Re: LifeDrive Frustrations

Ian,

Many thanks.

I appear to have had some form of success, since I have now done a hot-sync & have now got back my contacts & calandar info - after many, many hours of work!!

I've made other comments within the post:-

Ian Rawlings wrote: 
On 2006-01-22, John J Burness <JohnJBurnessAT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


2) When I try a Hot-Sync (using a USB Port), it often locks up solid (i.e. non-flashing light on orange, display blacked out, Power Switch not working, no other buttons working) - the only way out seems to be a hard reset 


This sounds very bad, have you tried connecting it to another PC using
the USB cable and just pressing the hotsync button without the
software installed?  It may be an incompatibility between the machine
and the USB ports on your main machine, I've seen similar with my
iPod.

As I understand it, without any software installed, the lifedrive
should appear as a removable hard disc on any recent installation of
Windows, from about W2K onwards.  If it's not working on other
machines then it sounds like a duff machine or duff cable.


It appears (??) to have installed software, hence it is "trying" to work!!

The only issue that I have (although it shouldn't be an issue) is that my PC is USB1.1 & the Palm is USB2 (under USB rules this should ONLY reduce the speed but should STILL be compatible)



3) After It resets, I continually having to hit the Tap-Points many, many times over. 


It is inconsistent!


You normally have to tap about 3 on other palms, if you're pressing
them with reasonable pressure but it's not registering the taps then
again that sounds like a problem.

Note however that when you hard-reset you have to go through the
tap-points routine every time, ditto telling it where you live,
setting the time, losing your contacts etc, when you hard reset the
machine is wiped back to the state it leaves the factory in (although
a lifedrive might not erase the hard disc).  A soft reset won't lose
any data but you seem to be saying that you've tried a soft reset but
it's not working.  This is rare, so please make sure you really are
trying a soft reset and not just going straight to the wipe-everything
hard reset.


5) Doesn't list my ISP, but doesn't explain how I can add my ISP to their pre-defined list - therefore cannot get my Emails on it

When I try to set up an Email Account, I'm offered 2 boxes, one a pre-defined list (without any options for editing) & the other for detecting an existing Email Account (this last one is grayed out & is not accessible).



You can add new ISPs quite easily to my current and previous palms, it
should be covered in the manuals

What Manuals?? Other than one of these non-informative "Guided-Tours" type of thing, there is NO manuals (i'm having to guess at everything.

or on Palm's website, I've been 
adding my own ISPs for years on my palms and I doubt the lifedrive
can't do it.  I've never used a lifedrive though.

I get the feeling you've never used a Palm or PDA before 

Used a Psion, years ago, but it didn't have the ability to sync!

, it's a 
steep-ish learning curve at first.  There may be a hardware problem
associated with it locking up when you hotsync, but the rest of your
problems sound like they're down to you not yet quite understanding
the nature of a hard reset, or of not quite getting the hang of the
software so far.

The most important thing is to get the "locking when hotsyncing"
problem sorted, so for now concentrate on that and forget the other
issues, no point thinking about those until the main issue is sorted
and potentially bad hardware is confirmed or refuted.  If you can
confirm that it's not appearing as a drive on other machines and locks
when you hotsync on those other machines then try taking it back to
the shop for an exchange unit.  I've always bought mine from PC World
as they've always been very good about that, normally I can't stand
the place but they do have their uses.

.

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