Idiot Move Of The Year - CLIE T615c

[marius]

Gang...

Now that I have had a couple of weeks to recover from embarassment and utter shame, I just wanted to share an incredibly moronic thing I did to my 615; also wanna pass along some info on how I resolved the problem and am looking to hear other people's horror stories...After all, I can't be the only jackass around here can I? ;-> [Warning: kinda long so bear with me...]

I received a 615 for Xmas...a great surprise and a terrific gift. I love it. Am a longtime IIIx, IIIc and Vx user so I'm no stranger to Palm OS PDAs. But I happen to be one of those clowns that just has to load up my PDA as much as possible, trying to both maximize the number of apps I "just gotta have!" and also to do everything I can to really get the most out of every single bit available on the unit. Sound familiar?

Anyway, loaded my 615 to the gills...basically ended up running the unit with anywhere between 100k-200k free space after all the apps and space for the max of 2MB worth of [free] AvantGo content. I am a big ebook reader so I have a couple of readers installed [iSilo, PalmReader, Docs2Go, Adobe PDF]. I had been using primarily iSilo and Palmreader, but this time I decided to open a 200k book I was reading using Docs2Go, just to see the difference in display. Had about 150k free space at the time of the incident.

Well, apparently Docs2Go [5.0 Premium] wanted to convert this particular file before opening it. No problem right? Not so. Docs2Go ended up in a locked cycle as it was trying to open the book. The unit completely stopped responding. Power button ineffective. OK, since I am a fairly knowledgeable veteran of PDAs [as well as being a reasonably competent sysadmin] I didn't panic. Figured I could start with soft resetting the unit and if all else fails, hard reset the sucker and blow it out completely [I had no fear as I hotsync at least twice daily] followed by a fresh hotsync.

Wrong.

Soft reset fails. The unit started the OS boot, but kept getting locked in a cycle where the Palm Computing logo appears. The logo simply kept flashing on and off and getting stuck there. OK, not panicking yet so on to hard reset.

Hard reset fails. The unit gets a little farther this time...up to the Sony logo screen and the backlight comes on but that's it. The unit got stuck there completely. Power button didn't work. Nothin' happening. OK, now starting to panic. Figured the hard reset didn't take for some reason, so I did it again....and again...and again....3 tries later and each ends with the same non-result.

Now I panick...

Got on the horn to Sony tech support...waited a tense 10 minutes staring at my frozen 615 with the Sony logo stuck in place and the backlight on. Finally get a live body. I replay the events, what I did to that point and explain what I think caused the problem.

Long story short: tech support had absolutely no idea what was going on and were unable to provide any other courses of action.
We try a couple more hard resets...no dice. I was surfing while on the phone hoping to find other possible things to try and discovered the "medium reset" option. I forget how to do this one now, but as I understand it, the medium reset is alot like safe mode in Windoze. I tell the tech about it while he is looking through the knowledge base. He had never even heard of this third reset option.

Medium reset fails...

Really sweating now...

Now I am thinking I gotta replace the unit...that I somehow fried the thing altogether. I am pissed [with myself mostly as I had by this time realized that I was to blame] and frustrated. Just about to hang up with the techie [who was very sympathetic BTW], when he threw something out at me. He suggested that since the unit was completely frozen with the backlight on, as a last ditch effort I should take it off the cradle and let the thing sit there until the battery charge drains completely. Told me it should take maybe 3-3.5 hours or so and then at least another couple of hours to recharge.

What the hell right? Couldn't do anything else right? So I try it while at the same time racking my brain to come up with an explanation to my friend who got me the thing. "Hey man, you know that Clie? Well, I know that it's only 10 days old, but guess what? I just killed it!"

So, 4 hours, many cigarettes and much vodka later I check on the patient. The backlight is off and the unit is totally drained. Now I gotta recharge the thing so back on the cradle it went and off I went to get more vodka and smokes.

2 hours later, I can't wait anymore. Decide to try powering the sucker up.

It boots up.

And gets through all the way.

...Yeah, you could say that I was moderately relieved...

Now just to make sure I don't screw myself again, I go through my backup folder and remove about 700k worth of files [3 ebooks] before I hotsync the unit. Well, one hotsync later [thank god for Backup Buddy!] and I am back in business. The unit has completely recovered and has been running like a dream...

Moral: Whatever you do, DON'T STUFF YOUR PDA TO THE MAX...

Lessons learned: I now run the unit with anywhere from 500K to 750K free and I know from the torture test that the battery will completely drain from 100% charged in roughly 4 hours.

So, I'm an idiot right?

Anyway, thanks for making it this far. Hope this will be of some use to my fellow Clie owners. And please, feel free to make me feel better by posting your own Stupid Moves and Greatest Misses...If nothing else, it'll make for an interesting thread...

peace!
-marius

[utahjazz85]

Originally posted by marius
After all, I can't be the only jackass around here can I? ;->




Hmmmmmmmmm?

[rollcage]

I've got tears in my eyes from reading your story "marius" - it all sounds so familiar!

[rollcage]

BTW: tears are from laughing - not crying!

[utahjazz85]

Originally posted by marius

So, 4 hours, many cigarettes and much vodka later I check on the patient. The backlight is off and the unit is totally drained. Now I gotta recharge the thing so back on the cradle it went and off I went to get more vodka and smokes.


I don't get it? I know this isn't the point of the story but how the hell do cigarettes and vodka help you? Unless you want cancer, and the vodka is just going to make you stupider.


Fortunetly, I haven't had any situations like you, but I know if I did that I wouldn't do something even stupider.

[boomer]

I've done the same thing to my Clie  :rolleyes:, but I haven't done the same thing to myself. :D

[jedix]

Originally posted by utahjazz85


I don't get it? I know this isn't the point of the story but how the hell do cigarettes and vodka help you? Unless you want cancer, and the vodka is just going to make you stupider.


Fortunetly, I haven't had any situations like you, but I know if I did that I wouldn't do something even stupider.


Well, if he didn't fix his Clie, maybe he thought the Vodka would help him forget that he even had a Clie, or what a Clie was. And the cigarettes..maybe he lost his stylus!:D

[utahjazz85]

He used to smoke his stylus? lol

[jedix]

ROFL!

[pigburger]

That reminds of the time I couldn't hot sync my S300, I was on the phone with tech support for over an hour and they were just as baffled as I was. He put me on hold so he could get a box approved to send out to me and I realized I had just installed afterburner. I turned off afterburner and it hot synced fine. I was so embarassed that I hung up while I was on hold. He called back and I had to explain my stupidity.

[pigburger]

Jedix, are you a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan?

[patrickl]

The way I see it the people at PalmSource are the real idiots though. How can programmers be so stupid as to let a runaway program completely kill your PDA? And then by something as simple as just filling up the memory!

I'm puzzled how a hard reset could fail. Never experienced that myself. Needed a hard reset to solve some problems before though.

[rob_squared]

Aren't you glad everyone is making you feel so welcome marius. :)

PS: You really shouldn't feel too bad, I've crashed my palm pilots so many times that I would make Helen Kellerl look like a good driver.

The only computers I haven't crashed are my wrist watch and my linux box, and I'm working on the latter.

[harbx]

Hmmm...

Reminds me of the time where my T665C gave me the fatal error loop like yours :)

Anyways the details--

About 2 weeks since I got my Clie, and was downloading and loading up all sorts of software into it, mostly shareware and freeware that could benefit my needs (well, most of it anyway).

Anyways, I'm sure you guys might have heard about this software, MonkeyLogo for mobile phones (you can create logos for your Nokia models specifically). Well, upon installing this app, it requested that I reboot my Clie to take effect.

Rite, upon resetting? I get the normal boot up Sony Clie welcome stuff, and proceed to the preference screen. That's where the nightmare starts, I see a fatal expression message with a reset button there.

OK, first time I've seen this since I got my Clie... so reset.

Same message.... and about 10 times later still the same thing, and worse off, I just realised that my power button doesn't work anymore, that loop keeps coming over and over.

Even had to hard reset a couple of times coz it went completely frozen with the reset on the screen not working, and still the same.

So that's when I hopped on to this web site forum and looked for how I could do a 'format' to get rid of everything.

( Doing that push page up button and resetting to remove all data cleared it up)

So, my moral? Please look for reviews of software you want to install on if possible, I went to look only after and realised how a number of people had this problem too with this Monkey nonsense.

Cheers ;)

[rollcage]

Since using "Crash" www.dseifert.com, I haven't gotten into a situation where I can't reset. This program catches a fatal error and resets automatically (most of the time). You guys should give it a try.

[marius]

Originally posted by rob_squared
Aren't you glad everyone is making you feel so welcome marius. :)

PS: You really shouldn't feel too bad, I've crashed my palm pilots so many times that I would make Helen Kellerl look like a good driver.

The only computers I haven't crashed are my wrist watch and my linux box, and I'm working on the latter.

Rob:

Yeah I do appreciate it! Not only are the folks here great when it comes to anything and everything about Clies, there are even people here who care about my personal health! :D

<sigh> wasn't life so much simpler when PCs had only had 4 MB of RAM and HDs were 50MB?

peace!
-marius

[marius]

Originally posted by harbx
Hmmm...

Reminds me of the time where my T665C gave me the fatal error loop like yours :)

Cheers ;)

<snipped>

harbx: thanks for sharing and for the heads up on MonkeyLogo...Great, ANOTHER thing to worry about. BTW, I just yesterday got my grubby little hands on a Lexar 128MB MS and I have vowed never to have a repeat of my near disaster...Just wish the MS stick was half as fast as system memory...

peace!
-marius

[marius]

Originally posted by utahjazz85




Hmmmmmmmmm?

LOL...thanks _alot_ utahjazz85...;)

[Dish]

Originally posted by marius

<sigh> wasn't life so much simpler when PCs had only had 4 MB of RAM and HDs were 50MB?

What about back when the maximum RAM was 64K, most computers had 8K or 16K (you were big-time if you had 32K or 64K) and floppy drives (if you had one -- most people used cassette tapes) were 90K or 180K.

Or when RAM for the IBM PC dropped to $125 for 64K (yes, folks, that's K, not M), and the price for 10 MB hard drives (or maybe it was the new 20 MB ones) dropped to $500....

[jedix]

Originally posted by pigburger
Jedix, are you a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan?

Well, my oldest son is a HUGE fan, and I enjoy my son's happiness. So, to answer your question, I guess I am. Why do you ask?

[BClie2k]

Originally posted by marius
Gang...


Lessons learned: I now run the unit with anywhere from 500K to 750K free
-marius

That is not enough. It is still a danger. You should leave at least 1MB free in your PDA.


Al

[Ayamd1]

Had the same blinking logo problem while tinkering around with new apps.

The "Medium" Reset is made by pressing the up scroll button while doing a hard reset. This is similar to Windows' safe mode. But this doesn't work all the time.

The real "Hard" Reset which clears RAM and removes all apps except for the ones built into ROM is the last resort. After doing a hard reset, press and hold on to the Power button for a couple of seconds. After releasing it, the pda tells you that if you press the up scroll button, it will erase all data. DO IT, and your back in time holding on to your baby clie with just the basics in it.

Just keep regular back-ups and experiencing this won't be so traumatic. I think every true clie enthusiast has to go through this rite of passage.

stay cool, dudes!

[jedix]

Originally posted by pigburger
Jedix, are you a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan?

Oh, duh, yea...
The Toby and Henrietta cat names! I didn't think of it at first! My son named the cats, and yes, based on the Thomas characters.
Do you enjoy Thomas?

[alanpgh]

The way I try to avert problems, it that I copy my entire Sony Handheld Directory to a place on my new 100G Western Digital Slave drive every week or so. This is overkill; I know I only need to copy my user name file. By the way, the 100G WD drive was $89.95 after rebate late last month at a CompUSA store. Nice weekly special.

Good Luck!

Alan

P.S. - I have a T665.
:D

[pigburger]

Originally posted by jedix


Well, my oldest son is a HUGE fan, and I enjoy my son's happiness. So, to answer your question, I guess I am. Why do you ask?

Caught your signature line, my 2 year old is a huge thomas freak and I have become a fan as well. We actually did the "Day out with Thomas" thing and got to ride in him. It certainly beats the hell out of Barney.

[gizmo8500]

On the subject of stupid palm experiences..........This is something my friend did a year ago.

My friend (who owns a m100 and name will remain anonymous) and I (who at the time owned a IIIxe) were at an airport restraunt. One of the things we like to do is train our palms to anything that has an infra-red signal into omni-remote. We had trained signals for everthing from airconditioners to the tv's in every room in our school. We noticed that there was a fountain to which you are supposed to put your cup under and it will automatically sense the cup is there and will then poor water into your cup. We decided to train our palms to the fountains infrared signal and see if we could get the fountain to disperse water remotely. I go up there and point my palm at the fountain, the palm reads the infrared signal and I get it trained. Then my friend goes up to the fountain. Before I can do or say anything his sticks his palm right up to the fountains infrared sensor to which his palm was directly under the fountain. The palm never had a chance. Water poored all over the screen in seeped into the plam. He jerked it back but it was way to late. The palm started randomly opening and closing applications and the screen was flickering and then it went dead.

Later that day as it dried out he tried to turn it on. only half the screen turned on, but it did boot up which was amaising.

Later that week I dropped my IIIxe on tile from about 3 1/2 feet up. When I went to turn it on the screen was blue....yes blue, and it was a greyscale palm.

Both palms ended up having to be shipped back. We got lucky and the warente covered both.

Now we keep our palms in leather cases which has saved them so many times that I have lost count.

[vick6816]

hey marius, you should be a writer. great stuff! made me laugh. i agree with patrickl, the techies at palm are awful.

[Chatbox]

I've been here in the forum for about 6 weeks now, and I spend my time reading people's posts and suggestions and experience.

Your post, is by far the most entertaining to read! I was reading and laughing...but I was laughing so hard that my eyes got shut, and I was trying so hard to continue reading and try not to laugh to much, damn, it was so difficult try to keep reading your post without having my eyes shut.

I wasn't laughing at you in particular, but rather, the post, the way you wrote it...so funny.

Great post, and good lesson.

For your info: the so called "medium reset" has a more correct term which is "debug mode reset". Because it sets the palm into the most basic mode with only very premitive functions (such as loading ROMs), and to check certain hardware to see if they are functioning at the low level.

[jedix]

Originally posted by pigburger


Caught your signature line, my 2 year old is a huge thomas freak and I have become a fan as well. We actually did the "Day out with Thomas" thing and got to ride in him. It certainly beats the hell out of Barney.

Yea, I realized afterward about the signature line. I couldn't think how you knew, until my wife pointed out to me that I included the cats names in my sig. That's funny that you picked up on that! We did the day out with thomas in Strasburg, PA. It was a lot of fun!

[rolando]

Originally posted by davemohan


I will second this recommendation.&nbsp; "Crash" does a great job of trapping fatal errors, and can be set to automatically execute a&nbsp;soft reset after a fatal error.&nbsp; I would recommend setting the delay to 3-5 seconds as I had problems once with it set to 1 second delay after the failure.

Another nice feature is that it lets you set up a custom screen for your crash alert.&nbsp; Mine is a picture of my wife taken when she was not exactly anxious to have a photo taken.&nbsp; It really shows in her face, and I have a caption telling me what an idiot I am for crashing the thing again.&nbsp; Takes out a little of the sting!

The newest version of Crash has a log feature, where it will log the error messages upon crashing. You can view them afterward using the Crashlog application.

Rolando

[marius]

Originally posted by Chatbox
I've been here in the forum for about 6 weeks now, and I spend my time reading people's posts and suggestions and experience.

Your post, is by far the most entertaining to read! I was reading and laughing...but I was laughing so hard that my eyes got shut, and I was trying so hard to continue reading and try not to laugh to much, damn, it was so difficult try to keep reading your post without having my eyes shut.

I wasn't laughing at you in particular, but rather, the post, the way you wrote it...so funny.

Great post, and good lesson.

For your info: the so called "medium reset" has a more correct term which is "debug mode reset". Because it sets the palm into the most basic mode with only very premitive functions (such as loading ROMs), and to check certain hardware to see if they are functioning at the low level.

Chatbox: <blushing>

Thanks so much for the kind words. I guess I was just trying to share my experience as fully as possible with my fellow PDA fanatics...And I figured that if I could at least make my post kinda interesting to read, people might post useful comments back....

peace!
-marius

[marius]

Originally posted by BClie2k


That is not enough. It is still a danger. You should leave at least 1MB free in your PDA.


Al

BClie2K:

footnote - since my post, I have discovered the absolute joy and security of having a 128 memory stick. Along with PowerRun, PiDirectII [which I am convinced works by magic] and BackupBuddy VFS, I am now able to have all the stuff I want on my Clie, but also maintain 2-3MB of internal RAM free at all times...

Thanks for reading and the tip...
peace!
-marius

[marius]

Originally posted by vick6816
hey marius, you should be a writer. great stuff! made me laugh. i agree with patrickl, the techies at palm are awful.

Vick6816:

Thanks for the praise!. Like I said in another reply, I just wanted to share my situation as fully as possible. Very happy you enjoyed my pain! <laughing>

God, I LOVE this group!...
peace!
-marius

[Eric S]

No, idiot move of the year goes to a friend of mine that just lost EVERYTHING Because he hadn't hotsynced, EVER. Seems the CD drive in his computer didn't work, so he never installed the software. If he had asked, I would have had him download the software off the net and install it that way, or at the very least hotsynced it on one of our computers, since he comes over at least once a month.

Oh, did I forget to mention that this was one of the integrated PalmOS PDA/Phones, and he's a realtor who put all his contacts into the phone (only), and now he's got no way to contact most of the people? Realtors live an die by their abillity to contact people, and he's going to be a while recovering from this.

[pigburger]

Yikes, just yikes. That reminds me of the story of the person who used to store stuff in the recycling bin on their windows machine....

[Unregistered]

Marius,
I jsut got the Sony T615 and trying to load it crashed and did the same thing endless cycling and no way to reboot. I fiddled with it for an hour finally and held the on button on. pushed the hard reset and held it and twice pushed in the jog dial and presto, it rebooted fine... Thought you'd like to know it ended that endless cycling.... Dennis

[rob_squared]

"We noticed that there was a fountain to which you are supposed to put your cup under and it will automatically sense the cup is there and will then poor water into your cup. We decided to train our palms to the fountains infrared signal and see if we could get the fountain to disperse water remotely. I go up there and point my palm at the fountain, the palm reads the infrared signal and I get it trained."

Man, I just have to do this now. :)

[GeekGod]

Originally posted by Eric S
No, idiot move of the year goes to a friend of mine that just lost EVERYTHING Because he hadn't hotsynced, EVER. Seems the CD drive in his computer didn't work, so he never installed the software. If he had asked, I would have had him download the software off the net and install it that way, or at the very least hotsynced it on one of our computers, since he comes over at least once a month.

Oh, did I forget to mention that this was one of the integrated PalmOS PDA/Phones, and he's a realtor who put all his contacts into the phone (only), and now he's got no way to contact most of the people? Realtors live an die by their abillity to contact people, and he's going to be a while recovering from this.

Hell, I get that all the time at work. Retards want to return their PDA because it lost all their "important" data. So important they couldn't be bothered to back it up. :rolleyes:

One lady even had a Memory Stick in the thing, and had never even used MS Backup. She moaned and groaned about losing something like 1000 addresses, appointments, etc. and when I asked her why she hadn't hot synced, she said she didn't have time to install the software.

SHE HAD TIME TO ENTER 1000 ADDRESSES & APPOINTMENTS WITH GRAFITTI, AND DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO INSTALL SOFTWARE?

Then I asked her why she hadn't backed up to her Memory Stick, and she said she didn't know how. (Um, you run MS Backup, you F**KING IDIOT!) You know, if there weren't laws against hitting people with heavy blunt objects, my job would be much more enjoyable.

Aloha, GG

PS: Marius, funny story...

PPS: I've never met a PDA that a hard reset couldn't clear. If a hard reset doesn't work for you, then you aren't doing it properly.

[rob_squared]

I have the same feeling about "the general public" but more along the lines of computers. I include CompUSA in this group.

[Eric S]

Originally posted by Eric S
No, idiot move of the year goes to a friend of mine that just lost EVERYTHING Because he hadn't hotsynced, EVER.


Talked to him last night. At best guess, 25% of the contacts are unrecoverable, and the rest are split evenly between 1) various folders in various offices, and 2) friend-of-a-friend information.

So, it will be painful, but he should be able to recover about 75% of the information.

He's buying a new computer just to hotsync his PDA to.