Still Having Alarm Problems with Windows Mobile 5?

[Jason Dunn]

My Jasjar, with only four third party apps installed (FlexWallet, ZoneCalc, SOTI Pocket Controller, Skype), stopped doing reminders recently. They'd just never trigger. I decided to do some testing, so I'd enter a reminder, wait 30 seconds, then hit the power button. No reminder would ever trigger. I'd enter in six reminders, wait 60 seconds, then just close the lid. No reminder would ever trigger. I've recently hard reset it again, installed no 3rd party software at all, synched with my <a href="http://www.4smartphone.net/affiliates.aspx?go=referal&ref=JD10726">Exchange server</a> [affiliate], and now I have reminders functioning properly. Puzzling. Since the reminder problem is one that dates back a couple of years - Pocket PC 2002 was when the problem first cropped up I believe - I thought I'd do a quick survey and see how many people with Windows Mobile 5 devices are having some level of difficulty with alarms and reminders triggering.

[DarkHelmet]

I think the answer lies in the "shouldn't see the light of day" nature of the spastically buggy WM5...

Is there anyone out there with a WM5 machine that is experiencing bug-free operation?

I doubt it - by the way - mine is an Axim x50v - rolled to WM5 (twice) and still humming away on WM2003SE...

Clearly the MS mother ship hasn't seen any responsibility to help the OEMs get the problems fixed.

Oh wait, I guess the Dell Axim x51v folks are happy (right?)...

[KTamas]

IIRC, It was a WM2003 bug only, and was already fixed in 2003SE...I don't really remember having problems with reminders under WM2003SE nor WM5...maybe one or two.

[whydidnt]

I had the very same problems with my JasJar shortly after purchasing it. It seemed like it wouldn't wake itself up if an alarm was set to go off. At the time I traced it back to setting an alarm and then turning the unit off immediately. I think WM5 wan't able to write the alarm to the Alarm's database before being turned off? Just a wild guess, no idea it it's accurate.

Anyway, after a hard reset for an unrelated issue, I haven't noticed it occuring, but it is puzzling. I know I'm not a programmer, so I probably oversimplify things, but I would think that creating alarms and having them go off consistently would be one of the easiest things to do. Even the cheapest of cell phones manage to pull that off these days. Why can't WM?

[zormic]

I have Jasjar, too and had the same problem, too. I did everything humanly possible to resolve it, all kind of resets and nothing gave a result until I have installed Pocket Informant. The reminders were back and sounding in an instant. Try it… I don’t know the cause for reminders not to pop up but I have found this to be the cure. I hope it works for you, too…

[Vincent M Ferrari]

I've given up all hope of ever seeing a reminder since WM 2003.

It used to be such a nice function too...

Now my X51v does exactly what my 2215 did.

You guessed it. Nothing...

And I ain't hard-resetting it AGAIN. I went through nothing but hard resets the entire first week I had it (a period, during which, reminders did not work either).

[JimV]

I have had problems with Reminders on my Axim x50v with WM5. I think I may have found how to get them going again. My problem occurs mostly with AlarMe not triggering my morning wakeup alarm. It uses a mechanism similar to reminders to wake up. In trying to figure out what was going on I looked at the notification queue (using PocketMechanic). The Notification queue holds information about upcomming reminders and other notifications and system events. What I found were notification records with incomplete information (such as no Application name) and notification records that were past their time but never removed from the queue (Reminders that you have snoozed will show a time in the past. This is ok). If a record is not for a reminder (does not have POOM in the Action Detail) and it is past time, it most likely a leftover that should be removed.

When these problem records were removed from the queue (using the delete feature in PocketMechanic), everything started working again. Typical records that start the problems are the ones that wake the device up at midnight, but for some reason are not removed from the top of the queue.

Be careful what you delete from the queue as there are many records that are required for the proper operation of the calendar, etc.

Could someone else that is having issues with reminders try this fix and see if it works for you?

This same issue may be contributing to the battery drain people have experienced (dead battery, memory error, etc.). I find that when it occurs on my Axim, I usually have had several reminders stacked up. WM5 seems to have a feature that will automatically snooze a reminder after a set amount of time. I think this is acomplished by another record in the notification queue. When the device wakes up to snooze the reminder it seems to get stuck in an inbetween state that drains the battery.
This last part is more of a guess than a proven fact.

[ctmagnus]

Perhaps Burr Oak Software (www.burroak.on.ca) should start advertising Wakeup Tweak (http://www.burroak.on.ca/ptafaq.html#wakeuptweak) again. If they rigged it so that the unit would remain "on" for a set period of time after the power button is pressed, this could possibly alleviate alarm issues on WM2005 devices.

[Jason Dunn]

I think WM5 wan't able to write the alarm to the Alarm's database before being turned off? Just a wild guess, no idea it it's accurate.

Yes, that's one possibility, but that's why I waited 60 seconds for the database write, and also why I created several appointments so the first would certainly be stored by the time I got to the sixth. It didn't seem to have helped. :?

[dochall]

i can't believe that Microsoft has delivered another operating system with the same problem.

I have solved the problem on PPC2002, WM2003 and WM2003SE with burr oaks wakeup tweak.

Although there seemed to be some discussions about the device not having time to write the alarm I have never been able to prove or disprove this. In fact, most of the time when I have had problems with missed alarms they always seem to trigger as soon as switch on the unit which suggests to me that they are in the database.

Basically wake up tweak extens the idle time out for wakeup. It suggest to me the problem is more concerned with the triggering of the alarm and the ppc not waking up but not having time to actually trigger the alarm before the timeout puts it back to sleep.

Now for total speculation on my part but could the need to read the storage card. I wonder if MS testing (I just can't believe they don't test this functionality) is done on a standard machine without a memory card. Certainly one of the first things power users do to a pda is slam in a card. Potentially I would also see any problem further excerbated by the installation of programs on the card.

Anybody having problems without a memory card installed?

[KTamas]

Anybody having problems without a memory card installed?

I have an SD card in my PDA 99% the time. No alarm problems on 2003SE nor WM5...

I was wondering, is it possible that the alarms has the same messed up "flushing" system like the registry does?

***large quote edited down my moderator JD - please don't quote entire messages, thanks***

[LarDude]

While traveling, I had really started to appreciate the wake-up alarm on my Nokia -- simple, pleasant, reliable -- when I had the bright idea of buying a K-Jam so that I could rid myself of carrying both a cellphone and PocketPC. After several frustrating mornings with the buggy WM5 alarm (sometimes it didn't go on at all), I stumbled onto a more reliable solution: (1) set the hotel's clockradio alarm to go off at the appropriate time; (2) after being woken up by the clockradio, manually trigger the WM5 alarm to ensure that it goes off "properly"; (3) claim victory and set off about your business, secure in the reliability of WM5.

[Julio]

Hello,

I have not had trouble with alarms on WM5 on X50v. However, I should point out that I am using PocketPlus and this has an "alarm fix." I am not sure if the alarm fix still does anything on WM5 like it did on the original WM2003SE - but, so far so good. Knock on wood (er, in this case, plastic)!

Julio

[bvkeen]

I had the problem for a while with my x51v, but a few hard resets and two ROM updates later and it's worked okay for a few weeks. I have no confidence that the good luck will continue, and, since I also can't sync at work (IT won't un-firewall the required port), I'm using my x50v (still WM2003SE) for most things with the x51v on hand just in case the x50v croaks (it has had zero alarm prbs in the year that I've had it, btw).

I have avoided using the ScaryBear software on my x51v (although I use it on the x50v) because my understanding is that the notification db in WM5 is different. When I had the problems with the alarms on the x51v, I had minimal software installed and am convinced it's not software-related.

[encece]

WM5 on Smartphones has the same problem. After a Hard reset, all is well again....then things gradually go downhill.

[krypticide]

The newest PP version fixes the repeating alarms for WM5, but recently I've still been having issues with alarms not going off until I turn my device on.

I closed PI last night before going to bed, and my alarm properly woke me up. I'm going to keep closing all programs before I go to sleep to test this out.

[bnycastro]

I have the alarm problem on my dopod 838. I enabled wake up tweak in Tweaks2K2.NET and it seemed to work for a few days. Now the alarm sounds only when I turn on my device.
I have no problems with recurring alarms that occur once a week [i.e. a TV show alarm] My problematic alarms comes from recurring alarms [I set the first alarm as Wake Up!!! 7:15am Alarm in clock], I also tried setting a recurring appointment Wake Up!!! and reminder for 1 min before 7:15am with the recurrence set at M,T,W,Th,F this alarm did not go off as well. So I think it has something to do with recurring alarms of more than one day? I am no programmer so I may be working on fuzzy reasoning here. I will try to set 1 appointment per day to wake me up and make it recurring and see if these go off at the right time.
--
Question is the BurOak tweak similar to the one in Tweaks2k2.NET???

[robert_biggs]

It's just sad and pathetic that one of the PPC's primary features: reminding of us of our appointments and tasks, doesn't even work properly. Come on MS, even a $5 watch can do this simple trick. :roll:

[existence]

Believe it or not Voice Command Fixes the problem. Even if you disable all of the features after installation, you will not miss another alarm or notification alert again. Any app that needs to notify or wake up the PPC will work flawlessly. MS some how patches notification system of CE with Voice Command. Don't know if they did this on purpose or otherwise. Noticed that this fixed the issue in WM 2003 and WM 5. Try it out.

[juni]

I haven't had any problems after getting a regular alarm clock to wake me up in the mornings. :D

[existence]

I haven't had any problems after getting a regular alarm clock to wake me up in the mornings. :D

heh

[digger]

I am not sure how WM5 is architected in comparison to WM20003SE, but I used to have alarm problems occasionally on the Jam (WM2003SE).

Having installed clear_notify.exe into the startup folder I have not had a single problem with alarms in over a year. This clears the notify queue of junk that builds up during resets and was on occasion stopping the alarm from sounding until you manually switched the device on. I don't have a WM5 device so can't say if it will help there, but may be worth looking at...

[bvkeen]

Believe it or not Voice Command Fixes the problem. Even if you disable all of the features after installation, you will not miss another alarm or notification alert again. Any app that needs to notify or wake up the PPC will work flawlessly. MS some how patches notification system of CE with Voice Command. Don't know if they did this on purpose or otherwise. Noticed that this fixed the issue in WM 2003 and WM 5. Try it out.

Unfortunately, Voice Command 1.5 doesn't completely work on my x51v - when I speak a command to show a specific name, it shows a blank screen (others have also reported this problem). Since that is a key element of VC for my uses, I haven't loaded it after my second hard reset. Besides, it miffs me that one "has to get" a 4.5MB memory-resident program to fix a simple problem.

[alese]

I am not sure how WM5 is architected in comparison to WM20003SE, but I used to have alarm problems occasionally on the Jam (WM2003SE).

Having installed clear_notify.exe into the startup folder I have not had a single problem with alarms in over a year. This clears the notify queue of junk that builds up during resets and was on occasion stopping the alarm from sounding until you manually switched the device on...

I never had any problems on my machines with alarms, but I do have strict rules. I have installed clear_notify.exe on all my machines and I also use Check Notifications from ScaryBear Software every week or so to check if there are some duplicates to be cleaned. I also always leave my machine to switch off by itself, to avoid possibility of changes not beeing written to queue.

Also a note, when I had used Universal, I haven't done any of the above and after 2 weeks of use, and a lot of resets I have used Check Notifications and there was almost 100 duplicate entries to be cleaned. So my guess is that notification system was not changed at all from WM2003 to WM5 and the problems are the same.

[Oliver T]

I still have the problem with my SPV M5000. It seems to be more apparent when I leave the wireless enabled before I switch it off. What annoys me more is that I have to soft-reset the device every two or three days because I'm running out of memory. There is a big memory leak in WM5 but nobody wants to admit it ;-(

[robert_biggs]

I tried installing Check Notifications and clear_notify.exe on my X51v. Check Notifications only found 2 duplicate "Null" entries, but it was unable to remove them. When I tapped the Clear button, the program would just hang and never finish deleting the duplicate entries. Soft reseting did not delete them either, nor did it create any additional entries detected by the program. I guess those programs don't work with the X51v running WM5. :(

[William Yeung]

Plain and simple. Microsoft SUCKS again. I have given a really angry post in help and support of MS. I hope they do something positive.

[twpd]

This is laughable. My old Psion 3 dating from 1991 worked perfectly well as did all successors. 15 years on an Microsoft still can't get it right. Alarms and reminders on all PPC's have always sucked - too quiet, too unreliable. Psion got it right, Palm got it right, cheap watches and cheap phones can do it right but, as long as muppets keep buying the rubbish that masquerades as an mobile o/s then MS will keep on turning out junk.

[Chairman Clench]

Plain and simple. Microsoft SUCKS again. I have given a really angry post in help and support of MS. I hope they do something positive.

This problem has existed since PPC2002... do you really think they are going to fix it now? Why should they... people buy these things regardless.

[Chairman Clench]

This is laughable. My old Psion 3 dating from 1991 worked perfectly well as did all successors. 15 years on an Microsoft still can't get it right. Alarms and reminders on all PPC's have always sucked - too quiet, too unreliable. Psion got it right, Palm got it right, cheap watches and cheap phones can do it right but, as long as muppets keep buying the rubbish that masquerades as an mobile o/s then MS will keep on turning out junk.

Maybe that's why Psion and Palm handhelds have all but completely failed! Maybe people don't actually want working alarms and reminders!

[davea0511]

This happens with every single release. Every time we complain. And nearly every time we do that there's an jerk somewhere who says something insulting like "If you can't remember appointments without an alarm then you must be dumber than a rock, and you deserve to miss your appointment.".

Where is this jerk and why hasn't he offered his stardard insulting reply?

Oh... I know. He's now the Director of the Microsoft Windows Mobile division. :roll:

$2.00. That's how much a tiny digital-watch cpu with integrated memory costs. All they have to do is integrate that and save the alarms to it's memory. Keep it seperate from the CPU, so it can wake the CPU from even a complete powerdown state. It's that easy. Why don't they do it? :cry:

[ajg23]

I also can't believe they still can't make reliable alarms. Worse, no one can STOP my device's model (PPC-6700) from waking up when it's NOT supposed to do so! :) :)

Wanted to point people to the beta forum of AlarmToday, which is WM5-compatable and even has a WM5 "registry fix"...AlarmToday's AlarmNotes on my device currently work, but AlarmToday doesn't yet fix all 3rd-party alarms (as it did when I had a WM 2003 device).

Their beta forum is http://www.pocketmax.net/smf/index.php?board=24.0

Aaron

[ajg23]

Also, cross-posting this idea in case some fancy-pants developer wants to try to make a utility :)

A post at http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=31895&amp;postdays=0&amp;postorder=asc&amp;start=0 got me thinking: maybe a good solution to the wake up problem that microsoft seems unable or unwilling to solve would be a utility that

-- turns off power to the screen
-- *hibernates* all tasks (a la PMH task manager)
-- allows screen to power up and tasks to un-hibrenate when a Windows notifcation fires (which it actually can b/c the whole system isn't OFF)
-- optionally lock the buttons

Mortsaver does some of this, but doesn't hibernate the tasks and doesn't keep the PPC from powering down (although I guess you could go to power settings and deactivate the auto-shutdown).

An issue to be dealt with would be alarms firing and then wanting to power down the device if they were not dismissed...

Maybe such a utility would make for reliable alarms and minimal battery drain...?[/url]

[asims]

Several different places (including Burr Oak's website) I've read that Wakeup Tweak simply modifies a Registry setting in order to correct this alarms issue. Can anyone point me to the Registry setting it modifies? I've just been unceremoniously introduced to WM5 when I purchased the hx2495 (hp's website says it's WM2003SE) and still have my h2215. I have applied the Wakeup Tweak to the 2215 but not the 2495 yet. Maybe I can compare the two Registry settings and see just what gets changed?

[wbuch]

I still have problems with my PPC-6700 not waking up for alarms and noticed it's been a couple months since the last post on this thread. Have any developers come up with a *small* (I don't want to install the 4.5mb voice command just to fix my alarms) utility that will reliably fix all alarms? I would gladly pay $10 or $20 for such a product.

Thanks.

[ctmagnus]

This is my registry export from a WM2003 device; I have no idea if it will work on any other systems:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\Timeouts]
"BattResumingSuspendTimeout"=dword:0000003C
"ACResumingSuspendTimeout"=dword:0000003C




This sets the timeout between when the device "wakes up" and it "turns on" to 60 seconds.

More info can be found here (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27840).

[asims]

The same dwords are in WM5, but they require a number. Mine reads 60 for both of those, and when I tried to change it to 0000003C, I got an error message basically saying the dword has to be a number. (Unfortunately, with the registry editor I'm using, I got an "Access Denied" when I entered a number. So now I'm looking for a good registry editor. I've already tried PHMRegistryEditor and it didn't work. Anybody know of a good free one?)

[gibson042]

I like Total Commander (http://www.ghisler.com/pocketpc.htm) for registry editing. Also, I didn't quite understand your issue, but 3C in hex is 60 in decimal so you may already have the values you want.

[asims]

Thanks, gibson! Total Commander works great! Not only was I able to change the settings, I was able to also change the view of the dword from decimal to hex and understand what you were talking about. Hopefully, by changing the suspend time to 90 seconds (from 30), my ppc will turn on when a reminder pops up.
Regarding the rest of my post, it's immaterial.

[gibson042]

You're welcome. Best of luck!

[Leviathon]

This may have been answered in some other posts, but I couldn't find it so I'll go ahead here, even though this thread looks pretty dead. My hope is to save someone from having to hard-reset their device.

My Cingular 8125 began to stop notifying alarms the other day. The only thing I could think was that the device had locked one time and there were reminders waiting to be dismissed or snoozed and I had to soft-reset. Perhaps that caused the problem. Or maybe it was a reminder I had set using an older, free version of apMemo (http://apsoftsystems.com/apmemo/). And lastly, maybe it was the upgrade installation of the latest version of Pocket Informant.

I ended up downloading MemMaid, CheckNotifications, Microsoft Voice Command (supposedly it rebuilt the notification database -- didn't fix the problem), and nothing worked. Finally, I came across a post about removing the battery while changing the notification settings in WM5. It sounded ridiculous. But it worked first try. Here's the quote from gregrey on http://www.howardforums.com/archive/topic/839691-1.html:

I will be honest with you, it happened to me a second time and I left on the 8125 and pulled the battery out and nothing happened. I am sure there is a way to do it I am just not sure which method worked but I was able to get them back again. I suggest the following. Also do not hard reset just keep trying different combinations one will work it has worked for me twice.

Leave the phone on go to the notification settings and turn all notifications off(uncheck the enable sounds for notifications) with the phone still on pull out the battery for at least 10 seconds, then reinsert the battery. I think this should work, if it doesn't try it a few times because for me it eventually worked. Also post on this board exactly what is was you did when it did work because now that i got the notifications back I can't test it. Trust me 5-10 minutes of screwing around with the battery is much easier than a hard reset and that is what I kept telling myself.

I really hope this saves some people from the hard-reset nightmare. Good luck!

[larrydj]

I was also having reminder problems. They didn't go off at all, even without turning the PDA off. So I downloaded the ScaryBear apps noted above. When i ran Checknotifications it came up with a lot of duplicates and I hit clear. I also downloaded clear_notify.exe. Immediately my reminders started working again!

However, the when i took the PDA out of the cradle, and put it back it, Activesync no longer works!!! I think I clear a notification that was necessary for Active sync. I've done soft resets and hard resets and rebotted my computer. Nothing. When I open Activsync on my PDA and hit Sync, there is a bried messahe of "Connecting" that flashes and then disapears.

I don't know how to fix it, but it appears I may have do a complete Clear of my PDA. Aaaaaaahhhhh! I hate this! I'd have to reload ALL my software. :evil:

Any tips about what I should do to avoid this? Otherwise this afternoon I'm going to do the Big Clear. :cry:

I have a HP 2495B running WM5.

Any help would be appreciated.

Larry

[blueorbz]

I'm using Windows Mobile 5 and have been trying to solve this problem for months now. I've tried many different fixes including registry edits to lengthen the timeout period, using Scarybear notification fix, setting device time back to before the problem occur etc., and none solved the problem. Something finally seems to work today (keeping my fingers crossed) and I decided to post my solution. Hopefully it'll spare some people the trouble of hard-reset.

The solution for me: PocketMax AlarmToday

It's a today plugin, so it's going to take up some real estate in your Today screen. (I've tried disabling it from the Today screen but it won't work.)

This program also displays the list of all reminders on your screen, which may be helpful to some. For others like me who already have other plugins (like PocketBreeze) for that, here's what you can do to minimize the real estate used:

* Using a registry editor, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> pocketMax -> AlarmToday.
* Set the value of "maxAlarms" to 0
* Go to Start Menu -> Settings -> Today -> Items tab to disable the AlarmToday plugin and click OK to exit
* Return to the same page and re-enable the plugin for the registry setting to take effect

Your plugin should now take less space without the list of reminders.

[Lex]

blueorbz, you can define an AlarmToday skin at 1 pixel and AlarmToday will be invisible. See the AT forum and search at: http://www.pocketmax.net/smf/index.php

[christiansmyth]

I have had a similar problem with my MDA(s) and no-one has been able to help! Appointments do get synchronised OK from our Exchange server, but at some point reminders for these stopped showing up in the notification tab. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop the notification alarm(s) from sounding repeatedly. As these reminders don't show up in the tab, they cannot be dismissed so overlapping alarms go off constantly. Soft and hard reboots have no effect. I have no 3rd party software on the device at all and never have. Any ideas? By the way, I have just tried to use Pocket Mechanic to clean up the Notification queue, but this has had no effect either.

[mikeinwin]

christiansmyth says ...at some point reminders for these stopped showing up in the notification tab. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop the notification alarm(s) from sounding repeatedly. As these reminders don't show up in the tab, they cannot be dismissed so overlapping alarms go off constantly... I was issued the hw6945 by the company I work for. We use Lotus Notes for calendaring and email (that's another story). The software we use to sync with the Domino server is pretty good - it is commonTime mNotes. Reminders and alarms were working fine for the first 2 months I had the device. Then last week I had several consecutive meetings with reminders. I think that when I did not "snooze" or "dismiss" a few in a row, something broke. I hear alarms, but receive no notification screen and can't shut off my "Wake Up!" after it wakes me up. I downloaded the Scary Bear stuff and cleared a bunch of notifications, but I still receive no screen notifications that I can dismiss. I almost broke ActiveSync, but a couple of soft resets seems to have fixed repllog.exe.

[dudge669]

Found this forum thread through a google search when I was trying to figure out why I suddenly didn't have any calendar notifications or alarms going off. I went out to ScaryBear's site and grabbed their CheckNotifications program and thought I'd give it a try even though it said it was for WM 2003 and not WM5 which is what my iPaq hx2490 runs.
I got it to work and wanted to post a note here on how I did it so someone else might benefit from it. Here is the email I sent to ScaryBear last night:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Just wanted to drop a note of thanks for providing your CheckNotifications software! Really helped me out. I couldn't figure out why my iPaq hx2490 Pocket PC (WM5) had recently stopped issuing notification windows. I wasn't being notified about calendar appointments and my alarms weren't going off. I would set an alarm and it would go off (sometimes) but no notification window would appear, making it impossible for me to silence the alarm without going into the time &amp; alarms settings and turning off the alarm there. Your software saved the day.

As you stated, it was designed for Pocket PC 2003 and some parts of it didn't seem to work for me but I was able to make it do what I needed it to do so I thought I might send a note about it, in case you wanted to include an explanation for people who have WM5. I tried going into the settings and turning on the 'remove duplicates' option and then clicking the clear button on the main screen but that just made my PocketPC lockup after a minute or two of watching the hourglass (rotating dial thing). So I soft-resetted my PocketPC and went back into your CN program to try to figure out just exactly what these notifications were, how they worked and which ones I needed to delete on my own.

I first went through and deleted all the red items manually which brought my count down from 150 to about 100. I then went back into the alarms area, UNchecked all the alarms and hit OK to leave the alarms applet. Went back into CN to see what that did to the notifications. Brought it down to 87. I think because I have spbPocketPC Plus installed with repeating alarms support, it puts multiple alarm notifications in the queue for each alarm. After this, I then tried going back into the alarms and setting one up but it still didn't sound when it was supposed to. It did put another entry in the CN list though, and it showed "Active" in the Event Status column so that got me thinking...

Most of the events were "InActive" but the top 5 or 6 entries all said "Active". I don't know if I'm correct or not but I took that to mean that they were all concurrently "sounding" - even though I couldn't hear anything because my notifications were messed up. They weren't all in red but I decided to take the plunge and deleted them all anyway. There was one that said NULL for the application name and I was hesitant to delete that one but went for it anyway. Then I went back into my alarms, turned them all off (unchecked them all), and then went back into CN and deleted all of the items that had clock.exe for the Application name and Daily Alarm in the dialog title. I left the one that said AppRunAtTime. I think that one was a clocknot.exe instead of clock.exe anyway. Long story short, after cleaning out all the events that my PPC -THOUGHT- were active and all of the clock.exe entries and then going back in and turning back on one of my alarms, I have notifications again! YAY! Thanks again for saving me from a hard-reset.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Hope this helps someone...

Edit: Scarybear has updated their webpage. Here's the new link:
http://www.scarybearsoftware.com/product_detail.php?productname=checknotify

[tjneweyes]

I also successfully used ScaryBear's CheckNotifications successfully (manual deletions only) on my HTC Wizard (T-Mo MDA) on WM5. Meetings and Task reminders were both not working.

I had to delete around 40 items. Most were from TASKS.exe. I tend to snooze reminders a lot. :wink: I also deleted NULL entries and a couple from Calendar.exe.

I really don't understand why Microsoft doesn't ship Windows Mobile with a notification queue utility like this. And why doesn't it just delete active alerts that are in the past if these entries are the reason it won't show new ones?

[wladston]

dudge669, I was having the *exact* same problems with an Ipaq rx1950, updated to the last ROM on the HP site. I've contacted HP, they made me do a hard reset, but the problem returned. Hp support never admitted it could be a m$ bug (with is, of course, obvious). So I looked on the internet, found your post, did it, and it worked! :D

Thanks to Scarybear for providing the software for free :D

I can't wait to have a non-micro$oft-buggy pocket pc!! Maybe when the ones with Ubuntu Mobile are out there ... This issue was really making me waste TONS of time and patience, and mental sanity!

[jason.hover]

This worked for me on 1/14/08. My reminders had stopped working about a week earlier. My device is Sprint PPC6700 WM5.

1. Launch Pocket Mechanic on PPC
2. Go to “Notification Queue”
3. Delete duplicate notifications, expired notifications, and also manually delete any notifications with Application = blank (look at them carefully to make sure they’re not something important – the one I found had Application = blank and had an old alarm date (in 2006) and had some calendar appt text so I could tell what it was).
4. Hit Next, hit OK
5. Soft reset
6. Create a task and an appt with a reminder in the next few minutes. Turn off device. See if reminders fire. If so, then fix is successful.


Keywords: Pocket PC, PPC, Windows Mobile 5, WM5, WM, PDA, no reminders, reminders not working, reminders not firing, reminders broken, Win CE Notification Queue

[peso6]

I have had problems with Reminders on my Axim x50v with WM5. I think I may have found how to get them going again. My problem occurs mostly with AlarMe not triggering my morning wakeup alarm. It uses a mechanism similar to reminders to wake up. In trying to figure out what was going on I looked at the notification queue (using PocketMechanic). The Notification queue holds information about upcomming reminders and other notifications and system events. What I found were notification records with incomplete information (such as no Application name) and notification records that were past their time but never removed from the queue (Reminders that you have snoozed will show a time in the past. This is ok). If a record is not for a reminder (does not have POOM in the Action Detail) and it is past time, it most likely a leftover that should be removed.

When these problem records were removed from the queue (using the delete feature in PocketMechanic), everything started working again. Typical records that start the problems are the ones that wake the device up at midnight, but for some reason are not removed from the top of the queue.

Be careful what you delete from the queue as there are many records that are required for the proper operation of the calendar, etc.

Could someone else that is having issues with reminders try this fix and see if it works for you?

This same issue may be contributing to the battery drain people have experienced (dead battery, memory error, etc.). I find that when it occurs on my Axim, I usually have had several reminders stacked up. WM5 seems to have a feature that will automatically snooze a reminder after a set amount of time. I think this is acomplished by another record in the notification queue. When the device wakes up to snooze the reminder it seems to get stuck in an inbetween state that drains the battery.
This last part is more of a guess than a proven fact.

Hi, thanks for the precious hint to use Pocket Mechanic: after several phone calls to the distributor swisscom and the manufacturer HTC, both seemingly not to be really aware of this (obviously old) problem, I plunged into this site to find the solution.
Having run pocket mechanic on the notification queue, simply deleting everything, my device now sounds again! Great help, thanks a lot! :D

[pfergus]

This worked for my AT&T 8525 running WM5. Nice app as well. I'll have to purchase it now!:p