yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] adit:
Message and Alarm issues

Hi all,

As I have found these problem very annoying, I decided to mail dopod, and this is what they said (and some more):

Dear Sir:

The mobile 5.0 system use new operation behavior for ROM control. It will save the changes for setting, file when power off (stand by). So if you soft reset it before power off (stand by), it will cause some data changes lost. Please power off (stand by) first, then reset. It should keep the data changed well.

And the download agent is use for download file in internet explore. It will download the file automatically you select a file it support in internet explore.

Thanks for using Dopod products.

Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 1:58 AM

To: SEAService

Subject: Product Support and Web Contents

購買種類：PDA Phone

購買機型：Choose a Model...

Hi, I recently purchased dopod 838 in thailand. overall I am pleased with its feature and capabilities. But I encountered several problems: soft-reset issues, each time I soft-reset the phone,the alarm which I dismissed couples of hour before rang again! also some of my messages are deleted (sms and e-mail); alarm itself has issues, sometimes it won't ring. btw, what does download agent do? I have visited your website several times now and I haven't seen any improvements ever sice. application section only provide manual and still no games. I would hope to see some application which might help me with my problems, also it would be convenient if you can make it mobile-friendly. thank you for your kind attention, I would appreciate it if I can hear from you soon. Regards, Aditya Pamungkas

Can anyone confirm and comment this? as I have found no problem ever since. thanks

::adit
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] chiark:
hmm, that doesn't explain why mine didn't set the alarm... I didn't soft reset it.

However, it could explain the root cause: alarms are being set, then the device is turned off before the RAM has a chance to update the registry/flash/whatever...

A bit of debugging should prove/disprove this. I'll have another play :D
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] chiark:
More playing... This seems to be something to do with turning off before the ram state gets a chance to update the flash, and set the appropriate flags, etc.

I wish that microsoft had a trouble ticketing mechanism!
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
booooo

I'm a long time lurker but cannot withhold myself from posting after reading this :)

This happened to me also a cple of times.

Alarm (the one in te clock settings) and notifications from the calender both failed on me 1 or 2 times allready. It's un-F*&^**-ing believable :( :x :cry:

A $700 PDA cannot do what a $1 dollar wristwatch does flawlessly.

And this has been an issue since WM2002 as i can remember, thats the saddest part.....

It's one of the most important functions of my pda!!

If I had an (real life) assistant i'd sure fire him if he made me miss my appointments.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] mrdo:
any updates on this ?

a pda that does not have a reliable alarm is pretty much useless. :-(
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] zamsky1:
Strange. I have same device and same bug.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] hrb:
Alarm not going off

Same happens with the HTC Universal (JJ).

Must definitely be a WM5 problem

Cheers

hrb
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] zfarkas:
1st: I could not stop an alarm and had to make a hard reset, from that time I do not use the repeat functionality.

2nd: My morning alarm was "lost in space", from that time I check the notifications, and clear duplicates.

3rd: I had set the alarm from Mon to Fri, and on Thu the alarm was lost, it disappeared from the notif queue.

WM5 is unable to give a reliable alarm? It works for a time and suddenly gone?

What app would fix it?
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
Well, i did the hard reset and flashed to the lates k-jam rom.

I also did not install SPB pocket plus (one of my favourite apps :( )

Because i was suspecting it was slowing my system down.

And voila! untill today, my pda did not miss 1 alarm.

So i'm thinking spb pocketplus might be the culprit.

Can you guys confirm that you all have spb pocketplus installed when running into this bug?
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] DocteurN:
No problem on my Qtek 9100.

But I use a french software named Pocket WakeUp 1.1

See : http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=1299

For those who don't speak french I can translate the commands in english if you want...
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] VOODOOS!L:
there is also another freeware application made for this bug: search for WakeUp Tweak on http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/

But I'm not sure yet if it works completely well on WM2005

sometimes it does, sometimes i think it doesn't...
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] DocteurN:
Wakeup Tweak is only for WM2003 first Edition.

I don't think it will work for the actual issue on WM 5.0
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] mrdo:
yes.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] davebo:
Overslept

Sorry a 'me too' message. My alarm was supposed to go off at 6 this morning so I could drive back to Leeds. When I got in the car it was 5 to 7!!!! The xda did start alarming, but it must have been 6:30-6:45.

Curses!

:evil:
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
but do "you too" have spb pocketplus installed?

thanks for answering :)
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] chiark:
I don't have much of anything installed other than the standard MDA Vario software... (Oh, the shame of admitting that!)

It worked fine last week, but I made sure I played around for a couple of minutes after setting the alarm. Back on WM5 on the Blue Angel, there were warnings that changing the registry or settings and then turning off would lead to information being lost because stuff didn't make it from RAM->Flash, so I do wonder if this is the same bug/feature.

Weird.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] davebo:
No SPBPocketPlus for me

Sorry, no I have the alarm problem, but I have a pretty standard install.

I did have O2 Active on until last week. I haven't tried the alarm since.

I'll give it a go...
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] Koksie:
same problem: calendar events don't ring till I turn on the device (out of sleep mode), I do have SPB PP installed.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
Hmm, the plot thickens...

So it doesnt really have to be pocketplus related.

Well, since my ROM upgrade i'm not experiencing the bug anymore.

So I'm happy.

When i run into it again i'll sure keep you guys posted.

thanks for your help
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] hal:
Happened to me, but...

I had the same behaviour occasionally: alarm doesn't ring in the morning.

It made me miss a flight for the first time ever :evil:

But apparently it does work if you leave your Wizard on the charger at night. Anyone care to confirm?

Cheers,

Hal
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] davebo:
Seems to work now

Since I hard reset and went to the Basic install, my alarm seems to work OK. I can't say I'd trust it though...

Lucky I have a new watch, eh? :P
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] chiark:
I should point out that my mda is completely standard, and only has total commander and tcpmp installed - no system grabbing hooks.

It's seemed to be reliable, but I've now taken to using the thing for 5 minutes after setting an alarm to check that stuff gets into the flash properly.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] treblechance:
I had this problem and worked out that installing the TomTom 5.2 update caused it. I just have TomTom 5.1 installed on my MDA Vario and have not had the alarm clock problem since (touch wood).
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] justintime:
alarm problem

I have exactly the same problems as yours.

I don't know how get it out.

Some friends of mine didn't encountered such a weird effect.

Is there a new rom upgrade for I-mate k-jam? The alarm is very important for me.

Anyone resolved it?
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] Mario4473:
my unit wakes up correctly...

i have a little problem with sunnysoft backup manger...with schedule backup my unit doesn't wake up....
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] ZeBoxx:
Just to add - this does indeed appear to still be a problem in Windows Mobile v5.

I have a QTek 9100 EN and it has had this problem out-of-the-box.

I posted some pretty useless information on this at the Dutch QTek forums - basically what it boils down to is this:

The symptom is that the device doesn't wake up when a notification tells it to (be it alarm clock, calendar event, etc.)

Yes, this is a known issue in WM2003+

No, Microsoft does not readily acknowledge it because:

No, it doesn't happen on all installs - it appears to be intermittent and sometimes even device specific

No, no concise cause was ever found.

Yes, some people suggest that it's either:

A. notifications database going whack

B. suspend > intermediate state > wake up|suspect going whack

C. you resetting/powering down before the device can save data ( not the case if you let it auto-poweroff )

D. other (PIM) database going whack

Yes, there are utilities* to possibly rectify all of these

No, they're not a perfect fix

*

To resolve A, you can use Check Notifications and WakeUp Tweak

To resolve C - just don't reset/power off immediately after doing something. Consider it akin to hitting the reset button on your PC while working on your documents/downloading files/etc. Don't ;)

To resolve D, you can use FixAlarm. Beware, using that option also clears out your Appointment and means you'll have to re-pair pocket outlook/etc. to your desktop variant.\

As for why they're not a perfect fix... just the battery timeout stuff never did the trick for me. The option to bring the device to full power on does appear to work (so far - but the real test will be tomorrow morning, and whether I'll wake up at 8:00/8:10/8:15 like my QTek 9100 should, or at 8:30 when my Sagem my-V55's alarm goes (which has never failed - how funny is that)) - but it also causes, for some time after auto-power off, the screen to come back on, etc. I can only guess that there are some programs running - be they standard or not - that cause this. After some time, though, that behavior stops.

It does make me wonder, though, just how good these 'fixes' are. What I mean by that is this... does anybody know just how much power drain is -actually- saved when going into the standby mode ? I ask because...

1. obviously WM5 is still running in the background

1.1. it doesn't have to boot up

1.2. it still keeps track of incoming calls (GSM device is on)

1.3. it still keeps track of connections being made

1.4. it still keeps track of your other notifications

2. the problem is in getting the device to wake up from the standby mode

Thus if standby drains not all that much less than leaving the device on (but with the screen off) - then my money is on just never letting the thing go to standby mode. That way all alerts should 'just work', without side-effects of any of the 'fix' utilities, etc. A predictable down-side being that you don't get the password protect screen - maybe there's a good replacement utility for that thing anyway?
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] Moonsower:
ZeBoxx

Excellent post, thank you. Was hungry to read it. Will be waiting for your tommorow "late (or not late) for work" report. I personally stopped playing with my 9100 as my wake-up alarm since I've overslept in two days in a row.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] ZeBoxx:
Well, with the "Power on to full" option in WakeUp Tweak, things appear to now be fine*

Alarms went off at 08:00 (dismissed it), 08:10 (let it expire), 08:12 (reminder of the previous alarm, dissmissed it), 08:25 (dismissed it).

Also a 9:30 appointment went off fine, as well as a 10:30 Tasks reminder.

So it seems to be 'solved' for me. * However, the random turning on off the screen still bugs me a bit. I'm also still curious just how much power standby mode saves. I'd imagine figuring that out will take days, though.

In the mean time I found the info on timeouts and power states and such on msdn; http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d.../wceddk5/html/wce50congwessuspendtimeouts.asp (power states are on the left).

There may be some good tweaking material in there if I read through it properly - e.g. if I find that battery drain is pretty minimal when not in suspend, it may be possible to tweak it to not go into suspend mode, but rather just into a mode where all other devices (display, camera, etc.) are turned off.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] Mario4473:
thx zeboxx...

very good post. the problem of waking up at schedule backup with sunnysoft backup manager 3.7 is 'solved'.

the new problem is that my unit (with power on to full option enabled) turn on the screen without a reason...as you wrote in your last post. it bugs me so much...

in any case you are an oracle for me. i'm wating the final solution...
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] fresh123breeze:
zeboxx

Everything You said works on my Qtek9100.

I did it when just get my PDA, becouse I knew it.

It works for me from November with no fail (yet) :)
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] justintime:
alarm

After installing Tweaks2ke.NET 3.15.0, after installing CheckNotification and clearing events, ( only with WakeUp Tweak with power on checked everything is ok, althought continuous screen flickering on/off persistently, every single minute, so I unchecked it), problem still persists.

I hope problem can be solved in next WM5 fixes :roll:
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] meroupow:
I have to say that since I used WakeUp Tweak my 9100 woke up every time it had to.

But I am still not sure if it is me being very careful when setting up the alarm or maybe just pure luck and the next time I put only 9100 as my only alarm clock it will fail (I use C500 all the time as backup alarm).

The truth is I lost trust although it seems to work now.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] fganhao:
QTek 9100 Alarm

I've read all your posts, and I have the same problem: alarm won't go off, only when I turn it on (from stand by mode). I do not have SPB Pocket plus installed, nor any Tweak sw.

How can I solve this problem? I have arrive late for appointments enough times to think that I should throw my Qtek through the window...

ROm Version: 1.1.7.5

ROm Date: 9722/05

Radio Version: 01.01.10

Protocol Version: 4.0.13.16

ExtROM version: 1.1.7.105
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] ZeBoxx:
At this point I would say either install the WakeUp Tweak, and set it to wake your device up Full, or...

...and this might be controversial...

don't let your device go to standby mode at all.

Install psShutXP, and use the Screen Off utility to power your screen off entirely (not just backlight) to save heaps of battery. I have yet to miss an alarm, and don't have the annoying device on/off flipflopping that I had as a result of the WakeUp Tweak. I haven't had time yet to do a full investigation, but I firmly believe this may very well be the best solution to this problem altogether; a developer at Microsoft, comparing power states between PocketPC and SmartPhone, agrees and mentions that in a future version of windows mobile for pocketpc, the myriad of power states may very well be deprecated in favor of the SmartPhone model. ( Try Googling for power states, pretty sure the article can be found from there )

If I ever do get the time, I'll try and post a new topic on this with my findings with regards to battery use and potential other solutions (e.g. putting other devices into Suspend state (camera, network, audio, etc.) to save even further battery; I'm going to guess there's just a system-level device that doesn't like coming out of Suspend state the way it normally does, and as long as that one is kept out of Suspend, it should be fine. Finding out which it is, etc. is going to take weeks at my rate.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] ZeBoxx:
In fact, found the article;

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/08/01/446240.aspx
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
wow some great investigating ZeBoxx.

It looks like you might certainly be on the right track here.

I'm going to watch you carefully :lol:
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] stegz:
WakeUp Tweak is what it is, a tweak, and I have to say I'm not entirely comfortable relying on a tweak which makes something that's inherently "faulty" work. I use pTravelAlarm (don't know why - I just like it more than any other alarm clock inc. spb time - too much bloat for me), and two days ago (first day back at work) I slept in. Switched on the MiniS and the alarm went off. Noticed that this seems to happen when there's been a notification (task, appointment etc) earlier than the alarm which hasn't been acknowleged before it auto-offs again.

There would seem to be no hope for us until Microsoft properly address this - and I assume that this will NOT be in a future upgrade of WM5 but in a new embodiment (e.g. WM6?).

I have been fine though when I've left the PC on overnight with it plugged into the USB port or when I've left it connected to the AC adapter (i.e. always on).
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] ZeBoxx:
Not sure whether you're being sarcastic or not ;)

But yeah... I wish I could spare the time right now to at least do a more accurate check of battery consumption, and to poke at the registry to see if I can tweak the Suspend state at all to not suspend the whole device, just a few select devices.

What would be much easier is if there would be a developer willing to take a poke at the device power states at runtime, perhaps even develop an application to do so. I'd be fully willing to (help) fund such development or donate to XDA-Developers, whichever. Of course then I'd essentialle become a project manager and I don't have the time to dedicate for that either %)
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
heh, definately not being sarcastic.

And essentially when funding you wouldn't be a project manager but a project investor, sounds good. If something of a solution comes up i will partner up with you :lol:

I'm really curious what the cause of this bug is.

I thought i got rid of the problem. I kept my wizard almost vanilla after rom-upgrade.

But this morning my alarm did not fire untill i switched on the phone manually :cry: :shock: :x :shock:

Checknotifications showed me a lot of dupe records so i deleted those, maybe it'll work again for a while now.

But that is the biggest problem, the "maybe" :)

I'ts really inconceivable for me that MS did not fix this. imho it's one of the most important functions of a "personal digital assistant"

So my hope is now here with you guys....
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] ZeBoxx:
Yeah, but with funding comes management :) All good and well pumping e.g. $150 (random figure) into something, but if at the end of the month there's nothing to show, it's wasted money.

Anyway.. if any developer is seriously interested in what I'm thinking about/referring to, drop me a private message. I'm deliberately not posting this in a main thread, as those developers most likely to be interested in this project would be reading this thread already anyway ;)
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] bnycastro:
I have Tweaks2K2.net 3.17 installed--with the Full Wake Up tweak on and just installed SB's Check Notifications. I was alarmed to see 303 events [the app even warned me it would take awhile to load] curious though is that when I had a WM2003SE device I never reached a 100 items, I haven't missed an alarm so far for any tasks or appts. [touch wood]... I've decided to clean out my notifications database anyway wouldn't want to wait for the problem to appear, but it remains at 303? Why is it so many in WM5.0 has something changed? or am I overlooking something? I have a lot of CALENDAR.EXE notifications, so it's mostly Birthdays and Anniversaries, the weird thing is this was not the same with WM2003SE [I also had 2 weeks and all future appointments synced] I do experience the screen flicker problem but to me this is better than missing my alarms. My device is a bit sluggish and I was wondering if my 303 notifications can be the cause of this or is it because of the new way of handling memory? According to SB's Check Notifications I don't have any duplicates [no red entries]. Have you guys checked how many notifications you have? Mine is pegged [seems like it] at 303.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
wow thats a lot.

Mine is around 30.

In checknotifications there is an option to "log" the notfication dbase. This will export it to a file. Maybe you could post it here?

Not that i would be able to point faulty entry's out, but maybe someone in the thread can....
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] marsonist:
I've gotten to a point of really not liking to read posts of other people's problems, because every time I do I end up acquiring that problem a day later :cry: I had been using Chronos to schedule my alarms and never had it fail. About 3 weeks ago I read a post mentioning failed alarms and on that day my alarms failed for the first time.

After that point Chronos would fail every single time. I could set an alarm for one minute later, set my device to standby, and it would consistently fail.

I installed the beta of AlarmToday last night and had Chronos work for the first time in 3 weeks. AlarmToday has some sort of registry optimization for WM5 as well as taking care of duplicate notifications. I'll have to do some serious testing before I trust my Wizard as a sole source of alarms, but it looks promising.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
heh.

Point of advice: don't start reading medical encyclopedias

Had a girlfriend with the same problem.

Had to put her out of misery after she read the chronic diseases section :)

I just downloaded the AlarmToday and gonna check it out.

Thanx for the tip
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] bnycastro:
Mind if I ask if you put entries in Birthday/Anniversary fields of your Contacts?
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] ZeBoxx:
That is a lot, but it'd depend on what all you're doing... a log, like bnycastro suggested, would be most informative. For all we know, you just have hundreds of perfectly legitimate events with alarms :)
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] leploep:
Yes, i do. :lol:

I just counted them, of the 28 items i have 14 birthdays/anniversary and 2 daily alarms.

The rest of the 28 is some junk of the system itself.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] bnycastro:
Actually it was leploep who suggested the log :D anyway I did export it to a log and it seems like they are all my appointments, by doing a quick compare with outlook [I have 376 appointments in outlook--most are birthdays at 274 and anniversary at 18 that's already 292 :P] . So I guess I'd have to live with these 303 notifications in my 838.
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] ZeBoxx:
man, I'm blind ;)

Anyway - good to hear it's just regular events... even though it's a bit crazy ;)

Seems like that whole notification stuff is very badly thought-out. It would make much more sense for today's devices to have a hierarchical event system
[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] bnycastro:
no worries my vision is really bad! i wear specs 1000 [left eye] /900 [right eye] grade... :P anyway thanks for pointing out the potential fixes for this issue. it makes sense to me that you can see all your future apps but it doesn't make sense to list them all in the notifications database... i have some entries for birthdays foe next year -> 2007 :shock: