My Disastrous experience with Phatnotes.

speedy1979 · 11-18-07, 01:32 AM

Today after growing tired of the builtin notes utility I decided to give phatnotes a try. So I visited their site and downloaded the .cab file.
After attempting to install the program to my CF Card I received the following error message:

"Installation was unsuccessful. The program or setting cannot be installed because it is not digitally signed with a trusted certificate."

After receiving this error message I tried again and got the same response. A short time later my ppc froze so I did a softreset. That's when I discovered that all of the programs in my program files folder (on my CF Card) had been deleted; ALL 135 MB's gone but thats not all. I also had made a zipped copy of my program files folder just in case it got corrupted. That zip is 125 MB's (or at least it was) it is also now empty.

I guess it's a good thing I didn't install phatnotes to main memory.

Needless to say I won't be installing it ever again.

cravaus · 11-18-07, 02:14 AM

That is odd. I have been using PhatNotes for about 3 years and have upgraded when ever I have had a chance. I can say it works best in main memory from my experience but it will load in a card. I got some crashes with it loaded on a card due to the start delay of the Axim card slots. I have had my data disappear from off my cards suddenly a few times. Backing up is a very important thing. SD and CF are just not as stable as other storage. I am sure to format all my cards to FAT32 before I plug them in. That makes a difference. Althought the cards will run right out of their container it is best to format them to avoid sudden data loss. Even with that I have had one other incident after transfering a card between my PDA and camera. Little surprises!!

Also check out PhatPad. I like it best for on the fly note taking. It is very feature rich. If you also use Caligrapher, it will translate your handwriting to text (80% to 90% accurate).

speedy1979 · 11-18-07, 12:09 PM

I always format my memory cards using FAT 32. And I did backup the card fortunately. But this is the first time I have seen an entire subdirectory emptied. I have seen corruption before but not this. The funny thing is nothing else on the card is damaged; just the \CF Card\Program Files and the \CF Card\Program Files.zip have been emptied.

Now I am terrified of Phatware.

psionandy · 11-18-07, 12:29 PM

Of course it could have been the problems that caused the cf to go wrong that also made phatnotes go wrong...

that's why backups are your friends

Julie · 11-18-07, 12:49 PM

I haven't heard of this kind of thing happening before with Phatware. It could be a coincidence. But backing up EVERYTHING on a pocket pc is always a good thing to do before installing new software (I am one of the biggest hypocrites out there :o)

AKAJohnDoe · 11-18-07, 03:25 PM

I've had a number of SD cards go bad and this is how it starts. What was running when they start going bad is just the luck of the draw.

speedy1979 · 11-18-07, 04:14 PM

Originally Posted by AKAJohnDoe

I've had a number of SD cards go bad and this is how it starts. What was running when they start going bad is just the luck of the draw.

Were any of those cards made by PNY.

I have a PNY OPTIMA PRO(TM) UDMA 4GB
266X CF Card. Purchased from J&R about 3 months ago.

AKAJohnDoe · 11-18-07, 05:48 PM

I do not believe so; however, I have also not had a CF card go bad (yet), only SD cards, and multiple brands of those. And they only seem to go bad in my X50V, so perhaps the hardware or device driver/firmware in the Dell is contributing to it in some way.

If the card has not simply reached the limit of writes (i.e.: worn out), then it can usually be recovered via a reformat, either in the device or by using a USB card reader and your PC.

This does suggest that it is worthwhile to have a USB card reader and have taken regular, periodic backups so that the data on the card may be restored after the reformatting has completed!