Database Users

pda2 (xda IIi) freezing when turned off

Hi Guys,
was wondering if any of you had seen this happening, or knew how to fix it..
occasionally, like once every two days or so, my pda2 will just not turn on again after it's turned off (put in standby). the only way to turn it back on is to press the reset button. it still seems that the radio is working when its in this state, as if i make a call to the pda, the phone im ringing from rings and rings, but the pda just stays silent, and if i put the pda up to a speaker i can hear the "da dada da da" noises that mean phone radio activity. also if i put the pda in a cradle when its in this state, the battery indicator light on the pda will turn on as if its charging..
i can almost live with the short battery life, but the phone freezing when its turned off i can't. i've tried a hard reset.. to no avail.
any ideas?

Hey ow, what have you got running that could cause it? Any 3rd party bits and pieces?
Kevin

hi kevin.
thats exactly the path im taking now. i have hard reset my device again, and have loaded NOTHING on to it, i reset it before it could install the extRom stuff, and i've only changed settings like vibrate on ring, and regional settings, etc. i haven't even active sync'd it. so far so good (touch wood)
programs i had loaded before:
intellisync (automatically connected to grps if not cradled)
small menu
kbattery
tAgenda (not fully compatible with 2003 SE, but seemed to generally work ok)
worldmate 2004 pro v1.0 (not fully compatible with 2003 SE, but seemed to generally work ok
and thats all i think. i have my suspicions with intellisync..

Hi there
Mine did the very same thing a few times but i just reset it and carried on ...
id recommend upgrading to the newer I-Mate ROM as its more stable, just be prepared to fart about a bit to sort the country code errors and such.
In fact ... i camt remember the last time mine crashed after ive installed the new ROM.

my device came with the rom dated 1/27/05, which is the latest i believe... ?

well, i think i've figured out what causes the problem, thought i might as well give an answer incase anyone else has this prob.
for me appears to happen when GPRS is enabled and i turn the phone off. gprs is turned on in the first place by intellisync, which sync's my email, calander, todo's and contacts with lotus notes. however i tried enabling gprs manually, waited until intellisync sync'd itself, then turned the pda off and went to lunch. after lunch it was frozen again.. i did turn it on at the start of lunch to check the time, and i assume at that point it hadn't tried to do an update, but probably sometime after that and before it froze i would assume it had tried to sync itself.. i guess the next thing to test is if i can just leave gprs on (making sure it doesn't try to do anything) and see how things go.

My Jamin just slept to Death...

Had it at about 70% battery (around) last night, after 12 hours or so today, it refused to turn on.
I got it to turn on finally with a soft reset, and the battery showed 28%!!
I have no idea how it could have run down so fast, though it could have been something I left on (maybe wifi?).
I'm still surprised it would refuse to turn on at 28% though...

My Dopod 818 Pro is having this problem ever since I bought it. If I turn off the screen using the power switch or let it go to standby automatically, most of this time I can't turn it on again and have to do a soft reset.
I do not see a lot of Dopod users complaining about this problem so I am wondering if I have a faulty set. Other than this problem, everything else works fine.

i'm having the same problem. Do you think there will be a rom fix?

I just found an interesting observation regarding this sleep-to-death (STD) issue. If I left my Dopod overnight and got the STD problem the next day, the battery had drained considerably. It was fully charged the night before, but after 8 hours, the battery is only at 40 percent.
But since more than one person is having this issue, is it still a hardware problem?

This is not a hardware issue, its more like an unoptimised ROM issue. I suppose it will be fixed with an update in the future.
Leaving WiFi on does not matter because your device automatically goes into standby mode after a pre-defined time (3 minutes by default). In that case, even if you leave 10 apps running in the background, it won't make a difference for the aforementioned reason.
With the HTC Universal, what happened was that people would leave apps running in the background and once they are done using the device, they would just close the device thinking that it would shut off, but it wouldn't because the standy-mode was disabled by most people to get a snappier device. In such a situation, battery would drain rapidly overnight as the device hasn't gone into standby mode.
This situation will occur on the JAMin too IF there is no default standy-by mode set.

I have an HTC Universal (O2 XDA EXEC) and had the same thing happen to me two nights in a row. The battery was at 100% when i went to bed and i woke up and realized i was late as the alarm i had set didnt wake me up.
I had to soft reset the phone and the battery was down to 24% and then the alarm starting going off, a bit late though. I have had this phone for three days, and im not happy about this failing twice on me.
The only thing i have changed is running a coporate install (0506) so that o2 active wasnt on the phone.
Is there any fix for this??
Rom version: 1.13.82 WWE
Radio version: 1.04.02
Protocol version: 42.37.P8
ExtROM version 1.13.188 WWE

Go to Settings>System>Power and check the "switch off device after x minutes" option. By default it is 3 minutes, but i have set it to one minute as that serves my purpose. You will notice the drastic difference immediately .

It kind of sounds like an issue I've seen on my m600. It's a wm5 bug where activesync will try to connect all the time, randomly, even if your device is off. It can cause STD (sleep to death) and will. It's a simple fix. Just install the autosyncschedule.cpf and run it. It's a simple little .cab that will change some settings. Hope it helps
http://us.f1.yahoofs.com/bc/59d707c...amin/DisableSyncSchedule.cpf?bftVi9DBC7gsZI7r
If that link to my yahoo briefcase doesn't work, you can get this file at eten-users.net in the download section under /utilities/wm5. It solved all STD's with the eten and so far with my jamin. 8)

You can also fix the Active Sync bug manually.
To do so open ActiveSync on your WM5 device and tap on Menu>Add Server Source. Add any info to create a fake server sync. After that is complete go to Menu>Schedule and change the two dropdowns to "Manual" and tap "ok" at the top right.

Slept to death- I've sussed out why my device was doing this
I had an SD card from my i-mate Jam inserted, and after taking this out, the situation stopped happening. So if you've got an SD card in try running the device without for a while to see if that helps...

WRAP: the Wizard Reliable Alarm Project

I have started this thread so that we can begin development of a program or a solution which will make the alarm system on our Wizards totally reliable.
As we know, a number of us have a problem whereby our devices fail to wake up when an alarm is due to go off, causing us to sleep in, and be late for work. This is an unacceptable situation. It is my intent to develop a program which will replace or augment the alarm system in WM5 so that we never again have to worry that our PPCs won't wake us up in the morning.
So far, we know there are a number of problems which might be contributing to the failed alarms:
1. Duplicate alarm/calendar notifications being entered into the notification database (same alarm shows repeatedly in the database)
- This can be resolved with CheckNotifications (http://www.scarybearsoftware.com/ppc_cn_overview.html) which will remove duplicate entries. It does not prevent the duplicates from being entered in the first place.
2. Alarm settings not saved to registry. It seems there may be a problem whereby registry changes are not being copied from RAM to Flash immediately, so if you Standby the device shortly after setting/changing the alarm, the alarm is not saved.
- This can be resolved by leaving the PPC for a minute or so before putting it in Standby after changing an alarm.
3. The big one. An alarm notification not turning the device on from standby. Why this affects some people and not others, we don't know. Some users report than when an alarm is due to go off, the device doesn't wake up. When the device is turned on manually, the alarm then sounds. This seems to happen randomly (with some alarms working OK, and others not) but doesn't affect everyone.
As yet, there is no known solution to this problem. This thread is intended to develop that solution.
My idea so far is to develop an application to replace the standard alarm on WM5. Our main objective is to create an event which will, reliably, and without fail, wake the device from standby. Once we have developed this program, a new alarm system can be tacked on to it, or the source code can be made available for developers of current alarm systems to integrate into their programs.
My PPC programming knowledge is limited, so the intention is for this project to be a joint effort, and I would urge anyone who has any useful input to contribute it on this thread.

I have noticed a few people mention that a program called Pocket WakeUp is a reliable alarm system, and doesn't suffer from the known bugs in the WM5 one.
http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=1299 (French version - see below for translated English version)
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to have been an update of the program for quite a while, and also, the program is in French, so there aren't many people using it to see exactly how reliable it is.
I have done a quick-n-dirty translation of the program into English (I hope the author doesn't mind - no other changes were made), and attached it to this post. The interface isn't great, and it can be quite convoluted to use, but perhaps with an English version, more people can give it a try and see if it actually is reliable.
From what I can gather, Pocket WakeUp adds a notification when an alarm is due, which loads with WakeUpStart.exe program, which then loads the main program and sounds the alarm.
If this program is actually reliable, then I expect the author has found a way to make the device wake up from standby without fail, and the WakeUpStart.exe is the important part.
Please let me know if you use Pocket WakeUp and it works reliably, or randomly fails. Also, if the author of this program reads this board (or someone knows how to get in contact with him in English) I'd be interested to hear your views.

Good effort, I'll try the cab and report back over the next week.

Excellent endeavor! I have been using PPC devices for sevearl years and this has always been my biggest problem. Its hard to believe that MS has issued 3 new versions of their WM platform, all with this issue. This should be one on the first things you need to get right in these devices.
On the WM2002 and WM2003 platform I have good success with both PhoneAlam with AlarmToday for Pocketmax and also SuperAlert. But since moving on to the KJAM, the current versions of these programs just don't work.
I am not a developer, but will certainly help with testing etc. I'll try the FR prog now and will also post results.
Regards
Chris

The alarm not waking up on standby bug was fixed in the leaked 9100 test rom.. so whats the point in fixing a problem thats already been fixed

MilanoRex said:
The alarm not waking up on standby bug was fixed in the leaked 9100 test rom.. so whats the point in fixing a problem thats already been fixed
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Says who? I'm using the latest i-mate ROM and the problem still persists.

I've been using Pocket WakeUp to check - *zap* - and so far it seems to work fine. Problem is, that's what I thought of the standard alarms until they failed a couple of times on me. Unfortunately, it also seems that my battery is draining faster now - but I would have to confirm that absolutely with a full copy of pocketbatteryanalyzer. I'm using my old phone in the mean time to make sure I do wake up.
For me, just not switching the device to standby is still the best bet. This also negates any issues related to point 2. Point 1 remains, and is actually a cause for old alarms going off when they shouldn't - and the cleanup thing is something I still do.
One thing that I think I should point out, though, is that the problem isn't just with a wake-up alarm. Pocket WakeUp may very well be a perfectly fine solution to that (no way to be 100% certain, I guess). The problem is that on at least one occasion, the device failed to wake up for a meeting event. Thankfully I was keeping an eye on the clock and I was leaving only 5 minutes late - and with a little speeding got there in time just fine. Point is, a wake-up alarm won't fix -those- :\

ZeBoxx, as far as I can see, Pocket WakeUp does use the notification system. Set an alarm with it, and check the notification queue. Delete the item from the notification queue and the alarm never sounds.
If we can work out how Pocket WakeUp reliably brings the device out of standby, then there's the possibility of writing a program to tack a wake up event in front of every calendar entry.

gah.. WakeUpStart? totally missed that.. I'll stfu now

ZeBoxx said:
gah.. WakeUpStart? totally missed that.. I'll stfu now
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep! Thing is, if WakeUpStart can wake up the device without fail, then it will be simple enough to tack a similar wake up event a few secs before each alarm or appointment. Just need more people to test Pocket WakeUp to see if it's reliable - and hopefully we can get a hold of the author so he can tell us how he did it!

I upgrade to the new KJAM rom and now my alarm works.

texasez said:
I upgrade to the new KJAM rom and now my alarm works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, the whole problem with this bug is that it affects people randomly. Some people have the bug, some don't. Some people just get it one day for no apparent reason. There is no one solution to everyone's problems. Upgrading worked for you - good for you - doesn't mean it will work for everyone, and there's always the possibility that you never had the bug, and then you upgrade to the latest ROM and you start getting the bug!

thanks alot elyl !!
the translation of this program is the best news in months! I have been using this prog for 3 months without any problems. It seems very reliable to me. I dont understand French thoug, so it has been a little bit hard to use.
Before I started using the program, I had alot of problems with the alarm...

I tried Pocket wake up yesterday with mixed results. My KJaM seemed to be waking up for each event, but I was expecting it to continue to repeat the alarm beyond the few repeats that you get with the built in reminder. That did not happen though... I have set Pocket alarm wake up call take is set go in a few minutes, so will see if that works (guess that I am already awake though, so it won't be a big deal if it doesn't go off )

cbrow51 said:
I tried Pocket wake up yesterday with mixed results. My KJaM seemed to be waking up for each event, but I was expecting it to continue to repeat the alarm beyond the few repeats that you get with the built in reminder. That did not happen though... I have set Pocket alarm wake up call take is set go in a few minutes, so will see if that works (guess that I am already awake though, so it won't be a big deal if it doesn't go off )
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you try setting a snooze time for about 5 mins? It will repeat then if you don't cancel it. Also, if you are using a short audio file for the alarm, make sure you increase the Minimum time of alarm to be X number of seconds - then it will repeat your alarm sound for however many seconds.

Hi Elyl
Yes, stumbled into that in the end. My French is very poor, so I had to guess at the options. Still, that seemed to work. I did notice that if you change the settings and then let the device go into standby, the alarm did not repeat...:-( I had to reset a new time, then it worked. I will now set a reoccuring alarm and not touch the settings and see how that goes... Will post back at end of day today..
Regards
chris

to be thorough...
In an effort to be thorough, I'll add my experience so that maybe a developer can read a solution. I use my kjam as a daily alarm. It has almost always worked when I leave the device plugged in and though the backlight is off but the actual system never goes into standby (everyday except one in six months). I have also experimented with using the alarm from a battery power source, but again, making sure that the device never goes into standby (this is a real battery drain).
I have used SPB time, Ptravel Alarm, and the built in alarm. SPB time is completely unreliable and has never worked (not even when set immediately after a more reliable alarm). Ptravel alarm has worked over the past week when I have tried it in both power/active and non-powerd/active, but I haven't tried it when the system was in standby. The Ptravel Alarm developer (Burroak Software) is a very very active developer and seems to really care about making his products work. The only flaw I have is the interface (i.e. stop button) is somewhat small to press first thing in the morning.
The built-in alarm is the one I have used most and seems to work well from a power source. Again, it does not work from standby reliably.
I know this is re-hashing the obvious for all of you, but thought it might give some more background. There simply must be something that is develop-able, which wakes up the device from standby (a turned off state) in time for the system to register and activate an alarm program or a few seconds before.
Could there be a way to extrapolate the program which activates the device or part of it to remotely activesync on a time schedule?
I will use the WakeUp program and report back.

wakealarm
just to stress the point, i will also use wakealarm and report at the first failures. If 100 users would do the same, we can improve our evaluation time by 100X. If even to a single user it will not work, i cannot fully trust the program for professional reasons or travelling.
Today, I have the test rom, SPB pocketplus, and yes ONCE the standard wm5 alarm didn't work on this configuration (over about 20 alarms and 200 calendar reminders that worked successfully). i use once in a while checknotifications and sktools to keep the notify queue clean - should i do it or not? sometimes, i am afraid that the alarm i loose are those that these two programs remove by believing they are unnecessary duplications....
i noticed that - in the infamous occasion of a missed alarm in the morning - i forgot the wifi connection on while the system was recharging beside my bed, and in the morning i had a pop-up message it complaining about the absence of network (instead of waking me up...).
Did i understand it correctly that - at midnight - the wizard does some internal procedures and wakes up? do i guess that - after waking up - it had to deal with the wifi network search instead of some alarm critical procedure? if it would be so, i would be happy - for example - to do the alarm critical procedures every few hours, so to be sure not to miss any.
Few hours later, finally at work, i saw the wizard rebooting by itself (second time ever, the first one was with the 1.6 ROM!) and, at reboot, started sending a list of alarms that i could not easily dismiss (since the system was in an early phase of reboot, no today screen available yet). i had to softreset a couple of times, after dismissal of the pending alarms it started to work correctly again.
I am reporting this in order to increase empirical understanding of the reasons why the standard alarm fails.

cbrow51 said:
Hi Elyl
Yes, stumbled into that in the end. My French is very poor
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's why I translated it! See the attachment.

Maybe its just me but I cannot see any link to a translation?
I can see the link to the cab file and I can see the link to the web site but no document?
Robin

Alarm driving me mad - alarms work (just about) reminders dont

Hi All,
Long time reader, first time poster
I have now got a T-Mobile UK MDA II and have had this problem occur twice.. the only resolution I found was to hard reset.
For no reason yesterday (no software installs, registry hacks etc..) my Reminders from the diary stopped working.
The phone switches on but fails to make any noise or pop up anything on the screen.
Then this morning when the Alarm should have gone off.. it did.. but gave me no option on the screen to turn it off! (which made me a very unhappy panda without the Snooze! this morning).
Any ideas why the alarms and reminders have gone wrong and how to fix them?
Edit: I have googled to exhaustion and still no better off :|
Tom - www.mouselike.org

HD2 Freezes sometimes during Clock Alarm

Brand new HTC HD2, No software or any tweakings, nothing.
Alarm set to wake me up this morning.
Woke up an hour later, phone was on, alarm screen was on display with the machine freezed, had to soft reset. What the hell is that? This is a brand new nothing installed device. A simple thing as an alarm clock freezes the device?
Anyone experiences same problem?

I had the same problem, but with galarm.I never thought this can happen with the original software.It should be bugs free...

I get a similar problem sometimes with GAlarm. Luckily for me, it sets the alarm off then freezes up. That gets you out of bed believe me
The screen is on, with the time displayed and what looks like one of the balls from the maze/snooze function in the very top right hand corner. You can't do anything to get rid of the screen. I had to press the Home hard key then end task GAlarm to get it to stop. So it's not totally frozen up but GAlarm is fubard

chimpsinties said:
I get a similar problem sometimes with GAlarm. Luckily for me, it sets the alarm off then freezes up. That gets you out of bed believe me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe a new function from g-alarm .
I don't have the problems you (all) are having, even with g-alarm. It's working like a charm on my HD2 orignal WWE 1.66 rom.
You guys/girls got all patches etc installed?

What kind of patches?
Doesn't 1.66 come with them already in?
I'm using BsBTweaks 1.6.
I think mine might be a setting within GAlarm. I quite often get an error while setting up alarms, usually either when adding tracks or when I get right to the end and save it. But it is there and set up when I next go in. I'm using GAlarm 2.3.

Never had this problem with my HD2. However it happened often with my HTC Touch Diamond. Maybe it has something to do with a specific device, dunno. Anyway just in case I have one alarm set on my iPod Touch so there's always at least one device that will wake me up. Maybe you should hard reset your phone or smth... Did you tweak your soft in some way? Edited the registry?

just this morning, fir the first time, the alarm clock didn't trigger. Had it set for 8:40, all days of the week active, obviously alarm was active, vibration was off.
I had a gut feeling that it MAY not work, so I setup the other phone at 9am just in case... as expected, the other phone woke me up, the hd2 didn't... but no freezes nor anything, simply no alarm sounded...

same for me. hd2. it has to do with
1. the windows lock screen
2. galarm
3. backlight/device timeout settings while locked
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
nothing like a frozen device MID alarm forcing you to pull the battery, and restart, etc

I have the same problem. But i will try something i found. Since the problem occurs occasionally I cannot reproduce the error and post a result. Maybe you can try and share the results too.
There's an option in G-Alarm settings that says "Turn backlight off during an alarm after x seconds". I will disable this feature.
I'm also using S2U2. This feature may interfere with S2U2.
Cheers

Well I am not using G alarm or any other app. Its just plain WM 6.5 alarm. I have tried it on 4 different ROM(stock) and other and I get same result.
If I don't reset my phone before going to bed at night, I will get this issue in the morning that my phone will be frozen during the alarm.
Any advice?

Try these, it should help freezing problems with htc hd2 and galarm
allthese settings are in galarm settings option
1)Disable "turn backlight off during snooze"
2) Disable "turn backlight off during an alarm after x secomds"
3)Disable "show flightmode function"
4) Disable "unlock the device"

I also have the same problem, sometimes the WM alarm fails to sound the alarm, the phone says that it has gone off, but no alarm sounds.
Have done some research, and it sounds like a fault with WM, the phone "wakes" its self at ~03:00 for 30seconds to schedule all its tasks for the day, BUT if it takes too long scheduling other tasks, it cant do the alarm call due to running out of time.