Database Users

Can I burn my set-up into ROM?

I recent dropped my XDA and it stopped responding to the power switch so I had to do a hard boot, losing all my settings and data. The data was no big deal as I synchronise to Outlook fairly regularly, but losing all the software and settings was a real pain, and this is the 2nd time it's happened...
I've now spent the day putting it all back as I want it and don't want to have to do it again. Can I now somehow get the system as it is into the ROM so a hard reset brings it back to its current state?
Thanks.

backup with activesync or xbackup or spiritebackup

I'm already using Sprite, but I'd like to be able to have ROM set how I want it. Is this not possible?
Thanks.

You can add your settings by "cooking" your own ROM.
But this will include only the initial settings. So if you change any data, these won't be in the ROM.
Forr making your own ROM you have to use mkrom ....
Stefan

Help! Can't install or uninstall any apps on WM5

Help is needed. I tried to install PocketStocks this morning. It would not install and now I can not install or delete anything from my 8125. I can run what is on it, but I can not add or remove anything. I have soft reset and tried multiple times to connect by USB but it will not sync. But it will let me "Explore" my hardware.
The Microsoft Active Sync troubleshooter is no help at all.
Any ideas?

jschaff said:
Help is needed. I tried to install PocketStocks this morning. It would not install and now I can not install or delete anything from my 8125. I can run what is on it, but I can not add or remove anything. I have soft reset and tried multiple times to connect by USB but it will not sync. But it will let me "Explore" my hardware.
The Microsoft Active Sync troubleshooter is no help at all.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi i am familiar with pocketstocks but it looks like it buggered your device. What error message came up and how far into the install did it get? Just wondering are there any residual files to remove - check program files and windows\startup and registry if you are used to doing that. What error comes up when you try to install anything? You may need to backup important files and do a hard reset to solve this.

I had tried to install Pocket Financial Analyzer just before it, and that did not complete the install. So when I did the Pocket Stocks, it finished up by saying that PFA install was unsuccessful. I have had this happen before but a soft reset and reinstall usually made it work. I kind of do not think Pocket Stocks is the culprit.
I suspect that there is a corrupted system file, and maybe if I knew which one it was, I could delete it and a soft reset would rebuild the file.
Or like you said, I may have to do a hard reset and start all over. And that is OK. I have done this about five times before, but everything is working so good on the phone right now, that I hesitate to mess that up. I just can't add or delete any programs.
Its so weird, at first the name of my phone would not come up. Then I deleted Active Sync 4.1 and installed AS 4.2 beta. Now I can get the device name to show up, but still the list of installed programs does not show and I can't sync it.
Help is needed.

I had tried to install Pocket Financial Analyzer just before it, and that did not complete the install. So when I did the Pocket Stocks, it finished up by saying that PFA install was unsuccessful. I have had this happen before but a soft reset and reinstall usually made it work. I kind of do not think Pocket Stocks is the culprit.
I suspect that there is a corrupted system file, and maybe if I knew which one it was, I could delete it and a soft reset would rebuild the file.
Or like you said, I may have to do a hard reset and start all over. And that is OK. I have done this about five times before, but everything is working so good on the phone right now, that I hesitate to mess that up. I just can't add or delete any programs.
Its so weird, at first the name of my phone would not come up. Then I deleted Active Sync 4.1 and installed AS 4.2 beta. Now I can get the device name to show up, but still the list of installed programs does not show and I can't sync it.
Help is needed.

I agree there probably is a corrupt file somewhere - I would do all the checks I said and notification queue for good measure - but it looks like hard reset time. Recommend you invest in spb backup or sprite backup - then it all becomes so easy! Everybody that joins this forum should have to buy one - before entering the forum - lol!

I had SPB Backup trial. But everyone was saying that the ROM upgrades made the backup invalid since there were registry changes that may not correspond with the new registry.
So I did not use it again. I heard that SKTools has a backup built in. NO?
Which one is the best to use?
Thanks

I had SPB Backup trial. But everyone was saying that the ROM upgrades made the backup invalid since there were registry changes that may not correspond with the new registry.
So I did not use it again. I heard that SKTools has a backup built in. NO?
Which one is the best to use?
Thanks

Sktools has a limited backup, so its not that useful. Sprite backup is good as you can use it even with a rom upgrade and is now wm5 compatible.

Automating Program Installs

Hey all,
I have a question.
I have been playing with my 8125 a lot lately and am constantly resetting my device. What I want to know is I have one main machine that I do all my application installs via active sync that way when I hard reset my device I just have to go to add remove programs in active sync and re-check all the programs I want to put back on my phone.
Here is what I want.
I don’t want to have to tell the phone where to install the applications (I want it to default to storage card without any prompts.) and.. I don’t want any confirmation prompts ie: security unsigned, approve this application to be installed, this application was installed properly… etc.. I want to streamline the process so I can just tick the check boxes for my apps, let them download and that’s it. Currently after refreshing I have to spend quite a bit of time clicking “ok” … storage card…. Ok… storage card… ok… I think you get it.
Thanks much!

I've seen a lot of different reg keys out there that may accomplis this. Is there a way to disable the notifications and pre-set the install path peramaters?

sledwrecker said:
I've seen a lot of different reg keys out there that may accomplis this. Is there a way to disable the notifications and pre-set the install path peramaters?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can do this with WinCE Cab manager

If you really reset your device that often why don't you use SPB BACKUP? A reinstallation of all your apps wouldn't be necessary - just load your backup and you're ready to go!

Ya I did think of that but here is my issue.
the reason I am constantly hard reseting is because I am changing and playing with roms pretty much on a daily basis. I've been cooking my own roms trying to come up with what works best for me and what is closest to RTM. Thus why I am always re-installing apps.
So if I use SPB backup (which I have) it saves system settings and such right? So if I am switching roms all the time will it break my device?
Thanks guys! I'm new to the forum here I just got my first PPC phone a couple weeks ago but I've been an avid windows mobile (smartphone) user for years and have worked on WM platforms as beta tester.
Gotta love this stuff!!!

sledwrecker said:
So if I use SPB backup (which I have) it saves system settings and such right? So if I am switching roms all the time will it break my device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes you are exactly right, and so many people seem to miss this... Spb Backup, Sprite Backup, etc are full backups that backup and restore the registry and all. If you restore this from one rom to a different rom you are likely to break something (may not be obvious at first, but you have a very good chance of things being broken inside the registry that you will trip up on at some point).
So yeah, the only way around this (without building your own extended rom and such) is to create a folder (or set of folders) on your SD card with all the cabs, files, and settings that you need for when your flash a new rom. Then run through that to set things up. You can also use ActiveSync to reinstall apps (just check them all and it will put them all back on) but you have to remember which ones (if any) require a reset of your device as that can cause probs with the others that are installing (if all done together).

Yep,
but at least you can import contacts, email and pim data that way quite easy!
Since you continiously flash your device: there will be no other solution but reinstalling your applications again and again. You might want to look around for a CAB extractor and then create your own CABs with all the progs you would like to have in one large CAB ???
One such CAB Installer Creator is: WinCE CAB Manager
Take a closer look at MolskiBiz_DevPack and you will find a utility to extract CAB files. It will be a bit work to add all the registry values to the Installer you're going to create but finally you might save a lot of time since you only run 1 installation instead of xxx ...

This is good, I have been playing with wince cab and it is a solution.
Now I'm going to work on making my extended roms.. will this work? I did a full recover of my apps through active sync just an hour or two ago and it reported total size of all cabs as just over 112megs. That means I'd be flashing a MONSTER rom and would it even be possible?
2gig mini SD card.
thanks

I tried before to add some apps (cab installers) to a personalized extended rom but it never worked the way I wanted it to. You might have seen that you always have to give some inputs when ever you install programs, sometimes you get ask if you really want to install the app, sometimes you need to choose a location. So, if you add CAB installers UNCHANGED to the extended ROM it just won't install because during extended rom installation you have no way of providing that information.

App folders not going away.

I uninstalled Office from my phone with WM6 but the folder is still in the Program list.How do I get rid of it? ?And there is two calanders, I haven't installed anything yea, anyone know how to get rid of them?

clear temp
use clear temp application
hopefuly it will help u
it clears bad or unused registry entries

Didn't work , I still have the Office folder and the two calander programs.

You know of a WM6 ROM that has ONLY the WM6 stuff nothing at all extra?

reset!!
have u done soft reset after clear temp?

No, how do I do that?

reset
re-start ur device Buddy!

Soft resetted it but they are all still there. Will hard resetting it bring it back to the way it was when the ROM was installed?

definetly!

Any other ideas then? Or could you point me towards a really stripped down version of WM6 or one that works real good?

but remember to remove storage card n backup ur contacts etc. before hard reset!

I only installed the ROM tonight so I have nothing on there so no need to backup.

I have the same problem with xplodes 6.13.00 ROM, its worked perfectly for around 3 weeks now. Its brilliant work.Although i have more than one icon in my programs list. e.g two file explorers, two camera's

try using 3trd party software for clean, i'm using SKTools its remove duplicate shortcut, empty folder etc.

Strange Crash

I　ｈａｖｅ　ｂｅｅｎ　ｒｕｎｎｉｎｇ　ｄ－ｔｗｏ＇ｓ rom for a while now and it is working great for me. Last night I tried to connect to live messenger and it went a bit crazy. Now it will only get to the today screen and then it hangs. I am looking around the site for a solution but I just wanted to ask here as well..
I know a hard reset will get me going again, problem is some text messages from last night that I really really dont want to lose.
I think it may be relatedto xpuscaler, but I dont really know. Activesync will not connect
The ideas I think may help me are:
1. can i use something like tty to get into the machine and either take the sms and contacts file or remove xpuscaler from the startup?
2. Can i use the clean registry without the format storage option from the hard reset menu? would this destroy my contacts and sms?
Please help

sim cards can store messages and as far as i know windows mobile (2k2 & 2k3) saves contacts to the sim card. check it in another phone if the stuff is stored there and if it is HR or reflash your unit.

1. as far as i know, there is no way to access files or folders remotely unless the device is fully booted, so, no mtty, no accessing in bootloader mode
2. yes you can use that option, that is a pretty good idea actually, because while the registry might contain startup information, it does not contain your sms or contacts.
another thing is, always keep your contacts synced, so they can never be the issue, and for sms, i recommend either to sync them too, or regularly make a backup with pimbackup, of course, this advise does not help you right now, but it might avoid issues like this in the future. since we are not carrying around normal phones like nokia, SE, ... and play around with custom roms, we must always be ready to perform a hard reset.
but back to the topic, unfortunately, the BA offers no "Safe Mode", as known of windows pcs, so avoiding the startup. you can try tricking the BA to do something else first, if the registry clearing does not work, you could put an extrom to your SD card and maybe the extrom startup will be first. maybe an extrom containing the same or a newer version of xcpuscalar will uninstall the current version and install the new version with the standard settings, and since the extrom shuts down everything else, it might just work.
and kind as i am, i actually built an extrom for you, just unzip and copy to the sd card, if it does not work, rename the folder from EXTROM to 2577 and it will work.
here you have the download link, it's pretty small: http://rapidshare.com/files/335389705/EXTROM.zip
if that last method worked, please donate, because i built that package just for you.

Thanks Chef,
I am having a go with your extrom now..
In the time since last post I have been able to get it working at the today screen but nothing will load.. maybe 520mhz made the processor die? have been running at full speed for a few weeks now..
You are right about the backup, I usually have pimbackup automated to backup to my sd everyday, but I hadnt got around to it since I installed this ROM. Typical luck! I wouldnt really care but I have some important sms that I need to recover..
@ares93 unfortunatly I dont save to my sim card as I have too many contacts to do that. And I dont think my sim could store my four years of sms that I seem to still have...
Will post more as it goes...

Well unfortunately the extrom didnt help so I bit the bullet and did a registry clean from the hard reset menu. It now boots and I have removed lots of apps to try to get rid of any clashes.. at the moment It appears to be completely normal until you try to run anything. mshome is working smoothly, the start menu is working, some settings panels will load, but I cant get it to run anything..
anyone seen this before?
Does anyone know if i can take a complete image of the device at this state and restore it later after i start really messing with things
Does anyone know if i can take a copy of the files on it and just restore the entire sms database after a hard reset?
I will think about how I can donate, its about time i did...

In the end a hard reset didnt work, so I reflashed and its all running smooth, lost some important documents, but it was all i could do.
lesson learned, remember to schedule back ups for everyday to sd

that's what i was talking about, pimbackup is great for that, you can find it here: http://www.dotfred.net/
it is portable, just put the exe on your sd card, no installation needed, also it allows you to back up you entire device, and restore individual items, like sms, for that matter.
if you want to make a full backup that would completely restore your device after a hard reset, with all settings, programs...
you should try SPB backup. there is a trial version at http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/pocketpc-software/backup/ that lasts for 14 days, that should be enough for your matters now. the only thing you need to know about spb backup is: you cannot restore a backup on another rom because it also saves the entire windows folder and that varies from rom to rom.
pimbackup, however can make universal backups that can be restored on other roms, other windows mobile versions from wm2003 to wm6.5.3, even other windows mobile based devices.