Do you trust your Hermes' Alarms? - 8525, TyTN, MDA Vario II, JasJam General

Hi there!
As we all know, there are a bunch of threads about all the various system hangs; battery drains; camera issues; SD cards not appearing; many reboots required, and so forth. (I think I started a few myself!)
Anyways, to me, the biggest pain is that I can no longer EVER trust my PocketPC alarm.
For the first time in five years, I actually missed a hockey game last week because I did set the alarm to wake me from a power nap, but the pocketPC froze. No alarm. No hockey.
I figured I would do some tests, and the first one failed.
I set the alarm for 1:00pm, with the Cingular Sound as the Alarm, and it missed it!
100 times on 100 times, my Cingular 8125 Alarms would ALWAYS work ontime.
Does anyone else "not trust" their Herme's alarms?
If you had an important business meeting, would you trust this alarm to wake you, or not a chance?
I hope I don't sound too much like a pessimist here... I am just curious if others won't trust these alarms, too....

Michael_514 said:
Hi there!
As we all know, there are a bunch of threads about all the various system hangs; battery drains; camera issues; SD cards not appearing; many reboots required, and so forth. (I think I started a few myself!)
Anyways, to me, the biggest pain is that I can no longer EVER trust my PocketPC alarm.
For the first time in five years, I actually missed a hockey game last week because I did set the alarm to wake me from a power nap, but the pocketPC froze. No alarm. No hockey.
I figured I would do some tests, and the first one failed.
I set the alarm for 1:00pm, with the Cingular Sound as the Alarm, and it missed it!
100 times on 100 times, my Cingular 8125 Alarms would ALWAYS work ontime.
Does anyone else "not trust" their Herme's alarms?
If you had an important business meeting, would you trust this alarm to wake you, or not a chance?
I hope I don't sound too much like a pessimist here... I am just curious if others won't trust these alarms, too....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I trust mine - you need to do good "notification queue" maintenance. It is a known problem with Windows Mobile". I use SK Tools, but there are other free ones. Do a google search for "windows mobile" "notification queue" clean or something or another. You will find it. Otherwise, get an alarm program. Sad about missing hockey - hockey rules! Especially since you are from such a great hockey city - probably second only to Detroit. (Before you get too mad - think Patrick Roy, Statue of Liberty, Colorado - need I say more?)

I dont trust my alarm..but I think its mainly just me not hearing it, running the latest lvsw rom, and my tytn has never been more stable, 0 lockups etc...
I have only noticed some crappy software not clearing out of the notification queue, it seems to maintain itself fairly well, I dont even mess with it anymore...(pdanet on wm5 was one of em)
I recommend mortplayer...but if your device locks up..then no software is going to work, so that doesnt really matter which alarm you use.

@Michael_514
To be honest no I don't even 95% success in the alarm going off is no good form me.
Clearing the notifications queue and resetting the alarm, when your ROM is not the best is important as stated above. BUT from your other posts I know you suffer repeated freezing/hanging, so no matter how clean your notifications queue, you still risk alarms not going off. The hanging and freezing issues in your case need sorting else the alarm cannot be trusted.
Mike

I use this http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=1299 which work everytime and dont course problems also.

Related

Alarm goes of at the wrong time

Hi there,
the alarm on my Wizard has started to go of on the wrong time (1 hours to early)
Ive had this isse before and solved it by a hard reset however Id really like to avoid that again due to alle the programs I have installed.
The only changes that has been made recently to the clock is related to summer/winter time (1 hour back)
Is there any way to check whats been saved in terms of alarms ? I have only in the standard alarm screen one alarm selected.
What to do ?
I wouldn't bother with the inbuilt WM5 alarm. I has loads of problems with mine - and imo it's shocking! I also think it's shocking that Microsoft can't get a simple Alarm function to work reliably - but nevermind...
Anyway, I downloaded and use an app called 'AlarmClock' which I found free.
It works a treat - and no more worrying whether the alarm will go off....

Problems

I've had my 8125 for over a year now and never really had problems. The last week or so it's been exhibiting some weird behavior.
The orange light, on the top [right light] is blinking constantly...once a second. I'm not connected to the net, wireless, or anything. What's that light for?
Also, I don't really know the pattern for the next problem. For example, when I hit the reset button with the stylus a minute ago, it reboots, and then it plays one of the alarm tones, the ringing bell tone, and it vibrates. It did this randomly for a few minutes.. gradually less frequently, until now, it's been about 5 minutes since it did it. I have no alarms set. It also does this in the morning when my alarms go off. It will do the ringing, and i can't get it to stop ringing. It's not doing it constantly [riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing], it will do the tone for the normal length [riiiiiiiiiing, riiiiiiiiiing], but I can't get it to turn off. I've tried everything short of uninstalling apps and the OS. If i'm gonna do that, i'm gonna put WM6 on it.
Thanks.
Sounds like you could have some alerts stuck in the queue. SKTools can remove them if I remember correctly (you can use the demo) and I'm sure someone will point you to a free alternative if this is the problem.
dj-anakin said:
I've tried everything short of uninstalling apps and the OS. If i'm gonna do that, i'm gonna put WM6 on it.Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
personally, i think it's a good idea to hard reset/flash new roms frequently - you never get problems and you clean out the junk you don't use. just get cabs for all your apps on an sc card
Ok, when I reboot, it freaks out.. rings, alarms, vibrates, etc. At first it does it alot.. then gradually is slows and doesn't do it.
I installed SKtools but I have no idea what to do now. Can someone help?
Ok, apparently I should have rebooted after installing SKtools, because there is now text on the buttons when there was none before. Still no idea what to do here.
Also, i've got the full version of sktools.
while you are waiting, search, download and and install the freeware 'scary bear check notification', easy to use, no hassle direct tool to solve your problem. Anyway, SKTool is good, keep it.
dj-anakin said:
I installed SKtools but I have no idea what to do now. Can someone help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1) Load SKTools
2) If the help system comes up (does on first run I think) close it. You should now have a list of icons with descriptions.
3) Press soft button View -> Maintenance
4) Press Notifications Queue
5) By identifying notifications for dates in the past, delete these entries
See if that helps your problem.
Ya, there are a ton of things in that Notifications Queue.
There are alot of "\\.\Notifications\NamedEvents\SCRIPT:0blahblah with a bunch of dates and times that repeat. Like, there are probably 20 2007/06/08 12:33 and 12:08's. I looked in my calendar and there's nothing that day.
Can I delete *everything* in that list? What would that do? I don't care about alarms. If they're on, it's by accident. The only alarm I use is the regular alarm at 3 times on workday mornings.
BTW, thanks so much for all your help. I'm rebooting right now to see if it still does it.
Holy crap! It didn't!!! Sweeeet! Thanks so much. I'll post again if anything weird comes up. Thanks again.

Greetings! And alarm clock software question

Hello,
Please forgive me if this post is misplaced.
I recently got given an I-Mate K-Jam (G4), which wasn't working. I stumbled upon these forums, and since then, haven't left.
I started off by loading Wizard Love, which bought the device back to life. Imagine the smile on my face when I realised that I could instead load WM6! I'm now running XDAm6r3, Radio 2.69.11, skype over wi-fi, etc, along with a few additional apps installed and loving it! iPhone? Please! Who needs an iPhone! Heh.
Anyway, the question I wished to ask was if anyone here is aware of alternative alarm clock software. The built in alarm is rather annoying. See, I'm the type of person that likes to simply hit a single button to snooze the alarm for another 5 or 10 minutes. The existing software requires at least half an open eye and three button presses to snooze (Menu, snooze, choose time, etc)
(Coming from an extensive Nokia background, this is something that's always been built into their alarm software... Kinda looking for the same, where the right soft key is an instant snooze...)
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
Denham
try pocketalarm, its not free but its very good. when alarm goes off you can snooze for 1,5,10,20 mins etc and also just stop it. it does mp3 alarm and repeated alarms .
one thing though the phone needs to be on for it to work, i use psshutxp to switch the display off on my wizard and then leave on charge next to my bed , so the phone stays on but doesnt burn out your screen
pTravelAlarm has been my favorite for a couple of years now. Look for it at
http://www.burroak.on.ca/pta.html
I see I need to upgrade myself. You get a 30 day trial period to see if you like it before splurging $9.99. So far for me that works out to about $2.50 a year........
thezoltar said:
pTravelAlarm has been my favorite for a couple of years now. Look for it at
http://www.burroak.on.ca/pta.html
I see I need to upgrade myself. You get a 30 day trial period to see if you like it before splurging $9.99. So far for me that works out to about $2.50 a year........
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's the best alarm clock program out there, and it's FREE forever! Snooze settings, easy to understand options, very reliable. Activates if phone is shut down, suspended,etc.

What's the deal with the alarm?

Slept through it this morning, discovered it only goes off twice and the tones aren't continuous unless i'm missing something obvious?
If it can't be changed then i will need to select a tone that is continuous, will i need to copy some tones files to the alarm directory? if so how?
I don't think it was ever intended as an alarm clock, the alarm funtion is a basic tool to provide a simple reminder for things that you wouldn't normally use the calendar or task functions for e.g. parking reminders.
Buy a simple battery alarm clock, it'll do the job far better.
no offence intended at all omneity but that answer is a little slippery.
Phones throughout the ages have had an "alarm" function [heck even the HD2 one has a "snooze" option!] which have done exactly what it said on the tin.
These are multifunction devices - otherwise why not just have the phone doing what a phone is supposed to do and leave off email/game/etc options?
maybe I am just ratty about it because I had the same issue this morning?! I only discovered yesterday that the HD2 alarm won't function if the phone is off
JonBaker76 I didn't even know it only rang twice. Yesterday it only rang once and there was such a long pause between it and the 2nd ring I thought that short single burst was it. Today I waited and found it did ring again so assumed it would keep repeating until snoozed or dismissed
If you do find a fix for it I would be interested to learn also - although to be fair I have the ring volumes loud and would usually be up by the 2nd round if not the first
I slept through it several times, now using G-Alarm
The fix is to chuck a 'continuous' tone into the windows root folder and select it. I'll be recording the sound of a numatic drill and putting that in
It might have to be a wav, will check tonight.
And i agree with your comments
The HD2 will also play video files, but I doubt if anyone would consider it a substitution for a cinema.
Not "slippery" just being pragmatic.
fight, fight
To be fair, an alarm is a very basic function and i actualy do use it in place of going to the cinema, i watch tons of films on it on my travels to work
omneity said:
The HD2 will also play video files, but I doubt if anyone would consider it a substitution for a cinema.
Not "slippery" just being pragmatic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apologies if you took offence to the word slippery; couldn't find a suitable way to express the impression of "why is this apple red?" "if you want a non-red fruit have an orange" type episode
I also feel I am being pragamatic in trying to find a way to make the "alarm" function work as one would naturally assume it aught [and how it does on countless other "lesser" phones] rather than having to resort to another piece of hardware fot this basic fuction.
And as it happens I fully intend from my phone to be a portable cinema for my my kids on long journeys - avi on the sd card and tcpmp looks a great option
I've been using WM's alarm since my first WM device (TYTN, TYTNII) and now on my HD2... Had it for a couple of months and it never failed...
Until this morning...
Phone had more than 50% battery, the alarm was on an well configured (indeed I never change the config)... I even always set 2 alarms (example: 1 at 7:00 the other at 7:15)... THEY BOTH FAILED...
After waking I set one of the alarms to trigged 20 mins after the actual time and it worked as always...
I'm kinda confused really... don't know what to think about this...
Any light on this issue would be much appreciated, I don't fancy installing 3rd party apps for things that my mobile should have "out of the box".
wigwam12 said:
And as it happens I fully intend from my phone to be a portable cinema for my my kids on long journeys - avi on the sd card and tcpmp looks a great option
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Coreplayer is great for films but no ac3 audio in case you didn't know. I started a thread earleir about tcpmp and ac3 plug in and one was linked for me. Gonna try it out tonight, just incae you didn't have it yet, the thread should be near the top, title: tcpmp and ac3
soponcio_virtual said:
I've been using WM's alarm since my first WM device (TYTN, TYTNII) and now on my HD2... Had it for a couple of months and it never failed...
Until this morning...
Phone had more than 50% battery, the alarm was on an well configured (indeed I never change the config)... I even always set 2 alarms (example: 1 at 7:00 the other at 7:15)... THEY BOTH FAILED...
After waking I set one of the alarms to trigged 20 mins after the actual time and it worked as always...
I'm kinda confused really... don't know what to think about this...
Any light on this issue would be much appreciated, I don't fancy installing 3rd party apps for things that my mobile should have "out of the box".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Soft reset, hope it doesn't happen again is the best i can do mate
jonbaker76 said:
Coreplayer is great for films but no ac3 audio in case you didn't know. I started a thread earleir about tcpmp and ac3 plug in and one was linked for me. Gonna try it out tonight, just incae you didn't have it yet, the thread should be near the top, title: tcpmp and ac3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks.
I set it up last night. I initially tried the 0.81RC version but after installing it kept giving me an error on initialising so uninstalled it and used the 0.72 version linked in the Apps forum here and it works a treat. Thomas the Tank Engine in all its glory
(actually I say that but the play/pause/forward button are blacked-out - I actually randomly jabbed at the black area to discover there were buttons underneath )
Going back to the Alarm I have read one thread too many about crashes where ultimately G-Alarm was found to be the culprit to be happy using that.
Also had a strange issue where alarm was set to 10.15am; as I was awake I pressed on the alarmat ~10.05 and reset it to 10.10am so I could see how it worked but it only went off at 10.15.
Went into the alarms and notification window and it had it there as 10.10 still
Klaxon is another Alarm-app I really can recommend....
Multiple alarms
I've been running Windows Mobile since it was Windows CE 2.0 and it's always had a problem with alarms getting doubled after resets. There is a company called Scarybearsoftware that has a fix called CheckNotifications that goes in and cleans out duplicates from the database. http://www.scarybearsoftware.com/product_detail.php?productname=checknotify
They also have a version down at the bottom of that page that you can put in the startup.
It works great for me, but I'm on WM2003SE and YMMV.
Bugs the hell out of me that it wont go off when switched off, I keep having to put the phone in airplane mode overnight, so i can use it as my alarm (as i have doe with all my previous phones) and not get woken by any random txts or calls!
Apart from that not had issue with it not happening at all.
I use SPB TIME does the job flawlessley.
omneity said:
I don't think it was ever intended as an alarm clock, the alarm funtion is a basic tool to provide a simple reminder for things that you wouldn't normally use the calendar or task functions for e.g. parking reminders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course it is an alarm clock... they just didn't bother their arse to code it properly, more important fish to fry n' all that
hope
jonbaker76 said:
Soft reset, hope it doesn't happen again is the best i can do mate
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
soft-reset will do the trick, but as it was in my case, it will occur again and worst thing is ... you never know when
So here are the choices:
1. you can use other, better reliable devices, if you have any
2. I saw somewhere at this forum, when vibrating is also selected, there should be no problem
3. every evening soft-reset
4. advice from HTC support is to use default WM setting for the alarms instead of HTC application
(Start-settings-menu-all-Clock and alarm-alarm-click on the bell icon and select the alarm sound-tap OK to save the modifications)
5. other alarm application and hope again that problem is not somewhere in WM itself
In my case, I am using older V1.48(because V1.66 is still not released for our region) and after trick No2. it is still working more than 2 weeks
lakeland said:
Of course it is an alarm clock... they just didn't bother their arse to code it properly, more important fish to fry n' all that
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If they'd coded it to sound continuously until switched off it would lead to greater battery drain. As others have said, there are other third-party applications if you require a more persistent alarm. It's not a big deal for most users.
Mindreaver said:
I slept through it several times, now using G-Alarm
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried installing this one myself but gave up. How did you solve the "owners information" bit, which HD2 dont seem to have, which you have to type in to be able to purchase??

Alarm clock sound not going off

Sometimes my alarms sound doesn't go off. I've checked all the settings, the sound is turned up, the profile is normal. The only way I can fix it, is to reset my phone. Then it works for a while.
It's happen to me a few times where I've woken up pass the time I've suppose to wake up. This morning I work up 2 hours late! . Lucky I didn't miss an important exam or assignment deadline.
I'm using the latest 3VOLUTION SERIES Rom for maple.
Anyone have any suggestions to fix it?
I'm having the same problem now. I've searched around, and can't seem to find a solution. Some suggest it's an installed app, but i can't pinpoint it.
Any thoughts?
(I have the Snap/Maple, with default rom, branded to Mobilicity in Canada).
Alternatively, are there any decent alarm apps out there that don't weight down the phone? I can't seem to figure out how to get more than 2 alarms on the phone.
Thanks for any help.
arpitp said:
I'm having the same problem now. I've searched around, and can't seem to find a solution. Some suggest it's an installed app, but i can't pinpoint it.
Any thoughts?
(I have the Snap/Maple, with default rom, branded to Mobilicity in Canada).
Alternatively, are there any decent alarm apps out there that don't weight down the phone? I can't seem to figure out how to get more than 2 alarms on the phone.
Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you should use a SmartTweaker.2008.v2.0 to fix it and you can get it through http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=664195
It may not have anything to do with rebooting. Your alarm might have failed due to receiving a notification at the same time:
http://forums.t-mobile.com/t5/T-Mobile-Dash-3G/T-Mobile-Dash-3G-FAQ/m-p/125328
Hakim Rahman said:
you should use a SmartTweaker.2008.v2.0 to fix it and you can get it through http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=664195
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the suggestion, but there's little point in paying for that app when almost all of those tweaks can be done for free by other apps or direct registry editing. Also, I don't see anything on there that addresses the silent alarm problem.
Bones Justice said:
It may not have anything to do with rebooting. Your alarm might have failed due to receiving a notification at the same time:
http://forums.t-mobile.com/t5/T-Mobile-Dash-3G/T-Mobile-Dash-3G-FAQ/m-p/125328
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info. This is both sad and alarming (sorry, had to throw in the pun). I guess we better hope we don't get an email/text around the time we're expecting to wake up!
FYI, I have installed Alarm Master (http://www.connectivetools.com/alarmmaster.html). Looks simple, but has a fair bit of features. Incidentally, the regular alarm regained it's voicebox and started working properly right after I installed this. Maybe a coincidence. I don't think message updates were causing the alarm to be silenced, but I can't be sure. For now, I'll keep using Alarm Master, since it has more option, and I don't want to risk Windows' alarm not going off in the morning.
Still haven't figured out how to get more than 2 alarms, though.
Alarms versus notifications
I have only had my alarm fail due to an incoming notification once, at least as far as I know. But yeah, I laughed out loud (out of frustration) when I read T-Mobile's note about "expected behavior". It's like they are saying, okay, we know that your alarm could fail but that's what it's supposed to do! I liked your pun, by the way, and appreciate the fact that I'm not the only one that finds T-Mobile's answer both sad and funny!
Anyways, I think unless you are getting notifications every minute of the day, it's probably a remote chance that both will happen exactly at the same time. You can also take the added precaution of having your notifications audible, I suppose, so that if one cancels your alarm at least you'll hear an alert for the new notification.
As for the two alarm problem you mentioned, what about using the calendar as an extra alarm? You'd have the two default alarms plus you could set calendar events to alarm whenever you wanted extra ones. In fact, I rarely use the two default alarms as I have all of my appointments set to alarm through the calendar. I have my work schedule and stuff like that set as reoccuring events synced with Outlook.
I hope that helps! I'm still really enjoying my Dash 3G despite a few minor annoyances. All phones have 'em, I think the trick is just learning how to avoid 'em.
Good point. I forgot about the calendar since I don't really use it. Since i upgraded to Win 7, I've had touble syncing my windows phones and kinda gave up on it. I recently managed to get my phone to sync, but I don't use outlook, so it's a bit of a hastle to get everything into the calendar.
I originally got my Dash as a temporary replacement, but have found it to be surprisingly capable. After customizing the home panels, adding a GPS (Tomtom), and a few apps and games, (and learnind to avoid the annoyances), I'm pleasantly suprised with what I can do with this phone.
I'm still using Windows XP so I haven't had any trouble syncing. But you should be able to set calendar events on the phone itself fairly easily. You could set an alarm for every minute of the day if you wanted just by making calendar events. I do prefer setting appointments in Outlook because you can get really creative with reoccuring events that happen at weird intervals. But when I'm on the go and need to set a reminder for an appointment, I just make one on the phone.
I, too, think this is a great phone. I use it for business all the time, especially e-mail, Word, Excel, and Adobe Reader. I also really like having the Notepad because I can use it combined with Word at the same time. I use a bluetooth keyboard with it so that I can touch-type but I like the built-in keyboard, too. I also really like the Task Manager, it's so much better for switching and managing programs than when I was using a Blackberry.
My only disappoint with this phone is that there isn't a flash with the camera but it's not usually an issue. Otherwise, it's easily the best phone that I've ever had.

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