Advise on IPaq hx4700 lock-up or boot sequence freeze

I have three constant companions in my life, one human, one canine and one electronic and when one of them isn’t well, life just isn’t the same.  Last week it was my constant and faithful electronic companion who was ill, died and thanks to some major Voodoo Hacking, was born again – in a real way, not a metaphorical spiritual way.

Shall we start at the beginning?  It all started, as almost everything does, with a Windows fault.  My iPaq, which holds over three hours of music, my e-mail, 300 contacts, months of appointment data, a couple of games, a novel I read when I’m bored and a copy of my short films, amongst other things like a variety of spreadsheets and writing projects, developed a flaw that meant the calendar would not synchronise with my desktop computer, Rubik XI. 

In it’s wisdom, Windows WM2003, v.5.0 would say Service code:800704490.  This translates into Element Missing.  Neither is a helpful term, but the English words at least let you know it is not something comprehensible by a mere human.  This error code is not well documented anywhere on the net, which sort of implies, that even though common enough, it is a flaw somewhere in the three bits of software that have to communicate to accomplish the task, and no one is to clear on where or why the problem occurs.  All the answers seem to point to uninstalling everything, starting with al the Oultlook data, then the programs, then maybe putting it all back again and seeing what happens.

In my case, nothing except the persistence of the problem.  Then tragedy!  In vernacular hacker, I bricked the hx4700!  You see, I discovered there is an unpublished and cryptic set of codes for the three kinds of rebooting that can be done to the device, warm, soft and hard.  Soft and warm, were not doing any good, so I decided to go hard.  A hard reset, contrary to what is published by the manufacturer is a three key code.  You hold down the mail and the calendar buttons then insert the stylus into the reset button hole and press for less than two seconds.  More than two seconds will also disconnect the battery – presumably for shipping or long-term storage. 

Then the story goes that a screen will pop-up and ask if you would like to erase all data (well, most of it, but that is a different issue) or preserve the persistent memory.  I select erase.  The unit obediently responds that it is doing the task, equivalent to what Dave did to the HAL9000 in 2001.  I patiently wait for the handheld version of “Daisy, Daisy…” but nothing!  When I get home from my meting two hours later, it’s still erasing!  Me thinks, not so.  I hard hit it again.  Nothing.  This baby is in a terminal loop of a near death experience. 

In its little processor, there is a primary interrupt calling on a priority wire – “move towards the light” only for it’s sentient silicone to silently scream to its circuits, NOOOOOOOO!  It’s locked-up.  The best I can get is the initial screen, sans progress (boot) bar indicator.  I deduce I have a ROM boot problem.  I need Instant Professional Help!

I go to the HP site and guess what?  Instant Professional Help!  You can resolve issues immediately with a real-time internet chat with a skilled technician!  Phew, am I in luck or what?  Let’s do it!

Tell us you issue, the box asks.  I tell it, in all it’s geeky detail, so I don't have to repeat myself and the skilled technician can move directly to the second or third tear of service technician and we can both be out of this chat in record time. 

3:25pm  Hi Ken, I’m going to take a few minutes to review your issue.
3:47pm  Try to re-set the PDA again.  He tells me how to do a hard reset.  Then he tells me how this will fix the… well, he didn’t really say anything, he just cut and pasted the advice form the service home page into a chat box.  It’s the same dribble I’ve already done and explained this in my issue report.  But I do it as asked.
4:00pm  Yeah, just like last time, nothing.  I stay polite, I’m not sure why.
4:12pm Next advice.  Do this.  I can’t, I tell him I can’t the device does not behave like that anymore, not since the upgrade – which I told him about in the issue report.  He had cut and pasted an older section from the service web page in to the chat box, but it was irrelevant.  It took him 12 minutes to do this!
415pm You seem to have a ROM problem, go to this web page and find a phone number to call.

Wow, he didn’t even try to waste a whole hour of my day, he was useless, frustrating, ignorant all within 50 minutes!  Now, that is service!

The web page doesn’t have any contact numbers, you don't need them when you can get Instant Professional Help.  Well, 50 minutes, that’s not instant, Professional, well yes, if you mean this guy only sites there and cuts and pastes web advice into a chat box for a living, I guess that’s what passes for professional and help, it was not.  I find the number my self.  I have a real live technician on the phone.

Well, he may work for a huge multinational computer company and have the benefit of what I can only imagine is an enormous internal training resource that rivals a medium sized university, but this fellow is deficient in basic computer concepts.  Here’s one example, his advise:  hot sync the device.  Oh, I ask, you think that will work?  That sure will, he says, it’ll fix itself once it makes the connection.  Okay, I’ll do that, thanks for all you help, I’m sure everything will be fine.  I hang-up. 

I swear to all the gods, he spoke good English, I explained the problem, I was calm, polite, I communicated that he could give me complex instructions and I would get it.  How much does he earn a year?  Whatever, it is, he shouldn’t complain about it, he’s way over-employed.

Back to Google.   

The problem of boot-lock-up is a common problem without a specific solution.  The essence of the resolution is to re-map the OS to the ROM chip, Flashing is the most used term.  One suggested solution is to create a ROM image from a working device, strip the first 2006 characters of the image, transfer it to an SD card, insert the card and cold boot the device.  Seems the device at it’s BOIS level will look to the card to see if it contains a boot image, it will swallow it and fire it up without further intervention. 

It also seems it won’t do it if the battery door latch is unlocked.  Wow, there is a sensor on the battery door lock!  This seems like a good solution, one that I can understand, though I wouldn’t want to try to explain it all to the Instant Professional Service idiot.  There is a limit to what some people can be taught, we just might as well acknowledge that, it’s why I avoid accounting and physics.

An alternative solution appeared on the horizon, which was fortunate since otherwise I would have to locate a working hx4700 and mangle it to suck the ROM image off of it.  It’s doable, but first I’d have to find another unit. 

The second solution was to twig the device into ROM Load mode, hook it to a USB cable and shove another OS into it.  Now, this sounds like it might work. I was getting power to the device, it was completing whatever passes fro a BOIS cycle these days, I assume that hasn’t changed much and so whatever it does to boot its basic services it should poll the USB connection for an image file. 

Now, I don't have an image file around anywhere, but I do have a copy of Windows Mobile 2003, which, since it loads into Rom and is a complete rewrite, I’m betting that it also loads a default ROM image or makes so many low-level ROM changes that it might fix the issue.  However, if I’m wrong, I can still get a ROM image off the web and try that. 

First though, I have to see if the device will go to a ROM image load state.  The unlikely directions suggest the following.

Press and hold the Power button (on the top of the unit)
Press and hold the iTasks button and the Contacts button (on the front face of the unit), then
Press the reset button for less than two seconds (on the bottom, base of the unit inside a little hole you can push the stylus into). 

Okay, push four buttons at the same time on three different surfaces of the unit.  I’m sensing a bad sense of humour on someone’s part.  This sounds like Voodoo to me.  It should be a two person job to get all this done, but I belly up to the edge of the table, rest the stylus against my personal famine reserve, starvation deferment device, everyone should have one, and then with the other two hands I press the other three buttons and slide the unit towards me compressing the stylus into the reset hole. 

Buzz-click!  ROM-Loading mode. 

I drop the unit into its hot-sync cradle and double-click the WM2003 upgrade package.  It accepts the input.  Twenty minutes later, that’s just the time it took Instant Professional,  no–Help—at--all to inappropriately answer two of my questions, and the hx4700 is Born again.

As I had guessed, WM2003 loaded a default ROM image.  The unit came to me with version 1.43, I then upgraded it to 2.01.05 (7/12/06).  After the WM2003 it reported 2.00, a previously un-published version.  On the tail of this success, I re-downloaded a copy of 2.01.05 and Flashed that to the chip.  I am over-joyed that my old friend is back again.