What to Do If Your Phone Enters Secure Start-up (Enter Password to Unlock)

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Learn ways fix "Enter password to unlock, 30/30 attempts remaining"

Co-authored by Hannah Dillon Reviewed by Luigi Oppido

Last Updated: July 31, 2024 Fact Checked

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Secure Start-up Overview

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Why Your Phone is In Secure Start-up

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Figuring Out Your Password

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What to Do If You Can't Unlock Your Phone

Have you booted up your LG phone only to be greeted by a white lock screen stating "Enter password to unlock, 30/30 attempts remaining?" If so, your phone is in secure start-up, a type of encryption available on older Android devices (though LG phones seem to be affected by this screen randomly appearing). In this article, we'll go over what secure start-up is, why your phone is in secure start-up, how you can figure out your password if you don't know it, and what you can do if you can't figure out your password.

Fast Facts: Secure Start-Up

"Enter Password to Unlock, 30/30 attempts remaining" appears because of secure start-up, a security measure on older Android devices and some newer LG phones. If you didn't set a secure start-up password, you can decipher it using your unlock pattern.

Section 1 of 4:

Secure Start-up Overview

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Secure start-up is a security feature on older Android phones. If you enable secure start-up on your device, the next time your phone restarts, you'll be prompted to enter a password, and you have 30 attempts to get it right.
- If the password is guessed incorrectly 30 times, your phone will be wiped. This is a security measure to keep your information safe in the event your phone is lost or stolen.
- Previously, you could enter a PIN or your Google account password to unlock your phone in secure start-up, but these methods were later removed by LG. ^{[1]
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Phones that launched with Android 9 or earlier have access to secure start-up. However, as of Android 10, Android now requires all Android devices to use file-based encryption (FBE) instead of FDE, so newer devices can't enable secure start-up. ^{[2]
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Section 2 of 4:

Why Your Phone is In Secure Start-up

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Users have reported their phones randomly going into secure start-up. Some users stated that their phone was put into secure start-up after updating it. Others stated that their phone restarted on its own, and once it was back on, they were faced with the secure start-up screen. It's not clear what exactly causes the secure start-up screen to show up randomly.
- However, if you do have secure start-up enabled and restart your phone, it will then enter secure start-up.

Section 3 of 4:

Figuring Out Your Password

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Determine the password associated with your unlock pattern. When unlocking your phone with a pattern, you can create that pattern out of 9 dots arranged in a 3x3 grid. You can determine your pattern password by assigning the numbers 1-9 to the dot grid (the first row is 1, 2, 3; the second is 4, 5, 6; and the third is 7, 8, 9.)
- Example: You created a pattern to unlock your phone where you draw a square starting in the upper-left corner and moving clockwise around the grid. You then decipher that your pattern password is 12369874.
- The table below demonstrates how the password was determined by assigning numbers to the 3x3 pattern grid. The highlighted cells indicate which numbers are part of the password, and the arrows indicate the direction in which the pattern is drawn to determine the order of the numbers in the password. The star indicates the first dot of the pattern, which determines the first number of the password.
- If you can't figure out your password, don't keep guessing. Your phone will be wiped if you reach the maximum number of attempts.