Spaced Out ::

Finally got around to sorting out a niggling bug on my San Fran phone. For *one* application only, I kept getting the following error when I tried to install it:

“Couldn’t install on USB storage or SD card”

I couldnt be bothered to do anything about it, but when it then occurred for another app I thought I’d better do some digging. Turns out that Android appears to created the file smdl2tmp1.asec when it installs an app. This is a temporary file and for some reason caused the failure to install this particular app. The solution is simple: just delete it! smdl2tmp1.asec resides in one of two directories:

/sdcard/.android_secure - this is an invisible folder on your SD card, but you can access with any file manager
/mnt/secure/asec/ - access to this folder requires root access (and a file explorer such as Android Mate)

Looks like this has been a known bug for some time…. which isn’t good because the last thing you want numpties doing is rooting their file and randomly deleting files on the phone!