lock screens - Google Pixel is stuck at "Pixel is starting"

I have an original Google Pixel running Android Pie. I have just encountered a problem wherein one of these things has happened:

1. When I boot up to the white Google logo, it will stay loading with the little gray bar that cycles across the center of the screen.


2. The white Google logo will pass quickly and I will be presented with the Android mascot with the caption No command written underneath.



3. I will boot to the home screen, but it will say Pixel is starting and the message won't go away. I can access my settings here, but if I wanted to change my password, the change won't stick. Also, if I click the "Applications" entry in Settings, it won't show my most recent apps (e.g., Chrome), only Phone.

Currently, I'm encountering #3 after my phone reboots after staying in #2 for a minute or so. This happened after trying to get TWRP to decrypt my data partition. I went through several cycles of setting a password/PIN/pattern, removing the screen lock, renaming files like locksettings.db, and so on.

Here are the paths to the files involved in this:

/data/system/gatekeeper.password.key.orig
/data/system/gatekeeper.pattern.key.orig
/data/system/locksettings.db.orig.3
/data/system/locksettings.db.orig.2
/data/system/locksettings.db-wal.orig.2
/data/system/locksettings.db-shm.orig.2

/data/system/locksettings.db.orig
/data/system/locksettings.db

Some notes on the files:

• locksettings.db.orig — This file is from before I was able to fix my crashing Settings problem. It was originally locksettings.db and I fixed my problem by moving it to the current name.


• locksettings.db.orig.2, locksettings.db-shm.orig.2, and locksettings.db-wal.orig.2 — These are the files that were created after I fixed the aforementioned problem.


• locksettings.db.orig.3 — This is the file that I had gotten after I had moved the files locksettings.db* to locksettings.db*.orig.2.


• locksettings.db — This was created after I moved the previous one to locksettings.db.orig.3. I've already deleted it.


• gatekeeper.pattern.key.orig and gatekeeper.password.key.orig — Both of these files were present at the same time without the .orig suffix at the same time that locksettings.db.orig.3 was locksettings.db. They're both empty for some reason. Apparently, one of them is supposed to be empty if one type of lock screen is used. I'm worried that I may have overwritten one with the other, but now that I think about it, that seems unlikely.

So, is the problem that I'm getting in #3 related to decryption?

Update 1

In the hopes of trying to get it back to normal, I've tried restoring the above mentioned files in different combinations. My last attempt, I removed both gatekeeper.*.key files (but not the backups) and locksettings.db. I was able to add a simple PIN as a test and I rebooted. It asked for the PIN and it accepted it, but I'm still getting Pixel is starting after it accepts it. Also, if I try to remove the PIN, when I enter it in to remove it, nothing happens. It just stays on the PIN entry screen. What's going on? Did it decrypt the FBE key(s) with a wrong key and then re-encrypted it using the simple PIN?

Update 2

There is no salt file underneath ce/0/current.