Oh gdGLRRRY!!! Hotsync crashing now! Inches, INCHES from g..

Archived from groups: comp.sys.palmtops.pilot (More info?)

see.my.sig.4.addr@nowhere.com.invalid wrote:

> I don't know if anybody can possibly guess why this is happening, and I'll
> probably have to do ANOTHER f-ing hard reset.

So far you haven't explained why you had to do a hard reset at all,
so I guess I can't help you with that issue.

> But, just hitting the hotsync button (on screen) crashes my Visor.

You may have some PDB or PRC on the device that is corrupt. The
corrupt format confuses the Hotsync code, and it crashes.

> It started doing it after a crash where I lost everything because it was
> one of the damn "jam the power on" type and the batts. were almost dead.
> Forgot to chg. them fast enough, and bye-bye  

When this crash happened, did you do a soft reset? 99% of the time,
that will allow the system to start up again normally so that you can
turn it off until the batteries can be changed. That should prevent
you from losing any data.

> I copied all the files that were currently on it into the backup/temp007
> folder from an rar archive I keep, synced, and waited for it to restore.
> At the end when it appeared to have already gotten everything (screen
> showed "cleaning up" like it does when it's done) but on the PC side
> Hotsync crashed.

If the Visor is already showing "cleaning up", then it shouldn't care
about what happens on the PC anymore. However, it is possible that the
same thing that crashed the PC is causing a problem on the Palm too.

> I don't see how it could have screwed it up with everything else being ok,
> but who knows.
> Anybody have any idea what to look for to try to fix it, or do I get to
> waste another 2.5hrs and batt. life for it to reload everything again  

I think that one of your PDB or PRC files may be corrupt, and the best
thing to do to get to the bottom of this is identify which one it is.

I would go about this by wiping the Visor totally clean (hard reset),
then breaking up your PRC and PDB files into groups, like 3 or 4
groups (say PDBs A-L, then PDBs M-Z, then PRCs A-L, then PRCs M-Z),
and then hotsyncing each group one at a time. After you've hotsynced
the first group, play around with the device for a minute and see
if it's stable. Then do the next group, and the next. Sooner or
later, you should experience the crash. When you do, hopefully
that means that the file that causes the crash must be in one of
those groups.

If you get that far, you can then hard reset again and break that
group up into smaller groups. Hopefully then you can identify the
smaller group that contains the problem file, and then repeat this
process again and again until you know exactly what file it is.

Actually, I should make a correction to the above: I think you'll
need to have one more group of data for all the built-in PIM applications
(datebook, todo list, etc.), since the desktop treats those files
specially even though they are just PDBs on the Palm itself.

Hope that helps.

- Logan

Archived from groups: comp.sys.palmtops.pilot (More info?)

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:38:12 GMT, Logan Shaw <lshaw-usenet@austin.rr.com>
spewed:
>> But, just hitting the hotsync button (on screen) crashes my Visor.
>
>You may have some PDB or PRC on the device that is corrupt. The
>corrupt format confuses the Hotsync code, and it crashes.
>
No way to tell which one though I suppose though huh..

>> It started doing it after a crash where I lost everything because it was
>> one of the damn "jam the power on" type and the batts. were almost dead.
>> Forgot to chg. them fast enough, and bye-bye  
>
>When this crash happened, did you do a soft reset? 99% of the time,
>that will allow the system to start up again normally so that you can
>turn it off until the batteries can be changed. That should prevent
>you from losing any data.
>
Read down, batts. died before I did it, stupid mistake on my part  

>> I copied all the files that were currently on it into the backup/temp007
>> folder from an rar archive I keep, synced, and waited for it to restore.
>> At the end when it appeared to have already gotten everything (screen
>> showed "cleaning up" like it does when it's done) but on the PC side
>> Hotsync crashed.
>
>If the Visor is already showing "cleaning up", then it shouldn't care
>about what happens on the PC anymore. However, it is possible that the
>same thing that crashed the PC is causing a problem on the Palm too.
>
That's what I thought.
Would't it have generated an error or not finished if it affected the Palm
too though?

>> I don't see how it could have screwed it up with everything else being ok,
>> but who knows.
>> Anybody have any idea what to look for to try to fix it, or do I get to
>> waste another 2.5hrs and batt. life for it to reload everything again  
>
>I think that one of your PDB or PRC files may be corrupt, and the best
>thing to do to get to the bottom of this is identify which one it is.
>
>I would go about this by wiping the Visor totally clean (hard reset),
>then breaking up your PRC and PDB files into groups, like 3 or 4
>groups (say PDBs A-L, then PDBs M-Z, then PRCs A-L, then PRCs M-Z),
>and then hotsyncing each group one at a time. After you've hotsynced
>the first group, play around with the device for a minute and see
>if it's stable. Then do the next group, and the next. Sooner or
>later, you should experience the crash. When you do, hopefully
>that means that the file that causes the crash must be in one of
>those groups.
>
Oy, what a pain. Guess that's the only way.
I think I'll try first just dumping everything and restoring it all over
again. Maybe I'll get lucky and it won't crash the 2nd time.
My PC is unstable enough that it's probably it's fault, so that could fix
it (needs a Winblows reinstall, reformat, etc.).

>If you get that far, you can then hard reset again and break that
>group up into smaller groups. Hopefully then you can identify the
>smaller group that contains the problem file, and then repeat this
>process again and again until you know exactly what file it is.
>
>Actually, I should make a correction to the above: I think you'll
>need to have one more group of data for all the built-in PIM applications
>(datebook, todo list, etc.), since the desktop treats those files
>specially even though they are just PDBs on the Palm itself.
>
Those will be different by now anyway since I use Palm Desktop constantly
as a PIM on the PC. Plus, it's working ok, so I doubt one of those is
corrupted. If it was an error in the conversion to PDB while syncing to
the Palm, it'll already be fixed by next hotsync.

>Hope that helps.
>
Yup. Was hoping for an easy way, but as is how it usually goes.
At least there's a way to fix it though. Thanks  

> - Logan

--
_____________________________________________________
For email response, or CC, please mailto:see.my.sig.4.addr(at)bigfoot.com.
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Archived from groups: comp.sys.palmtops.pilot (More info?)

In article <o44Td.40980$Bx5.25057@fe1.texas.rr.com>, Logan Shaw
<lshaw-usenet@austin.rr.com> wrote:

> see.my.sig.4.addr@nowhere.com.invalid wrote:
>
> > But, just hitting the hotsync button (on screen) crashes my Visor.
>
> You may have some PDB or PRC on the device that is corrupt. The
> corrupt format confuses the Hotsync code, and it crashes.

Agree. I would look for a corrupt file.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.palmtops.pilot (More info?)

see.my.sig.4.addr@nowhere.com.invalid wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:38:12 GMT, Logan Shaw <lshaw-usenet@austin.rr.com>
> spewed:

>>If the Visor is already showing "cleaning up", then it shouldn't care
>>about what happens on the PC anymore. However, it is possible that the
>>same thing that crashed the PC is causing a problem on the Palm too.

> That's what I thought.
> Would't it have generated an error or not finished if it affected the Palm
> too though?

Not necessarily. I don't know how the internals of the Hotsync process
work (i.e. what it's really doing when it says "cleaning up"), but I
do know that something is going on. :-) And I also know that every
PDB record has, in addition to its record number, a 3-byte "Unique ID".
I'm not saying this *is* the problem, but it seems plausible that the
Palm could crash during the "cleaning up" phase if there are two
records with the same Unique ID. Or something else along those lines.
There are lots of little flags for each record, and each record in
every database has a category, etc., etc.

>>I would go about this by wiping the Visor totally clean (hard reset),
>>then breaking up your PRC and PDB files into groups, like 3 or 4
>>groups (say PDBs A-L, then PDBs M-Z, then PRCs A-L, then PRCs M-Z),
>>and then hotsyncing each group one at a time.

> Oy, what a pain. Guess that's the only way.
> I think I'll try first just dumping everything and restoring it all over
> again. Maybe I'll get lucky and it won't crash the 2nd time.

It's possible, but it's also possible that that won't permanently
fix the problem.

Breaking it up into groups probably won't take all that long. If
you have 4 groups, there's only a 25% chance that you'll have to
hotsync all the files over, because there's a 75% chance that the
corruption (assuming, of course, that I'm right that there is a
corrupt file!) is in one of the first three.

Plus, it's logarithmic: if you break it into two groups per phase,
you're still eliminating half of all the possible files in each
phase. So, after 7 phases (which is a maximum of 14 hotsyncs, each
of decreasing size), you'll have eliminated over 99% of the
possibilities. The point is that you don't have to add them all
in one by one.

> My PC is unstable enough that it's probably it's fault, so that could fix
> it (needs a Winblows reinstall, reformat, etc.).

Well, of course that doesn't help matters much... :-)

Anyway, good luck...

- Logan

Archived from groups: comp.sys.palmtops.pilot (More info?)

see.my.sig.4.addr@nowhere.com.invalid wrote in
news:m40q119m97kokoikbr83hc8ohloh9uc45t@4ax.com:

> No way to tell which one though I suppose though huh..

Maybe. Get dbScan from Pimlicosoftware.com, and run it. If you have a bad
record in your datebook, that should find it. You can also get ResetEMU,
which is a reset emulator, and run that. It can often find which program
causes a crash. Both are free.

--
Regards,

Stan

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." B. Franklin

Archived from groups: comp.sys.palmtops.pilot (More info?)

On 24 Feb 2005 04:48:03 GMT, Stan Gosnell <murkuhn@gmail.com> spewed:
>> No way to tell which one though I suppose though huh..
>
>Maybe. Get dbScan from Pimlicosoftware.com, and run it. If you have a bad
>record in your datebook, that should find it. You can also get ResetEMU,
>which is a reset emulator, and run that. It can often find which program
>causes a crash. Both are free.

Oo, oo, sweet!
I'll check em out ASAP!
I'd had ResetEMU d/led but forgot what it did, other than trigger soft
reset. Even after I installed it, still didn't figure it out.
I'll take a look at it again, but if you know offhand what do I want to do
with it to test?

--
_____________________________________________________
For email response, or CC, please mailto:see.my.sig.4.addr(at)bigfoot.com.
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