A question for Menneisyys, et. al....

[Sooner Magic]

I have a 4150 (ROM 1.10) which has served me well. About 6 months ago and quite spontaneously, several of the programs which were installed on the SD card stopped working and weren't even recognized. In addition, there were several new folders with wierd names (CY548PSQ?????, etc). I reinstalled the apps and figured it was a hiccup.

Unfortunately, the "episodes" are continuing and becoming more frequent. I have switched SD cards with no change in behavior, so I have ruled out any card specific causes.

I always plug it into a surge protector, it has not been dropped and I have no other suspected cause(s) for this wierdness.

I have previously used the chkdsk drivename: /f command (via a card reader), but the behavior has continued....

As I try to identify what could be causing the corruption in the first place, I have thought of the following situation...

When I power the iPAQ on, the SD card takes a second or two to "come to life" even though the iPAQ itself is up & running. If during this interim second or two, I try to access a file or program which is installed on the SD, it gets confused and hence, corrpution takes place. Is this accurate and/or a likely cause?

While I can reformat the card, run chkdsk and get my data back, it would be helpful to learn what I can do (or not do) to prevent it in the future.

This is apparently a fairly common problem for others as well.

If I remember correctly, Menneisyys has posted about installing apps to a SD card and FAT settings in general to optimize memory cards. Maybe he (or others) would be willing to shed some light?

Thank you.

[Patrick Y.]

What programs do you have installed on your Pocket PC? Did you try a hard-reset and see if the problem still exists?

[Sooner Magic]

Unfortunately, hard resets did not change the behavior.

Programs which were installed on the SD card were:

ListPro
FlexWallet
TripTracker
Total Commander
Memmaid
Tweaks2k2
Cabinstal
WIMR
TomTom maps

[Menneisyys]

When I power the iPAQ on, the SD card takes a second or two to "come to life" even though the iPAQ itself is up & running. If during this interim second or two, I try to access a file or program which is installed on the SD, it gets confused and hence, corrpution takes place. Is this accurate and/or a likely cause?

I do the same on my PPC's a lot - that is, switching on the PDA and trying to start recording with Resco Audio Recorder to the memory card as soon as possible. In a lot of cases, when the card isn't active yet, Resco either starts recording to the main memory or just crashes. The latter often happens also when I try to stop and start a recording in really rapid succession.

So far, I haven't run into problems because of this - the biggest "problems" I've seen were 0-byte files created on the memory card when I tried to start recording too early. No card corruption.

You may, however, want to play with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\StorageManager\PNPUnloadDelay . See http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44488 for more info.

BTW, my article on storage card optimization can be found at http://pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17921

[Menneisyys]

Also see http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=393655

[Sooner Magic]

Thank you for the advice.

Given that my PPC is not WM 5.0, is it correct to presume that these still apply?

I noticed that one of the posts was for WM 5.0.

[Menneisyys]

Thank you for the advice.

Given that my PPC is not WM 5.0, is it correct to presume that these still apply?

I noticed that one of the posts was for WM 5.0.

Ys. Actually, it's mostly for pre-WM5 OS'es that the reghacking applies.