PDA = Personal DEAD Assistant?

March 17, 2007 by
Filed under: Uncategorized 

I think my PDA (a Tungsten E) has died :(

It started acting funny on Thursday night; I left it charging overnight and kept an eye on it throught Friday and this morning, but it still doesn’t want to respond.

This is the third or fourth time it’s done this recently – just locking up completely, usually with an appoinment alarm shown. Being stuck like this drains the battery, so it gives an error when it’s rebooted saying it needs to be recharged first. I recharge it then reboot again and usually it’s OK, but this time it is taking hours (literally!) to get through the initial setup screens.

I don’t remember the last time I put new software on it, other than the Daylight Saving patch from the Palm website that I installed last week.

The closest thing I can see in the Palm knowledge base is “Solution ID: 28266“, “Fix a handheld that’s extremely slow or temporarily freezing“, but I’ve tried a Hard Reset and it’s struggling through the “digitizer calibration” that’s taking hours and hours! :(

Given that a Hard Reset puts it back to the “shipped” state (i.e. no data or installed programs, just the basic functions that it had when it was bought), I’m not convinced it’s a software problem; I suspect it could be the battery or (less likely) a hardware problem.

The local PDA store doesn’t list batteries for the Tungsten E or the E2; I wonder if it’s compatible with other models?

Tags:

Comments

7 Comments on PDA = Personal DEAD Assistant?

  1. paul on Sun, 18th Mar 2007 8:14 am

    2. Just in case…. the Tungsten E2 is $300 @ FutureShop; it’s also $300 at BestBuy but they offer $50 off if you buy online by tomorrow; Staples has it for $280.

  2. paul on Sun, 18th Mar 2007 8:47 am

    3. OMG! I think it’s fixed!!!!!

    I checked out the Palm forum and found someone with the same problem – turns out the screen guard is the cause! I removed it and my PDA finished the calibration step in seconds. :)

  3. paul on Sun, 18th Mar 2007 9:19 am

    4. Yep, that looks like the fix!!

  4. paul on Sun, 18th Mar 2007 11:28 am

    5. …Except there’s stil the problem with AvantGo not liking a simple reinstall. For some reason it just won’t let me login and sync properly.

  5. paul on Sun, 18th Mar 2007 12:02 pm

    6. Aha! There’s a new version of the s/w available – version 6.2 build 3044

    No, wait – that looks like the same version I was already using :(

  6. paul on Sun, 18th Mar 2007 12:17 pm

    7. Well, I don’t know if re-downloading that file made the difference, or if it was because I used IE and went through all the post-install steps, but it’s OK now. :)

    (Every time I uninstalled it on the PC and deleted it from the PDA, so it can’t be that.)

  7. blog.henman.ca » Live and learn (Top2-2007.12) on Tue, 20th Mar 2007 10:27 pm

    8. [...] I also discovered (thanks to someone who posted the solution to their problem) that the screen guard on my PDA was actually the cause of my problems! [...]