Acer N50, crashing and backups

[Laurence]

First off, the normal introductory stuff, since this is my first post here! I've only had a Pocket PC for about a week so far, but have been playing with it quite intensively so far! The PPC in question is an Acer n50 Premium (selected because it was a sensible price, had SD, CF, WiFi and Bluetooth), running Pocket Windows v4.21. It's got a 520MHz Intel CPU, 64MB ROM and 128MB RAM. (don't know whether all that matters to my problems, but you never know!)

Anyway. On to my reason for posting... In the time I've had it, I've been generally very pleased with the features, however the stability leaves quite a lot to be desired, and I've had a few issues...

Firstly, it has done a hard reset (all memory wiped) three times now, in the week that I've owned it. It usually happens after the device either hangs, or refuses to turn on, forcing me to press the soft reset button, however the device then boots to the setup screens, and loses all information, installed programs, WEP keys and time/date information.

The second problem... After the second time the palmtop wiped itself, I started backing up the device regularly, just in case, both through ActiveSync and the built in backup utility, onto an SD card. Unfortunately after the third time the unit wiped itself, when I restored the backup, I found that while it put back the software I'd installed, the backup appeared not to contain either my calendar information, or my saved WEP keys.

The third problem is that the device has gone through phases of crashing every time it is turned off with the power button, requiring a soft reset to turn it back on again. This is annoying when I want to check something, and have to wait for the device to boot up again. I have just performed a hard reset on it, and restored from backup, and this seems to have fixed the not-turning-on problem, at least for now.

Fourthly, I am interested in finding an alternative to ActiveSync as the software is unstable, unreliable and generally poor. I also would much rather not install Outlook on my computer, for similar reasons. I don't require much of the functionality of ActiveSync, just to be able to copy files on and off and do complete backups (including the calendar and network information).

Finally, after the last hard crash, and restoring the backup from the device, I also tried to restore from my ActiveSync backup, however ActiveSync refused to believe that it was the same device, even after a hard reset.

If anyone here can help me with any of those problems, I would be extremely grateful. As I said, I'm otherwise most impressed with it, just seems to have a few bugs...

Thanks very much!

Laurence

[Cybrid]

Firstly, it has done a hard reset (all memory wiped) three times now, in the week that I've owned it. It usually happens after the device either hangs, or refuses to turn on, forcing me to press the soft reset button, however the device then boots to the setup screens, and loses all information, installed programs, WEP keys and time/date information.Have you got anything installed other than the default items?
Found answer in second paragraph. Uninstall and re-install each one at a time. Perhaps an incompatible app is causing trouble
Check the manual perhaps quick tap=soft reset and tap and hold=hard rest.


The second problem... After the second time the palmtop wiped itself, I started backing up the device regularly, just in case, both through ActiveSync and the built in backup utility, onto an SD card. Unfortunately after the third time the unit wiped itself, when I restored the backup, I found that while it put back the software I'd installed, the backup appeared not to contain either my calendar information, or my saved WEP keys. Try Sprite www.spritesoftware.com , I've had multiple devices and the onboard back-up apps are weak or less than useful at best. Harmful most times.


The third problem is that the device has gone through phases of crashing every time it is turned off with the power button, requiring a soft reset to turn it back on again. This is annoying when I want to check something, and have to wait for the device to boot up again. I have just performed a hard reset on it, and restored from backup, and this seems to have fixed the not-turning-on problem, at least for now.Definitely an app in startup. Something it's choking on is not allowing it to come back up. Test one at a time


Fourthly, I am interested in finding an alternative to ActiveSync as the software is unstable, unreliable and generally poor. I also would much rather not install Outlook on my computer, for similar reasons. I don't require much of the functionality of ActiveSync, just to be able to copy files on and off and do complete backups (including the calendar and network information). You're stuck with it. Disable syncing by unchecking the options or sync as guest every time.


Finally, after the last hard crash, and restoring the backup from the device, I also tried to restore from my ActiveSync backup, however ActiveSync refused to believe that it was the same device, even after a hard reset. delete the partnership when not connected....
Activesync>file>delete partnership... then try...


If anyone here can help me with any of those problems, I would be extremely grateful. As I said, I'm otherwise most impressed with it, just seems to have a few bugs...

Thanks very much!

LaurenceDon't worry. You will find PPCT to be the place for help and advice....they've got some serious brains in here.
See what happens with my advcie and post back

[Patrick Y.]

For the hard reset, is the battery really low? Pocket PC will hard reset if the battery is completely flat since power is required to keep the RAM alive.

Make sure that you don't have any big program running in background when you turn off the device to prevent not-turning-on problem.

[Laurence]

Thanks for the response, both of you! I don't actually have the device to hand right now, as I've lent it to one of my friends to use the TomTom side of it for a bit, but I can probably remember most things about it!

I suppose it could be a software problem - it seems to have been behaving more since I posted, perhaps whatever it was was lost in one of the resets! If it happens again, though, I'll try building it up from scratch! As far as I can recall, I've just got TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player), WinamPAQ and TomTom installed on it. Are any of those known problem causers?

As for button presses, I believe that a press on the reset button's a soft reset, and pressing two of the hardware buttons and the reset button's a hard reset, however I will check that.

Sprite looks interesting, I'll have a look into it. I have to admit though, I've got caught up in the whole Free software thing, paying for software seems odd! That said, it's probably worth it if it replaces the extremely poor bundled programs.

Definitely an app in startup. Something it's choking on is not allowing it to come back up. Test one at a time

This was preventing it coming out of Standby, you're thinking it was something in the startup, that got into memory? That sounds probable. I'll look into it too, thanks.

There's no alternative to ActiveSync? That's quite surprising! Ah well... I'll just try to avoid synching, I guess! And your other comment seems to have fixed it, thanks. :-)

Again, many thanks for your help, that was a most informative post! I think I'm getting used to using the device now, it's causing less problems. Unless I'm just learning to work around them!

Patrick. I don't think it's a battery problem - my n50 has a backup battery in it, which (I believe!) it uses to keep the RAM alive when the main battery dies. I've not had it fail due to a dead battery. I've also turned it off while driving to save battery life (not got a car charger, yet) and so with the TomTom software loaded and running, which I think is the biggest app on the thing, it then powers back on with no problems, and after a few seconds, the TomTom updates its position happily. Still, the battery thing is worth keeping an eye on, thanks. :-)

Anyway, in summary, I think my problems are basically passed. Still not happy with the backing up issue, since ActiveSync is a waste of time, and Outlook is equally bad, however I'm going to look into Sprint, give it a shot, and see if that makes all the difference. Thanks once again!

[Andy Whiteford]

Are you running the latest ROM release? Acer have a rom update on their support pages for the n50.
I would suggest a hard reset then only sync pim data from outlook and run with that for a few days to see how it performs. If it is stable then third party software would appear to be causing the problems.
You also said when you soft reset the device, it hard resets? Are you holding the hardware buttons when you do this or are they perhaps sticking meaning this combination of them and the soft reset is causing the hard reset? A long shot but worth checking.
How often do you soft reset - have you ever manged to do a normal soft reset without losing all your data?

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Laurence, backup batteries are usually good for only about 20-30 minutes, so Patrick's point is valid. You might want to invest in a battery monitor app (there are freeware apps available as well) to really monitor battery life. You should know that LIon batteries that are typical for PDAs don't like being discharged too deeply, they're happiest and last longer when kept near full charge all the time.

On Activesync, if you're only concerned about transferring files across, then I would suggest either a wifi or bluetooth network with your PC (through an AP or dongle). Share a folder on the PC, enable network shares in File Explorer on your PPC (how to do this should be available on the forum somewhere), and you're set. Alternatively you could set up both PPC and PC with ftp servers, which would have the same effect. This way you needn't bother with activesync at all, and as a bonus file transfers should also be up to ten times faster.

One other way to do this is to get a card reader and just use a storage card to swap files to and fro. This is probably the easiest way, and file transfers are even faster than through a wireless network, though there's obviously the effort and wear and tear involved switching the card out.