[Droid Incredible Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] slak?:
So about a week ago or so I began, out of the blue, to have power button issues. The power button would turn my incredible on when it was off. It would wake it when it was asleep/screen off. After that it became hit and miss. When the screen was on it was highly unresponsive. Sometimes it took several presses to get it to turn off, sometimes I couldn't turn it off at all. Sometimes a tap would bring up the shut-down menu as if I had long-held it. Long holding it usually didn't work either. A few times I had to do a battery pull just to shut it off. I eventually downloaded quickboot and a screen lock widget just to get that functionality back. The last thing I remember downloading before this started happening was 'reddit is fun'. I uninstalled that after the problems, but to no avail.

Now lets go over what I was set up with. I have an amoled unit. I was at the time using CM7 Final and whatever kernel was included with it. Although I have used it a lot in the past, I didn't have setCPU installed or running this time. The only root-required thing I can remember running was autostarts. No changes were made to autostarts in the weeks leading up to the problem. I have used many roms; Frankenrom, Virtuous, Ruby, ShadowRom, IncDoes AOSP, The New Guy, Warm 2.2, Redemptive, SkyRaider, Evervolv, and several of the CM Nightlies. While using Redemptive my radio completely quit working across the board. Returning it to stock and then re-rooting fixed it. As far as I can remember I had only used SkyRaider, Evervolv, and the CM Nightlies up until I was using CM7 Final.

So after the problem started happening I decided easiest thing to do would be to try and flash a nightly over it. Tried that, didn't work. That was kind of a long shot, and I decided I might need a full wipe. Did the full wipe and installed the latest nightly. The problem persisted. I think I flashed the latest SkyRaider then, still had the problem. This was starting to seem kind of serious so I did another complete return to stock. I booted into the stock rom and used it for a bit, maybe a few hours, it seemed to work. Since things seemed back to normal I flashed the latest CM Nightly again. Seemed to work for a minute, then it was back to the same old problem.

Now around this point I, for reasons I can't remember, remove my 16 GB SD card and put the stock 2 GB one back in. I have SkyRaider on that and I flash it, it works perfectly. In fact it continues to work for a day or two. All this time my old 16 GB is sitting out on my desk. I eventually decide to clean it up, deleting a bunch of stuff I didn't need on there, and throwing it back in. After putting the 16 back in the problems creep back in. Here and there, then only working half of the time, then barely working at all.

About this time I come up with the idea that maybe something on the SD card, or the card itself, is causing this problem. Seems like a long shot, but I can't think of any other reason that would fit. I do not install apps to my SD card.

So I pull the SD card out. I was at work and I didn't have my old 2GB, so I just left the slot empty. It seemed to still be messed up, but over the course of the next hour or so it began to work correctly again.

Now I'm at home and I have deleted everything from my 16GB, and reformatted it completely. I'm about to flip it back in and see how things go.

The strange thing about this whole situation was that the problem didn't seem to just start and stop. It was as if it phased in and phased out over time, but always being caused by certain things. It seems organic if you know what I mean by that.

Feel free to tell me this is a really ridiculous idea. I think it might be. Is there something critical to the android system that could possibly be stored on the SD card?