Storage Card2

[Guest monkeygadge]

Today I received a brand new Sandisk 2GB card from Ebay. Having previously received a faulty card, I decided to place the card straight into the phone and find out if it works.

In it went and I checked it through task manager and yes, it worked! :D

So I replaced my old card as it contains all my emails (to save phone storage) and..... :D

Problem - some of my icons on the start menu are missing!!! I quickly worked out that they are the programs on the storage card!! Panicking I thought that my old card had gone and I'd lost all my photo's and vids! SO I went straight into File manager, and into Storage Card and.....

The only folders where "Inbox" and "PIE"! Noooooooooooooo! :D

Wait a minute... what's that.....

Storage Card2???? :D

Oh look, it's got all my documents, and is in fact my actual storage card! :D Hurrah! Saved! :D

Right then, what's happened?

Well I reckon that the phone has booted (it has to when I change card, an XDA IQ must) and it hasn't recognised the card, therefore automatically creating a folder called "Storage Card" to place the Cache and mail attachments in - This is because I previously edited my Registry to store these on the storage card, which has meant that when the new (or might of been the old) card has been inserted, it has automatically been called Storage Card2.

I then thought, well all I need to do is delete the folder "storage card" as it contains no useful info, reboot and everything in the world will be good again. Yeah, like that would be to easy! :D

Can I delete it.

No i bloody can't. :D Not from the phone, not from my computer either. It won't let me delete the Desktop.ini files, and I can't change the properties to allow me to delete them either. So after a coffee and a biscuit I think to myself...that's because the phones using the files! Aha!

Back into regedit, change all relative keys to point at Storage Card2. Reboot phone, will it delete files....no it bloody won't! :D

Right, fed up, 2 choices, hard reset or remove programs and reinstall to Storage Card2?

Well I thought remove programs and reinstall then post a message on here to see if anyone else has had this problem, or if anyone knew of a quick fix?

Info:

XDA IQ (Imate SP5)

WM5

512MB PQI Mini SD

2GB Sandisk MiniSD

Registry keys changed

HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders

Values -> Cache, Cookies and History - Changed value data to point at Storage Card

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\MAPI

Values -> AttachPath=\Storage Card\Inbox\Attachments & PropertyPath=\Storage Card\Inbox

Thanks in advance for any help/comments.

[Guest notaliberal]

Hi,

Frustrating, isn't it? Been there. But not to worry...

Make sure all your reg entries point to the normal storage card path, not storage card2. Connect via ActiveSync, explore the phone, and RENAME the decoy storage card by putting a "." (just a period, no quotes) at the end of the name. FOr whatever reason, it WILL let you change the name, even though it won't let you delete it.

Now, reboot. Your actual storage card should now be named correctly. Connect via activesync again and DELETE the decoy with the period at the end. Good to go.

Look here in the downloads section, there's a cab to install to supposedly stop this from happening. I say supposedly because the only time this happened to me was AFTER I installed that cab, but it only happened once so I decided it was a fluke.

Good luck,

Jeff

[Guest monkeygadge]

Cheers Jeff,

I've been using the phone for a few days now the way it is and to be honest, I've not lost any functionality at all. It's working fine. I'll keep your advice in mind though, in case something comes and bites me on the ass!

[Guest monkeygadge]

Okay, installed google earth last night and now I have a Storage Card3!!

Took your advice Jeff, but I couldn't rename the folder from my computer whilst in sync, I had to use Smart Explorer to do that, but it worked, my Flash storage is now called "Storage Card" again!

But..... I still can't delete my newly named "Storage Card." and "Storage Card2." It still tells me that I am unable to delete desktop.ini files. Is this because they are system files? How do I get around this?

Thanks.

[Guest notaliberal]

I think that means that a process on the phone is still using/accessing/writing those files, that's why you can't delete them.

Couple things; Have you tried deleting them via activesync, the built-in file manager, and smartexplorer? I figured at least ONE of them would let you delete them. Also, I assume you rebooted after the renaming? Sounds like you did based on your results, but figured I'd ask...

I guess you can always try renaming them AGAIN, this time to something like "Storage Card..." and "Storage Card....." - then reboot and try to delete them again.

Basicall, we have to make those folders unrecognizable to whatever programs is trying to use them after the phone boots. If the program can't find those folders, it can't tie up the contents and we can delete them.

So, try that and report back.

Sorry it didn't go as smoothly as I said it would, it never gave me that problem, but perhaps I missed a step in my instructions or something...

Good luck,

[Guest monkeygadge]

I hear what your saying Jeff. Thinking outside the box, do you think it could be because I can't delete system files because my phone is still application locked by O2? I have been able to install all the programs I have wanted so far except Keylock_WM5 which told me that I didn't have the permissions to install the application. If it is still locked, would that prevent me from deleting system files?

[Guest notaliberal]

I dont' think it's the application lock. i've unlocked mine some time ago, and yet just this morning the storage card2 occurred again. Argh.

Having said that, I'd still go ahead and app unlock your phone, it's so quick and easy...

So, now that I've just had this happen again, here's what I had to do...

1) renamed "Storage Card" to "Storage Card." using the phones stock file manager.

2) rebooted

3) "Storage Card2" is now named correctly - "Storage Card"

4) connected to active sync, deleted "Storage Card." with no problems.

5) Done.

The problem is, I use John Cody's alerts! to wake up for work in the morning, and more importantly to REBOOT my phone at 3AM while I'm asleep. Well, when my phone rebooted at 3 this morning the darn storage card bug happened, so when my alarm went off it couldn't find the \Storage Card\alarm.mid file so IT DIDN'T WAKE ME UP!

We have seriously got to find a permament fix for this. I long ago installed the SurrealNetworks "prevent Storage Card renaming" cab, so it's obviously not doing all it should.

i really hope somebody else can chime in here and point me in the right direction as to why this is happening. well, it's obviously happening because the storage manager that controls where the PIE cache, etc, are stored is starting BEFORE the storage manager that mounts the miniSD starts and gets the storage card mounted. but how can we tweak that? That's what we need to find out...

Cross your fingers some guru checks this post. I'll report back when I find something.

jeff

[Guest notaliberal]

Okay, here's what I've found...

Looks like my assumtption was more or less correct, though it may actually be the speed of the storage card itself instead of the storage manager starting too soon. Not too clear on that. Anyways, I found a thread with a *possible* fix, here's a snippet from the thread:

Ok I understand what your problem is. Lets see if I can explain it in a way that makes sense to you. Your problem is windows is attempting to access a storage card that is not yet mounted. Or a storage card that does not exist, yet. When this happens you generally wind up with a folder by that name somewhere on your system.

Outlook in this case starts before the card is mounted, and tries to access your card before it is ready. I suppose that one could try putting some really big values in HKLM\System\StorageManager\

PNPUnloadDelay

and/or

PNPWaitIODelay

Or perhaps buy a better quality SD card that does not take so long to become active. I'm not so sure their is a real fix to this problem. Sorry I don't have a better answer for you.

Read the thread here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=43165

I performed the reg hack (I only had the PNPUnloadDelay, which is the one I tweaked), and set my value (was 1500) to 10000 (10 seconds, I assume). I then proceeded to reboot my phone about a dozen times (what a friggin time-waster that was! I wish these things booted faster...). I was unable to get the problem to reoccur.

So, perhaps it's a fluke and I'll see the problem again, perhaps it actually fixed it. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

If others with this recurring problem could do this as well, and report back, that'd be great.

Thanks, and good luck,

Jeff

Edited August 30, 2006 by notaliberal

[Guest notaliberal]

Ugh.

It happened again. I wish I could find some common factor between all the times this happens...

I read that the only way to get it to stop is to NOT use the messaging plugin on the homescreen. Apparently that plugin gets initialized before the storage card is ready. Well, that is not an acceptable solution for me. THere has to be a way to tweak how/when that pluging starts, or how/when the storage card is getting mounted...

Still hoping somebody else is going to chime in here, hate to start another post on this but we've got to get to the bottom of it...

[Guest pavankp]

Ugh.

It happened again. I wish I could find some common factor between all the times this happens...

I read that the only way to get it to stop is to NOT use the messaging plugin on the homescreen. Apparently that plugin gets initialized before the storage card is ready. Well, that is not an acceptable solution for me. THere has to be a way to tweak how/when that pluging starts, or how/when the storage card is getting mounted...

Still hoping somebody else is going to chime in here, hate to start another post on this but we've got to get to the bottom of it...

One more piece of information: this problem certainly happens whenever I let the phone die because of lack of battery. This is the only sure-fire way I have found of reproducing the problem. I find it very irritating too, but I've made my peace with it and have given up on finding a fix.

If it's acceptable to you, you can make Outlook independent of the storage card, and that should fix the problem too. You would set the registry settings for Outlook inbox and attachments and Internet Explorer cache back to their default values. I download lots of email with attachments, so I didn't do it myself.

Good luck and let us all know if you find a real solution!

Pavan