My iPhone Has Negative SMS!? how to fix?

[CGagnon]

I downloaded irealsms 2.0 and it automatically sent text messgaes to two of my contacts. Long story short now my iPhone says I have -2 unread messages. Now, either irealsms gave me some psychic abilities to look into the future and read messages before I even get them, or there is a problem (I am thinking the latter).
Does anyone know how to fix this without deleting the entire conversation with the person? It is really bothering me but I don't want to clear the whole conversation.

Things I tried:
I downloaded biteSMS and deleted the two messages sent by irealsms and it didn't work...

Moral of the story:
DON'T DOWNLOAD IREALSMS!! IT IS WACK AND WILL MESS UP YOUR IPHONE!

Also, it is a 3G iPhone with firmware 2.1. In case that is relevant.

Thanks,
CGagnon

 

[jcde7ago]

I downloaded irealsms 2.0 and it automatically sent text messgaes to two of my contacts. Long story short now my iPhone says I have -2 unread messages. Now, either irealsms gave me some psychic abilities to look into the future and read messages before I even get them, or there is a problem (I am thinking the latter).
Does anyone know how to fix this without deleting the entire conversation with the person? It is really bothering me but I don't want to clear the whole conversation.

Things I tried:
I downloaded biteSMS and deleted the two messages sent by irealsms and it didn't work...

Moral of the story:
DON'T DOWNLOAD IREALSMS!! IT IS WACK AND WILL MESS UP YOUR IPHONE!

Also, it is a 3G iPhone with firmware 2.1. In case that is relevant.

Thanks,
CGagnon

If you have -4 msgs, send yourself 4 messages with iRealSMS being the default app. This should theoretically bring you back to "0" messages. Now, uninstall iRealSMS and go back to your native app. You should have a message with a blue dot next to it. DO NOT open that conversation, just swipe and delete it. That should take care of your problem, just happened to me yesterday and i also have uninstalled iRealSMS, as it also caused added lag to my phone which i did confirm through tests of installing and uninstalling it (probably because of its heavy dependency on MobileSubstrate, but note that not ALL apps that depend on MobileSubstrate cause noticeable lag by any means).

 

[CGagnon]

If you have -4 msgs, send yourself 4 messages with iRealSMS being the default app. This should theoretically bring you back to "0" messages. Now, uninstall iRealSMS and go back to your native app. You should have a message with a blue dot next to it. DO NOT open that conversation, just swipe and delete it. That should take care of your problem, just happened to me yesterday and i also have uninstalled iRealSMS, as it also caused added lag to my phone which i did confirm through tests of installing and uninstalling it (probably because of its heavy dependency on MobileSubstrate, but note that not ALL apps that depend on MobileSubstrate cause noticeable lag by any means).

Thanks for the reply! I am afraid to open it again though because every time I do it crashes and one of my friends gets a random text.

EDIT: It worked... Sort of.. I don't have negative messages, but still have the blue dots near three conversations, and when I try to delete the conversation with myself like you suggested, it goes back to negative 2.

Thanks again,
CGagnon

 

[Brandonsc]

I had the same issue. Just delete 4 message from the stock app.

 

[CGagnon]

I had the same issue. Just delete 4 message from the stock app.

Yeah, but I don't want to delete the whole conversation. I need an alternative method.

 

[happypappy]

Yeah, but I don't want to delete the whole conversation. I need an alternative method.

Just for reference, I am using iRealSMS and had the same issue.....in my opinion, who cares.....you arent using that stock sms app anymore so just throw it on the last springboard page so you don't see it or use SBSettings and remove the stock sms app from the springboard. All in all, I am very pleased with iReal and it is the best sms app available right now.

Also, stop using the demo and I bet you won't have these same issues.

 

[CGagnon]

Just for reference, I am using iRealSMS and had the same issue.....in my opinion, who cares.....you arent using that stock sms app anymore so just throw it on the last springboard page so you don't see it or use SBSettings and remove the stock sms app from the springboard. All in all, I am very pleased with iReal and it is the best sms app available right now.

Also, stop using the demo and I bet you won't have these same issues.

I don't want to use iRealSMS though.. I like the stock app. Hence my problem. I even got off the demo version and I just ended up removing iRealSMS.

 

[gazzer82]

Did you manage to resolve this, i have the paid for version and it was all working fine. But i recently chose to send an SMS front a contact in my address book and it started up the default apple sms app. Now i am stuck with my app saying -1 messages, which is also causing notifier to continually show the sms icon on the notifier bar!!

Help Please!!

Cheers

Gareth

 

[CGagnon]

Did you manage to resolve this

No, not yet. I have the same problem as you. I suggest doing what jcde7ago said as a temporary fix so that it doesn't say -1 and you don't have the notifier.

I found this on another site, but I don't know what it means:

Ok, I found the real solution to this problem, you don't need to rename sms.db because you are going to lose all your sms.

Instead, copy that file (located on /private/var/mobile/SMS) using scp to your machine, open it using sqlite (you can download binaries from http://www.sqlite.org/download.html) and execute this query:

SELECT * FROM msg_group WHERE unread_count < 0;

Then, look at the first number of each row (I will use XXX for the example) and execute this query for each row:

UPDATE msg_group SET unread_count = 0 WHERE rowid = XXX;

Finally copy the modified sms.db file to the iPhone (again to /private/var/mobile/SMS) just in case REMEMBER TO BACKUP THE ORIGINAL FILE before copying the new one, restart your iPhone and should be fixed now.

source: http://www.xsellize.com/showthread.php?p=51382&posted=1#post51382