I've been having an issue with my device. Once every week or so, something happens to my 16 GB SanDisk memory card. Exactly what happens I can't tell you, but it can be stuff from Media Player not beeing able to add files to the library (but plays them fine if you open them manually), to the phone freezing after entering PIN upon start-up. Sometimes it freezes randomly, and I have to remove the SD-card. Whenever this happen, using my card reader and running Vistas error-checking sorta helps it, or if I can isolate a file that causes a problem (not a program, any kind of file) and delete it, it usually works.
But, why does this happen? I never take the card out of the phone, except when trying to fix the errors. I sync over Bluetooth and USB, I've used different ROMs (I think, I've flashed quite a few recently so can't tell for sure), I've used diffrent line-up of programs, but it stills keep acting weird. Any clues? It's quite annoying. I didn't search the forums, since I honestly don't know what to search for. Any clues or search strings are most welcome! Thanks!
Forgot to mention, I'm currently running CRC's latest stable, but, as I said, I don't think that's the problem.
same thiong happened to me
My mem card started showing up files with some weird names, other files were unaccesible, programs stopped responding and the phone would freeze until I took out the mem card. What I id to fix the issue was, took out all the vital info (keep it minimal cuz there might be a corrupted file and we dont want to transfer that one to the phone again. format your memory card using a "low level" format application http://lmgtfy.com/?q=low+level+format+freeware+download+sd&l=1 then pop it back in again and the phome will format it, and transfer your old data back. This happened to me a while back and havnt had a single issue sience the low level thingie. Hopes this helps
I'm afraid this is a common enough problem and has been written about many times. Causes vary from software errors, switching off before all data is written or even physical contacts between phone and card (some evn say different brands of card work better).
If it happens that you see corrupt file names do not continue using the device or open programs or trying to delete data. Imediately perform a soft reset, this can recover (sometimes) the corrupt FAT file and save data.
The inability to save Media Player files to the library is an un-related issue and is a known software issue. You can overcome the issue by deleting the msmetadata file (search this forum for more info). Unfortunately it's something you may have to do fairly regularly.
Mike
Hi everyone,
I'm in a spot of bother, and really hoping someone can help to give some advice. This is my first Android phone, as you can probably guess, and I've been noticing some issues.
1) The first thing was the Martket not downloading, however after following some advice on forums it seems to be working okay now.
2) Today I've noticed that some applications are crashing. It's not the same ones, so far it's happened with Market, the internet browser, even some battery gauge which I installed. I don't have a note of the exact error message, but it always says it's encountered a problem with 'com.android.......' and needs to close, and then I have to click force close.
3) It's asked me to download an OTA update for the phone, but I've read mixed reactions on it. I don't have any issues with the proximity sensor, but I've read a few people have had the problem arise SINCE they installed the update. Would you recommend that I install it, or leave it?
4) The main issue that's concerning me at the moment is an issue with the memory card. I've had a few occasions where it's come up saying 'memory card unexpectedly removed'. I've checked the cover to make sure it's on and the memory card was in. At first, removing it and reinserting it, or restarting the phone fixed it. However, this evening it's not. If I put the memory card in the phone, it says it's preparing it, and whenever I access anything that needs the memory card, such as the camera, it comes up saying it's been removed.
I've tried the card that come with the phone, and that seems to work. However, I'm worried for two reasons a) I need to copy all my pics, music, etc from my old memory card to the new one that come with the phone, and I'm worried in case it might be something on there that has interferred with it. b) I'm worried that the phone might have damaged the memory card in some way, as I now can't even get my PC to access it.
If anyone has any suggestions or advice, I'd really appreciate it.
I have read similar problems with people changing the SD card before first use. It seems there are some system files on the SD. I recommend copying all data from the original SD card to the new one and then checking to see if you have the same problem.
I have updated my DHD over the air and it works fine
I've had the phone for about a week now, and it's been really crash-prone and unstable for the first couple of days. I previously had an HD7 for 4 weeks, so I immediately set up my DVP like I had the HD7 set up.
It was so buggy, I hard reset at least a couple of times in those few days. My most recent hard reset was on Sunday, and lo and behold, I didn't experience any crashes for 4 days!
That started me thinking. The difference between the previous hard reset and the current hard reset was that I hadn't loaded many apps or any mp3s yet - so I loaded the same amount of MP3s as I had before (about 8gb) and immediately any new programs started crashing! In fact, I think just about anything that wrote to the disk exhibited errors, from newly downloaded and installed apps to existing apps which does disk I/O. The marketplace crashed all the time while downloading or installing apps.
My best guess as to the cause of the issue is that the SD card is corrupting data. As long as you are using the internal storage, everything runs fine - but once data is written to the SD card, things are getting corrupted. I'm not sure about this, it's just a guess.
At the OS level, the internal storage is combined with the SD card into a single logical disk - AKA JBOD in RAID terms. I'm not sure about the OS-level algorithm it uses to determine whether or not to save to internal vs SD card, but my guess is that it writes to the internal first, then when that is exceeded, it writes to the SD card. Even after removing some MP3s, I still had crashes, so I'm guessing that it doesn't overwrite the same sectors that previously held data until all the "fresh" sectors have been used (ie it was still writing to the SD card).
If this is the case, then the culprits could be either A) Dell's crappy SD card drivers corrupting the data or B) a crappy quality SD card corrupting the data. Given their recent QC issues i'm inclined to think it's B - but I hope it's A because that would imply a software fix as opposed to having to replace hardware.
Either way, I'll write a program to test my hypothesis: It'll create a test files of a specific size and then read them back and check that the test data is correct.
Thoughts? Has anybody else noticed similar behavior after filling up their storage?
I suspected the SD card as well, which is why I included the remaining storage space in the options in the poll at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=891295
That being said, some others have said that doing a system reset on their phone did not fix the crashing problems. There are 2 major unknown variables here of course - when the phone is using the SD card vs. internal memory, and whether everyone is experiencing the same type of crashing.
pjfan75 said:
I suspected the SD card as well, which is why I included the remaining storage space in the options in the poll at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=891295
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple causes for the all the crashes people are experiencing - most likely the SD card may be responsible for some of those, while other issues are causing more crashes.
Impossible to tell at the moment, though. But perhaps the reason why people associated wifi with crashing was that they were using the wifi to load more data than they were over 3G?
I've thought about the apps too. AP mobile is one that is involved on my list. Shazam, yelp, where, are others. I an make my hd7 crash with each of them. However, that does not eliminate sd card. Optimal read/write access speed will probably impact crash, lag, and performance.
Based on this thread it sounds like it's probably more of a driver issue.
alodar1 said:
I've thought about the apps too. AP mobile is one that is involved on my list. Shazam, yelp, where, are others. I an make my hd7 crash with each of them. However, that does not eliminate sd card. Optimal read/write access speed will probably impact crash, lag, and performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've used those apps on the HD7 and I don't think they ever crashed it - not nearly as often as the DVP crashes.
zaijian said:
But perhaps the reason why people associated wifi with crashing was that they were using the wifi to load more data than they were over 3G?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That and also at a much higher rate than 3G typically.
zaijian said:
Based on this thread it sounds like it's probably more of a driver issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if I would agree with that. I would hope that drivers would be the same on all devices. To have 1 fail and 20 not fail....is it driver? I would be curious to know what the failure rates would be. Sure we see alot of complaints here on this forum....but there is not a whole lot of traffic about failure of the DVP. All in All, I'm happy with the DVP. I also have a HD7...and I'm happy with that. I have them both sitting here...and when I make a decision to use a phone of my choice...I've chosen the DVP.
With all things being equal, if I get into a fight, the DVP can be used as a weapon.
I've used up quite a bit of storage but the only time I seem to get a crash is when I enable WiFi, otherwise my DVP seems to run stable.
efjay said:
I've used up quite a bit of storage but the only time I seem to get a crash is when I enable WiFi, otherwise my DVP seems to run stable.
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Click to collapse
I have the same results, I went crash free for 2 days without WiFi I wanted to test it and turned it back on and it crashed within a few min.
I have a replacement coming from Dell but I doubt they will have it fixed. I'm hoping it would be something that can be fixed by an update.
Mine crashes too!!
I too am experiencing many of the issues that have been posted on this forum (crashing w/wo wifi, while in MP, or when an app needs data from the internet). Twice I have reached in my pocket, hit the power button to bring up the lock screen and nothing happens - just a blank screen. Hence had to pull the battery and reboot.
A couple of other things I have noticed that I am not sure I have seen on the forums. Does anyone else have a DVP where the top left edge and the bottom right edge are not flush with the bottom of the phone? It is slight, but I noticed it on day one. Also, I have a heck of a time with the accelerometer sticking. Sometimes it refuses to go back into portrait mode. No mater how I turn and twist it (360 deg).
Anyone else experience this?
I used to use the power button to get to the unlock screen, but after fumbling with it a few times in the dark, I switched to flipping out the keyboard, which does the same thing. And while it did often take multiple presses of the power button to wake the DVP, I have never had to pull the battery.
I've had the DVP since November 8th, and had it crash on my severely enough for a battery pull maybe 3-4 times tops. This is both on the "engineering" phone and the "retail" phone. The only difference I have with you guys - and this is pretty significant - is that I hacked my SD card pretty much within the first couple of days of getting it. I've upgraded to a SanDisk class 2 16GB.
Now, I haven't particularly filled it up; in fact, I have tons of space free. But, I'd like to set some facts straight:
1) The DVP has no internal storage. Just a few megs (~16MB or so) just so the OS can run if you pull the SD card. Nothing new here; we've seen this during the first days of the SD card hack thread.
2) If you fill up your storage, and applications request for IsolatedStorage, the request will most likely fail if you have (close to) zero storage free. If applications don't check for that, it will probably crash. I don't know if this is necessarily happening, since I don't have a crashing device to observe this behaviour, but that's one hunch. Some of you have said that the HD7 did not crash when you filled up the storage, which might throw my theory out the window.
3) The SD card used in the DVP is also a SanDisk - I tend to trust them with storage reliability. If it is indeed a driver issue, then Microsoft might have some share in the blame as well - MS writes drivers for the OEMs for WP7.
What we need to do is scientifically reproduce the issue. Instead of general data corruption, another thing to check is to see what happens as storage gets filled up.
kltye said:
What we need to do is scientifically reproduce the issue. Instead of general data corruption, another thing to check is to see what happens as storage gets filled up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I attempted to do just that - I wrote a storage test app and ran it on my DVP, and it encountered no issues.
The app wrote test data, filling up 95% of available free space (around 13.3GB), then read it back in and verified the data. I'm now fairly confident that it's not the SD card or the storage drivers that are responsible for the crashing.
I did however, encounter issues trying to download the Rise of Glory game. I had turned wifi off, but it's large enough that it requires wifi or sync in order to download and install. Once I turned wifi on and retried the download, the phone crashed on me.
Let's see if we can verify the wifi + marketplace issue:
1) make sure phone wifi is off
2) connect DVP to computer, run Zune
3) via zune sync, verify that you can install a large game or app on your phone. It has to be one which you haven't downloaded before, as I don't think you can force zune to reinstall an app it knows you already downloaded.
4) disconnect the phone
5) verify the game runs correctly
6) uninstall the game on the phone
7) turn phone wifi on
8) go into marketplace on the phone
9) reinstall the same game and see if you have any issues with marketplace while downloading (freezing/hanging/etc)
10) if everything's still ok, verify that the game runs correctly
@Zaijian
I tried reproducing your flow on my DVP and it didn't crash. But, what is strange is mine freezes (only twice so far) @ random right after playing and trying to get to some other app or switching between app. This tends me to side on the memory as being the culprit or some other component being the culprit. Most likely could be memory related and how WP7 manages to kill an app. Is there a memtest kind of thing we could run on this DVP?
I wrote a wifi transfer testing app and ran it overnight - it transferred 4GB over my wifi (from my desktop to the phone) correctly and without incident.
So, i've confirmed that:
A) there's nothing wrong with writing a single large file to the file system
B) there's nothing wrong with transferring data over wifi
My next tests will be:
1) simultaneously writing multiple large files to the file system
2) simultaneoulsy writing files to the file system and transferring data over wifi
3) some sort of memory test to see if memory is getting corrupted
WiFi seems to be the issue
Not much question that mine locks up when WiFi is turned on. I have been experimenting with this issue for the past few days and while having WiFi on causes random lock-ups, not having it on makes it run without any issues.
Fortunately, most of the areas I use my phone have good 3G coverage so WiFi acting up is not a deal breaker but I certainly hope they are able to fix this with the impending update.
One consideration is could there be an app we all have that uses WiFi that is causing trouble? Has anyone had issues with this from a fresh device? I seem to recall having it lock up early on before I put many apps on it.
jetjockgordo said:
Not much question that mine locks up when WiFi is turned on. I have been experimenting with this issue for the past few days and while having WiFi on causes random lock-ups, not having it on makes it run without any issues.
Fortunately, most of the areas I use my phone have good 3G coverage so WiFi acting up is not a deal breaker but I certainly hope they are able to fix this with the impending update.
One consideration is could there be an app we all have that uses WiFi that is causing trouble? Has anyone had issues with this from a fresh device? I seem to recall having it lock up early on before I put many apps on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My problems seem to occur when I'm going through the marketplace and downloading via wifi.
I verified with my test app that wifi can transfer a large amount of data without errors. This leads me to believe that the wifi itself is not the cause of the issues, but that wifi in combination with other factors may be the cause.
zaijian said:
My problems seem to occur when I'm going through the marketplace and downloading via wifi.
I verified with my test app that wifi can transfer a large amount of data without errors. This leads me to believe that the wifi itself is not the cause of the issues, but that wifi in combination with other factors may be the cause.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought so too but I left the WiFi on and rebooting without accessing Marketplace has been causing lockups as well. In fact, I just noticed it was locked up after a reboot 10 minutes ago and, sure enough, I left WiFi on. I didn't so much as unlock the screen after the reboot although I have also had it lock up while accessing Marketplace.
jetjockgordo said:
I thought so too but I left the WiFi on and rebooting without accessing Marketplace has been causing lockups as well. In fact, I just noticed it was locked up after a reboot 10 minutes ago and, sure enough, I left WiFi on. I didn't so much as unlock the screen after the reboot although I have also had it lock up while accessing Marketplace.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll test using wifi simultaneously with local disk I/O and see if that causes errors.