Evil, Wicked...2 Hard Resets

[kennyd]

I have had two hard resets on my TX. I posted my first hard reset in a forum concerning either ZLauncher or app compatibility.

My first hard reset happened when I executed a soft reset from the "device" menu in Zlauncher

The second hard reset happened when I executed a soft reset from the "device" menu in LauncherX

Grrrr...I'm leaving for work and know the entire days events that I just entered into my TX are gone. I just punched out my scheduled and was having an issue with phone lookup not seeing a contact, so I decided to roboot the TX to see if that would resolve it.

I hate to lead someone into fire, but I'm curious...is this repeatable on anyone elses device?

[pastorcmbc]

I also had a hard reset and many soft resets. I was only trying to access the wifi during the hard reset. The soft resets were random. I actually sent the unit back for a credit. I have since ordered another one and it will be here tomorrow. We will see?? I have 30 days more to find out if this one is reliable. I intend to only have datebk5 and the installed apps on this one to see how stable it is.

[kennyd]

Bump: I can't believe that no one else is having this issue. This is a very duplicatable issue on my device.

[LupeValenz]

I would have, but already sent the TX back. Screen quality isn't to my liking, the unresponsive buttons when pressed, sometimes doesn't even turn on, have to reset to turn the device on >_<. I been spoiled by THea ^.^. I did soft reset using the soft reset button in Zlauncher and it just did that, no hard reset. Didn't have much on the device and the duplicate icons made me just dump ZL all together for the TX.

[Dick Tracy]

I don't use ZLauncher but understand there is an update from ZZTechs. Perhaps it will help.

[mdlsimpson]

I've had several soft resets while in wifi mode at a free hotspot.... resets when I am inputting grafitti... (it is repeatable while at google.com and putting in more than 10 characters in the search box?!?! )
I also get a soft reset when looking at a docs to go word or excel doc off an SD card and attempt to close the doc I am viewing... works every time!
I love just about everything else on the TX (wish it had a voice recorder and would love it to have a camera like my old TH55)... but these resets are making me wonder if I should wait for a software update (although this is MUCH less buggier than the T5 I had) and have been tempted to the dark side (iPaq 1950) that was on display at Best Buy... I used to own an iPaq1945 along side my Palms/Sonys and tried several of my old programs on SD card with the new iPaq as well as surfed the internet using Best Buy's open wireless (labeled "Geek Squad") without a single hiccup.... I'm always going to own a Palm (I have too much software investment) but am tempted back to using both again... I love the 1950 size/weight....... Tempting!?!??

[Dick Tracy]

Did you hack Legacy Graffiti or install any other hacks? I hear they can cause resets. The only reset I'm getting is trying to launch P-Tunes and read the card too quickly after inserting.

[kennyd]

I do have MessagEase loaded on my TX. The skin for ME is loaded via MySkin. After my last HardReset I did a restore via hotsync (not that I thought that loading the same apps on the device again would give me different results) and noticed that LX and ME did not like each other at all. If I tapped the app icon in ME then the device would reset. If I tried to dissable ME and load the default skin then I would be denied. These issues could be the result of these apps being installed through a restore instead of independantly but none the less these apps where not happy.

[WildCelt]

I have had two spontaneous hard resets and more soft resets than I can count. I was attempting to load a ROM in PalmMAME during the first, and the second one I was simply trying to customize PalmFiction.

Blazer seems incredibly unstable to me. It is very slow to open (sometimes taking ten seconds or more) and often crashes. Arvale is also incredibly slow to open (taking almost 20-30 seconds!) and often crashes as well.

One thing I've also had the displeasure of finding out it BackupBuddy does not backup everything. During my two hard resets, after restoring it seems both Versamail and Docs to Go did not restore. I have already emailed Blue Nomad and am awaiting a response.

[kennyd]

This is remaniss of my 10 day life drive trial. There are obvious incompatibility issues with the new nvfs memory system. Hopefully Palm can generate an effective patch or developers can do miracles.

Sometimes I'll see someone chime in on a thread like this and acclaim the stability of their lifedrive or TX. I have been watching threads like this in both the lifedrive and the tx forums. In fact a returned my lifedrive after the third hard reset and came to grips with the overwhelming amount of posts that others were having the same issue.

My Zodiac with twice the amount of system tweaks and hacks than what I have had loaded on the TX gave me maybe one or two hardresets over the coarse of a year and a half or so.

I'm afraid that the younger palm community will begin to feel like this is normal handheld behavior.

Please complain to Palm. I think that they do need to hear feedback.

[technical1]

To All,

I just got the Zlauncher fix & no probs since installing it; when I did experience
some duplicated icons; but nothing since. I installed it on what was then a ZL
free TX, & now it seems good.

To Wild Celt about BackupBuddy, did you have the conduits in question set to
synch or do nothing or something else?

To LupeValenz, I got this too, but instead of cursing under my breath, I took it
as a sign that there was an incompatibility; which indeed there was. I isolated
the issue to point to a low level file that affected how your palm starts up.
When I unchecked the button that activated this app running at startup the
problem went away.

I don't want to point fingers at people & realize that 'your mileage may vary' is
most applicable for early adopters - however I must be honest & admit that I've
been doing PalmOS app beta testing for a while; so I had that experience to fall
back on - my point is don't be so quick to say the TX isn't good, when it could
something that you'd probably figure out yourself if you had seen this kind of
thing before.

Bottom line, ZZtechs have a fix, I found Repligo has a newer version that
fixed all of my problems, so I realize that things are already starting to gel.

For less than a month, I believe it is pretty good. BTW, I encourage you to keep
online & see what others are saying here & on TX forum in Brighthand, & PDA247
I have no claim to any inborn skills - but I learned fm what others said as well.

Bottom line, I am a bit prejudiced b/c my beloved T3 is only showing 4.12v after
an overnight charge & goes downhill quickly fm there - in other words the battery
is dying & the digitizer probs drive me nuts (besides spoiling Action mode on my favorite
game - Bejeweled2) & TX digitization is rock solid. So far.

So everyone, please take my encouragement, it is early on & in history of new
releases, stuff happens & you can get a lot fm people here & on other forums.

I am also convinced that it also has a lot to do w/the change fm VFS to NVFS, & it is supposed to be better in TX than in T5.

[kennyd]

I agree that developers will be working to obtain compatibility. I also understand what your saying about beta testing. I know that myself along with WildCelt can be dated back to the days of MemPlugs on Visor Prisms and Neos. We were beta testing through initial development of more robust aspects of memory usage on palms.

I think that my point is coming from an angle of dissapointment knowing that with the release of palms last 4 major releases there have been what I would describe as "major" issues of stability. The T3 and SD corruption, T5 and major issues with nfvs, the lifedrive and...oh my, the tx and many reports of incompatibilities that are even resulting in hard resets.

I wonder how Tapwave was able to get 128mb's of ram on the Zod2 without having to utilize some weird memory architecture like nvfs. I'm just a bit nervous about nvfs and hope that I don't have to learn how to live with a tempermental device.

I'm excited about the new Linux based palms. From everything I've been hearing from developers this should provide a much broader base for the palmos.

[WildCelt]

To All,
To Wild Celt about BackupBuddy, did you have the conduits in question set to
synch or do nothing or something else?


Conduits are set to their default "Handheld overwrites desktop" settings. Blue Nomad's reply was of course "Install the latest version." Well, I found out that I wasn't running most recent version, but I am still having major problems with it (It keeps bombing out before completing). I sent my hotsync log to them, per the instructions in the log itself. We'll see what happens.

Regarding Blazer, I suffered another spontaneous hard reset last night, and am beginning to wonder if it is Fonts4OS5 that is the culprit, as explained here (http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?p=864611#post864611).

[WildCelt]

I agree that developers will be working to obtain compatibility. I also understand what your saying about beta testing. I know that myself along with WildCelt can be dated back to the days of MemPlugs on Visor Prisms and Neos. We were beta testing through initial development of more robust aspects of memory usage on palms.

I think that my point is coming from an angle of dissapointment knowing that with the release of palms last 4 major releases there have been what I would describe as "major" issues of stability. The T3 and SD corruption, T5 and major issues with nfvs, the lifedrive and...oh my, the tx and many reports of incompatibilities that are even resulting in hard resets.

I cannot echo this sentiment enough. I am certianly no noob to Palms, as Kennyd states, and am also not afraid of getting my hands dirty in fixing a problem. If I only wanted to complain I wouldn't spend all the time I do troubleshooting and reporting back to developers (I have contacted the developers of all the programs with which I'm having troubles).

This being said, I have not had this many problems before when upgrading handhelds. After my last hard reset I was about ready to drive the damn thing over to Best Buy and shove it up some Geek Squad's nether regions, but I cooled down and got back to troubleshooting. I would not be so frustrated if I had backups I could trust, and in the case of BB, I just cannot trust them (thank G-d Resco Backup seems to be working--once I figured out Fonts4OS5 must be disabled :) ).

I don't understand why Palm not only has to mess with things that I'm sure they know will break popular programs, but that they do not communicate it before the release of a handheld to developers so they have have their software already fixed before it is released. I never used Fitaly, but losing a developer out of pure frustration over this is no way to do business. It's sad that not only developers but we as consumers have to go through this painful process after every handheld is released. I might add that it not only consumers, but loyal consumers that bear the brunt of this problem. New consumers will not have these problems, mainly since they have no frame of reference and have no third party software installed.

I'm certainly going to keep the TX. Overall its a great handheld, but I am looking forward to it being a bit more stable!

[xsnrg]

I have only this to say. If you bought a TX, and ran it without loading any 3rd party apps on it, and had problems, your gripes are just. However most people having problems are people (rightly so, as that is what makes the Palm great) loading unknown software versions, hack, slices, DIA changes, font changes, etc on a machine that hasn't even been out a month yet. Most developers are just getting around to even seeing if their software works on the new units. Note too that it is not just running the unknown apps, but how they work with the built in apps and the system itself is also unknown.

Reading through the forums, I constantly see G1 hacks, font hacks, DIA hacks, system utilities, etc that were written to work on previous versions of hardware, with different OSes, different CPUs, different memory architectures, etc. It is a testament to Palm that the majority of this runs on their new systems. I know they didn't test every 3rd party app that is out there.

If you need to buy a palm on the cutting edge, that's great. Use the energy you have around that to talk to the developers and convince them to work faster to release code for the new unit. Don't complain about the Palm itself where it is not justified.

That being said, I had a few problems with apps too. I removed the problem software until new versions were available. I have not had a single hard reset on my TX to date. Nor do I have lockups at seemingly random times. My Blazer input boxes work as advertised, and Blazer does not crash. I use versamail heavily, syncing a IMAP account, and an exchange account. I sync to two computers, and use the wifi heavily. I have been running palmOS handhelds since 1995, with a USRobotics Palm Professional as my first, so I am not a newbie that is spouting here either.

As far as I am concerned, the TX is the best Palm to date. My opinion of course.