Many people have experienced the DSOD, i.e. the phone's LEDs still blink but the device won't turn on and needs to be soft-reset.

I'm collecting all the things we can do here to avoid DSOD. I haven't completely gotten rid of it, but I'm down from "DSOD after literally every hour" to "once a week".


- Disable the automatic ActiveSync checking. This is the official solution Verizon Data Technical Support gave me. Check this thread or search for "Stop Activesync". Yes, VZW Support told me to follow those clumsy steps.

- Do not install software on the storage card that might trigger automatically. That means: Absolutely no today plug-ins, no ring tones, nothing that runs in the background, and nothing that could accidentally be triggered if you hit one of the buttons of your device.

- Do not store data that might be accessed automatically. Same thing. Basically, do not store mail attachments on the storage card if you have wireless sync.

- Close programs that use the storage card before turning your device off. Magic Button is an excellent tool to do this.

- If you do install programs on the storage card, do NOT use the "Programs" window or the start menu to start them. Instead, use a File Explorer to run them. If you use "Programs" or the start menu, that program will be in your list of recently accessed applications in the start menu. So the next time you turn your device on and click on the start menu, the system will access your storage card to load the icon of the application - this will create a noticeable delay of several seconds, if not DSOD.

- You may try disabling the auto-shutoff of your device. Personally, I don't do that, but many people in this forum have successfully avoided DSODs by preventing their device from going into sleep mode in the first place, with just the backlight turned off.

- Get a good holster or find another good way of transporting your device. It seems to me that physical impact can cause DSODs. It might be a bad idea to carry the phone in your pocket. Try a good holster (and stay clear of the Verizon holster - my personal favorite is the Seidio holster, but check this forum first before making a decision - there are good reviews for most available holsters available).

- Don't randomly install crap. Every single piece of software you install could interfere with your system. Limit the software you install to what you really need. Check the forums, some people named a few programs that explicitly did not work for them.

- Disable paging for the file system. This is a registry hack that might alleviate the problem. Try setting HKLM\System\StorageManager\FATFS\Paging from 1 to 0 (requires soft reset). Some information about paging can be found here. Whether or not this registry tweak works realiably is not confirmed, but individuals have reported noticeable results.


Please send me things to add and I'll edit this entry if your suggestion has been proven to help.

- Do not store data that might be accessed automatically.

I would add ring tones to that as well.

I was having the worst luck with DSODs since day one. I had the red badge of courage model. For 5 months I figured it was something I installed. Almost everytime I would do a soft reset, it would go DSOD. Finally I took it back to Sprint and they swapped it for one with the new logo, and I installed everything I had on the other one, and I have yet to get a DSOD. I save mail attachments to the Storage Card, I run programs from the Storage Card via the programs menu, but I don't have any Today plug-ins installed to the storage card. So if you are having a lot of problems, it may be hardware.

__________________
SMT-5600 >> PPC-6700 (Apache) >> PPC-6900 (Sprint Touch)
Sprint Touch Cube Configuration Tool

Thanks Lazybones for the advice. As far as hardware goes - I had my first phone swapped as well, but I'm not sure whether the DSODs were because of the hardware or not. When I got that phone, I was oblivious to this whole DSOD madness, so I happily did all the no-nos that I listed up there. After I got the new phone, I applied all the knowledge I got from the forums, and I didn't have DSODs for over a month - they only started sporadically appearing later on.

But given that I noted that physical impact might cause DSODs, it could be that the 6700 is just very delicate and therefore prone to manufacturing errors.

In other words, don't use the device the way it was designed to be used

Thanks for the list, good stuff. But a better solution would be for U-Star-whoever and/or HTC and/or Microsoft to get off their collective a$$e$ and fix this issue.

Here is a quote I pulled from another thread in this forum.


[quote]I've had a terrible time with DSODs since upgrading. After much trial and error, I believe in my case I have a fix.

I moved almost all my apps off the SD card. I turned off Today plug-ins. I moved the attachment storage location for Messaging. In short, I tried nearly everything. I did some research and narrowed down the suspected culprit to either the "paging" setting for the FAT file system or the new network time synchronization feature of the new ROM. Turning off time sync didn't fix it. Changing the following registry entry seems to have done the trick:

HKLM\System\StorageManager\FATFS\Paging (I changed the default 1 to 0) [\quote]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I made the registry change and was done to about 1 DSOD per week. I undid on Monday just our of curiosity, and I'm back up to 1 per day. Can anybody else verify that's the registry hack worked for them?

Up untill about 2 weeks ago I was getting DSOD daily once, twice, three times, old rom and new. This is what was happening. After I installed the new rom I kept having an anoying probem. DSOD continued. My phone had a 15-20 second delay when turned it on. No buttons responded. Many times when my phone was in sleep mode and a call came in it would wake up, but I couldn't answer it. Buttons wouldn't respond. I was getting frustrated because I was missing calls. Finally I found out the problem that also stopped DSOD completely. I have omega one battery pack, the latest version. All I did was remove the battery bar plugin that displayed battery power, memory etc. I went to today settings and unchecked the battery bar plugin. No no more problems with delays or DSOD. I guess it was the battery bar plugin for me. Anyone that has DSOS, try this! Uncheck any plugin that is works similar to omega battery pack. Just uncheck the plugin that displays battery and memory, including storage card. What's happening is The plugin is reading the storage card to determine how much memory remains.

Tony

__________________
Tony

Its funny this thread should be started, since I experienced my first DSOD this morning. I had heard about this issue and intended to go back and read it about today, since I was pretty sure the behavior was a DSOD.

I got my 1 GB SD on Monday and begin putting my files on it. I do not do any saving by default to the card, nor have I installed any progs to the card (nor do I plan to). This morning, I woke up at 8:00 am, 1 hr 45 mins late, wondering why my alarm never went off. I looked at my phone and the green LED was a solid amber and the device would not respond when pressing the button. DSOD! I soft reset and it came up and I had a nice battery warning telling me that I was down to 20%, after going to bed only 6.5 hrs earlier with it at 80-90 % Joy!

The only thing I know is, I did drop my phone from waist height last night. Also, I did sync and charge my device before going to bed last night. I have done the AS hack to stop it from running, however, since I synced last night, AS was probably still running. My Windows Media player is set to sync videos in an Auto Playlist to the storage card when first connected to the PC, and I do know that I watched some videos yesterday. Dont remember if I soft reset anytime after watching videos yesterday, so its quite possible Media player was still running at bedtime last night as well. I will have to monitor these things to see. I'm already practing most of the tips first posted, but I'll have to keep a better eye on leaving WMP running, and AS after syncing, so I can hopefully keep these DSODs to a minimum. I went a whole 3 days of using the card truly for storage of large files like video clips before getting a DSOD. I don't use a task manager, i kind of like leaving my progs funning, they flash to the screen faster since they are already running...

Last, not sure if this is from the dropping or the DSOD, but now when i turn on my device, the screen is completely white for a fraction of a second before my today screen shows up...

What exactly is "paging?"

Paging by definition is breaking up a block into little chunks (pages) and streaming those in an out.

As an example for paging, Windows on desktops does this with memory by using "virtual memory". Even if you only have 256MB of physical RAM, you can still run an application that requires 512MB (or 10 applications that require 50MB) by splitting up your 256MB into tiny pages and putting them onto your hard disk (in a "page file", called pagefile.sys on Windows NT/XP) and only loads those pages that are currently needed. This is why your hard disk is grinding like crazy when you run something that requires lots of memory but don't have much physical memory installed.

If you have an important alarm that you can't miss, pop out the storage card

[quote=mbartels]Here is a quote I pulled from another thread in this forum.



THANK YOU!!!
I did this earlier today and it has changed my 6700!!!

Before i would have to pop the MiniSD just about every time i wanted to turn on the screen. had a 10-15 second lag after turn on til i could do anything. and i didnt always know who was calling.

now turns on everytime. no lag. every once and a while i will get a little one 2-3 seconds but my today screen is full. and i always know who is calling.

ive only had this for a few hours but it made a huge change!

sorry buddy. been there done that. may not work for everyone... but worth a try

If you have omega one battery pack today plugin, go to today settings and uncheck battery bar. It doesn't matter about programs on the storage card so you can still keep the program bar. Uncheck the battery bar and see if this cures your DSOD.

__________________
Tony

I used to get it a bit but then I figured out a way to make sure it doesn't happen.

When I am not using my phone I turn it off manually. If it goes off on its own is the only time I get one now.

I have all kinds of programs installed on my card and yet as long as I manually turn it off I do not have any issues.

It works for me. I thought all this FatFS stuff was because of the storage card? If not, then this device has another problem too!

Either way, grrr... Sprint and Microsoft shouldn't allow their employees to go home until this is fixed.

After changing the Paging Registry value to 0 Windows Media Player could no longer 'Update the Library' for the Storage Card. It would hang on 'Adding files'. Changing it back to 1 makes it work again.

Has anyone else noticed this?

My XV6700 looses half of its worth to me w/o a storage card.

I fixed my chronic DSOD by eliminating Weather to Go, which was installed to my storage card.

No DSODs for the last week since the change. I no longer have the urge to chuck the phone out the window at 75mph....

Actually, WMP cannot even read the library. It says that the library is corrupt. I guess people using this setting are not using WMP. Any suggestions (other than get Verizon/UTStarCom to fix it)?

I have been logging each registry tweak I make on my device as well as software Installed. About 2 days after changing the "HiddenTimesyncPage" setting in my registry I started getting DSOD's. Since my device was still new, I had been tweaking and installing things like crazy. After researching the issue here and on other forums, I decided it must be something I had done. I systematically removed each piece of software and undid all changes in registry one at a time with no luck...until I got to the Time Sync. After removing it, I haven't had a DSOD (2 weeks ago). I have since added back all software as before and more. Plus made additional registry tweaks.

Here is info on the tweak that caused my issue:

"The key is under, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\OEM\PhoneSetting. It is labeled "HiddenTimesyncPage". Just change the Dword value from a 1 to a 0.

Then the option to sync will appear in your phone options..."