iPaq Sudden Death Syndrome

[fairyliquidizer]

Guys! My wife was using my iPaq and it crashed (I was away on business so it was left in a crashed state). When I returned home she told me that it had crashed and I tried to turn it on. It wouldn't so I thought ok I'll charge it. So I plugged the charger in and nothing happened. No flashing lights nothing. So I removed the battery and put in my extended life battery. Phew It charges and works ok!

So I put the old battery in the 4150 and try to charge. Still no joy. Also every time I plug in the dead battery the iPaq looses it's memory contents.

I have now put the "suspect battery" in the spare battery charger slot on my charger. There is now an amber light on (At the word Aux from "Aux battery"). It is constantly on. What does this constant amber light mean? Is it charging?

Does anyone know if there's a way to get my slim battery working again or is it dead? There was no shortening of battery life or signs of decreasing performance before this happened.

Any ideas? Apart from this I think the 4150 is a fantastic PDA (I had been a PalmOS user since they were called PalmPilots).

Fairy

[fairyliquidizer]

Ok, so I have a solution. Although the iPaq refused to charge the battery leaving it in the charger has done the trick.

The constant amber light on the charger turned to a constant greenlight indicating a full battery.

So all is well that ends well. Quite why the Pocket PC wouldn't charge it I know not. Irrational things these computers!

Fairy

PS- In a future world when the machines rule the Earth I will be in trouble when they search their collective memory ("the Internet") and discover my slur on their rationality!

[Janak Parekh]

Good to hear you got it working. Sounds like the battery completely discharged -- when the iPAQ crashed, it probably wouldn't turn off. In those cases you want to soft-reset immediately instead of letting the battery drain.

--janak

[fairyliquidizer]

Yip I would have reset the PC but wifey didn't, she just fell asleep :)

I'm still puzzled as to why the Pocket PC couldn't charge it but the Aux Battery slot in the cradle worked. Maybe the Pocket PC needs a little juice to be smart enough to charge a flat battery :)

[Sven Johannsen]

Did you leave it on charge for a while or just plug it in and nothing happenned? I've seen really flat batterries take a while befor the system would even recognize they had a charge to speak of. The cradle isn't that smart.

Not for you but for others. I realize you were the victim of significant other syndrom. It's really not good to let the batteries drain to ashes. Having collected a number of PPCs over the years that often don't get used much, I generally pull the fully charged battery out of the device for storage. I'll do a backup if I plan to use the config again later, but I don't just leave a battery in a PPC and stick it in a drawer. There's a good chance you'll be buying a battery to get it back up.

[fairyliquidizer]

Ehm I left the battery in the iPaq and left it plugged into the charger but no joy :(

Sooooo (a week later) I think hmmm maybe the iPaq performs some logic checks before charging and can't. Also I am thinking that batterys don't die in that manner!

So today I plugged the battery into the auc-battery slot on the desktop charger and got a constant amber light. I searched this forum and others are read that amber flashing=charging and thought hmm no flashing so posted here. But Lo! After a while the amber light turned green and I thought, this looks promising! So I backed up my iPaq and switched batteries and switched it on and Eureka! It worked :)

So the lesson is even if the iPaq wont charge it the Aux Battery charger on the desktop charger might!