Scary letters....wont delete....yikes!

[YoungMD]

Any help would be appreciated. I have a dell x30, and love it. I'm a med student and tried to install a program, and now on my SD card, I have quite a few files with funky letters and boxes. I'm thinking corrupted or virus, and I cannot get rid of them. PLEASE HELP! I have no clue what to do.

Thanks in advance to the smart people who know this stuff

[SBF74]

If you've got an uncorrupted recent backup I would suggest a hard reset.

[YoungMD]

The thing is, the problem is with my Scan Disk card. The files are on the card, and I have a feeling that I could reset till the cows come home, and nothing would happen. This is the problem. I even downloaded PC-cillin for pocket pc, and it found no virus scanning my device, but it didn't scan my card. Any other comments would be welcome. Is there some way to completely wipe the scan disk card clean? That would be a help, and I wouldn't have to reinstall so many programs. Thanks again for any help, its MUCH appreciated.

Jon

[SBF74]

To my knowledge there are NO known viruses affecting PPC at this time.
Sorry, missed about it being on the SD card.

The other thing to try would be to download MemMaid and scan your PDA - perhaps they are old files from incomplete uninstalls.

Otherwise IF YOU ARE SURE they are not vital you can just delete them manually (be very sure!)

Perhaps someone more knowledgable than me will be able to help..... I'm a 2nd year Medical Resident, not a technophile. Good luck.

[jmckeown]

if you have a card reader i would hook up to my pc and take a look at the card. you probably could delete files there If theses are programs, did you try 'Remove Programs'

[Theophilus]

This is not a virus. Most probably a corrupted SD card. This sometimes happens

[aximix]

I face this problem sometimes with MP3 files. If I copy them from my desktop PC to card via a card reader, they work ok on desktop as well as PPC. But files downloaded via PPC to card are displayed as funny characters when I view them on PC via the card reader.

You might want to test out the above.

[YoungMD]

I thank everyone for the help. It appears that nothing can work. I was trying to install pocketMerck, a medical program, and it kept giving me problems. I was installing it to my SD card to save space. The install wouldn't complete, even though I could see the program icon in the list. I uninstalled and reinstalled a couple times to no avail. Now I just have these three files and four "thingies" on my scan disk card taking up like 8MB of memory, and I cannot erase them from file explorer. I don't have a card reader, and i've tried everything I know. I know these things aren't essential, but I just cant get rid of them. Maybe I just need to upgrade to a 1G card and call it a day, but if anyone could lend some more advice, I'd be happy to hear it and save a few bucks. Thanks.

Jon

Download the trial of Pcoket Mechanic (link in my MyPDA) and format the SD card - this will clear up what appears to be a corrupted Sd card (uninstalling and reinstalling programmes to a corrupted sd card isn't going to fix the the card from being corrupted )

Then try and reinstall the programme.

BTW - welcome to the site :approve:

[YoungMD]

Rob, thanks for the reply, and for the welcome! This site is great! I've already lurked around, and there is a ton of info here. I'm trying your idea right now.....and I wasn't trying to get rid of these things by uninstalling and reinstalling....that's just how I think they got there. Hopefully this works....if not, off to CostCo for a new card. Oh, and btw, SBF74.....any programs you find particularly helpful up in the wards and whatnot? I always accept advice. Thanks again people.

Jon

[Blade]

If you have not already formatted the card, try renaming these files to something else then delete them. The reason you cant just delete the files is the OS doesn’t recognise these as valid files.

[Vric]

Normal Sandisk Card did that to me too. I had it for 5 days and had only problems. The card get corrupted very easily. I exchanged it for a Lexar and never had problem again. The normal Sandisk (first gen) is a very slow and unstable card. The "new" one at 32x is better (for what I have read, I don't trust Sandisk anymore)

You will need an usb card reader and format the Card to "solve" the problem. Or use a software like Anton Tomov Pocket Mechanic to format using your Axim. Try to make a backup of the good files before.

btw my "defective" Sandisk card came from Costco also.

[YoungMD]

God Bless this group. Thanks for everything and all the help guys. I tried everything in the book. Everytime I tried to rename the files, it wouldn't let me. It wouldn't let me delete them either. Rob's link for the pocket mechanic worked, and caused minimal damage.....and by damage, I mean that I didn't have to reinstall that many programs. For anyone with a similar problem, after trying everything else, pocket mechanic worked by formatting the disk and erasing all the files on there. Now a simple reinstall of old programs and we're up and running. Thanks a ton guys. May the sun shine on you today.

Jon :approve:

[SBF74]

Good software to use on the wards:
Lots of freeware programs around the web
Up-To-Date is excellent but subscription only $200/yr
Any Skyscape programs - esp 5MCC are good for Gen Med. Archimedes is free.
Therapeutic guidelines - this is from Australia (where I'm from) and is an Isilo document.
Epocrates
Mobipocket reader
Isilo reader
Betaplayer for listening to music/watching clips when not busy
A few games - see above.

[adrenal_medulla]

YoungMD, where are you in medschool at? I'm in Tucson. One fun program that I've used a little (I'm still a second year) is Diagnosaurus - for differential diagnoses based on symptoms. It's free. Another program that's been handy is ConverterCE (I'm still not used to the metric system) and it's free too. If you're still in the basic sciences and use flash cards at all then SuperMemoCE is great. I got it for free off the U of Utah medical student website. I think I'll be getting Epocrates soon here.