Recovering Information(Contacts,Messages) from the Android Backup file

Question

My Android Phone Micromax a99 canvas got locked due to unknown number of trials by My kid's friend.I was left with two options - Restore factory settings - Delete/wipe user data

I preferred second one , I also took the backup of the user data by booting into recovery mode( volume up/down powerbutton combination) and then copying the backup into my PC. Now I did restore factiry settings and then tried to restore from my backup file but to my amazement(but thats likely as well) after restoring the phone I again got the same phone lock issue , since it was the part of my old user configuration.Now I am left with just one option - To recover my contacts/messages on the PC and store it on My phone manualy.Oks thats not a problem for me , I just want few important contacts. Is there any free/opensource tool I can use to extract the contacts from my .backup Android Backup file.

I just need to get my Contacts !!! Thanks in Advance !

Answer 1

there are some ideas to restore backup and reset screenlock without flashing anything.

if still interested please come back to forum.xda-developers.com and answer my question regarding solution C.

solution A is easiest way, but i have not tested 1. create userdata_20160208_095026.backup 2. root the phone. don't flash custom recovery 3. factory reset 4. copy /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db to /cache 5. install some shell script to copy back settings.db on every boot 6. restore userdata_20160208_095026.backup with stock recovery

solution B, tested on MT6582 Jelly Bean, works! (because some phones dont have fastboot and its difficult to flash) 1. use my script to convert stock backup to cwm backup 2. root the phone. don't flash custom recovery 3. install stericson.busybox and jackpal.androidterm 4. insert sdcard with ext2 partition 5. mount ext2 partition 6. copy /data to sdcard 7. unmount /data partition and symlink sdcard to /data 8. mount /data partition to /cache/data 9. unpack cwm backup 10. replace settings.db

solution C (with flashing) tested on MT6582 works! 1. use my script to convert stock backup to cwm backup 2. replace settings.db in cwm backup 3. root the phone 4. flash custom recovery 5. restore cwm backup

currently i am writing a shell script for solution B. it works at moment for cwm backup only, try to fix up some errors regarding stock backup...