Friday, April 21, 2006
My Device Died... And Resurrected!
Posted by Darius Wey in "THOUGHT" @ 06:40 PM
'Twas a dark and stormy Friday night. Okay, maybe not stormy, but it's all about setting the mood, you know. ;) My Phone Edition (E-TEN M600) was sitting in its cradle for a sync and charge. I had just updated an appointment in Outlook, so as you'd expect, the changes were being mirrored on my device via ActiveSync. However, unlike the other million synchronisations I had gone through in the past, this one didn't work out too well. Long story short, it froze midway, a white screen appeared, and so it was time for a soft-reset. Following the soft-reset, the device appeared to boot up as normal, except when I reached the Today screen, something had gone horribly wrong. Other than 'Owner Information' and 'Pocket MSN', all my Today plug-ins had vanished off the face of the earth. In addition, the 'Start' menu only displayed two entries: 'Today' and 'coldinit'. This was great. Really great. Because I had an arrangement that night, I had no other option other than to let it be and deal with it when I get back.
I returned home a little after midnight on Saturday (which was just a few hours ago), and I thought I'd get the hard reset over and done with, just so I could have a working phone for the weekend. So I hard-reset the device (with SD card and SIM card removed), and was in the process of setting up my personal information, when all of a sudden, it froze again. Something clearly wasn't right here, and I was suspecting a little problem with the device's innards. It was time for a soft-reset, and this is where my device reached the point of no return. After soft-resetting, it simply did not want to get past the boot screen. I exhausted all other possibilities in trying to get it to work, from further soft-resets, hard-resets, and removing the battery, to strange dance rituals, and the waving of magic wands. None of them worked. My device had officially gone to the gadget graveyard up in the sky.
At the moment, I'm using an old Nokia 6610i as a replacement. With a hint of sarcasm (obviously), I can tell you now that the experience is amazing. I have a 128 x 128, 4K-colour display with no Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and an infrared port capable of only one-way transfer. I'm a lost soul without my converged Windows Mobile-based device, and I sit here now pondering what to do next.
Anyone else have similar tales to tell - happy ending or not?
Update: So, there's always a bright side to a sad story, right? Well, apparently so. One word: bootloader. For those of you who aren't aware of what this is (and I'm going to keep it a little non-technical here), it's a special "program" built into the device that allows you to attempt a local read and re-flash of the ROM (via memory card) with the hope of a successful boot of the operating system. I had already tried this earlier in the day, and it yielded an unsuccessful result. Well, just a couple of hours ago, I sat back down, picked up my 6610i, and yawned all over Bounce. Somehow, that inspired me to try the bootloader again - not once, twice, or three times. Instead, an additional twelve times! I kid you not. After the twelfth attempt at flashing the ROM, my device started working. Up came the blue Windows Mobile screen, and down went a beer in celebration. Despite this feat, I don't place great faith in the integrity of the ROM. Twelve flash attempts just to get it working? That shouldn't be the case.
I returned home a little after midnight on Saturday (which was just a few hours ago), and I thought I'd get the hard reset over and done with, just so I could have a working phone for the weekend. So I hard-reset the device (with SD card and SIM card removed), and was in the process of setting up my personal information, when all of a sudden, it froze again. Something clearly wasn't right here, and I was suspecting a little problem with the device's innards. It was time for a soft-reset, and this is where my device reached the point of no return. After soft-resetting, it simply did not want to get past the boot screen. I exhausted all other possibilities in trying to get it to work, from further soft-resets, hard-resets, and removing the battery, to strange dance rituals, and the waving of magic wands. None of them worked. My device had officially gone to the gadget graveyard up in the sky.
At the moment, I'm using an old Nokia 6610i as a replacement. With a hint of sarcasm (obviously), I can tell you now that the experience is amazing. I have a 128 x 128, 4K-colour display with no Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and an infrared port capable of only one-way transfer. I'm a lost soul without my converged Windows Mobile-based device, and I sit here now pondering what to do next.
Anyone else have similar tales to tell - happy ending or not?
Update: So, there's always a bright side to a sad story, right? Well, apparently so. One word: bootloader. For those of you who aren't aware of what this is (and I'm going to keep it a little non-technical here), it's a special "program" built into the device that allows you to attempt a local read and re-flash of the ROM (via memory card) with the hope of a successful boot of the operating system. I had already tried this earlier in the day, and it yielded an unsuccessful result. Well, just a couple of hours ago, I sat back down, picked up my 6610i, and yawned all over Bounce. Somehow, that inspired me to try the bootloader again - not once, twice, or three times. Instead, an additional twelve times! I kid you not. After the twelfth attempt at flashing the ROM, my device started working. Up came the blue Windows Mobile screen, and down went a beer in celebration. Despite this feat, I don't place great faith in the integrity of the ROM. Twelve flash attempts just to get it working? That shouldn't be the case.
