...Pocket PC...Loaded Up...Can't Move...So Slow...

[Jason Dunn]

I have a client who has an Axim, and I help him with it now and then. Recently he began complaining that his Axim was running very slowly, and it was giving him out of memory error messages. I smugly assumed that he had simply loaded too many programs onto it, and that I could undelete the apps. I was shocked when I saw that he only had 0.5 MB of RAM total free on his 32 MB RAM device, and that was split between program storage and memory - the blue memory lines were so narrow I could barely see them. He couldn't even use his Bluetooth card without memory errors! I went into <i>Remove Programs</i> expecting to see 30+ apps installed, and instead I saw only four, one of them being the Adobe Acrobat reader. I needed to do some more sleuthing.<!><br /><br />I loaded up <a href="http://www.freewareppc.com/utilities/whereismyramarm.shtml">Where Is My RAM</a> and went to town. I was shocked at what I found! He's a very heavy user of GPRS for email & Web access, and it was very apparent how inadequate the Pocket PC is when it comes to dealing with junk that builds up. Check out what I found:<br /><br />• <b>5 MB of temporary Internet files</b>: Yes, Pocket Internet Explorer has a "Delete Files" button, but why doesn't it have a way to restrict the amount of storage used? Unless I'm mistaken, it would simply continue to grow and grow - does this seem like a good idea to you? Why not have a user-adjustable limit, or purge it on a soft reset?<br /><br />• <b>3.5 MB of orphaned email messages</b>: I looked in the /windows/messaging folder and found two huge email that totalled 3.5 MB each. The frustrating part is that I manually went through all his email folders, and he had five messages total, none with attachments over 10 KB. So why doesn't Pocket Inbox do a comparison of the email it has inside the app, and the email listed in that folder, and delete the ones that don't belong? Programatically, this doesn't seem too difficult to do. I find it really hard to believe that no one at Microsoft noticed this considering how heavily email is used there.<br /><br />• <b>6 MB of temp files</b>: The blame for this falls squarely onto the shoulders of Adobe. Not only is the Adobe Acrobat Reader slow to load and use, but it apparently doesn't clean up after itself very well. In the Temp folder I found several huge Acrobat temp files (6 MB in total) that weren't deleted even after I opened and closed the application again. Still, the burden here also falls on the Pocket PC OS. Why can't it recognize a low memory condition like Windows XP does and trigger a "clean up" application that would purge the directories I mentioned here?<br /><br />:soapbox: <br />All in all, it was an ugly process going through those obscure directories deleting files, and certainly not something I could ever expect a normal end-user to go through. It's completely unacceptable that on a 32 MB device, there was 14.5 MB of wasted space - the operating system should not let that happen. <br /><br />I know there are third-party tools to clean up these temp files, but this is a core element that should be handled by the operating system. I spent an hour surfing sites on my Axim and have 3.1 MB of data clogging up my temporary internet files, and even though with slow GPRS you want some caching, I'd much prefer to set it at 1 MB and forget about.

[dcharles18]

When I first went mobile with my iPAQ i quickly noticed the same issue with the temporary internet files. My solotion was to use OP reg tool and move the temporary internet file storage onto a card. It works very well.

[jpaq]

When I first went mobile with my iPAQ i quickly noticed the same issue with the temporary internet files. My solotion was to use OP reg tool and move the temporary internet file storage onto a card. It works very well.

This is good. Someone (Jason, one of our contributors) recently wrote an article about clearing temp files. this helps as well.

[R K]

Can anyone with the original Pocket PC OS confirm that the IE Options PowerToy allowed the user to customize the cache size?
I think I remember being able to do so but I'm not sure.

I do agree with you Jason. When you have gigs and gigs of storage space, then 50MB worth of temp files don't matter much, but with the limited memory on our Pocket PCs, memory management and maintenance should be a big concern.

[Don Stratton]

It seems really odd to me that there is no utility out there to take care of this soft of thing. This is the sort of thing you could do even in eVB! I can accept that MS might have missed that in the OS, but surely someone else has observed this problem and crufted together a solution?

[qgman]

Can anyone with the original Pocket PC OS confirm that the IE Options PowerToy allowed the user to customize the cache size?
I think I remember being able to do so but I'm not sure.

Yes, with the IE PowerToys, you can clear the cache and set it to a custom size.

[shk718]

I had a couple of e books that someone scanned in that required the ADOBE reader. I could only flip thru 20-30 pages before my memory got full. I'd have to close out the program - then open it again to continue reading the book.

[digital-doc]

This slow phenomenon occasionally occurs with my Ipaq 54x by the end of the day using a 3 meg medical database. I don't have any temps, email or surf the web. I just assume it is the way the OS mis-manages the memory. A soft reset always eliminates the extreme slowness.

[codepunk]

I hope you don't all flame me, but this is the sort of reason why I created PowerStart. I hated having to use a 3rd party tool or Control Panel->Memory->Running Apps to manually close all apps. I hated having to go through File Explorer and delete temp files so I created a tool to automatically do it for me each time I turn my PPC on (as well as a few other things like having a startup sound). Here's the link to the press release:

http://www.handango.com/NewsArticle.jsp?siteId=1&jid=DX5D728EF899317F65F8E95X697F7BB8&articleId=2210&platformId=2

[smittyofdhs]

• 5 MB of temporary Internet files: Yes, Pocket Internet Explorer has a "Delete Files" button, but why doesn't it have a way to restrict the amount of storage used? Unless I'm mistaken, it would simply continue to grow and grow - does this seem like a good idea to you? Why not have a user-adjustable limit, or purge it on a soft reset?



there is a limit set but it's extremely high for a device that only came with 32 megs. tweaks2k2 has a tweak to make it user defined but there's one problem... you have to set it each time you reboot the device. According to the tweaks2k2 help, this setting defaults back to spec each reboot and the user has to reset it each time....

[smittyofdhs]

It seems really odd to me that there is no utility out there to take care of this soft of thing. This is the sort of thing you could do even in eVB! I can accept that MS might have missed that in the OS, but surely someone else has observed this problem and crufted together a solution?
they have...it's called Spacemaker and rids all of the problems listed above...

[Gerard]

When I got my old E-115, in May of 2000, I soon realised that these sorts of file accumulations were a serious problem. Manual deletions were okay, if I remembered, but I am one forgetful fella. So using my trusty Casio CF modem I went a-hunting for automated software solutions. I found them, and used them - use them still on my Casio EG-800.
Then along comes PPC 2002, and only one of those solutions works any more; Scott Seligman (http://www.scottandmichelle.net/scott/cestuff.html)'s ClearTemp. Another was AppStudio (http://www.appstudio.com/)'s TweakCE. It won't work at all for clearing the Temporary Internet Files folders on soft reset on my iPAQ. Works perfectly on the Casio. AppStudio seem to have abandoned development completely, as there have been no updates to any of their software for over a year. Another was the PowerToys thing, with cache limiting. It works on the PPC 2000 OS, but the files just keep growing when I try it on the iPAQ. As far as I can tell, none of the functions work in that program, not even the Clear Cache button. It just does nothing. Oh, right, if there are Java errors it pops up an annoying message saying so.... but the supposed Java enabling fails to offer even a slight improvement in Java code handling on any webpage.
Thanks to WIMR? (http://mypaq.net/mysoftware/wimr/index.shtml) I don't have to worry about accidental huge files clogging up memory. And Pocket Backup now includes handy memory tools, both as a Today plugin and a standalone browsing tool with files sorted top-down by memory used, folders and all.

[Birdman]

I have an XDA and I just used WIMR and noticed lots stuff in my Windows folder. I have a number of files called MsgQueueDataFileMicrosoft ..., each one 1.65M in size, and then a bunch more of smaller size.

Does anyone know what these are and if they can be safely deleted?

[smittyofdhs]

I have an XDA and I just used WIMR and noticed lots stuff in my Windows folder. I have a number of files called MsgQueueDataFileMicrosoft ..., each one 1.65M in size, and then a bunch more of smaller size.

Does anyone know what these are and if they can be safely deleted?
those are part of the SMS system, they can not be deleted, they are actually in ROM, not RAM. The file size is not correct on those. Due to the nature of those files and the PPC OS, the size is not correct, even though it says 1.5 megs. Every PPCPE device has those.

[Gerard]

You can shut off viewing of files in ROM using WIMR?, Resco's Explorer 2003, SuperExplorer, or just about any other third party explorer. That'll confirm for you anything about what is or is not in ROM. WIMR? also lets you view only files in ROM, as a menu option, so you can browse these and get familiar with them. Yet another way is simply to try to cut and paste one somewhere else. If it's in ROM, you'll just get an error.

[Birdman]

Thanx for the quick repies but I have WIMR set to show only files in RAM, not BOTH. These files clearly show up in the Windows folder.

[Gerard]

Then the next step would be a solid backup, then cutting and pasting the files in question to a card, then doing a thorough checklist runthrough of every function you can think of. If everything works, don't put the files back. But don't delete them either, because chances are fair that you may discover later on something you missed and that you may need them after all.

[smittyofdhs]

Thanx for the quick repies but I have WIMR set to show only files in RAM, not BOTH. These files clearly show up in the Windows folder.

yes I know they show up as RAM files, but they are not! and you can't delete them anyways, they are needed for the OS, so only screw with them if you want to render your device useless....

[Birdman]

O.k. That is definitive enough for me!

[CESkins]

It seems really odd to me that there is no utility out there to take care of this soft of thing. This is the sort of thing you could do even in eVB! I can accept that MS might have missed that in the OS, but surely someone else has observed this problem and crufted together a solution?
they have...it's called Spacemaker and rids all of the problems listed above...

Also the latest version of Battery Bar has a CleanUp utility integrated as well that you can set to run at a specified time interval. Between Battery Bar and Spacemaker, I don't have problems 8O of the type Jason mentioned in the intro post.

[Tom W.M.]

This (http://www.geocities.com/heliosrobotics/ppc/pocketie.htm) is even odder!

[Ed Hansberry]

This (http://www.geocities.com/heliosrobotics/ppc/pocketie.htm) is even odder!
Odder how? That is Pocket IE from the HPC 2.0 and HPC Pro devices.

[emjay]

And this is probably the main reason why I switched back to Palm - I got sick of decreased system performance the moment I started installing any kind of task switcher/Today plugin/calendar replacement/etc. I can fill my Palm Tungsten with all kinds of stuff and nothing fazes it, as has always been the case with Palm.

I'm sure there will be others who have things working fine for them, and if so - good for you :) At the end of the day, it's a personal preference and I generally like all small electronic gadgets, no matter what OS they run :) For play I'd pick a Pocket PC, but for something I depend on it's Palm every time...

[smittyofdhs]

And this is probably the main reason why I switched back to Palm - I got sick of decreased system performance the moment I started installing any kind of task switcher/Today plugin/calendar replacement/etc. I can fill my Palm Tungsten with all kinds of stuff and nothing fazes it, as has always been the case with Palm.

I'm sure there will be others who have things working fine for them, and if so - good for you :) At the end of the day, it's a personal preference and I generally like all small electronic gadgets, no matter what OS they run :) For play I'd pick a Pocket PC, but for something I depend on it's Palm every time...
and you are telling this because? this thread had nothing to do with task switchers

[Tom W.M.]

This (http://www.geocities.com/heliosrobotics/ppc/pocketie.htm) is even odder!
Odder how? That is Pocket IE from the HPC 2.0 and HPC Pro devices.
Sorry, I guess that I was unclear. It just seems odd to me that IE is loosing features at the version numbers go up.

[Gerard]

Please educate me if I'm mistaken, but isn't the Palm getting less stable the closer it gets to PPC-like functionality? I keep seeing articles and user reports lately that would indicate as such, but as I've never really used a Palm I couldn't say so myself. And Palms don't load anything program-wise until you tell them to, one at a time, again, as I understand it. Many long-time Palm users have said so, that true multi-tasking is not yet available for the Palm, though it may be in the next OS.
I have about 5 programs open at a time on average, besides about 12 things that load as part of the startup shell. The basics are GigaBar, Dashboard, 5 plugins for Dashboard, MultiIE, SuperAlert, and I forget what else... lots, anyway. Performance of both my Casio EG-800 and iPAQ 3835 is fairly snappy, with none of the long lags I've seen when trying a few Palms and Sonys in stores or trying out those of my clients for a few minutes. It seems to take forever to load the simplest files on a Palm-based device. But as they get into the near-$1000 mark (Canadian), they do seem to get a little closer to what I'm used to in terms of speed and versatility.... and low battery life, and a tendency to lock up....
I suspect that a serious breakthrough will have to come along for either platform before a truly ideal meeting of speed, power, and reliability come available. Until then, there's always Pocket Backup. Takes me about 3 minutes to backup everything in RAM to an SD card, 100 seconds to my Accurite external hard drive, with over 16MB of junk loaded into RAM. I try to keep as much as possible on cards, programs included, speeding backups a lot, and leaving over 40MB for whatever I want to download or capture via my CF camera.

[heov]

http://www.geocities.com/s_k_s_k_s_kru/util.html#remover

check that program out to. It can clear temp files, non-working shortcuts, old reg files, etc. I use this to uninstall my programs becaus it deletes everything, even in the registry. I used to uninstall, then go to the registry and manually delete the left over keys.

It also has an automode after a softreset to clear temp and temp internet files. Check it out :)

From the same developor of CabInstl!

[Fzara]

What about these lovely files in "Windows/Avantgo" ??? They seem like they could accumulate if one does not take care of them.

Any way of removing them without screwing up Avantgo?

[Looxer]

I have a problem! When I am reading e-books using MS Reader, after few pages my iPAQ h5450 will warn “low memory” and it will freeze. I will have to softreset... What to do?

[Janak Parekh]

I have a problem! When I am reading e-books using MS Reader, after few pages my iPAQ h5450 will warn “low memory” and it will freeze. I will have to softreset... What to do?
Are you reading an ebook with lots of pictures? There are known memory leakage issues with MS Reader in that case, and at the moment I believe there's no workaround.

--janak

[Looxer]

I have a problem! When I am reading e-books using MS Reader, after few pages my iPAQ h5450 will warn “low memory” and it will freeze. I will have to softreset... What to do?
Are you reading an ebook with lots of pictures? There are known memory leakage issues with MS Reader in that case, and at the moment I believe there's no workaround.

--janak

I think yes, for example I was reading Pocket PC Magazine May issue when this problem occurred.

[Janak Parekh]

I think yes, for example I was reading Pocket PC Magazine May issue when this problem occurred.
Yes - that particular periodical is known to trip up MS Reader. We have a thread buried somewhere here (I tried a couple of searches, but I'm obviously missing something) where other people were recounting the exact same problem.

--janak

[smittyofdhs]

What about these lovely files in "Windows/Avantgo" ??? They seem like they could accumulate if one does not take care of them.

Any way of removing them without screwing up Avantgo?

yeah you can rid of them, if you don't want avantgo anymore....

but if you do use avantgo, then those files will be copied backed to your ppc the next sync.

you should not really play around or delete anything you are not really sure of.... :)

[Gerard]

Same here with PPC Magazine. I signed up for their forums last week, thinking what the heck, there's a free ebook version of the 'June' copy in it for me... or was it July? Whatever. I was only marginally interested in most of the content there, as it had to do with a lot of GPS stuff, and I am neither a pilot nor a travelling salesman. Anyway, even skipping about 75% of the stories, it took me 7 tries to get through the magazine. I read quite quickly. But every time I saw the available memory drop below about 2MB in total (I use GigaBar, which has memory graphs available all the time, among other monitors and tools) I'd close Microsoft Reader and then re-open it. Memory always took about 10 seconds to jump back to 40MB available on my 3835, and that's when I'd re-open.
As I understand it, this memory leak happens when picture-laden ebooks are constructed using the Word plugin for the purpose, not when using Readerworks. Is that so, anyone know? I have made a few LIT files using Readerworks 2.0, with a couple of very small graphics included. I've also made a few using the Russian TXTtoLIT program, but obviously those contained no images. Neither has shown any signs of memory leaks. A fellow PPC user emailed me a few large novels he'd scanned and made into LIT files, including illustrations at each chapter heading. This was strictly for corroberation, and I deleted the novels immediately after a few days of testing on my devices. I found that his ebooks leaked inconsistently, sometimes letting me read for a half hour, other times giving me only a few minutes. These were also created using the XP Word plugin.
By the way, you say this is a 'known issue' - does that mean Microsoft is getting off their collectively lazy butts and doing something about it, like, SOON??? It's a pretty glaring bug, when the largest magazine dedicated to the devices cannot be properly read, even though they are charging USD$4.95 per issue!

[Looxer]

What about these lovely files in "Windows/Avantgo" ??? They seem like they could accumulate if one does not take care of them.

Any way of removing them without screwing up Avantgo?

yeah you can rid of them, if you don't want avantgo anymore....

but if you do use avantgo, then those files will be copied backed to your ppc the next sync.

you should not really play around or delete anything you are not really sure of.... :)

Is there a way to save Avantgo files (web pages) on Storage Card every time you sync???

[smittyofdhs]

What about these lovely files in "Windows/Avantgo" ??? They seem like they could accumulate if one does not take care of them.

Any way of removing them without screwing up Avantgo?

yeah you can rid of them, if you don't want avantgo anymore....

but if you do use avantgo, then those files will be copied backed to your ppc the next sync.

you should not really play around or delete anything you are not really sure of.... :)

Is there a way to save Avantgo files (web pages) on Storage Card every time you sync???

yes there is. you can do it via the registry or get one of the reg tweakers out there. Tweaks2k2 does it....

[Programmer]

I had a couple of e books that someone scanned in that required the ADOBE reader. I could only flip thru 20-30 pages before my memory got full. I'd have to close out the program - then open it again to continue reading the book.


I have that exact problem with MS READER with a few books. It drove me nuts when it just seem to lock up. Took me a week to figure out I was out of memory.

I have to do the exact same steps to keep reading. Very annoying! :onfire:

Robert

[Programmer]

I have a problem! When I am reading e-books using MS Reader, after few pages my iPAQ h5450 will warn “low memory” and it will freeze. I will have to softreset... What to do?
Are you reading an ebook with lots of pictures? There are known memory leakage issues with MS Reader in that case, and at the moment I believe there's no workaround.

--janak

I am Reading the Belgarion series and it has no pics... oh wait. It does have maps in each section. About 4 total per book. Would this be the problem?

Robert

[Janak Parekh]

By the way, you say this is a 'known issue' - does that mean Microsoft is getting off their collectively lazy butts and doing something about it, like, SOON??? It's a pretty glaring bug, when the largest magazine dedicated to the devices cannot be properly read, even though they are charging USD$4.95 per issue!
Dunno. :( I'm not an MVP, so I don't have direct feedback channels. I'd be pretty sure that Jason, Ed & co. have raised it with the Mobile Devices guys, though.

I am Reading the Belgarion series and it has no pics... oh wait. It does have maps in each section. About 4 total per book. Would this be the problem?
Maybe. It depends on how many pictures there are. My ebooks have only one picture (the cover) in each, so I've never run into any such problems -- I'm just reporting what I've heard from others for quite a while now.

--janak

[Gerard]

Earlier today I wrote much of what I did here to PPCMag. Matthew Arant of Thaddeus got back soon, asking for a link to µbook... I'd suggested an alternate downloadable version in ZIPped HTML, with images, as a workaround to this Reader leakage. He mentioned that they use Readerworks Publisher to format into LIT, so it's not just a Word plugin problem.

[michael0000]

Can anyone with the original Pocket PC OS confirm that the IE Options PowerToy allowed the user to customize the cache size?
I think I remember being able to do so but I'm not sure.

I do agree with you Jason. When you have gigs and gigs of storage space, then 50MB worth of temp files don't matter much, but with the limited memory on our Pocket PCs, memory management and maintenance should be a big concern.

Yes, such thing do exist, you can still find it on microsoft's webite. It's quite a useful tool, strange that microsoft didn't that function built in for pocketIE.

[michael0000]

What about these lovely files in "Windows/Avantgo" ??? They seem like they could accumulate if one does not take care of them.

Any way of removing them without screwing up Avantgo?

yeah you can rid of them, if you don't want avantgo anymore....

but if you do use avantgo, then those files will be copied backed to your ppc the next sync.

you should not really play around or delete anything you are not really sure of.... :)

Well, you've got one of two options,
1. From Avantgo Property panel, select "refresh all content at next sync", It will clean and update you avantgo files on your ppc.
or
2. manually go into \Windows\AvantGo\AvGoDocsMQ and delete everything except for the file "stamp"

[VanHlebar]

What is this directory for? My ppc has almost 4MB of files in this single directory and I was wondering if it is something that can be deleted?

Thanks,
-Eric

[Gerard]

Email. Everything in the \Windows\messaging folder and sub-folder(s) is either letters or attachments. Try renaming to TXT if small, and you'll be able to open in Pocket Word. Of course, if you delete or permanently rename them they'll no longer appear in Inbox... PPC 2002 is notorious for keeping old junk there, and it is very difficult to tell what is useful and what is long-ago deleted mail. Dates can help, unless you keep tons of mail in folders or in Inbox's main folder anyway, which would explain the 4MB.

[VanHlebar]

Email. Everything in the \Windows\messaging folder and sub-folder(s) is either letters or attachments. Try renaming to TXT if small, and you'll be able to open in Pocket Word. Of course, if you delete or permanently rename them they'll no longer appear in Inbox... PPC 2002 is notorious for keeping old junk there, and it is very difficult to tell what is useful and what is long-ago deleted mail. Dates can help, unless you keep tons of mail in folders or in Inbox's main folder anyway, which would explain the 4MB.

Gerard,
Thanks for the help. Guess I will have to take a look at all the files in there in my "spare" time :)

Thanks again,
-Eric