iPAQ 3835 spontaneously turns itself off

[rave]

Is this one of the "accepted" problems of the 3800 series? My unit would sometimes turn itself off after a warm reboot, often during the self-test. Operation would then resume normally after turning it on, but still it is a problem.

The only observations were that it would happen only when Permanent PIM was enabled at any time (meaning the problem starts only when you enable it and remains even when you disable it), and when F-Secure, iPresenter and WISBar are all installed.

If it helps, may I also mention that I recently played Turjah 2 and accidentally set the game's "overclock" setting to a high value. The overclock lasted a few seconds at most. The game crashed and I did a soft reset moments after.

I tried reformatting the File Store, but it didn't seem to solve it. I disconnected the battery and am leaving it overnight to see if it helps. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. :)

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Side comment: I find it very irresponsible of Jimmy Software to include the overclock functionality in Turjah 2. The frequency in megahertz isn't even shown... just an icon of a chip with a "lightning bolt". Merely discovering that the game has it makes you think and worry what hidden settings it has done to your machine upon starting it.

[Janak Parekh]

Is this one of the "accepted" problems of the 3800 series? My unit would sometimes turn itself off after a warm reboot, often during the self-test. Operation would then resume normally after turning it on, but still it is a problem.
Unfortunately, yes, this is a problem with the latest firmware (the .20 series). Fortunately, it only happens after the soft reset...

For me, it happens even with Permanent PIM off, but not consistently (maybe ~ 40% of the time after a soft reset).

--janak

[rave]

Believe it or not, your reply is somewhat a relief to me. At least now I know it's not a hardware problem, and instead something that can be fixed through an update. Thanks. :)

[Janak Parekh]

Believe it or not, your reply is somewhat a relief to me. At least now I know it's not a hardware problem, and instead something that can be fixed through an update. Thanks. :)
You're welcome. :) It's not clear when/if HP/Compaq will release an update though. :(

--janak

[rave]

Well, here are my observations on the matter:

* Upon resetting, I saw that the WISBar battery gauge is all red (zero battery). That's understandable since it may take a few seconds for the device to query battery status. Reading will "normalize" after a few seconds.

* It could be possible that this time window of zero-battery reading, however short, is just enough to trigger the system's auto-power off functionality. I did observe that this problem does not occur when the unit is on AC power.

So, a workaround for the problem is to connect the unit to AC power when resetting.

[rave]

Update #2

I disconnected the device from AC power, removed WISBar's battery display, and reset the device. The problem did not surface. I repeated this five times more for good measure. The unit did not turn off even once.

Seeing this as a lead, I re-enabled the battery display and went through the same procedure. I reset the device five times, and each time, the unit would power-off within less than a minute.

This supports my theory that the problem is related to the device's battery-status mechanism, or how some programs query the device's power status, or both.

Any thoughts on this?

[laser]

Now that I think about it my 3835 didn't start to power off until I installed wisbar. I must also say that it wasn't long after the .20 upgrade.

I guess I felt this to be a minor issue. It never did power off whild using it, only after a soft reset, and then only occasionally.

I have a 3955 now and it does not do this. (Yet) :)

Laser 8)

[rave]

Yep. Anyway, I uninstalled WISBar and installed vBar and BatteryWatch. Now I don't have the power-off problem, plus I get the full PPC2002 notifications capability.