How to fix Samsung Galaxy A5 that keeps showing “Unfortunately, Settings has stopped” error [Troubleshooting Guide]

Although the error “Unfortunately, Settings has stopped” on your Samsung Galaxy A5 may seem like just another app-related problem, it’s actually a lot more complicated than that. While Settings is just another app, it’s the app of all apps in your phone as it holds all your preferences and settings for every app, feature or service in your device. If it crashes, then there’s a big possibility other apps will be affected. That’s even the reason why your phone may slow down noticeably when this kind of error starts to show up.

In this post, I will walk you through in troubleshooting your Galaxy A5 that’s plagued by this error. We will try to look into every possibility and rule them out one by one until we can pinpoint what the problem with your phone really is. This way, we can easily formulate a solution that may fix the problem for good and even prevent it from happening again in the future. So, if you’re one of the owners of this phone and are currently bugged by a similar problem, continue reading below as this post may be able to help you.

But before we go to our proper troubleshooting, if you happen to find this page because you were looking for solutions to a different problem, then I suggest you visit our Galaxy A5 troubleshooting page as we’ve already addressed the most commonly reported issues with this phone and you may find what you’re looking for in there. Feel free to use the solutions and workarounds we provided. If they don’t work for you or if you need further assistance, fill up our Android issues questionnaire and then hit submit and we’ll do our best to help you.

How to troubleshoot your Galaxy A5 with Settings has stopped error

The course of our troubleshooting will be to go after the possibilities that don’t have much impact on the overall performance of your phone as well as the safety of your files and data. Then, we’ll go after the firmware if we’ve already ruled out all possibilities that this problem is triggered by the apps. I am certain though that this problem isn’t due to a hardware problem especially if it occurred without apparent reason. That being said, here’s what you should do about it…

Step 1: Start your phone up in Safe mode

It’s possible an app is causing this problem and we don’t know whether it’s a third-party or a built-in app. So we have to start the phone up in Safe mode to temporarily disable all third-party apps.

  1. Turn the device off.
  2. Press and hold the Power key past the screen with the device name.
  3. When ‘SAMSUNG’ appears on the screen, release the Power key.
  4. Immediately after releasing the Power key, press and hold the Volume down key.
  5. Continue to hold the Volume down key until the device finishes restarting.
  6. Safe mode will display in the bottom left corner of the screen.
  7. Release the Volume down key when you see ‘Safe Mode’.

If the error still shows up in this mode, then move on to the next step, otherwise, try to do something about the apps that might be triggering the error. Try the following procedures…

Update applications that need to be updated

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Play Store.
  3. Tap the Menu key and then tap My Apps. To keep your apps automatically updated, tap the Menu key, tap Settings, and then tap Auto-update apps to select the check box.
  4. Choose one of the following options:
    • Tap Update [xx] to update all applications with updates available.
    • Tap an individual application and then tap Update to update a single application.

Clear the cache and data of suspected apps

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Applications.
  4. Tap the desired application in the default list or tap Menu icon > Show system apps to display pre-installed apps.
  5. Tap Storage.
  6. Tap Clear data and then tap OK.
  7. Tap Clear cache.

Uninstall suspected apps if previous procedures failed

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Applications.
  4. Tap the desired application in the default list or tap Menu icon > Show system apps to display pre-installed apps.
  5. Tap Uninstall.
  6. Tap Uninstall again to confirm.

Step 2: Delete all system caches so they’ll be replaced

We have encountered quite a lot of issues that were caused by corrupt system caches. Among the issues that often arise because of this are sluggishness, constant reboot and app crashes. We’ve already ruled out the possibility that this problem is caused by some apps, so it’s time to go after the firmware and the first thing we need to do is replace all system caches as some of the may have already been corrupted or obsolete.

  1. Turn off the device.
  2. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key.
  4. When the Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
  5. Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe cache partition’.
  6. Press the Power key to select.
  7. Press the Volume down key to highlight ‘yes’ and press the Power key to select.
  8. When the wipe cache partition is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
  9. Press the Power key to restart the device.

If the error still shows up after this, then you have no other choice but to reset your phone.

Step 3: Backup your files and data and then reset your phone

That’s right, a reset is necessary to fix this issue now that you’ve done all the basic. However, make sure you make a backup of your important files and data as they will be deleted during the process. Then disable the Factory Reset Protection so you won’t be locked out after the reset.

How to disable Galaxy A5 Factory Reset Protection

  1. From any Home screen, tap the Apps icon.
  2. Tap Settings.
  3. Tap Cloud and accounts.
  4. Tap Accounts.
  5. Tap Google.
  6. Tap your Google ID email address. If you have multiple accounts setup, you will need to repeat these steps for each account.
  7. Tap Menu.
  8. Tap Remove account.
  9. Tap REMOVE ACCOUNT.

How to reset your Galaxy A5

  1. Turn off the device.
  2. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
  3. When the device logo screen displays, release only the Power key
  4. When the Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
  5. Press the Volume down key several times key to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
  6. Press Power button to select.
  7. Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
  8. Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
  9. When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
  10. Press the Power key to restart the device.

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