Mobilepro stopped working!!

Alright, here's how it went. I just bought a compact flash card for my Mobilepro 780 and inserted it. Everything's going fine, I install a few programs, I try out a few of them (WR-tools, hammurabi) and then I install betaplayer. Again, so far so good, then I try out betaplayer. I open it, click, File>>Open and then I select my video file. It's a 60 MB .avi video. Nothing happens. I sit watching my screen for about a minute then leave. Come back 10 minutes later and nothing has changed. So I try the power button, nothing. I try the Windows button, nothing. I press down the little suspend button, again nothing! And then I'm freaking out and so I take out the battery (not the best of ideas but as they say, my hindsight's 20/20!) and then the screen goes black, obviously. So then I reinsert it and press power. And guess what, the screen is still black . So then I plug in my charger and on comes the little orange light. But still no power up. If you know anything I might do to fix it then PLEASE tell me! And tell me what could have done it too since I'd like to know for next time....if there is one....

Do a soft reset. Little depressed reset button that you can trigger with the stylus. It's underneath the unit on the left hand side.

Did you try a hard reset? When you take the battery out of the MP780, you should see a little hole you can poke the stylus in about 1 inch to the left of the main battery connector. This hard resets the unit. You lose all your data, and the MP780 is reset to the factory configuration (i.e. whatever is in ROM).

If that doesn't fix it.....I guess you're doomed.

Thank you so very much Zapperand btrimmer! I tried that and everything is back and running. I did loose a couple files I had but I had most of my stuff backed up on my PC. Thanks again! I can't believe I didn't think of that sooner though. I guess I was a little freaked out.

Edited by Uncle Cheesedog 2005-07-06 6:00 PM

Goodie! ... the wonders of HPCs ... quick quick recovery!

Now compare that to a XP + SP2 + AV of your choice + All the device drivers you need.

Actually, if you own one of those branded PCs (Dell, Gateway, etc), they all come with a system recovery CD. It's kinda like the equivalent of a hard reset, i.e., you lose all your data, WXP and default device drivers are restored, McAfee comes alive again, etc. The newer ones even include SP2.

It's even better with a regular dose of Norton Ghost. Full system restore by popping in a bootable DVD-R and restore it all back to the last clean backup.

I keep meaning to set that up, then instantly putting it off and remembering again when my system is too bloated to do it

Even though those programs and recovery CD's exist, try to make one that even matches the time a WinCE backup restore takes. No restore CD (unless you're restoring DOS) takes less than a minute, and if you count boot time, it gets worse.

and yes, i've got a Dell laptop, but i've never used the CD, when i had the need to reformat, i did it all by myself (drivers and dell utilities included). I'm starting to think that means i'm a masochistic geek

Edit: i agree with Corporate, as i do not have a DVD recorder, and i'm not willing to use 40+ CD's to make a full backup. maybe when i get a removable drive, it'll all be different, but not right now

Edited by matrixcore 2005-07-06 10:05 PM

LOL, when I first got my 6651 I was paranoid to restore, thinking it might be like a bad motherboard flash and leave me with a brick. Duh. It's all in ROM silly.

Now I restore 2-3x daily, a little excessive but any bad install or experiments are so easily reversed. Also, I do all my banking on this thing and have zero worries about bots/keyloggers/whatnot after a restore.

These things restore so fast usinig ghost on my d/t feels like forever.

The hard reset blows everything away and loads from ROM and executes in RAM. Both are not out of the question in the industrial embedded computer scene. It does however translate into $10k touchscreen computers running a severely constrained version of a desktop OS. Those restore pretty fast too.

With regard to doing a desktop and/or laptop full system reformat and reinstall, the manual way is the only way. It's not masochistic, it's being pragmatic. Get it just the way you want it without all that crap that Dell sticks into their default installations. You can also do custom setups that benefit your needs, and not the generic lowest common denominator.

Like partitioning the hard drive into an OS Boot partition, with the core OS and primary programs, in 10gb of space. That includes space for the swapfile and hybernation file. Then the rest for data.

You ghost the core OS partition, and it fits in a single DVD. Full system restore in 15 minutes and you don't have to worry about bloat. All that goes to the data partition, which you can back up independently as needed. Typically drag and drop to a DVD-RW, separate ones for different data categories. DVD burners can be had nowadays for $35, and the disks are down to 25 cents apiece on sales. Certainly worth the investment.

Most of our embedded systems (I work for GE Fanuc) run windows CE, everything is nicely stored in ROM and your data is all nicely saved away on a CF card or some such. Makes them rather idiot-proof

Mmm, here in Mexico DVD burners cost at least $100 and DVD's cost about $2.5 a pop (prices in USD). and don't forget i've a laptop. although i could buy a USB enclosure, which will be nice, but heavy. but the system partition idea is a good one indeed. in my past laptop, i had thing set up that way

Mmm, i think someone around the forums has a signature regarding idiotproof things and idiotproof-thing-proof idiots

Edited by matrixcore 2005-07-07 12:38 AM