Help, please.

After running what I thought was a well-behaved Sinclair emulation (and this may not be its fault), my Programs screen will not display when chosen from the Start Menu. Soft resets do not solve the problem.

Settings comes up and works; and I can access any of the programs in the Start menu.

All of the program *.lnk files are still where they should be in \Windows\Start Menu\Programs, and tapping any of them them while in Resco File Explorer will run it, with the exception of Calendar, Contacts, File Explorer, Pocket Excel and Pocket Word.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I've also lost my input possibilities: the input mode choice menu comes up, but I can't choose any keyboard or writing recognizer.

Some sort of system link has broken down here. Is there any way to restore it short of the hard reset? (BTW, I was able to run the backup utility even in this state, so I'm ready for the hard reset if I must, but I'd prefer not, I think.)

Any help greatly appreciated.

Marc

Update: I did the hard reset, but, as I feared might happen, the Restore restored the corrupted state. Any ideas of what I could exclude from the Backup that might thereby exclude whatever routine got corrupted? (The problem, I see now, involves all ROM-based programs--including the keyboard routines and the Programs page itself--if that suggests anything.)

If possible I'd like to avoid reinstalling from scratch only because it'll be messy: several of the programs I run from the sd card had system files stored in Main Memory. How much reinstalling do you do then?

Grateful for any help.

Marc

Jeez marc,
sad tale you have goin on there man.

When you hard reset, did the functionalty of the Rom based Programs work again, or did ya skip over it?

It seems something has a system hook in place and its stopping you from accessing basic functions, Maybe something like a file manager or screen saver even, Any of these on your recent install list bro?

Hmm, long shot, but thats all thats here right now, have you tried to re-map your buttons or other in the input selection screen?


If i can think of anything else, ill pop back an add it.

Good luck in the meantime Bro.

Peace

WR

Thanks for the concern, WR.

Yes, I should have said: after the hard reset, everything factory-installed came back like it should. But when I did the Restore of the backed-up contents of my memory that functionality went south again. I think you're essentially right about there being some hook inserted, since for some of the ROM routines, if I try to use them, I get an alert saying "No memory available," when nothing else is running.

No new file managers, etc. installed recently. Moving the ROM programs to the Start menu doesn't make any difference. I can call them, but they won't come.

Thanks for the help. If you think of anything, let me know.

Marc

Heyas,

After your reply there Marc,
I would bet dollars to donuts that one of your today screen apps or plug ins is the culprit.

Long shot it maybe, but in my experiences with these units, people were saying that when thier bluetooth radio failed to turn on, that their unit said, in-sufficent memory to start application.

I found if this happened to mine, i unselected a couple of my today screen apps, and all was well for my radio to work.

(They seem to hook it the most, and can cause some weirdness.)

Try unselecting your today apps bro, and let me know if it did help or not.

Peace

WR

Hi WR,

Good thought, my friend. I too have seen some of those posts about the weirdnesses of Today add-ins. But not the story here. The only Today plug-in I had was Pocket Weather. It had peacefully co-existed with everyone else for months. But, hey, you never know. So I took your advice, took it out, reset (first soft, then hard with a Restore that omitted Pocket Weather). Alas, no change. I'll give it another day to see if you or anyone else can think of a less drastic solution. Then I'll hard reset and just start re-installing programs one by one. If I'm lucky, the register will figure out itself what to do with the programs installed on the SD card. If not, buddy-buddy, I'll have to reinstall all of them.

Thanks again.

Marc

Well, Ok, i have a last idea Marc.

I know this may be hard if you cant select any of your built in ROM applications by touch, .... Can you map the "Welcome to ipaq" app to a button and run it.


If not bro, I'd say, uninstall crap till it works, chart and resume with waypoints.(if you can Uninstall)

As probably, when installing, it all works till it go's bad again right.

Keep us filled in bro.


Peace

WR

You are tenacious, WR. I really appreciate it. I was able to get to the Welcome.exe app with Resco File Explorer. (This whole episode has been an education regarding which "ROM"-based programs really are in the ROM and run from there, and which simply get loaded at startup into RAM to run like ordinary apps--"built-in" or "OEM" would be better names for many of those. Still, they saved my life, since i could run them even without access to the Programs page, and they allowed me to do backups and to reset the clock from the internet, things like that. I should have been taking notes as to which were which.)

Long and short, though, is that it didn't solve the problem. So, late last night I did a hard reset, followed by a partial backup of the new, pristine Register. Then I did a partial Restore of my old memory--everything but the Register and some apps I was suspicious of. Then I restored the new Register and did a soft reset. Everything was there and worked almost as it had before. So far, so good.

Then I started reinstalling the suspicious apps. When I installed my favorite keyboard replacement, it all blew up again. Dang. I really like it, and it had not caused any problems before. On another thread someone else reported sudden and unexpected problems with it, so it's probably not the utility itself, but some lethal interaction suddenly with another program.

Anyway, I redid the partial restores after another hard reset, and left out the utility. Everything has been running okay today, though some pieces seem to be missing from some programs. I may do a little reinstalling of those. I'll also try once more with the keyboard utility, being scrupulous about deleting every scrap of its old associated files before installing it. I'd hate to give it up.

So that's where we stand. Thanks for your interest.

Marc

Your more then welcome

Now, Hope you can resolve the problem that lies before you.

Peace

WR

Latest (final?) update. After scrupulously cleaning out all leftover files related to the keyboard utility, I reinstalled it. So far, everything is working as it should. I took the opportunity to make two backup files: one of the state of main memory before reinstalling the keyboard; one after installing it but while everything's running right. If I need a hard reset in the future, I'll be able to choose how far back I want to go with the Restore.

Thanks again for your help and moral support.

Marc