laolita

So my son went searching for my email password when I wasn't looking - he wanted it to reset the parental controls on WoW. He got past the TH55 screen lock but didn't know he had no chance of getting past the SplashID password and he did a brute force search. Usually I exclude some applications from Findhack but he included all and that caused a hang. Not sure if he was unlucky or did something else but by the time I got to the TH55 it was in a Reset loop... everytime it hung on the Power-on screen with no escape possible except for a hard reset.
To make matters worse, I disassembled it with battery connected in the hope that removing some of the tons of muck or wiggling the connections would bring it to it's senses (it is very battered and there are plenty of openings for muck to get in). I was hoping to save the data I had entered in the 5 days since last backup. This caused the problem I have seen elsewhere where it will now only work on USB power - so presumably the mainboard is damaged.

No problem - I keep a nice new shiny backup TH55 for this situation... I meant to change over to it sometime anyway as the battery is better and it looks presentable.

Now I have been using MS Backup for backups. Always worked for me in the past when I had a hard reset.
This time things are different. So it doesn't restore to a different device. How stupid!
Apparently it doesn't key on username or Hotsync ID but on ROM ID.
I have Changename.prc so I tried to set the ROM ID to that of the old machine. No go. It seems that Changename is not actually capable of changing the ROM ID on a TH55.(?)

Some other things I thought to try are hampered. No JAmerican SCSI driver so I can't access the memory stick through the TH55 as a USB storage device... and for some reason the SCSILibraryTH55.prc is not part of the memory stick backup (Neither was Changename.prc)... so I had to Hotsync those across.
[Had been trying to avoid Hotsync as my Hotsync backups are rather old... done to multiple machines and with various versions of the Desktop (e.g. 6.*? on Vista).. so I am never sure they are that complete]
(In fact I think some other files may be missing from the MS backup... does MS Backup skip backing up files if they are somehow locked? One of my SplashMoney databases looks rather old)


So I am wondering:
1. Any particular pattern or rule governing files missing from the MS Backup? Just some .prc files as far as I know. Are they all drivers or have some special property? I guess for the most complete restore I have to start with a Hotsync to restore my most recent PC backup.
2. Where does MS Backup store the ROM ID... perhaps I could use a hex editor on the database and trick it into thinking the machine did not change.
3. If not that - then can I safely copy all the files in the MS Backup folder to a backup folder on the desktop to get them restored to the device?
4. Any other suggestions?

Laolita

laolita

I found out what is perhaps the easiest way to restore a MS Backup set to a different TH55.

The problem:
Trying to restore a MS Backup set to a different TH55 than it was created on will result in the message:
"Discordance of the device
The backup set that you selected is not the backup data of this device."

The reason:
The ROM ID of the device is saved on the memory stick in the binary file:

\PALM\PROGRAMS\MSBackup\bkSetInfo

Not the solution:
Changename.prc can change user id but it doesn't seem to be able to fake the ROM ID on a TH55. At least it is useful for finding our what the ROM ID is.

An alternative solution?:
It is probably possible to solve this using a Hex Editor to change the ROM ID...but that won't work if there is a checksum in this bkSetInfo file.

Easiest solution:
Make a backup from the new TH55 and then exchange it with the one you want to restore.

Before I started - I had done a hard reset and used Hotsync to restore an old backup to the new TH55. This gave it my username and correct Hotsync ID... but this step was probably not necessary.

e.g. Where you have 5 backup slots numbered 1,2,3,4,5 and these are actually stored in physical folders on the memory stick numbered 0,1,2,3,4:

To restore from slot 3:
a) Using memory card reader, backup the memory stick \PALM\PROGRAMS\MSBackup\ path to your PC as a precaution.
b) On the TH55, delete the backup set 1.
(If you try to directly backup to it from the new device you will get a message "Discordance of the device"
"The backup set that you selected is not the backup data of this device."
"If you want to back up here, please delete selected backup set first.")
c) On the TH55 backup to backup set 1 (you don't care what it is actually backing up as this step is only to update the bkSetInfo file to have the new ROM ID associated with this backup set)
d) Back on the PC, exchange the \PALM\PROGRAMS\MSBackup\0 and \PALM\PROGRAMS\MSBackup\2 folders by renaming.
e) Put the memory stick back in the TH55. You will perhaps notice that the date, size, and number off records for the two backup sets you swapped (1 and 3) are displayed incorrectly. This is not important for our purposes.
f) You should now be able to restore the backup set 1 to your new TH55.

As a precaution you may want to make new backups as necessary to correct the wrong date/size/DBNum information in the MS Backup application... wrong information here may confuse you at a later date.


[In doing this I noticed that the ROM ID of my old TH55 ended in "W2" and the new one ends in "EU". That reminded me that the original is a Japanese Bluetooth enabled one and the replacement I got off Ebay is a European one (also with Bluetooth). I hope that does not matter]

I am glad to see that the JAmerican SCSI drive (to enable use as USB mass storage on PCs) and Changename are now installed despite the fact I could not see their .prc files in the backup set I restored.

Further issues:

Everytime I start Brainforest I am getting the message (which I did not get before despite having Changename installed):

"Your HotSync ID is used to identify your data.
Using software to mask your HotSync ID can
cause data loss or
corruption.

Changename"

As far as I can tell I can ignore this - I don't think the Hotsync ID changed. Will uninstalling Changename stop this message? Or is it also checkingn the ROM ID?

Cyker

Good call, I was gonna suggest the backup-and-switch trick when I read your first post

As for Changename, I don't use it so I couldn't say. I'd assume uninstalling might fix it, but be aware that just because the hotsync name is the same, doesn't mean the hotsync ID is the same.

I accidentally synced my Zodiac (Which has the same hotsync name as my TH55) and it complained about duplicate hotsync IDs