Unlock Samsung Galaxy S "Too many pattern attempts" error

My cousin's Samsung Galaxy got screen locked and showed the "Too many pattern attempts" error. It asked for her gmail so she can open it. Unfortunately, she could not remember her email password and didn't have an alternate email to retrieve her email password. She only registered a gmail account for her phone, so she never used it. So she couldn't answer the security questions either.

I went looking online for answers and found this forum to be helpful. One forum poster, blackstonesx, has this to say:

The solution: 

1) I put my SIM card 
2) I called from another phone and answered the call 
2) Press the touch button that is on the left winged “home” button 
3) There appears a menu with 3 options, "Contacts", "Notes" and "SIM services” 
4) I selected "SIM services" and lower the drop-down menu at the top.
5) Press the home button (the square in the middle), I went to the main menu, Settings, Privacy and data factory reset. 

I tried it, however it didn't work. I tried another solution which was posted by another person, Deanman6:

You might have to hard reset the phone....turn off the phone or just pull the battery out and put it back in. While the phone is off press and hold the volume up and volume down button at the same time (keep holding down those buttons..with your other hand press and hold the power button for 2 seconds. A menu sould come up (Recovery) now you can let go off the power up and down button and navigate with them (up or down on menu selection). use power button as an "enter" key. and click on "wipe data/factory reset" then navigate with the volume buttons and push the power button on the "yes..." selection. This should wipe your phone and start fresh as if you just got the phone.


However, that didn't work either, because everytime I push the power button, it just powers up regularly and leads me back to the "Too many pattern attempts" error. This solution, posted by Richardj, was what worked:

As Goots said, Recovery mode is volume up + Home + Power(international version) and not volume up and volume down. On the many variants of the Galaxy S and SII the key combinations are different. And your fix will not work on newer firmwares.


So, depending on when you bought your Samsung Galaxy S, one of these solutions may work for you. I have to warn you though that resetting your phone will erase all the data from your phone. Be sure to remove your SD card first before doing the reset, so you won't lose the data from your SD card. However, you will lose your data from the phone memory.