Fixing “Type Password to Decrypt Storage” Error in Android

After updating one of my smart phones from Android Kitkat to Android Lollipop, I found myself in a very strange situation when I first rebooted the phone. It was asking me to “type password to decrypt storage” and was not letting skip this step. I was both baffled and surprised at seeing this as I had never set any sort of password on that smart phone. I tried entering some of the usual passwords that I use, thinking that perhaps I had set a password and then forgot. I even called the service center for the mobile phone manufacturer but ended up wasting more than 30 minutes in just waiting.

After all this struggle and hassle, I finally figured out a way to take care of this annoying problem. Apparently the new version of Lollipop was trying to use the user storage from the older Kitkat version and was asking for a password after failing to access it. So the only solution is to wipe the user data from your Android storage.

In order to wipe the user data or factory reset the phone, you will have to reboot into recovery and then perform the factory reset. Here is how:

1. Open the back cover of your smart phone and remove the battery. This will power off the device. Now put the battery back in and close the cover.
2. Now you have to press the key combination to access the recovery mode. This differs for all the different mobile phones. In some phones it is Vol Up + Power or Vol Down + Power while in others it could be Vol Up + Vol Down + Power. You have to check your device manual, google it or ask on xda-forums about this. These key combination will boot your phone into the recovery mode.
3. Once you are inside the recovery mode, choose the option to wipe data/factory reset. This option shall delete all if your user data including the installed apps, personalized settings and added Google accounts.
4. After the data wiping is finished, choose the reboot system now option from the recovery to boot into the normal mode and access Android OS without any errors.

Conclusion: When upgrading to a newer version of Android OS, you might encounter encrypted or corrupt storage error in your smart phone. This error can easily be fixed by complete factory reset of the device.