Hard Reset? I Never Asked For That!

[Mike Temporale]

For reason that is still unknown to me, my C500 Smartphone attempted to purge its rusty old memory banks on Friday night. The phone is about a year old, and has worked very hard in that time and I have never seen it respond in such a drastic fashion. I was on the way home with my wife, when I placed a call to a friend who we had planned to have dinner with. It was a quick call, just wanted to wish him a Happy Birthday and double check the restaurant that we would be meeting with. After the call, I decided to give the phone a reboot. It was acting rather sluggish and it had been running for at least a couple weeks. All this took place with the phone safely mounted on the dashboard of the car. <!><br /><br />When we got home, I placed the phone down at the front door as we ran around and gathered items for the kids. When all of a sudden my wife and I heard a really odd sound. It kind of sounded like the smoke detector, but it wasn't really the right pitch or volume. Before we had a chance to locate the source of the sound, it stopped and the company line started to ring. Odd. Not having much time, I quickly answered and the phone and their questions. Just before I was to hang up, they mentioned that they had just called my cell and there was no answer. (My cellphone is the definitive way to reach me. :) ) Now I was starting to put the puzzle together. That weird sound was my phone. When I got back to the front door, and looked at the phone it was displaying a nice little dialog that informed me about pressing ok to restart and complete the reset process. NOoooo! No matter how loud I screamed it was already too late. The reset was done, and the phone was in it's final restart. <br /><br />We had to leave home right then if we were to pickup the kids and get to the restaurant on time. My phone was now fresh and new. I had no applications and no contacts, or so I thought. As it turns out, the phone only half reset. Seems a little odd, doesn't it? All my programs, files, contacts were still on the device. However, any personalization and configuration I had done was gone. Time zone - gone, Owner name - gone, Email settings - gone, Data connection info - gone. Gone, gone, gone, no more, nadda. :cry:<br /><br />I figured that since all the applications where still on the device, I would just run a restore. I'm using the trial version of Sunnysoft Backup, and the latest backup was on the storage card. However, when I ran the restore it failed because most of the files it wanted to access are locked by the phone. :evil: What good is a backup solution if it can't restore?<br /><br />I was able to get through dinner and the rest of the night because it still had all my contact information on it. However, Now I'm stuck in a weird little situation. Since my SP5m is due to ship sometime soon (1-2 days according to Expansys, which in reality means sometime this year), do I waste hours and hours reinstalling applications or do I just load up the basics and run a minimal setup until my new device arrives? I'm currently working under the second option.<br /><br />What I really want to know is how and why my device would just hard reset, and why it failed to do a complete job of it? Has anyone else had this problem? Was it something I said?

[ctmagnus]

I have vague memories of an iPaq 3670 half-hard-resetting. But that was before I was "hardcore" and had a ton of necessary stuff on it, so iirc I just continued that way for a while.

[Santa Fe]

Welcome to the club. My i600 did almost the same thing. I wouldn't re-install everything right now. I found that most of what I had on the phone I didn't really need and it made me rethink how I really used the device (of course I'm not a high powered web guru :o ).

[ARW]

My i600 did a couple of half-hard resets before I upgraded the ROM to 2003. It was the weirdest thing, some add-on apps would work, others wouldn't, some configs were lost, some were still available.

Luckily since upgrading to 2003 I haven't had any problems. I'm waiting for my SP5m to arrive, so let's hope it doesn't have this most disturbing bug!

[Jerry Raia]

My 5600 did something similar. Except I have more stuff on it now than I did before the meltdown. :lol:

[John Cody]

When I had my i600, it did something similiar, but that "half" reset was short lived - A few days latest my phone started to act wierd, and the only solution was to do a full reset and reinstall everything.

BTW, I think sprite backup is the best backup utility...I mean if I can take a restore that I did and restore my apps/settings/files onto a totally different phone (but the same model) and everything works, then that backup app proved itself to me! (which sprite did)

[Kris Kumar]

Happened to me a loooooooooong time ago. It seems like "one or couple" of the settings database file got corrupted. And the phone is programed to go back to the factory state.

I use Sprite backup and I am sure that it helped me out. I have always had results with it.

[encece]

QUESTION:
Did you have the phone plugged into a charger or USB when you did the reboot? Isn't there a second way to do a hard reset that involves removing the phone's cable when restarting?

[Pony99CA]

What I really want to know is how and why my device would just hard reset, and why it failed to do a complete job of it? Has anyone else had this problem? Was it something I said?
Maybe it didn't like being replaced and this was its way of showing you. :twisted:

Steve

[Janak Parekh]

My i600 did a couple of half-hard resets before I upgraded the ROM to 2003.
I just had the same problem... and my i600 is running WM2003. Basically, just the registry wiped itself. I haven't reinstalled it yet. I just hard resetted it and synced the contact data so I can make phone calls. :|

--janak

[jimfee]

A colleuge of mine in the wireless bussiness today looked back and was impressed with how far mobile handsets have come, he has been in the wireless bussiness since the AMPS days( about ten years ago) but has recently been ogling my smartphone or wondering if our other coworker was better off with the latest Blackberry. Either way he will probably be looking for a full featuresd handset soon.

Ten years ago, and not on the cutting edge, I purchased my first Windows 3.1 desktop computer and had experiences similar to our currrent Smartphones it needed more memory, applications were extra money, it would shut down when you pushed it hard and give you the blue screen of death when your term paper was ready to print.

Nowadays the screen of death is white but everything else is pretty much the same. Desktops are alot more reliable than they were 10 years ago, wonder what smartphones will be like in 2015?

[encece]

Apparently removing the USB (or maybe the charger in your case) while turning the phone off, puts the phone in some kind of wierd mode.

How To:

1. turn phone off and remove usb cable

2. hold CAMERA key (key on right side of phone) and plug in USB cable
(will start in 3 color mode; see picture below)

3. start c500v5unlock.exe and follow instructions


I knew I saw this before...(from florin's c500-unlock site) because I think I did a hard reset this way by mistake, though I didn't hit the camera button as far as I know. I would try it now but I havnt had a USB cable for a few weeks now since I lost it. (Syncing via BT lately).

But maybe this had something to do with it.

[Mike Temporale]

OK, so a lot of us have had this happen. But WHY? It's not like the phone froze up and I had to pull the battery. I simply turned off and on the phone. Nothing special, so the registry should not have been corrupted.

:evil:

[Mike Temporale]

Apparently removing the USB (or maybe the charger in your case) while turning the phone off, puts the phone in some kind of wierd mode.

How To:

1. turn phone off and remove usb cable

2. hold CAMERA key (key on right side of phone) and plug in USB cable
(will start in 3 color mode; see picture below)

3. start c500v5unlock.exe and follow instructions


Actually, the USB cable has nothing to do with the reset. It works just fine if you start with the phone off and at step 2. I've done this a couple times - before I learned that the Tornado had a built in software tool that does a hard reset for you. :?

Besides, the phone was mounted on the car's dash. I don't have any chargers or other USB cables in the car. I simply pressed the power button for a couple seconds until I saw the shutdown screen. About 2 minutes later I pressed the power button again, until I saw the start up screen. Just a normal reset that everyone of us has done at least a couple hunderd times. :(

[encece]

Just thought I'd give it a shot and maybe help explain a hard reset I had once that had me totally confused.

BTW...My latest Cingular SMT-5600 has never been hard reset yet! :)

[Janak Parekh]

OK, so a lot of us have had this happen. But WHY? It's not like the phone froze up and I had to pull the battery. I simply turned off and on the phone. Nothing special, so the registry should not have been corrupted.
Now that you mentioned it, it happened under similar circumstances for me. Every so often, the phone feels quirky, so I reboot it. In my case, though, I think I may have pulled the battery when the shutdown didn't work. I'm wonder if it was slow because it was writing to the registry, and I corrupted it by forcing a reboot it in the middle?

--janak

[Kris Kumar]

... I'm wonder if it was slow because it was writing to the registry, and I corrupted it by forcing a reboot it in the middle?

I am pretty sure that is what happened in my case. Which led to a partial reset. :( :?

[Darius Wey]

Since my SP5m is due to ship sometime soon (1-2 days according to Expansys, which in reality means sometime this year), do I waste hours and hours reinstalling applications or do I just load up the basics and run a minimal setup until my new device arrives? I'm currently working under the second option.

Sorry to hear about the problems. It always hits home hard when its unexpected and apparently insolvable. :(

I'd stick with the second option. I'm in the exact same boat as you (waiting for a new device to show up on my doorstep whose ETA is a few days). Better to reinstall everything once than twice. :)

[dwest218]

My smt5600 hard-reset twice on me and within a week of each other. Like a desktop computer that use to lock up and reset I blamed it on memory. So here is what I did and have never seen that nasty bug again.

1. Delete internet explorer cache memory OFTEN
2. Do a power down, power up every other day.
3. Make sure old email, call history, etc are purged every so often.

[Mike Temporale]

1. Delete internet explorer cache memory OFTEN

I'm not a big IE user on the phone, and I had not visited any sites in the last couple days - so I don't think this had anything to do with IE

2. Do a power down, power up every other day.

Nah, that's not my style. I leave my phone on all the time, day and night for weeks and weeks. Until I have to restart it due to a software install or whatnot. And this behaviour is nothing new for me. I've been doing it on my C500 from day 1, so I don't expect it caused this problem.

Another thought, say this crash was due to a fault in the shutdown procedure? By doing one every couple days, I would be opening myself up to more of them! :?

3. Make sure old email, call history, etc are purged every so often.

Again, not something I've ever had to do, and it's not something I should have to do. I'm more of a let it be type guy. I don't want to be messing around doing stuff like this every couple days. If that's what I needed to do, then I would just get a dumb phone and be done with it. :wink:

[subzerohf]

2. Do a power down, power up every other day.

Nah, that's not my style. I leave my phone on all the time, day and night for weeks and weeks. Until I have to restart it due to a software install or whatnot. And this behaviour is nothing new for me. I've been doing it on my C500 from day 1, so I don't expect it caused this problem.


I do power cycle my phone (SMT 5600) every day. I do it out of habit.

Another reason for power cycling a phone or computer periodically is memory leak. If you let the computer (or phone) to run forever, slow but steady memory leak will cause a low memory situation. And unpredictable things might happen as a result.

Just a thought.

[KTamas]

I have vague memories of an iPaq 3670 half-hard-resetting. But that was before I was "hardcore" and had a ton of necessary stuff on it, so iirc I just continued that way for a while.
Wow, I'm not alone! :) A looong time ago when i still had that...umm...big device (with a CF sleeve...)...i uninstalled a program, soft reseted, and it was something like a half hard reset: some of the stuff was gone, some not...(don't remember exactly...i think the registry got wiped out, but not sure). It was one of the weirdest things I've ever had with PPCs...

[Mike Temporale]

Another reason for power cycling a phone or computer periodically is memory leak. If you let the computer (or phone) to run forever, slow but steady memory leak will cause a low memory situation. And unpredictable things might happen as a result.

I actually monitor this indirectly. I have Task Manager on speed dial so I can easily switch between applications. Task Manager displays the amount of free memory in the lower left corner. So if I notice things are low, I'll shutdown some apps and run Oxios Hibernate app to force the release of memory. Usually gets me back up to the 7-9 meg range.

[Janak Parekh]

Another reason for power cycling a phone or computer periodically is memory leak. If you let the computer (or phone) to run forever, slow but steady memory leak will cause a low memory situation. And unpredictable things might happen as a result.
Well, that shouldn't be acceptable, should it. ;) And in practice, I find that most Windows Mobile devices don't need to be restarted anywhere nearly that frequently. I usually reboot my i600 no more than once a week, and like Mike, when I "feel" it getting sluggish. I shouldn't have to attend to it nightly.

--janak

[Pony99CA]

Nah, that's not my style. I leave my phone on all the time, day and night for weeks and weeks. Until I have to restart it due to a software install or whatnot. And this behaviour is nothing new for me. I've been doing it on my C500 from day 1, so I don't expect it caused this problem.

[...]

Again, not something I've ever had to do, and it's not something I should have to do. I'm more of a let it be type guy. I don't want to be messing around doing stuff like this every couple days. If that's what I needed to do, then I would just get a dumb phone and be done with it. :wink:
Maybe your style needs to change. As phones become more and more like computers, they'll probably need to be treated more and more like computers. No, it's not something that you should have to do, but if you want to fight reality, you might find yourself getting more of these half-sets.

As for clearing old E-mail and call history, why do you think you shouldn't have to do this? They take up memory, and memory isn't infinite. Do Smartphones automatically purge E-mail and calls older than a certain date or after a certain number are reached? (I don't have one, so I don't know.)

Steve

[Pony99CA]

Another reason for power cycling a phone or computer periodically is memory leak. If you let the computer (or phone) to run forever, slow but steady memory leak will cause a low memory situation. And unpredictable things might happen as a result.
Well, that shouldn't be acceptable, should it. ;)
Of course it shouldn't, but see my previous post. Computer users shouldn't have to be worried about memory leaks, viruses and worms, program crashes and so on, either. Of course, the reality of the situation is that we all need to worry about them. Until software development gets perfect (which will probably be never), don't expect things to change.

Steve

[Janak Parekh]

Maybe your style needs to change. As phones become more and more like computers, they'll probably need to be treated more and more like computers. No, it's not something that you should have to do, but if you want to fight reality, you might find yourself getting more of these half-sets.
I would consider this unacceptable. If I was forced to do that, I might as well ditch my Smartphone instead of succumbing to it. There exists no desktop today that I must reboot nightly or fear corruption. Slowness is one thing -- corruption is something else entirely.

And to the Smartphone platform's credit, this never happened to me before. I've probably pulled the battery during a crash 15 times or so, without any negative results. That's why I don't think this is generally true, and it would be nice to trace it down to something concrete.

--janak

[Pony99CA]

Maybe your style needs to change. As phones become more and more like computers, they'll probably need to be treated more and more like computers. No, it's not something that you should have to do, but if you want to fight reality, you might find yourself getting more of these half-sets.
I would consider this unacceptable. If I was forced to do that, I might as well ditch my Smartphone instead of succumbing to it. There exists no desktop today that I must reboot nightly or fear corruption. Slowness is one thing -- corruption is something else entirely.
I didn't claim that it was acceptable. Somebody gave some suggestions on avoiding the problem, and I think saying "that's not my style" without actually trying the suggestions to see if it does indeed avoid the problem is a poor response to the suggestion.

And to the Smartphone platform's credit, this never happened to me before. I've probably pulled the battery during a crash 15 times or so, without any negative results. That's why I don't think this is generally true, and it would be nice to trace it down to something concrete.
Yes, it would be nice to find a definite cause. However, as I'm sure you know, tracking down intermittent problems can be very difficult. Finding the direct cause isn't always easy, so sometimes you use an indirect method, like seeing if the problem goes away when certain steps are followed. This seems to be what was suggested. Dismissing those suggestions as "not my style" seems to hinder the investigation, not help it.

Also, even if you do find a direct cause, what will you do? There are likely two things -- first, report the problem to the manufacturer; second, stop doing what causes the problem until a fix is developed (if ever).

That second step may involve changing the way you do things, so, again, claiming it's not your style seems counterproductive. (Note, I'm not saying that avoiding the direct cause will involve following the same steps as suggested, just that it may, but if the steps suggested do avoid the problem until a direct cause is found, they shouldn't be dismissed.)

Steve

[Mike Temporale]

I didn't claim that it was acceptable. Somebody gave some suggestions on avoiding the problem, and I think saying "that's not my style" without actually trying the suggestions to see if it does indeed avoid the problem is a poor response to the suggestion.

Since I've had the phone for a year and never had this problem before, I don't think rebooting it every night in hopes it doesn't happen again is going to be of any help. If the problem was a daily or weekly thing, then sure - maybe.

However, I'm not going to change the way I use a device in hopes that it might just fix a glitch - that has only happened once in a year! At what point do you consider the problem fixed? After 2 solid years without another half hard reset? :roll: Sorry, but that's just not my style.

[Pony99CA]

I didn't claim that it was acceptable. Somebody gave some suggestions on avoiding the problem, and I think saying "that's not my style" without actually trying the suggestions to see if it does indeed avoid the problem is a poor response to the suggestion.
I'm not going to change the way I use a device in hopes that it might just fix a glitch - that has only happened once in a year! At what point do you consider the problem fixed? After 2 solid years without another half hard reset? :roll: Sorry, but that's just not my style.
I understand that you can't prove a negative, but you're looking at it the wrong way. If you do follow those steps and the problem does occur, you've proven that those steps aren't sufficient to fix the problem. That can help narrow the problem down. Would trying the suggestion for a week or two really hurt your productivity?

Remember that you're the one trying to find out why this admittedly very rare problem occurred, in essence asking all of us to spend our time trying help you chase (or narrow) it down. If rebooting every night is a problem, how about every time you charge the phone? How long does a Smartphone take to reboot anyway?

Once more, I realize that if you never have the problem again, this won't have proven anything, but if you never have the problem again, that's a good thing, right? :-)

Steve

[Janak Parekh]

Yes, it would be nice to find a definite cause. However, as I'm sure you know, tracking down intermittent problems can be very difficult. Finding the direct cause isn't always easy, so sometimes you use an indirect method, like seeing if the problem goes away when certain steps are followed. This seems to be what was suggested. Dismissing those suggestions as "not my style" seems to hinder the investigation, not help it.
I think you're reading too much into Mike's choice of words here. If I read him correctly, he's saying that he wouldn't consider that an acceptable means of using a cell phone, either.

As for trying it to diagnose the problem, since the sample size is so very small (e.g., once in a year or two), debugging it in this fashion is not going to be productive. If it happens again, there simply isn't enough data to conclude if it was because one turned the phone off and on every night or, for example, if there was an errant application triggering the problem. If it doesn't happen again, how long do you wait until you conclude the problem has disappeared? 3 years? ;)

--janak

[Pony99CA]

Yes, it would be nice to find a definite cause. However, as I'm sure you know, tracking down intermittent problems can be very difficult. Finding the direct cause isn't always easy, so sometimes you use an indirect method, like seeing if the problem goes away when certain steps are followed. This seems to be what was suggested. Dismissing those suggestions as "not my style" seems to hinder the investigation, not help it.
I think you're reading too much into Mike's choice of words here. If I read him correctly, he's saying that he wouldn't consider that an acceptable means of using a cell phone, either.
I agree that it's probably not an acceptable way to use a phone. However, if you're worried about this half-reset happening again (which is presumably why Mike posted about it), maybe attempting a workaround is a good thing.

After all, even if we did manage to diagnose what caused the problem, you'd still have to avoid doing that until the manufacturer released a patch (if ever). If the workaround was in fact what was suggested earlier, what would you do -- reboot regularly or risk another half-reset?

I asked before but never got an answer -- how long does it take to reboot a Smartphone? Would it really be that burdensome to reboot it every night (or every time you charged the phone)?

As for trying it to diagnose the problem, since the sample size is so very small (e.g., once in a year or two), debugging it in this fashion is not going to be productive. If it happens again, there simply isn't enough data to conclude if it was because one turned the phone off and on every night or, for example, if there was an errant application triggering the problem. If it doesn't happen again, how long do you wait until you conclude the problem has disappeared? 3 years? ;)
I think my previous post covered that rather well. No amount of time could ever prove the workaround was responsible for solving the problem because you can't prove a negative (which isn't strictly mathematically true, but go with the aphorism).

However, if the problem did occur despite rebooting regularly and clearing the call history and old E-mail, that demonstrates it's probably not a memory leak -- which is very useful information in tracking the problem down.

Steve

[Janak Parekh]

If the workaround was in fact what was suggested earlier, what would you do -- reboot regularly or risk another half-reset?

I asked before but never got an answer -- how long does it take to reboot a Smartphone? Would it really be that burdensome to reboot it every night (or every time you charged the phone)?
Sorry, missed it. I presume Smartphones differ, but they're generally rather slow at the shutdown and startup process. My i600 takes 10-30 seconds to shut down, and at least a solid 45-60 seconds to start up. The hassle is significant enough that I would rather risk the half-reset, since it only occurred once so far.

Additionally, rebooting a Smartphone is not like soft-resetting a Pocket PC. It's more like removing the battery from a WM5 Pocket PC, waiting and reinserting it. That is, while all the permanent data persists, some transient data (like the most recently used app icons on the Today screen) are lost.

However, if the problem did occur despite rebooting regularly and clearing the call history and old E-mail, that demonstrates it's probably not a memory leak -- which is very useful information in tracking the problem down.
Again, it happens way too rarely to make a conclusive call. I'd have to wait a year before I could say with any form of authority. Maybe. And, most likely, I won't have the device at that point.

--janak

[Pony99CA]

However, if the problem did occur despite rebooting regularly and clearing the call history and old E-mail, that demonstrates it's probably not a memory leak -- which is very useful information in tracking the problem down.
Again, it happens way too rarely to make a conclusive call. I'd have to wait a year before I could say with any form of authority. Maybe. And, most likely, I won't have the device at that point.
As we don't really know what causes the problem, we don't know that it would take another year to rear its ugly head. Maybe it's one particular application with a memory leak that Mike just happened to use, for example.

I'm not saying that somebody should try the reboot every night for a year if it's a big hassle, but if you try it for a week or two and happen to get the problem again, that indicates that the workaround was not effective. I realize that this may not have a high probability of catching the problem, but I haven't seen any other suggestions presented (or I've forgotten them during this long discussion :-)).

Also, as several people seem to have gotten the problem, if each of them tried the suggested workaround, it would increase the chances of people getting the error again (if the workaround wasn't really effective).

Anyway, it doesn't seem like people are interested in trying it, so I'll stop beating this apparently dead horse. As somebody who does debugging and QA professionally, the problem interested me....

Steve

[Janak Parekh]

Anyway, it doesn't seem like people are interested in trying it, so I'll stop beating this apparently dead horse. As somebody who does debugging and QA professionally, the problem interested me....
Oh, I know, I do debugging as well all the time. However, I have major deadlines due at the moment, so I don't have the energy to try and coordinate a further debugging on this right now. ;)

--janak