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Resets, or What to Do When Something Goes WrongJan 18 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line In a perfect world you would never need to reset your Palm. Unfortunately this world isn't perfect. If your Palm is acting strangely you may need to reset it.
In a perfect world everyone's Palm would run perfectly on a single set of batteries forever. Unfortunately this isn't a perfect world. Sometimes we will run into problems. If your Palm is acting strangely you may need to reset it. Some of the minor symptoms frequently cured by resets include alarms not turning on your Palm, freezes, and minor digitizer drift (when the Palm thinks you are tapping a slightly different spot than you are actually tapping). Okay Sherlock, but just what is a reset? Resetting your Palm is like rebooting a desktop computer. It basically reloads the system. Palm devices support three basic types of resets: soft resets, warm resets, and hard resets. Soft Resets Soft resets are the most commonly used type of reset and are completely analagous to rebooting a desktop machine. To do a soft reset, take a paper clip or a reset pin (included in the tip of many stylii) and stick it in the reset hole on the back of your Palm. On III-style units the reset pin is on the right side of the unit about 1/3 of the way down from the top. In some older units the reset pin is just above the battery door. You should see the splash screen and then the general preferences screen. If you are using HackMaster, you will be asked if you want to reload your Hacks. In many cases if a soft reset is needed, a message box will pop up on your Palm asking to reset your Palm. This is called a software soft reset. Some portion of the time your Palm will freeze, requiring you to use the reset pin to reset anyway. Warm Resets If you have done a soft reset and are still having problems with your unit, try doing a warm reset. Warm resets are equivalent to rebooting with extensions turned off (rebooting with the shift key held down on a Mac). To do a warm reset, hold the up key while pushing a paper clip or reset pin into the reset hole. Like a soft reset you should see the splash screen followed by the general preferences screen. You will not be asked to reactivate hacks since Hackmaster is disabled after a warm reset. Hard Resets You've tried a soft reset and a warm reset and you're still having problems? I hope you've done a backup recently because now it's time to hard reset. Hard resetting will erase all data in RAM. To hard reset, hold the power button while sticking a paper clip or reset pin into the reset hole. You will be asked to confirm that you really want to erase your data. When prompted, hit the up button to complete the hard reset. You will see the splash screen following by the digitizer. After redigitizing you will be placed into the launcher. Only system applications and any files you have in Flash will still be on the device. Reset Tips You should always progress through the resets in order. Soft resets fix most problems. Warm resets take care of almost all of the rest. Hard resets are fairly rare but they do happen. If you don't hotsync frequently or backup your data to another medium regularly you are taking the chance of losing it. I highly recommend using BackupBuddy since hotsync is not 100% reliable with its backups, especially on Macs. Never initiate a reset of any type when you are in the middle of another reset. This could lead to the "flashy resets" where the splash screen comes up and flashes indefinitely after a reset. This problem will not respond to soft or warm resets. If you get the flashy resets you will have to perform a hard reset to recover. In Conclusion Most of the time Palm devices will happily do what they are supposed to do. Every once in a while, however, things do go wrong. Performing soft, warm, and hard resets (in that order) will fix a large percentage of problems that do occur.  |
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