IS soft resetting bad for an ipaq?

[tdrake]

hi everyone --
I am new to ipaqs - just got my 1930 a month ago and already love it. But I had a couple questions.

What exactly is the soft-reset?
What does it do?
Can you do it too much and ruin something?
Should I not reset if I dont have to?
Should I not use programs (like orientation programs) that require me to soft reset?

LEt me know -- thanks

[Dave Beauvais]

What exactly is the soft-reset?
It's the same as rebooting a desktop computer. Only faster. :)

What does it do?
Clears program memory, and restarts all programs in the \Windows\Startup folder. Anything in storage memory is safe, though, and will not be erased. (Unlike a hard reset, which wipes all data in the device's RAM, such as your contacts, appointments, tasks, etc.) Storage cards are safe even with a hard reset.

It's important to note that any unsaved data at the time of a soft reset will probably be lost just as if you pressed the reset button on your PC with applications running. For example, if you were writing something in Pocket Word and pressed the reset button on your Pocket PC, anything you had written since the last save would be lost.

Can you do it too much and ruin something? ...
No, it's perfectly safe to soft reset a Pocket PC as often as you wish. Unless I install or uninstall software that requires a soft reset, however, I only have to do it a couple times per week at most. Some people do it more often for one reason or another. You could reset every minute or so and not damage anything, but you wouldn't get much accomplished! :)

Hope that helped!

[Palmguy]

It's a good idea to soft reset every now and then just to clear out program memory.

[tdrake]

Thanks Dave - that was a quick response too. I appreciate it and will try to not reset every few minutes from now on! :wink:

Have a good afternoon.

[Crazie.Eddie]

Correction, soft resets can cause problems with your PPC. Please read the following...

The Pocket PC 2003 OS appears to have a bug that can slow down the performance of a Pocket PC device, and can potentially cause ActiveSync delays. It has been identified that after every soft-reset of your device, a few extra "Notification Events" are added to the Notification Event Database on your system (This database holds system notifications such as alarms, timed events, etc.). After several soft-resets, a device can have several hundreds of extra notification events that can reduce the performance of a device.

After several soft resets, it's best to clear the database. There are several programs that do this, one of which is called CheckNotifications (http://www.scarybearsoftware.com/ppc_cn_overview.html)[/url]

[bdegroodt]

And to add a completely frustrated smart mouthed response, I think the soft reset button was originally intended to be the "real" on/off switch for the OS, but was misinterpreted by product design when the specs came back from marketing. :twisted:

I must have done the good old soft reset on my new 4350 no less than 40 times in 3-4 weeks now.

[corphack]

(I can't resist a good opening line. :lol: )

all Windows OS products appear to be designed to regularly reboot, whether or not the user wants them to, so what's a few more going to hurt?

heard at a recent Infrastructure Ops status meeting at my current employer:

Enterprise Ops Mgr: We try to maintain a regular bi-weekly server reboot schedule for the midrange servers. Does the WinTel infrastructure have a similar proceedure?

WinTel Svr Mgmt: Do you mean intentional server reboots?

[Chairface1]

Does the Power Clean feature in Battery Pack clean up these extra "Notification Events"?

[Janak Parekh]

I must have done the good old soft reset on my new 4350 no less than 40 times in 3-4 weeks now.
This is about 10 times as often as I do mine on my i700. 8O Good thing, because the soft-reset hole isn't nearly as convenient...

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

Correction, soft resets can cause problems with your PPC. Please read the following...
Correct, although this is a bug and I'd expect it to be fixed in EUU1, whenever that comes out. It certainly won't cause hardware damage, fortunately. ;)

--janak

[bdegroodt]

This is about 10 times as often as I do mine on my i700. 8O Good thing, because the soft-reset hole isn't nearly as convenient...

--janak

Yeah. I can't give the entire blame to the OS. The biggest cause for resetting comes from the wireless issues (but now I have a way of doing release/renew so that's slowed it a bit) and I also had a lot of issues with links from emails locking up PIE when I would click on a URL. I disabled a piece of PIE add on software I had in there and it works fine, but I'm not happy about that because I like that software a lot. Can't say it was the software for sure, but I can say it hasn't happened since.

[mrkablooey]

This is about 10 times as often as I do mine on my i700. 8O Good thing, because the soft-reset hole isn't nearly as convenient...

That's why you need HandyMenu. ;)

[ctmagnus]

I backup every evening and have Sprite Backup set to soft-reset automatically. But otherwise, it's a rare occasion when I have to soft-reset.