Ipaq 2210 power problem

[Ben909]

Everything was going swimmingly well with my 2210 until this morning.

Last night it was fully charged when I removed it from its cradle and turned it off. This morning it wouldn't power on, so I did a soft reset. It powered on and displayed a warning message that the battery was dangerously low and needed immediate charging. So I charged it to 100% again.

Now, it NEVER powers on with the power button. A soft reset is required every time I want to use it. The power button functions when I want to turn it off, but it never turns it back on again. I've reset my button mappings to default (they were on default anyway), and I've tried making sure there's nothing in my startup, no today plugins, no password, etc. Basically I've looked at everything I can think of that may be making this happen, but I've ran out of ideas.

Anyone got any thoughts they'd care to share before I take the 2210 back for an exchange?

[Ben909]

I've resorted to a hard reset :( But it's solved the problem. I have no idea still what caused it, so chances are I'm gonna end up re-installing the offending piece of software and it'll happen again. If I work out what causes it, I'll report back in the hope that it'll save someone else discovering this problem too.

BTW - a hard reset occured when I removed the battery for a couple of seconds and put it back in. At risk of highlighting that I still haven't read the manual, how are you supposed to replace the battery without causing a hard reset?

[gary]

I have a friend with a HP 51xx which had the same type of problem. She would let it sit out from the cradle for many days and then recharge it finally when she had to but then it would not power on. She actually took it back because she thought it was a faulty device. It would turn on while in the cradle and it would show 99% battery level. What I noticed was that there is a standby tab in the power screen and it was set to 72 hours and when I switched it down to 12 hours standby time the unit would work fine again until she let the battery lose most of its charge again and the standby setting would be back to 72 hours.I dont know if this is your problem and I dont know the story behind the standby setting but I thought maybe it would help you.

Gary

[Ben909]

Thanks Gary

I did wonder about that setting, and it was indeed set at 72 hours (the default). After a hard reset, I've restored from a backup and the problem was back. Another hard reset, and the problem goes. I'm still inclined to think it was a software thing, despite showing initial sides of being a hardware problem. I'm 50% of the way towards reinstalling all my software now and it's still ok. I'm regularly testing so if I find out which install causes it (IF it was an install) I'll post here.

[Ben909]

Problem solved!

It's the StowawayXT keyboard drivers that are causing it. When I reviewed the StowawayXT (http://www.pdacorps.com/default.asp?key=pages/stowawayxt.htm) I did so on the 3870. I'd read from Jason that his worked well on his 2210, so didn't consider that this might be the cause. I'm not the only one with this problem either (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14761&highlight=stowaway)

Just wish I'd read that thread before doing a hard reset :(