Must reboot to receive text messages

[Clarence Donath]

I have a Treo 650 on Verizon.

Several months ago, my phone stopped notifying me of text messages. Today I just noticed I'm not getting notified of voice mail either.

Taking the battery out to reboot the phone causes the voice mail notifier to work, and several, but not all text messages, are downloaded.

I went through the prescribed procedure for solving the "reboot when receiving SMS", even though this isn't my problem, which is to delete the SMS database, etc.

I have 5.8MB of available internal memory.

Are there any old 650 pros out there that can offer any ideas please?

[RickAgresta]

did you add any new software before the problem started? I have no direct experience with the 650, but software conflicts aren't necessarily device specific...

[hal]

I have a Treo 650 on Verizon.

Several months ago, my phone stopped notifying me of text messages. Today I just noticed I'm not getting notified of voice mail either.

Taking the battery out to reboot the phone causes the voice mail notifier to work, and several, but not all text messages, are downloaded.

I went through the prescribed procedure for solving the "reboot when receiving SMS", even though this isn't my problem, which is to delete the SMS database, etc.

I have 5.8MB of available internal memory.

Are there any old 650 pros out there that can offer any ideas please?

While the diagnose can get lengthy, I've been into somewhat similar issues, like my Treo 680 crashing with an incoming SMS, or hanging to the point that a soft reset is due. A part of this is that you certainly have too low internal memory. I don't remember what's the total internal memory in the 650, but try never to allow it under 15 MB or something, cause then you'll run into issues like background memory full, processes getting a stack overload, and so on. Do a summer clean up. Another forum member, believe it was WyreNut, suggested never allow the internal memory under 20 MB.

Another potential source is that the SMS DB is having an issue. When I've run into issues with Palm DBs, it happens that the common solution is to use an app called DBFixit, but it happens that this app doesn't find the SMS DB. OK, IME I solved it by creating a backup set with NVBackup, and then restoring the SMS DB from said backup set. I am not sure why it worked, but my guess is that a corrupt or misplaced entry in the SMS DB could have been the culprit, and it got kinda in place when backed up.

Another source of issues, but I don't know if it's present in your device, is the Palm SMS chat view. This view usually makes the SMS app to miscount entries (messages this is), and misplace them in the DB. If you have such an option and it's on, put it off, allow the program to re-sort all the messages to the common view, soft reset the device, once awake again do a backup with NVBackup and restore the SMS from it.

As of missed voicemail notifications, I'm starting to wonder whether your device has a hardware flaw. Or, your carrier is missing in sending them.

Please, work in an orderly fashion, and don't forget starting by doing a hotsync just in case. Please report back any progress

[Hook]

Clarence!

My first guess would be low memory. Palm gets very goofy when it doesn't have memory. There is probably a lot of apps you don't need, especially if you arr primarily using the 650 as a phone. I would honestly back everything up to your SD card with a backup program, and hard reset. See if it works with factory settings. Then restore from backup just what you need keeping memory above 20Mb if possible. Restore one thing at a time and test to identify any errant program.

Hopefully more 650 people willl show up (I'm not one of them).

[Clarence Donath]

Clarence!
especially if you arr primarily using the 650 as a phone. I would honestly back everything up to your SD card with a backup program, and hard reset.

Thank you Rick, hal, and Hook!

I am going to work at this slow and orderly. First, removing all the piled up junk to get above 20MB. I will report back.

Yes Hook, I arr primarily using the 650 as a phone and calendar app.

Best regards,
Clarence

[r0k]

Thank you Rick, hal, and Hook!

I am going to work at this slow and orderly. First, removing all the piled up junk to get above 20MB. I will report back.

Yes Hook, I arr primarily using the 650 as a phone and calendar app.

Best regards,
Clarence

Wow. You got above 20MB? Did you delete everything? I suggest you move all your apps to SD card and run them from there. The Treo 650 only has 32MB and keeping apps on the phone clogs things up very quickly. I never had mine reset when receiving text messages. My issues were related to the tiny memory footprint and I was running zlauncher to allow me to keep more stuff in SD card but make it appear as if it was installed in the phone.

The 650 can be an excellent PDA+ phone but if you try to use it for data, versaFAIL and Blazer will quickly make you regret that decision. Also the lack of wifi means any and all data you use must come over 2G. Yes, it's 2G. I run my iPhone on At&t 2G by disabling 3G (to save battery drain caused by a constant flood of corporate email) and my iPhone is incredibly fast compared to what I remember from Treo 650 on Verizon.

[Hook]

Wow, didn't realize the 650 only had 32 Mb. That's what my old T2 had and it didn't have phone functions.

Clarence, 15 Mb is a more relalistic target and should be enough.

[Clarence Donath]

Status report!

First, thank you all very much for taking the time to give me your experienced information.

I raised internal free memory to just over 7MB by removing all applications, save mRing, Pocket Tunes, and Agendus.

I've gotten SMS reception working intermittently now. I Never experienced the voice mail notification failure again.

I got SMS to work intermittently without having to soft reboot by Hotsyncing, which I hadn't done in over a year. I thought this had solved it until SMS stopped working reliably again.

I'm leaning toward the theory that not hotsyncing for so long may have overflowed some counters and caused some type of corruption.

I use this as a phone, appointment reminder, and MP3 player. No Internet services. No application additions for years. Just additions to Contacts (no photos), Agendus appointments, and swapping of MP3 files on the card.

At this point, rather than try to repair, I'm going with the hard reboot. nvram backup first of course.

I'll report back!

[hal]

Status report!

First, thank you all very much for taking the time to give me your experienced information.

I raised internal free memory to just over 7MB by removing all applications, save mRing, Pocket Tunes, and Agendus.

I've gotten SMS reception working intermittently now. I Never experienced the voice mail notification failure again.

I got SMS to work intermittently without having to soft reboot by Hotsyncing, which I hadn't done in over a year. I thought this had solved it until SMS stopped working reliably again.

I'm leaning toward the theory that not hotsyncing for so long may have overflowed some counters and caused some type of corruption.

I use this as a phone, appointment reminder, and MP3 player. No Internet services. No application additions for years. Just additions to Contacts (no photos), Agendus appointments, and swapping of MP3 files on the card.

At this point, rather than try to repair, I'm going with the hard reboot. nvram backup first of course.

I'll report back!

Good! Being the internal memory so sparce in your device (I was unaware of it), I really suggest you drop down to PIM and phone. All the other usages can be diverted to yet another device that you don't consider of critical purpose.

There is something to comment when doing a HotSync: if there was a recent Palm DB misbehavior, it's likely to end after two HotSync operations. Sometimes, DBs misbehave cause a recent entry was not allocated in the proper order (at the top or at the bottom, I can't really tell where it is). Next, the DB misbehaves, and it makes its corresponding application to misbehave, if this has a significant effect then you can have anything between a nonresponsive app and a system crash. When you hotsync, that misbehaving DB can be transferred to the PC, it gets kinda "properly stored", the mislocated entry gets in place, and in the next hotsync it gets back to the handheld device all fully functional. This is one of several reasons why hotsync operations are usually suggested to be done in pairs (I mean, in an even number of attempts).

Now, of course not all DB issues are solved by means of a simple hotsync. But keep on trying the first paragraph, cause it seems it's working. A side issue with critically low internal memory, is that the Palm OS may be unable to open a rather big DB, i.e. the Contacts DB when it holds a lot of entries (good to kill the pictures BTW). When an incoming call or incoming SMS are due, the OS will put the Caller ID to work, and this in turn demands the full exploration of the Contacts DB. If it's too big, it can perhaps not be opened, and if you add to this a flawy SMS DB, you got a system crash around the corner.

[Clarence Donath]

Status report!

I've hard booted. You know, this is the first time I've done that. I cannot remember when I got this phone. My online account on Verizon Wireless doesn't have any history of this equipment on my account. lol. It's been a solid piece of equipment, especially considering I went swimming with it (in fresh water) for about five minutes one day (three years ago) when I fell out of my canoe. I need to check the date on the receipt when I get home, just out of curiosity.

After hard booting, I didn't sync anything back to the phone. I added five contacts from scratch, and put all my applications on the card. I have 17.3MB of internal memory available now. My apps (mring, agendus, volumecare, pocket tunes, card export, and zlauncher) must be using some internal memory. This is down from ~20MB that was available after the hard boot.

I hard booted and installed apps (soft booting after each app install) on Saturday, and on Monday I experienced the problem of no SMS reception and no VM notification again. I then received all SMS and the VM notification after a soft boot. But it's only been the once since the hard boot that this happened. I've set up a cron job to send myself a test SMS at 10:00, 14:00, and 16:00 on weekdays.

So I don't have a good feeling that the issue is resolved.

I should say that I first started noticing the missed SMS in June. I've been receiving all calls (from the wife) the whole time without any trouble. I say "the wife", because she'd definitely let me know if I didn't answer my phone.

I haven't tested whether I'm able to receive phone calls when it gets in this funky state. I will try to call the phone when/if it happens again.

I imagine the same receiver circuit is used by SMS, VM notifications, and phone calls. The only disconnect between these features should be software. But that's only a guess. This needs to be tested.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge Hal. I hope you get paid for what you do, because it is very good.

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Having just reread this message, I think I may have had to hard boot when the latest 650 firmware was released, which I know I installed. My Phone Info shows "Software: Treo650-1.05a-VZW". It's been so long I can't actually recall if a hard boot was necessary at the time.

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Ugh. Another afterthought. After hard booting I did the VZW reprogram of the phone. *228 and #1. Followed by a #2 for updated roaming capabilities. It'd be interesting to see what happens when I don't do the reprogram. As an experiment, I'll avoid that if/when I hard boot again.