Possible Fix for Windows Mobile 2003 Reminder Issue

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?threadid=97345' target='_blank'>http://discussion.brighthand.com/sh...?threadid=97345</a><br /><br /></div>There's an interesting thread on Brighthand started by <i>PATRICKJEF</i> - he says he talked to someone at HP about the reminder issue and this was their response:<br /><br /><i>"...this (the alarm situation) has been escalated to Microsoft. What is happening has to do with the "housekeeping" that occurs at midnight. The Operating System comes on for 15 seconds at or around midnight , as you know, to perform housekeeping duties. Within those responsibilities is the packing of the alarm database file, dbnotify. Unfortunately, 15 seconds is not long enough for all of this to happen. On top of this, every time a soft reset is performed, the size of the Dbnotify file, doubles. Hence, the 15 seconds grows shorter and shorter as there is more to do and less time to get it done. This time will be increased in the following release to 1 minute."</i><br /><br />This description might indeed be accurate - as of yet I haven't heard of any truly definitive description of the problem. The thread goes on to provide a download that apparently fixes the problem - but also seems to cause a few other issues. Be very careful installing software from unknown sources.

[R K]

On top of this, every time a soft reset is performed, the size of the Dbnotify file, doubles. Hence, the 15 seconds grows shorter and shorter as there is more to do and less time to get it done. This time will be increased in the following release to 1 minute.

Don't they need to get the dbnotify doubling error fixed as well?
It's pretty bad that such a huge bug got passed Microsoft into the final release of WM2003. That dbnotify bug isn't pretty, and enough soft-resets can slow a WM2003 device down to a crawl.

[adamz]

Hello! Why not make it so that it doesn't HAVE to do any housekeeping at midnight??

I wish it didn't turn on at all at midnight. If you have Media Player running, but on Pause while in suspend mode... the Pocket PC will power on at midnight, and will never shut off since Media Player is presumed active. Well... it'll shut off when the battery is dead.

[joelevi]

On top of this, every time a soft reset is performed, the size of the Dbnotify file, doubles.

Don't they need to get the dbnotify doubling error fixed as well?


I've got to go along with RK here. If it's not a bug, what's the purpose behind the doubling the Dbnotify store? Microsoft, why don't you address that issue before simply extending the "midnight ON time" from 15 seconds to 1 minute?

[arbitrajeu]

As a reasonably regular soft-resetter, I'm interested to know whether the dbnotify file grows indefinitely, or there is some way of getting it back under control (apart from a hard reset)?

[Ripper014]

The the patch released by Sprite is supposed to delete the duplicate notification files...

[moaske]

I believe what helps, is to change a certain registry key that defines the shut off time after the device wakes up for housekeeping. I changed this key (and am still evaluating if it fixes the alarm-issue, since i've just done it a few days ago):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power And change the following key: DWord value WakeupPowerOff set to 60 (decimal, or: 0x3C hexadecimal).
Needless to say that you gotta be carefull if you start messin' with the registry. For the DBNotify pile-up, i use the scarybear utility. Of course that's no fix, but just a 'plug-to-close-the-hole' ;)
Me too is baffled by how on earth a huge software company like M$ could have let a major flaw in the OS slip through onto the market like this... :? Don't they test and debug their stuff at all then ? :|

Apart from these bugs i gotta say that i hardly ever reset my new h4150, maybe once in a week or so... So stability has defenitely improved so far...

[Goren256]

I installed two programs from ScaryBear that seem to resolve this issue. One works with each soft reset, the other is a standalone program. Here's the link: http://www.scarybearsoftware.com/ppc_cn_overview.html

Thoughts?

[denivan]

I still don't even know how to get reliable, repeating
alarms on my PPC 2002 iPaq 3660 :(

My iPaq is a great tool, but the most important
part (reminders/alarms) is defective :(

Anyone with any ideas on how to 'fix' my ipaq
en get alarms working properly. ?

Ivan

P.S. mods : if this is OT, please split the thread and
move my post to the appropriate forum.

[dochall]

Well this fits exactly with my experience.

I have tried probably all the tweaks around, including the scary bear tweak, with no success UNTIL

I tried the freeware Wake Up tweak from burr oak (available here :http://www.burroak.on.ca/wm2k3tweaks.html).


Since starting to use a couple of weeks ago I gone from getting no alarms at all (if the device was off) to getting alarm it set. The Ipaq finally makes it into my morning alarm routine something I haven't done since my PPC2K 3660.

The wakup tweak basically sets the Wakeup Idle timeout to 60seconds (though user configurable) rather than the 15 seconds default. So this fits totally with the first posting.

It really has fixed my one huge problem with my 5550.
:D [/url]

[guinness]

It's still pretty sad when Microsoft can't even get a simple alarm function to work properly on a regular basis. This issue has popped more frequently lately for me too, MS keeps this up, my next PDA will be a Palm.

[mattchapin]

There's a leak on www.palminfocenter.com about a two new Palms... One is purportedly the Tungsten E2. 320x480 screen, bluetooth...

If it's basically a Tungsten T3 without that slider, then it might be my next purchase.

Especially if it uses tried-and-true OS 5 instead of the new OS 6-- then I'll snatch it up right away.

I've had a PocketPC for 6 months now and I still haven't found a use for multitasking that would save me more than 45 seconds per day.

-Matt

[rmasinag]

Oh yeah, I remember my Compaq H3135 waking up at midnight spooking me out when I upgraded it to 2002 the first few times it happend because the backlight would come on too.

When I scheduled Pocket Backup to make backup every 11:56 pm(it takes about 4 min to make a compressed backup), I never had the problem of my alarms not firing up ever again on my HP 2210.

This makes sense that it's prolly doing housekeeping during or after backup.

[dorelse]

I am watching with this with great interest...as my office has just dropped official tech support for Palm's. The reason I have a Palm in the first place was b/c I couldn't trust the alarms on my PPC, well that, and Pocket Word/Excel stinking...

If we finally get a fix, I maybe on the road to PPC recovery.

[heliod]

It makes sense to me. I've had at least 3 users here in Israel saying that at the moment they activated Spb Pocket Plus's feature of cleaning-up the dbnotify database at everystartup, the problems with the alarms and notifications disappeared.

[BobWitt]

I've got to go with "dochall" on this... I installed the Burr Oak thing after reading how they come to doing the fix... Study of the code from platform manager, understanding the 3 power states, ect...

Coming from a PPC 2K (Casio EM-300) to the 2k2 (Jornada 568) and now an iPAQ 4155 the alarm issue was new to me with the 2k3...

Basically, I received NO notifications until I installed the Burr Oak Tweak, although I was testing by adding an appointment one hour into the future. I knew I could not tolerate missing my appointment notifications and found the tweak before I "moved into" the 4155...

Just my $0.02...

BobWitt

[RobertCF]

I have to friends who each have the X5 Advanced, with native WM2k3 (as is mine), and they had the reminder problem right out of the box (so how could the housekeeping issue have ALREADY been a problem?). I tried the Burr Oak and the other tweaks and none have fixed their problem. The Clock alarms work just fine. The reminders still do not work.

The sad part is, the "explanations" for the source of the problem don't make sense since they indicate a performance design problem. If this is so, then why aren't ALL WM2k3 machines doing it? Why does mine work fine? Why does my wife's work fine, even though hers was an upgrade from PPC2k2 to WM2k3?

There has to be something more to this.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I have to friends who each have the X5 Advanced, with native WM2k3 (as is mine), and they had the reminder problem right out of the box (so how could the housekeeping issue have ALREADY been a problem?). I tried the Burr Oak and the other tweaks and none have fixed their problem. The Clock alarms work just fine. The reminders still do not work.

The sad part is, the "explanations" for the source of the problem don't make sense since they indicate a performance design problem. If this is so, then why aren't ALL WM2k3 machines doing it? Why does mine work fine? Why does my wife's work fine, even though hers was an upgrade from PPC2k2 to WM2k3?

There has to be something more to this.
Having done several hard resets on my machine, I can tell you that I had alarm problems after some hard resets and no problems after other hard resets (specifically hard resetting to figure the reminder issue).

Currently I don't have the issue, but I had to hard reset a few times. Makes no sense...

[BitBandit]

I believe what helps, is to change a certain registry key that defines the shut off time after the device wakes up for housekeeping. I changed this key (and am still evaluating if it fixes the alarm-issue, since i've just done it a few days ago):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power And change the following key: DWord value WakeupPowerOff set to 60 (decimal, or: 0x3C hexadecimal).
Needless to say that you gotta be carefull if you start messin' with the registry.

I think you've got the wrong key selected there. That key appears to contain the standard timeout values that are set through the control panel power applet. The correct keys are one level down from there as follows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\Timeouts

There are two keys to be modified; one for AC power and one for battery power:

ACResumingSuspendTimeout and BattResumingSuspendTimeout

Their default is the HP discussed 15 seconds (0x00000F) and should be set to 60 seconds (0x00003C).

Once they are changed, the device should be restarted (soft-reset) to ensure that the change is picked up by the Operating System. I can't wait to see if this does the trick!

[moaske]

I think you've got the wrong key selected there. That key appears to contain the standard timeout values that are set through the control panel power applet. The correct keys are one level down from there as follows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\Timeouts

There are two keys to be modified; one for AC power and one for battery power:

ACResumingSuspendTimeout and BattResumingSuspendTimeout

Their default is the HP discussed 15 seconds (0x00000F) and should be set to 60 seconds (0x00003C).

Once they are changed, the device should be restarted (soft-reset) to ensure that the change is picked up by the Operating System. I can't wait to see if this does the trick!
Ooops....sorry about the mistake (i had to dig back to figure out what i'd done when i posted this, and i got it very wrong... :( )
I'd read about this hack you mention here already some time ago on another thread on some other forum (don't remember which one).
So far this and a daily check (and cleanup) of the events dbase, has worked for me: up until now every alarm has gone off like it was supposed to ! I truely think this is the fix for it :D

[mhowie]

Unfortunately, this "fix" has not resolved my alarm issues. Same problem every morning... the alarm doesn't sound until I manually turn on my iPAQ 2215. Then it goes off just fine! :roll: This doesn't help much when one has already overslept!

What a joke this has become and no solution from MS and/or the Pocket PC manufacturers (I'm not certain if it is the OS or the specific implementation, by manufacturer, of the OS).

[Chairman Clench]

It's still pretty sad when Microsoft can't even get a simple alarm function to work properly on a regular basis. This issue has popped more frequently lately for me too, MS keeps this up, my next PDA will be a Palm.

I (along with lots of other people) had this issue in PPC2K2. I would have paid for a new WM2003 device if this issue would have been fixed in the new OS/Software/Hardware. I read with interest when WM2003 was released to see if people were STILL having this issue. To my great dismay, they were.

Needing a reliable PDA that actually sounded alarms on time, I had no choice but to ditch the PPC platform and move to Palm. In 5 months, EVERY alarm has sounded, HotSync works EVERY time, and I have had to reset the device less in 5 months than I used to do in a week with my various PPCs.

[mhowie]

I (along with lots of other people) had this issue in PPC2K2. I would have paid for a new WM2003 device if this issue would have been fixed in the new OS/Software/Hardware. I read with interest when WM2003 was released to see if people were STILL having this issue. To my great dismay, they were.

Needing a reliable PDA that actually sounded alarms on time, I had no choice but to ditch the PPC platform and move to Palm. In 5 months, EVERY alarm has sounded, HotSync works EVERY time, and I have had to reset the device less in 5 months than I used to do in a week with my various PPCs.

Out of curiosity... are there any areas/programs/things "it can do" the Pocket PC offers which you have not found similar functionality with the Palm device?