X50v woes

01-06-09, 05:48 PM

My beloved X50v has stopped working properly. There are a few symptoms, so if anyone at all can help or advise me in any way I will be supremely grateful.

The most obvious problem is wierd screen glitches. The screen appears totally corrupted with moving horizontal or verticle lines and bars (it changes randomly or when you switch it off and on again). The colour of the screen will cycle and change as well, strangely. Repeated turning off and on will sometimes fix this, but only temporarily.

Turning on wireless hangs the device completely.

And lastly, the memory cards "disappear". I will get a message like
Unrecognised Card, asks for the name of the device driver in a dialog box:
"Unknown card in Socket 1"
and then no sign of the card being present, whether I reinsert it or what.

I've hard reset it several times, to no avail.

Is this a dead X50v, or perhaps a ROM corruption or something? Would reflashing or upgrading the ROM make a difference perhaps? (it's running WM2003SE A05). I've never done a system upgrade on it so I admit I'm a little nervous about it but I've tried everything else I can think of... help!

Gigi · 01-06-09, 05:53 PM

After hard resetting, did you restore from a backup? If so, try hard resetting without the restore to see if it's any better.

Also, what ROM are you running? If it's WM5, try the hacked WM6 that is reportedly much better.

01-06-09, 06:23 PM

Thank you so much for the swift reply!

After the hard reset, I was still getting the card and screen glitches. I am still running WM2003SE as well, so it might be worth trying the newer ROMS. I don't have WM5 or 6 though, so where would I find them these days?

Gigi · 01-06-09, 07:00 PM

In my (humble) opinion, I think that the X50 series were designed to run best with WM2003SE. However, if you want to look into WM6, take a look at this thread to start off:

X50V from WM5 A01 to WM5 A02

Be aware that the files needed for X51 and the X50 are different.

Also, I am wondering if your problems are more hardware than software based. But give WM6 a try if you wish; can't hurt (given that you can't use your device as it is anyway) and may help!

01-06-09, 07:12 PM

Thanks Gigi. I think I might have hardware issues too, but I'm willing to try anything at this point to get it going again as it's long out of warranty and unusable in it's current state so I have nothing to lose.

I'll give it a try, I think.

Gigi · 01-06-09, 07:14 PM

Good luck with it then. Let us know how it turns out!

01-08-09, 05:56 PM

Okay, I was able to run the WM5 upgrade successfully, and I must say that it's a nice update to 2003SE (first time I've seen the OS in operation, how sad...).

I'm still having problems though. The screen corruption still comes up (though it seems to happen less often) and the cards still go wonky (though mostly the CF card - the SD card seems to be stable now).

I had a few new issues - my batteries (both the main and spare) at times seem to drain flat in seconds, the processor was locked at full speed and activesync kept running whether I wanted it or not but I've fixed most of these issues with my search-fu. :approve:

The main problems left are batteries draining very quickly (literally shutting the device down as soon as I take it off the cradle), occasional screen glitches and the CF card appearing, disappearing and corrupting. Other than that, I'm sweet!

:rolling:

Box · 01-08-09, 06:01 PM

Now that you are into the realm of WM5 you may need to do the Fake Server Trick, which you will find in this thread.

Gigi · 01-08-09, 06:04 PM

You should not be staying with WM5 as it is very unstable with the X50v. See this thread for some solutions if you insist on WM5:

Solution - Axim not turning on, Disappearing CF/SD Cards and Battery Discharge

My advice is to upgrade to WM6 by following the thread I posted in post #4.

EDIT: Beaten by Box!

01-08-09, 10:53 PM

Okay, I'm taking the hint. WM6.1, here I come!

02-06-09, 12:42 AM

Well, the upgrade worked, and I had WM 6.1 on my device... but the problems were still there, so it was obviously a hardware issue.

Thank god for ebay, I now have a shiny (almost) new X50v what works perfectly and for a very decent price as well. Problem solved! :p

KimChee · 02-06-09, 11:23 PM

I've had similar problems ie the card not recognized in the cf slot and wireless problems, Ive read some threads about it, but also concluded it was a hardware issue.

Playerka · 03-07-09, 05:02 AM

Hi All!

[Dell Axim X50v] I seek "bin" file extension ROM.
Or find the BIOS chip.
Or looking for an e-mail address of the manufacturer.

Gigi · 03-07-09, 08:58 AM

Originally Posted by Playerka

Hi All!

[Dell Axim X50v] I seek "bin" file extension ROM.
Or find the BIOS chip.
Or looking for an e-mail address of the manufacturer.

You need to be more specific. Which ROM?

BTW, please do not post the exact same question in multiple threads. I've deleted the extras.