Help! Major Resore problem!!

[Steve Jordan]

My e330 recently deep-crashed, forcing a hard reset. In the past, I've been able to restore everything from my backup. But when I try to run the backup now, the 330 will disconnect from Activesync at some apparently random point, anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour into the process, and the restore will be cancelled!

Repeating the process over a weekend has resulted in some files making it back to the 330. But my calendar, contacts and tasks are still awol, and the crash corrupted the Outlook backups.

What could be causing this intermittent cutoff? Is there anything I can do?

[Steve Jordan]

My e330 recently deep-crashed, forcing a hard reset. In the past, I've been able to restore everything from my backup. But when I try to run the backup now, the 330 will disconnect from Activesync at some apparently random point, anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour into the process, and the restore will be cancelled!

Repeating the process over a weekend has resulted in some files making it back to the 330. But my calendar, contacts and tasks are still awol, and the crash corrupted the Outlook backups.

What could be causing this intermittent cutoff? Is there anything I can do?

[Steve Jordan]

So... thanks for all the help, guys. I see the only value of my posting here was that now I have a record of the last time my PPC crashed on me. Since it's done it again, I won't even bother asking any questions here. I'll just go check out the incredibly informative postings about Star Wars III.

[Janak Parekh]

You know, people occasionally miss posts. And there's the possibility that the people who noticed didn't know the answer. We're not a guaranteed support service, so your attitude in the second post is misdirected, and in fact will discourage people from answering you in the future.

What I can tell you, now that I notice the initial query, is that ActiveSync's backup is not very good. Its excessive slowness makes it very sensitive to sudden disconnect. Those disconnects, incidentally, can be caused by USB flakiness or some application that might interfere with ActiveSync for some reason.

You may want to consider a different backup program, like Sprite Backup, which is not only very fast, but can back up to SD card, preventing the need to be near a PC to do backups. (You might also want to look and see if an SD backup program is built into your e330).

As to why your unit spontaneously hard-resets, it could be because of a hardware problem or a software interaction problem. That's difficult to debug over a forum, but you might want to keep an eye on which programs you use on the unit.

--janak

[Steve Jordan]

Janak,
Thanks for the response... and yes, I only just stumbled on it, so I should be doubly ashamed. (After 2 months of no response, I did fly off the handle and dump on you guys. It didn't help that I got no help from Toshiba as well, and I was testy, but you're right, it doesn't excuse my behavior. Sorry to all.)

The 330 doesn't deep-crash much, but it crashed once more last month, and I went through similar issues restoring it. It seems to respond better when it has been in the charging cradle, but unused, for 3+ hours, or even overnight. But it will still sometimes spontaneously disconnect during a backup or restore, even after a night's charging, and I haven't been able to identify anything on the PPC end that could be causing it. (Mind you, I've got so much s**t on my PC that anything could be interfering with it at that end.)

Usually, repeating the process 1 or 2 times gets it done, but that means 1-2 days until it's back up, and that can be very frustrating (witness my initial response).

[Janak Parekh]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Usually, repeating the process 1 or 2 times gets it done, but that means 1-2 days until it's back up, and that can be very frustrating (witness my initial response).

Considering that the unit's out of warranty, it will be difficult to solve it if it's a hardware problem. In any case, if you plan to stay with the device, my advice remains the same: don't use ActiveSync's backup feature, and adopt an alternative solution. (From what I've heard, ActiveSync's backup/restore has been removed entirely for WM5 devices.)

--janak