How to recover from a startup hang

[Termin8r]

I'm the unhappy owner of a new Axim X51v . I did a lot of research before buying, including this site of course, and decided I should go ahead anyway since it seemed I could work around the problems. I've encountered one problem I can't get rid of, though. Basically, the Axim hangs while loading the Today screen, and I can't seem to find a way to skip those programs at least temporarily so I could disable them.

History:
In my first week, I'd installed some of the software from the Dell CD and everything went fine. I installed their 8-classic game pack and things still worked. Then I decided to buy and install some of the more "intrusive" software like CalliGrapher 8.3 and Omega One Battery Pack Pro 2.13a. That's when bad things happened.

After installing a couple of apps, including following the instructions to soft-reset when asked, I now have a persistent hang during the loading of the Today screen. I basically get to see the background, clock, bluetooth/network icons, and the title bar (Start, clock, etc) and that's it. I get that circular "in progress" loading "cursor" and it freezes, not accepting any buttons or taps. I tried countless soft-resets, but it generally ends the same way. The only other thing I sometimes get is an empty ActiveSync screen which looks as if it's ready for business, but does nothing (hang also). It also doesn't connect to my PC.

Question
Now, I'm wondering if there is any trick to bypass startup programs so I can get into my Axim and uninstall the recently installed ones and debug this. Yes, I'm hoping there is something kind of like holding SHIFT to disable StartUp programs in Windows :).

I'd love to avoid having to do a hard reset and start all over. It'll not only waste time, but I'll also lose some of my data which I don't think Activesync backs up.

[DudeZXT]

Sometimes, if you're quick enough, you can press Start with the stylus and it'll let you get into settings to do things. I've had programs that made my X50v take up to 5 minutes to load and get past Start-up. Hopefully, your patience holds out and you have success that way.

There's also a program for WM2003/SE, named SafeMode. I'm not sure if it works on WM5, but the function of the program makes it well worth the space that it takes...

Have your pop-up blocker software active for this site:

http://www.freewareppc.com/utilities...pocketpc.shtml

[Termin8r]

After posting the thread, I managed to stumble on that Start Meu trick and was able to disable new plugins, but it hung on me after less than a minute. After the eventual hard reset and BPP installation first thing this time, I found out that BPP was indeed the offending app, so I hard-reset and am living without it.