T5 unreliably on/off?

[chrissie10027]

I have had my Tungsten T5 for less than a year, but it has recently become unresponsive to powering on/off. I will try to turn it on (using the main power switch or any other button), and it is totally unresponsive. Hours later, I hear it beep, and when I go to check on it, only to find that it is now turned on. What is going on??

[Heather Cullen]

Hi chrissie, and welcome to the board. I am curious have you performed a soft or hard reset?

Solution ID: 887
Resetting your device (Soft, System/Warm, Hard, In-Cradle, Power Down, Battery Disconnect, Zero Out)

http://kb.palm.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,kb=PalmSupportKB,CASE=obj(887),ts=Palm_External2001#soft

Often a simple reset will resolve your issue.

Heather

[chrissie10027]

Yes, I have tried a soft reset, but that doesn't elicit any response either. The pattern seems to be this: T5 won't turn on, I do a soft reset (with no reaction), I then charge it all day/night, and sometime shortly after that it will spontaneously power on.

[Dick Tracy]

Sounds like you may have installed an incompatible third-party application. Have you reviewed the compatibility list at palmfocus.com?

[chrissie10027]

I have not installed any software on the unit; I only have the programs that came pre-installed. Do I just have a defective unit?? (Of course, none of this happened until I right after the 1-year warranty ended.)

Any other ideas?

[Dick Tracy]

Could also be there is a problem with the charging circuitry. Try plugging into power and then pressing reset on the back. Leave alone for 3-4 hours.

[willyglorioso]

Hi chrissie,
Have you found the solution to the problem?
I am having the same problem just yesterday
Like you, I had my T5 for less than a year
I am sure my T5 was fully charged
My charger has an LED indicator which turns green when fully charged (red when charging)
Tried doing a reset but to no avail
I seem to have a dead unit now
In the last few days that the T5 was working, I find it difficult to turn it on with the on/off switch (only a reset can turn it on then)
I thought it was just some alarm applications that is causing a battery drain so I deleted all alarms but the problem seem to get worst
Right now, I am trying to figure out how to turn it on
Will charging it overnight do the trick?
Or may be discharging it (which means I will be waiting for a long time because I do not want to open up the T5 to cut the wires)?
Hope to receive a good feedback from you and other guys out here
Thanks in advance for any help you can give

[Bexuanmai]

Discharge for longtime is better than charges overnight.
Good luck

[willyglorioso]

Hi
I didn't have to charge overnight to power on my T5.
I just need to charge it via USB using synch-charge cable for a while then it comes back to life upon pushing the power button.
However, I have experienced a lock-down right after the startup screen (the animated Palm logo does not disappear until battery is drained) just after some minutes of functionality.
I can power on my T5 now but I can not power it off during the lock-down (battery drain due to the screen display battery consumption is the only way to turn the screen off).
What is more is that I still can not use it due to that lock-down I mentioned.
Tried to hard reset but the lock-down prevents it from starting properly.
Tried various other ways of resetting but the lock-down still interferes the booting up sequence.
BTW, during the lock-down, a blinking horizontal black line appears at the upper boundary of the screen.
What could have caused this?
Can it be that NVFS is corrupted?
Can it be that the read/write limit of the NV RAM has been exceeded?
After all, its just 100,000 read/write limit if I am not mistaken.
Should I stop hoping to bring back my T5 back to its usual order?
Right now I am trying to drain the battery by not charging it.
I will do so for a week or so.
Hope to get some more feedback from you guys.

[willyglorioso]

I guess it is time to give up.
I let the battery drain starting on Nov 7.
When I charge it, the unit turns on but the lock-down I described persist.
I even got adventurous after by dismantling the T5 to unsolder the battery wires then resolder back again to no avail.
I did some further readings on some other forums.
Like them, I am STUCK IN THE GRAY PALM LOGO WITH HORIZONTAL BLINKING LINE ON TOP.
No report of unit having successfully recovered in this situation.
You can see the blinking line more clearly when you do a debug reset (press and hold the down navigator button and press the reset switch then release the button after some time elapse).
Returning it to Palm for repair is impractical for me.
I will not be "purchasing" any NVFS Palm unit again.
May be not "buying" Palm units all together.
It does not mean I will not be "using" Palm but "buying" it will no longer be an option for me.
Will still wait for the solution to surface in the future.
How I still wish I can revive my T5.

[PalmSole]

I wouldn't give up on the T5 yet. If you fish around the brighthand forum there seems to be mention of an independent repair wizard named chris short who reportedly fixes everything from TX to early palm models. It seems that he only charges a minimal fee to diagnose. Let me know if you can't find and i'll try to post a link.

[willyglorioso]

I had heard of him at the brighthand forums.
That is were i picked up the better term for my T5 problem (STUCK IN THE GRAY PALM LOGO WITH HORIZONTAL BLINKING LINE ON TOP)
It may be what he calls SDS (Sudden Death Syndrome), the best term for a dead unit I guess.
However, Chris Short is a LONG way from where I came from (I am in the Philippines).
I could end up spending more if I so try.
Besides, SDS could be an intermittent and a persistent problem for NVFS units.
There is no guarantee that it will not come back.
If that is so, the solution must be known and workable by ourselves.
It is quite frustrating not having my PDAs to last just for the lifetime of its battery life.
Anyway, should I came by Minnesota at one time, I might bring my old Sony CLIE NX70VU (dead pixels all over) and PalmOne Tungsten T5 (SDS and digitizer drift problem) for a possible repair.