Hi everyone, I really need advice before I do something wrong. I’m honestly shaking and very scared right now because my chats mean a lot to me.

My WhatsApp on my Redmi Note 5 (Android 9) suddenly showed a “Something went wrong with your chat history” message and now it only gives a Restore option. I didn’t uninstall or reset anything, it just happened randomly.

Here’s my situation:

Phone: Stuck on restore screen, can’t access chats normally.  
Laptop: WhatsApp Web/Desktop still works and I can see chats up to today.  
Local backup: I found a database file in phone storage (msgstore-2025-11-08.1.db.crypt14). Nothing newer than that.  
Cloud backup: I had weekly backups enabled earlier. I clearly remember my backup being around 6 GB at one point, but now I can’t find any backup in Google Drive. Not sure if it expired, got deleted, or I’m checking wrong.

My biggest concern is chats from 2018 to early 2025. That history is extremely important to me.

Things I’m unsure about:

\* If I press Restore, will it log me out from WhatsApp Web or affect the chats visible there?  
\* Should I rename that Nov 2025 database file before restoring?  
\* Should I copy the entire local WhatsApp folder from my phone to my laptop first as a safety backup?  
\* Is there any way to save or export the recent chats I still see on my laptop?  
\* Has anyone recovered chats safely after this kind of error?

I’m really scared of losing years of conversations, so any advice or experience would help a lot.

[HELP] WhatsApp chat history error on Android. Laptop still shows chats but phone asking to restore. Afraid of losing years of data