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Route 66 Mini - Stupid Mistake!

zunerat Page Icon Posted 2010-01-02 6:34 AM
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I've had the above GPS device for well over a year now with no problems what so ever. It's in a completely virgin state, the only thing that I've changed now and again is the registry key HKey_Local_Machine\init\Launch50 value from "CeLauncher35.exe" to "explorer.exe" whenever I want to have a quick play with WindowsCE 5.0, afterwards I change it back.

Right, my stupid mistake is that I wanted to change the registry key value to "explorer.exe" again last night unfortunately I was in too much of a hurry and mis-spelt "explorer.exe" as "eplorer.exe", I then saved the registry and powered down the device. When I switched it back on it immediately hung forever at the "Route 66" splash screen at the start.

So my problem is this: when you switch the device on, the registry key Launch50 see's the value "eplorer.exe" and try's to run the file in the Windows directory, of course there's no such file there so the device just hangs. I'm still able to connect to the device using ActiveSync 4.5 with no problems and using CeRegEditor I can change the registry key back to it's correct value and save it. However, as the device is still in it's hung state, the only way to restart it is by doing a soft reset, the problem with this is that the registry key value reverts back to "eplorer.exe", therefor I'm back where I started still with the problem.

It seems such a small thing to do but so far I've been unable to fix it, I've tried all ways of doing a hard reset with a combination of the soft rest button and the on/off button (which does not work in the hung state), I've also changed the registry key value to "explorer.exe" saved it and then let the device battery run down until it switches itself off, unfortunately that's the same as a soft reset.

My questions:

(1) Is there a way to do a hard (factory) reset using just the device buttons, I know there is a factoryreset.exe in the device's flash drive which would do the job but I've been unable to execute it although I can see it using ActiveSync?

(2) Is there a way to directly access the device ROM and rename the file in Windows from "explorer.exe" to "eplorer.exe" or even adding a new file using ROM flashing software?

(3) If none of the above would work, does some kind soul on this forum have a full ActiveSync Backup (*.sgl) of their own Route 66 Mini so that I can do a full restore?

(4) Are there any other options that I haven't thought off yet to bring my poor old device back to life?

Sorry for the long thread, any help would be much appreciated.
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2010-01-02 12:55 PM
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If you can copy another compatible explorer.exe (first renamed to eplorer.exe) into \Windows on the device, you should be able to bring it back. Try this one (an ARM CE 3.0 explorer.exe):



Attachments
----------------
Attachments explorer.zip (57KB - 18 downloads)
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zunerat Page Icon Posted 2010-01-02 1:57 PM
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A million thanks, I just didn't think of that, it was so simple. I already had a copy of the Win CE 5.0 "explorer.exe" and it worked a treat, the only thing was that the initial soft reset had to be done using CeRegEditor, after that everything's back to normal. I've definitely learnt a valuable lesson today.

Thanks again.
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2010-01-02 2:06 PM
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One other tip to avoid this kind of problem in the future: export the Launch50 key with the value "explorer.exe" to some other location on the device. Then you can just re-import the same one each time you want to go back to the CE shell.
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