Why Does it take like 30 seconds or more for a soft reset??

[Nutzer]

I would hit the soft reset button, see the dell logo, then a white screen with a black bar on the top for 30seconds! WHat GIVES??

Is it trying to load things into memorY?

THanks!

[Sslixtis]

Must be your PDA, takes mine 12 seconds from the depressing of the reset button to the time the Today screen is up.

I have the 400Mhz version set to auto CPU selection, 11.15Mb of RAM used for storage, a 256Mb SD card and a 256Mb CF card both in the unit.

Hope this helps.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Did you install any programs or games to SD? If any of those SD programs end up showing on the start menu? There is sometimes a delay in "powering-up" the SD card and if your PPC is trying to link to any of those programs from the start-up menu, it will stall until the SD is fully powered.

Having owned an EM500 & iPaq3835, this was a common problem with SD, especially with games (or any relatively large programs).

[Nutzer]

Yeah, actually, I have alot all my games and stuff, close to 30 mb of apps installed on the SD card!

So, in order to shorten the time, you say take the apps out of the start menu?

[garretwp]

You can take them out of the start menu you or before you reset the device take the card out and then insert it when its done booting. but the one thing you should do it take them out of the start menu and also take teh card out when rebooting.

Garrett

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

The problem is that the Start menu often shows a "Most Recently Accessed Applications" list. Even if you remove a game from the start menu and then proceed to start a game from "Programs" menu, it will show on the start menu and thus, slow down your boot-up cycle.

My advice is to:
1) Remove links to games and other large programs from the start menu
2) When running those games and large programs, run them directly from the explorer window... in fact, what I do is create a directory with shortcut links to all those programs and then just go to that directory using something like Resco File Explorer to activate the program.

In general, I tend to install all my programs directly to RAM and then use the storage device for media and data files for increased performance. With exception to games and the very few large applications out there (e.g. - Textmaker), they really don't take up that much space. Remember 64MB can go a long way as long as your not storing media/data files and games on them.

[mike6024]

So you mean a noticeable part of the boot process involves simply loading shortcuts from some file or the registry? I'm sorry, but that's pretty sad on Microsoft's part. Maybe it was just more intern code :lol:

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

From what I remember, the delay is in actually finding the associated icon from the executable file that is being "shortcut". Try this, remove all of the Today menu shortcuts associated to games stored in SD and make sure they don't show up on your "most recently used list" as well. Do a soft reboot and then using Explorer, navigate to the SD directory in which the game executable is stored, you'll notice there's a long delay (sometimes up to 30 seconds depending on the file) associated with the system just trying to display the contents.

Yes, this is pretty sad...