T3 fatal error - drains battery to empty

[mkgordon]

Hi,

I've been experiencing an occasional serious problem with my T3. Every now and then, I take it out of my coat pocket or briefcase and find it won't turn on at all.

I put it onto my cradle, and let it charge for a few minutes and then I can turn it on. But it's been completely wiped, as if I'd done a hard reset!

I can restore everything by Hotsyncing, of course, but one day this is going to happen when I really need access to my T3 and I'm away from my desk!

Once or twice, I've looked at my Palm when I'd just used it say an hour before, and I find that it's on, with an error message asking me to, but not letting me, reset by hitting a screen button. If I do a soft reset via the hole in the back, it comes back with all my data. But I can see that if I didn't find it, it would have eventually drained and then I'd lost my data.

The error message I found once went like this:

Fatal Alert
DataMgr.c,Line:7399,
DmWrite:DmWriteCheck
failed
---------
reset
---------

That last bit is my representation of the little circle around the screen reset button that you sometimes see when you install some new software.

This keeps on happening. Can anyone tell me what's going on?

I tried calling PalmOne, but those guys just don't inspire confidence that they know what they're talking about. Either it's a thirdparty problem or a hardware problem and you need to have it sent in. Obviously, I'd like not to send it in because that means that I'll not have a PDA for however long.

I look forward to hearing from any of you who might have some insight into this.

Thanks,

Mike
Toronto

[NZ Rocks!]

Don't know for sure, but it seems to me like a nasty software related problem. Try rebuilding your system to the original out-of-the-box condition, with no added software, and start from there. If problem disappears, that would be it.

Don't know if it will work, but it is definitely worth a shot. Please share your results with the forum.

-Cheers!

Manuel

[Stefan Knochenhauer]

Been there, done it... I had this problem happening to me three or four times during the first three months that I own my T3. Funnily enough it would always happen when I stayed at my girl friend's place, far away from my cradle and computer. I would put it on her desk at night and pick it up in the morning and the damn thing was wiped out. I never found a solution to the problem, never even saw an error message. But all I can say is that the problem vanished from one day to the other. Haven't had the fatal hard reset in about three months now.

[aym]

That precise error message was one I was getting with the new "fix" they implemented between the old versions of the databases and the new ones. Resetting didn't help because for some reason the T3 itself (they had sent me a replacement) had corrupted databases to start.

There was quite a bit of discussion over DmWrite errors on the Datebk5 forum on Yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pimlicodatebk/) surrounding this. I think the recommendation is to use the newest dbscan on it. It's worth a shot before you try to follow the convoluted explaination below. <g>

Back when I had it they hadn't figured it all out on the Yahoo group, so I was on my own. I just determined which of the databases it was happening in (Datebook and I think ToDo, for the record), then kept doing warm resets and using Filez until I was able to delete both Calendar-PDat_appl_a68k and DatebkDB at the same time *see note below. I then ran the calendar program to let it recreate the databases and all was well. I did the same for the ToDo program. Since DatebookDB isn't really the data - CalendarDB-PDat is - I didn't lose anything. The other two files are just for shuffling the data back and forth. I would think given your situation you might have Datebook problems that are appearing when alarms are accessing the datebook. I found the errors happened whenever something (Hotsync counted) tried to modify whichever database was broken. I think the Hard Resets you've been seeing are a result of the battery running completely down instead of actual direct symptoms.

I've learned since that restoring with older versions of BackupBuddy can cause this because they restore the old databases like DatebookDB and can cause this issue, but as I said - mine came with it. PalmOne was absolutely no help at all.

I wouldn't think it would even require a hard reset.

Now, I hope I have it all straight. This was mainly done in the parking lot of my chiropractor's because I was so frustrated I wanted it solved right away, so I'm going on memory from a couple months ago. Once it was solved the issue never came back.

Hopefully that will help. It was driving me nuts too! I wish I could give you precise step by step instructions, but I presume anything would be a help right now.

Amy

*note: for some reason it wouldn't always let me delete both databases. I found I needed to map a hard key to Filez so I could go directly there from the prefs startup screen (and to the Calendar if yours has been remapped), and it mattered which order I went in - though I can't remember which worked. It seemed to work sometimes when it didn't work others, so I'd just warm reset and start again, starting the calendar program to recreate whichever one was missing if it was stubborn. Eventually it worked. Just remember - warm reset - directly to Filez via hard key - directly to Calendar via hard key. Once it worked the problem was gone for good.

[aym]

PS - if someone uses this advice to solve this problem please do everyone else a favor and post a step-by-step method before you forget it!

Thanks!
Aym

[blues]

My T|T3 just did the screen squish thing, and I remember someone saying that they have unplugged the battery very quickly instead of waiting 5 hours for it to drain. How difficult is this to do? Instructions anyone?

[PalmTech]

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