the net via WiFi (some will and some now won't)), that I really haven't got the time or energy to reinstall all of them again, so can someone please point me in the direction or post(s), explaining the best way to back up my internal memory and settings (I don't have the HDD space to back up the entire data contents of apps on my external SD card at the moment, so I'm guessing backing up the internal 11GB will save all the relevant data I need). I'm sure backing up like this has been covered in a separate post, so any pointers to those posts would be useful, thanks.

But the most important thing for me at the moment are to get my Google Services and Wi-Fi issues fixed.

One last problem.....When I try to open Applications Manager in Settings, it stays open for about 10 seconds then force-closes. I'm guessing that having the high number of installed apps n games installed is causing this, is it? Because of this, I don't seem to be able to delete the davik cache on things like Google Play, etc.

I've managed to reset (global) App preferences in Applications Manager, but that's as far as I can get in there before it force-closes itself.

I've tried logging on to YouTube, using my regular Google account, but nothing happens.....I don't get it. Would I need to remove my regular Google account from my phone and then fill it in again??

I even reinstalled Google Play (Playstore v4.0.27.apk) and Google Search, but both still don't connect to the Net.

If you have any other questions regarding my problems) or need any more details from me, to help with a solution to these problems, then please go ahead and ask me. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to put is as much detail about my problems as I could.

Many thanks in advance, sincerely, Al.

Edit:-

I originally posted this a few days ago, so, not meaning to be rude, since no-one answered my initial post, can someone kindly 'please' address it and give me some answers?? I hope my issues here aren't too complex for some of you guys to figure out (do you detect a challenge here? Think YOU are up to it and have the know-how to solve this??)...But seriously, please, if you can, help me out here at your nearest convenience or at least point me to somewhere I can find the solutions, cheers.