Is my beloved Athena dying? - Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General

Over the past couple of months I have noticed a number of small issues with my Athena, and have resorted to soft-booting more and more often.
Recently I tried both MemMaid and Pocket Mechanic. The former found a number of registry issues, the latter several problems with microdrive. Several e-mails to the PM guys had me running a de-bug version of their scandisk program, but I never got it to sort out the microdrive.
So I hard re-set
MUCH better - at least for a week or two. Decided to put in a bigger SD card (8gb) which arrived yesterday. When I looked at the music folder on the microdrive, one folder was completely corrupted, so I copied only programs and data from md onto sd card, then reformatted the md
Just went to look at a program on the microdrive and Total Commander froze. Soft reboot and everything fine again. But now I am concerned the microdrive is on the way out.
The machine is 3-4 years old and is used every day. Syncs to both home and work e-mail/calendaring and contains my life, frankly. I do not want to change, but would appreciate any advice.
Should I just forget about the microdrive and keep everything on the sd card?
Thanks
Robert

It does sound like classic hard drive "beginning of the end".
I'd be tempted to just stick everything on an sd card and leave the Micro Drive alone.

Thanks, good advice.
If by any bad luch the machine is actually on its way out, what should I replace it with? Is the x7510 a better bet?
I have my car all set up for the Advantage and I love the 5" screen, so not really attraced to the HD2 at present

Similar issues w/ Microdrive
Yeah, I've been having trouble with my Athena (X7500) for a couple of months now.
In early January, my device got stuck in the bootup phase of any soft-reset; only way to fix the problem was a hard-reset to delete all of my memory. (I keep all of my important stuff backed up, so the only inconvenience is re-installing software and getting my data restored.)
About a month later in February, the device hard reset itself and blew away everything I had loaded. This time, my MicroDrive would not show up for about 2 hours while I tried to figure out how to fix it.
MD began working again, and everything is cool now, but I decided to use the MD for data only (and keep it backed up, of course) and install my programs to the SD card (8GB).
We'll see how it goes. I'm fortunate enough to have purchased a friend's old Athena "super-cheap" after he fell into a lake with it. I managed to get everything working except for the VGA/USB Host port. (The USB sync port works if you plug it in, then go to standby/powerup again.) I'll try taking the MD from this device if mine goes out.

Still having issues, even after moving everything from the microdrive and running just from memory + SD card.
Question: does the main memory degrade? Will a hard-reset do anything? will a re-flash acheive anything a hard-reset doesn't?
I am loath to part with this work-horse. And concerned about buying a second-hand one from e-bay without understanding a bit more
Appreciate any suggestions
Thanks

Related

Phone reset itself! Any idea why?

I have an O2 XDA2. I just took the phone out of my jacket pocket to find that it wanted me to calibrate the screen. It went on to take me through the whole set-up wizard and then I found that all my data and installed programs had been lost
I'm guessing the phone decided it wanted to reset itself!
Does anyone have any idea why this might have happened so I can avoid it happening again?
The phone had plenty of battery power (approx 80%). It had plenty of space space (approx 28MB). I hadn't recently installed any software although I did uninstall Pocket Money on the weekend. I also created an IMAP email account then but I've had no problem with the phone since then until now.
Any ideas? Thanks very much
would prob be a good idear if you stated the rom version you are using
Sorry, It's 1.60.00 WWE
I have never upgraded it as I haven't the first idea how or what the implications are.
the latest officail rom is 1.72
if you get that from their site you will not get warrenty issues
when i used 1.66 i had lockups from time to time
after i got 1.72
i havent had any issues
I don't really feel comfortable upgrading it as I haven't the first idea what to do.
How do you normally reset a device? Is it something I could have done by accident?
there is a little hole in the buttom of it in the right corner if you press that using something thin like the stylus while you press the on button
then it hardreset
but there is software which let you do it as well
the upgrade is really pretty simpel
Thanks very much. I know the reset button, I use that every now and again. There's no way I could have pressed it and the on switch by accident given tha the phone was in an otherwise empty jacket pocket.
Oh well, I guess my phone just had enough of life. I'll look into upgrading the ROM when I feel a bit more adventurous
Fabulous...My phone has again decided to reset itself out of the blue.
I have no idea why it does this but it's a pain in the rear. Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone know if there's anything I can do to prevent it? (other than upgrading to the Universal when it comes out!!)
And it's happened again...seems to happen approximately once a month.
Has this spontaneous hard reset issue not happened to anyone else?
I suffered this audacious curse only to find that by removing my 1gig sd card remedied the problem.
I'm wondering if the sd card draws too much power/resources or whether I have a dodgy sd card.
Either way, without it I'm flying. I pop it in when I need to use my TomTom and as it's on charge in the car cradle it doesnt matter about resource usage etc.
So, try removing your sd card and see what goes
SD cards seem to be causing all sorts of problems. I kept getting the eternal spinning timer when copy, paste or deleting files, if the card was inserted. Did a soft reset today to be met with the calibration screen as from a hard reset. Such fun isnt it. :roll:
Hi Guys
Thanks very much for your comments. Unfortunately it isn't the cause as I have had my SD slot empty for a while now (my SD card is in my new car radio/MP3 player )
I'm starting to think that after 15 months my XDA2 has decided that it's had enough of the world. My colleague told me that it's seeking revenge as it's heard me salivate over its younger sister (the Universal).
As you say having the phone hard reset itself is a whole lot of fun!
I have the Sprite Back Up programe so all is not lost - it creates an exe file on the SD card that you locate and select thus restoring everything just how it was before it was lost
one can also just have activesync do an inc backup at each sync
and if the device hardresets one can connect as guest and restore the backup from ones normal profile
The nice thing about the Sprite software is that you can restore when you're out and about unlike the active sync method which means you need your pc close by

Mini SD trouble.

Just trying to upload a few files to my 1gb sandisk and found that some files and directories had just become a jumble of characters and after a soft reset my programs that were stored on the card refused to work.
I had the phone reasonably close to my monitor at work on the desk, could that have been the prob or is my card going to die ?
Formatted it on the PC and its back to normal for now. Just re installing everything.
i got the same thing just now. all my games and programs stored on my miniSD card dont work! what the heck?
Is it some form of magnetism interference or power surge or what ? I was plugging my phone into the usb attached to the computer at the time when I first noticed it. Everything had been runnning fine before that.
Hope its not going to keep happening on a regular basis.
It happened to me too, I think it is due to two programs trying to write to the storage card at once, or something reading while some else is writing, or similar.
I wiped mine and fortunately was able to replace most of what was on there (mostly music) but found out afterwards that there was a good chance of recovery.
Try checking out EasyRecovery Professional, there is a free trial I beleive and you should be able to recover files on your card (even if they have been deleted and not yet overwritten).
Hope this helps
Oliy

sudden camera blues!

i have done a search and read thru some threads with similar problems, but not exactly the same.
i have the O2 xda trion with the dopod rom and have had the device since feb 07 without any significant problems up until a few days ago.
all of a sudden the camera would not capture, ie save anywhere, and then is not saving to the 2 gb sd card i have been using since day 1.it inconsistently is not saving to either site, card or internal. (i do not have the "network" choice) i use the camera just about every day and take photos for work and remove the micro sd card and place it in the sd-adapter in my pc to instantly copy and print....this has been working very well until recently.
i have tried most all of the suggestions from the threads incl., card out while device on a few times, soft reset, installed cool camera and it does not copy to the card, hitting the icon for sd card, reducing from super fine to fine on the settings, so i am left with a hard reset which i dread doing, almost an excuse to get a new device AND installing an sd card formatting/cleaning? program ??. as i am not a real techie and dont know how to do registry changes and have the patience of a spastic paranoid schizophrenic, i wonder if someone can direct to a program that might resolve this issue as i do believe it now has to do with the card itself.
other poss suggestions are encouraged, AND i did do the search and spent quite a bit of time before opening a new thread.
thanks in advance!
djsell
[email protected] said:
i have done a search and read thru some threads with similar problems, but not exactly the same.
i have the O2 xda trion with the dopod rom and have had the device since feb 07 without any significant problems up until a few days ago.
all of a sudden the camera would not capture, ie save anywhere, and then is not saving to the 2 gb sd card i have been using since day 1.it inconsistently is not saving to either site, card or internal. (i do not have the "network" choice) i use the camera just about every day and take photos for work and remove the micro sd card and place it in the sd-adapter in my pc to instantly copy and print....this has been working very well until recently.
i have tried most all of the suggestions from the threads incl., card out while device on a few times, soft reset, installed cool camera and it does not copy to the card, hitting the icon for sd card, reducing from super fine to fine on the settings, so i am left with a hard reset which i dread doing, almost an excuse to get a new device AND installing an sd card formatting/cleaning? program ??. as i am not a real techie and dont know how to do registry changes and have the patience of a spastic paranoid schizophrenic, i wonder if someone can direct to a program that might resolve this issue as i do believe it now has to do with the card itself.
other poss suggestions are encouraged, AND i did do the search and spent quite a bit of time before opening a new thread.
thanks in advance!
djsell
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds like one of those infuriatingly difficult problems to solve where in the end a hard reset is the only option left. Still, some routine questions just in case:
1
Installed any new software recently?
2
Are you running low on main memory? - cleaned out the PIE history and temp files recently?
3
Does it save pictures at low resolution?
4
No other applications are running when you use the camera?
5
Other applications, word say, save and read ok to SD Card?
6
You do of course have full backup software installed so a hard reset is no problem???
Mike
WOW!, mike,
thats great stuff .....as if i had an appt with my trioniatrist, i feel i owe you money, but......i'm in between patients of my own but i do think you've made some excellent diagnoses and it certainly may work and will get back with you as soon as i can address those issues 1 x 1 !
thanks...djsell
[email protected] said:
WOW!, mike,
thats great stuff .....as if i had an appt with my trioniatrist, i feel i owe you money, but......i'm in between patients of my own but i do think you've made some excellent diagnoses and it certainly may work and will get back with you as soon as i can address those issues 1 x 1 !
thanks...djsell
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL perhaps more of a trionologist, haven't reached the heady heights of trioniatristry yet . The above are just thoughts really, based on a speculative guess that it might be a memory issue - not so much on your SD card but on the device itself. I have noticed it likes to keep quite a chunk of memory free in order to run and process data. However, as I said above, tracking down a solution might not be worth endless ours of trying and testing. I would not be without my periodic full backups - even if I hit problems, often I won't bother looking for a solution other than just restoring the latest backup.
Mike
hello mike,
i was able to figure out my problem after i cleaned out memory from about 3 mb to 10 mb and still the problem, so i realized that after using both the inherent camera and the cool camera (which i do like better at the moment) and both did not save to the sd card and i finally got a message that there was no path to the sd card and checked to see i had made a sep. file on the card months ago called "my pictures" but it was not a subfolder under "my documents", so i created a subfolder in my documents and the path was opened.
why it worked before i dont know, but so far so good!!
thanks again and maybe people with similar problems can try this mode of therapy!
i do hope to upgrade to an "omni", imate ultimate 7150, or the kaiser in the future so we'll see if they are with stable cameras!
by the way just had a few mcewans ales for the 1st time and quite tasty!!
djsell
Agh! Good news though.
Next time someone asks, checking the file path will be on the diagnosis checklist.
Glad you enjoyed the McEwens, but don't let Hermes drive you to alcohol!!
Cheers
Mike

Microdrive wiped clean for no aparent reason

Yesterday I was play around with the VGA 144 resolution program and I noticed that on this resolution the contents of my microdrive were showing up really slowly in file explorer.
I uninstalled the program and things were back top normal.
Later I installed a newer version of the CAB for VGA 144 and this time the contents on the microdrive did not show up at all, as if it was empty, which in fact it was!
I do not know what caused this (I don't think it was the change of resolution) but was wondering if anybody else has had this happen?
The threads I have seen so far are that the microdrive is no longer visible as a drive or error messages when trying to access it....
edeplano said:
Yesterday I was play around with the VGA 144 resolution program and I noticed that on this resolution the contents of my microdrive were showing up really slowly in file explorer.
I uninstalled the program and things were back top normal.
Later I installed a newer version of the CAB for VGA 144 and this time the contents on the microdrive did not show up at all, as if it was empty, which in fact it was!
I do not know what caused this (I don't think it was the change of resolution) but was wondering if anybody else has had this happen?
The threads I have seen so far are that the microdrive is no longer visible as a drive or error messages when trying to access it....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something similar happened to me and that's why I don't trust the drive. It wasn't with a VGA program, just happened.
I have never lost the microdrive, but something similar happened to me on an SDHC 4GB card. I had been using it only to store CAB files for installed programs but one day it was just 'empty'.
I pulled out the card and hooked it up to my computer, ran scandisk on it and all of the files were there, just seemed to have lost the FAT table as they were all lost files to be recovered. I reformatted the card since I had the files backed up.
I was running VISTA at the time time of the incident and I found that I had been moving files to the card using WM Device Center and I had the SD directory open on my desktop when I undocked my phone. Seems as if it had the FAT table open and and did not like being disconnected with the directory open.
There may be something analogous to this with ActiveSync, but I have never had this happen with another device, just with my U1000. I have been closing WMDC since then and have NO PROBLEMS.
so far this has not happened to me with the microdrive, but it has happened a few times with the sd card, which left me f**ked last week as i had tomtom on it, luckily I downloaded google maps to get me home. but there has to be an answer to why this is happening.
raskell said:
I have never lost the microdrive, but something similar happened to me on an SDHC 4GB card. I had been using it only to store CAB files for installed programs but one day it was just 'empty'.
I pulled out the card and hooked it up to my computer, ran scandisk on it and all of the files were there, just seemed to have lost the FAT table as they were all lost files to be recovered. I reformatted the card since I had the files backed up.
I was running VISTA at the time time of the incident and I found that I had been moving files to the card using WM Device Center and I had the SD directory open on my desktop when I undocked my phone. Seems as if it had the FAT table open and and did not like being disconnected with the directory open.
There may be something analogous to this with ActiveSync, but I have never had this happen with another device, just with my U1000. I have been closing WMDC since then and have NO PROBLEMS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
one of the times it happened to me was when copying files, 1 gig card is fine I dont have a 4 gig only two, you may be right about the fat, but I was using windows mobile device centre at the time.
Even though this happened to me personally...YET, I'm expecting it sooner or later. Never did get my cousins MD fixed!!
I hate this MD and not being able to trust it really defeats the object of buying this device in the first place. Looking forward to when we can eventually replace it with something else.
Surley the MD is not bigger than say the technology needed for a Full sized SD card and connections, is it? That would allow us to relatively easily upgrade our storage capacity in the future too.
Anyway, enough dreaming.
My MicroDrive wiped out too...
I was just using RescoExplorer and my x7500 stucked, I soft reseted the device and ALL files in all directories were deled, and the empty directories were there.
I used Pocket Mechanic Professional and did a scandisk and wupti all files was there again but there was about 59000 bad clusters...
Now everything is back to normal..
It happened to me twice last month both times using different s/w! (and I just start using my Advantage in July; basically this was the first time I seriously used this PDA)
The idea was nice but data storage on this MD is totally unreliable. I guess I will not be using it anymore. Even for the none vital files (e.g. music) it is not interesting seeing how much time it takes to load the MD and the ease the data disappears from the MD.
1st time I was using TomTom -on the second day of my holiday- which stopt responding. After a HTC reset TT started up and reported it could not find the Western Europe map (which I put on the MD). When I checked this map directory ALL FILES WERE GONE! Other directories appeared ok. Luckily (I thought) just for leaving on my holidays I added also the individual maps on my MD, so I switched using the Austria map, where I landed at that time. At most 2 hours later again TT froze and at inspection ALL files in the Austria directory had vaporised. Later in the evening I tried to relax from the stress driving with an "old fashioned PAPER map" and put on some music. Halfway the first number the music stopped and -you guess it right- ALL 40+ CD's were disappeared. At that time I ran Pocket mechanic 'scan disk' which reported that the FAT tables did not match (and it could not repair). Next I could not find my MD at all anymore, followed the next day by the complete HTC not being able to startup anymore after a reset (the today screen was only showing half and this part was flashing: the HTC also did not respond anymore to the h/w buttons or almost any command via the screen).
When I returned home from this first stage of my holidays (, I hard-reset the HTC after which everything returned to normal including the MD that reappeared.
After 1 week at home I was to leave for the second stage of my holidays and I prepared by putting this time all nescesary TT maps on the SD. I spend quit some hours putting some 40+ CDs again on the MD. ( I can only copy ~3 CD's at a time otherwise it aborts somewhere).
The FIRST TIME I listened to some music I started a Bowie CD and half way the first number suddenly it switched to a Stones number (no, nothing to do with 'dancing in the street'). After inspection of the MD there were already only 2 (screwed up) MP3 files left -in the root- on the complete MD!!
The MD is still in this state -and I just ran scan disk again- and appearently there is again a problem with the FAT only this time with lost clusters.
If it where not for the fact that during this 2nd trip of 4200km/2700mls over curvy B-roads TomTom gave me no troubles at all, the internal GPS worked flawless and the BlueTooth A2DP worked perfectly with my "home-made" BT helmet (for this I bought this HTC) I would have been seriously disappointed in the Advantage. As it is now I am actually quit happy with it, except for the inconvienence of not being able to use the MD.
So yes, it happened to me too: twice.
Petition for recall?
Do you guys think it's time to petition HTC for a recall of the MicroDrive? I have no idea how something like this will work but based on the feedback on the forum...there are waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many people having problems with the MicroDrive. Those that use it seriously have problems.
I myself don't have time as most of my time is being spent on the Athena Project ROM but maybe someone else can help in the matter.
What do you guys think? A massive communication effort to HTC to find out what the heck is going on here? We paid wayyyy too much money for them to think we'll be happy with what we have if there is one or two faulty parts. The one part that keeps failing us is the MicroDrive and I think it's time to get a few answers. It's our right as the consumer and get answers and the quality product that we anticipated.
I totally agree and was just trying to report my problems -including the link to this forum/thread- on the HTC site.
HTC however seems a little bit e-mail shy. Last time I checked I could not find any e-mail link at the HTC site, now I could find one but everytime when I submit my message I get a popup 'the system is experiencing some problem, please try again at a later time'.
I try again later.
scruued up
so suddenly yesterday i was just using my athena and i had this Vista Theme on Wisbar Advance running....and the device just got stuck at windows live sign-in window and the phone first just restarted but then again got stuck and the "Windows Mobile" window wich appears at the start and then wen i manually resetted it....EVERYTHING was WIPED OUT!!!...BUT everything on the device remained like the wisbar theme it asked me to install and all but on the MICRODRIVE...everything just....VANISHED!!!
I was on holiday in the u.s.a in July, and had tomtom installed (on the MD, no more room on the card), all of a sudden, it froze while driving, had to pull over and found that my usa maps had been wiped! luckily I also had igo installed with some usa maps and was able to continue my holiday without having my head stuck in a paper map, thanks for the dodgy MD HTC!
Yes, this happened to me - both the sd card and md are equally unreliable. At the moment,I install everything on my md simply because it is way way faster than the sd card. I don't use my sd card at all now,although I have two of them.
When you copy files using wm5torage, avoid starting a new copy before the one before completes. Similarly, do not use the device while copying is going on , although the system does not stop you. What I observe is that there is a higher chance of corruption when I don't observe these practice.
I used to think that md is less reliable than sd. Now I don't think that anymore. I think they are equally unreliable.
musso said:
I was on holiday in the u.s.a in July, and had tomtom installed (on the MD, no more room on the card), all of a sudden, it froze while driving, had to pull over and found that my usa maps had been wiped! luckily I also had igo installed with some usa maps and was able to continue my holiday without having my head stuck in a paper map, thanks for the dodgy MD HTC!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which Tomtom version are you using? do you have WM5 or WM6? What is your Rom version?
Guys, is there a way to easily reproduce the problem in MicroDrive and SD so we can pass it to HTC and hopefully get a solution?
My new Advantage is less than 24 hours old and I too have had the Microdrive come with garbage while trying to move videos files from my PC to the PDA. I have formatted it and reloaded it, so wish me luck!!
Exactly the same story here - 7501 (WM6) less than 24 hours old.
- unable to accessed until formatted
- sometimes not showing directories/files until a soft reset
- returning messages like 'disk full or write protected' when copying from desktop
The worst of it is losing a 126Mb wmv file during one of these false 'disc write protected/full' events.
There has to be a serious issue with the OS that has to be fixed.
How do we build a poll of users with this problem?
Folks,
I have a reply from a message I sent to [email protected] last week:
Hello Bart,
Thank you for taking the time to contact HTC regarding the problems you are having with your HTC Advantage device.
Bart, we regret to see that you are having problems with the micro drive in your HTC Advantage device. If you could forward us several examples of other users having the same issues, we will forward them to our product development team for resolution. Please forward me the following information for each example:
* Serial Number
* IMEI
Identity
* OS Version -
* Radio Version -
On receipt of enough examples for these issues, we will be able to prioritize the resolution of this problem.
How can we collect this information so we can provide a united front to HTC?
Do we need a moderator to post a 'sticky' message at the top of this forum?
Btw to get this info
* Serial Number
- inside the battery compartment door flap
* IMEI
- inside the battery compartment door flap
or
- Start >> Seetings >> System Tab >> Device Infomation icon >> Identity
* OS Version -
- Start >> Seetings >> System Tab >> Device Infomation icon >> Version
* Radio Version -
- Start >> Seetings >> System Tab >> Device Infomation icon >> Version
Thanks
Bart
I'd like to contribute...
Did we get anywhere with this issue with HTC? I think it's a great idea, at least for the principle of the thing, to get them working on this (even if someone else can solve the problem better and faster). We could each submit a tx, but creating the "petition" for help that they seem to want would at least get some results. My reservation would be that we would be suckered into what seems like manipulative behavior on their part. After all, they are not government and we are not lobbyists.
I'm working on fixing it myself, but why are they releasing stuff I have to fix out of the box? If we can't get them to spend thier money & time fixing this stuff, we'll keep getting crap we have to fix, right? So where do we go from here? Anywhere?
I only get flaky when I'm on 128dpi
My MD seems to work acceptibly well on either 192 or 96, it's when I shift to 128 that things start to disapear, etc.
Hmmmm. Would, perhaps, this be a result of lame drivers?

phone has become abnormally slow, and hangs often.

i am a ardent fan of this site and a regular visitor since i brought my htc touch hd, i am living in Australia bought the phone when i went to India last month. this is my very first windows mobile, the phone was working like a charm till the time i accidentally reset the phone by clicking clear storage. i thought it was like emptying the recycle bin in windows vista, the phone asked me to type the numbers from 1 to 4 which i did and everything changed from that time. the phone is abnormally slow and often hangs, leting me down when i need it. of late i am not able to sync the phone with the system as it is not getting recognized my sd card.ophra does not work as like most of the applications. i tried to format my 8 gb sd card which came along the phone, but the fate is still the same. will a hard reset help me?
my rom is: 1.18.707.3(23358) wwe
radio version: 1.09.25.14
i am a novice person as far as phones are concerned, i don't meddle with it
help in this regard is much appreciated.
regards,
gokul.mb
Yes, you should try a hard reset. Remember to backup any data that you have entered in the phone, hopefully you will be able to sync to do that. If I understand, you deleted the 'internal storage', am I right? Maybe some programs are storing executables, DLL files or other stuff there and all of them stopped working when you 'cleared' storage. Btw, where is that 'clear storage' option in the menu?
It's in System Settings I think.
Isn't Clear Storage a hard reset?
yeah its the one found in settings under the tab system, i think i did a hard reset by do it. thats what i found from the forums, while i was reading a few hours back. i dont know what to do now, also read it some where that installing .net 3.5 and change the settings using a reg editor, later install sd card tune up cab will improve the performance considerably. which registry editor do you suggest? thanks for your replies....
I had similar issue with my Touch HD, but it happend after i took a picture (one of many) with the camera. I did a hard reset, but that did not help. Try removing the SD card, because in my case the problem was that something had gone wrong with that picture and the phone could not read it properly and display it in the Photos and Videos section ot the TouchFlo 3D (or at least that what I think was the reason ). Anyway, that worked for me - glad if it works for you too.
P.S. Forget to mention that after deleting that picture (with SD card reader - I could not do it in the File Explorer on Touch HD) everything went back to normal.
omg i solved my problem atlast....... thanks to all who gave me suggestions about this problem. i hard reset the phone after formating my sd card. now the phone runs like a wild horse...faster than before.
Good to hear.......Now jump on that sucker and get moding......yeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaa

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