I have had about 20 PMs on this topic (over the past week) and guess the best place to share this is here and not sending directly.
Everyone's process for setting up their i730 is different, in fact you might not like some of the things I do to mine, and yet some of them you might not think about. This is what I do to get my i730 to a "perfect" pre-synced, pre-program installed state, and to a slighty "modified" perfect, synced state.
1. Do a sync to make sure everything is on the computer that can be on the computer.
2. Backup all files if you are hard resetting. Either use Sprite to back them up, or manually go in and back up what you want. I usually do the manual thing because I would rather do it myself then let a program do it. I normally back them all up to a separate SD card than the one I use on a daily basis.
3. Back up files from SafeStore.
4. Back up files from My Documents
5. Check the Program Files Directory for any files that you might want. Saved games files, saved profiles.
6. Go into any programs that you might want to back up, PhoneAlarm for instance, and run their individual export tools.
7. Basically go through every little thing to check and see if it's something you can't get by a general install.
8. Make sure you have all passwords and serial numbers for your software. This includes all the settings from your e-mail accounts, wireless sync, etc.
9. Make sure you know your Name as it's listed on the Today Screen or in the Info screen, as some programs require this.
10. Go into the "About" icon in the settings/system options. Click Device ID and write that down.
11. Now that you have everything backed up, format SafeStore, this cleans it out so you can reinstall your files. This is what I do because I normally want to do everything from scratch. You can skip this step if you want, you still have to reinstall everything to get the pointers to work, I just clean it out incase I don't want that software to be on the i730 any longer. You do this through the settings/system menu and choose Erase Memory.
12. Pop out your SD card that you made the backups on.
13. Hard Reset and then align screen
14. Do the stupid little tap and hold exercise.
15. Set your location
16. Wait for Wireless Sync to install and close it.
17. Click Start/settings, click memory, running programs tab, stop wireless sync (do this only if you don't want wireless sync)
18. Click X - The click remove programs, and remove wireless sync "Sync Client" (if you don't want/use it)
19. Soft reset
20. Click start - Programs - File Explorer, and navigate to \Windows\Startup - Click Hold the WOWTray icon, then choose CUT.
21. Navigate to \windows\start menu\programs\ - click hold in the background and click paste (this moves the SRS sound object from starting at bootup, and still gives you the option to load it later, just go to Programs and launch it, just saves on that much more memory running in the background)
22. Close all and return to today screen, Now soft reset
23. Click start/settings, click Buttons Icon - Change record button to < None >. Exit Buttons menu.
24. Click Input, Word Completion Tab, drop down Suggest and switch to 4. Click ok to go back to settings.
25. Click Menus, then New Menu tab, Turn on New button menu, then remove Word and Excel from the list (I don't use Word and Excel, no reason for it on the list). Close this.
26. Owner information, fill it out (remember to put in the name you used when registering your software) (Also don't forget Numlocker is not on yet). Click OK (fill out notes and change any other options in it).
27. Click Phone, Change Voicemail number to automatically put in passcode, change ring type to Vibrate and Ring, Click OK (these are the only changes I make in there).
28. Click Today Icon, go to Items Tab, uncheck Owner Info, move it to bottom of list, and move Wireless to top of list. Change timeout to 1 hr. (This makes it go back to the Today screen after an hour of non-use). Close
29. System Tab, click About, then Device ID tab, change this back to the device name you used before. While doing this I also go to my computer and open activesync (not syncing the handheld, just open it), click File, delete partnership, this makes it so you can reuse the name you used before. No spaces can be used in the name, but you can use an underscore. Close
30. Click Backlight, change 30 Sec to 1 min, click External Power Tab, turn off backlight if not in use, 10 mins, click ok.
31. Click Power Icon, Misc Tab, (even thought it doesn't matter), change the phone time to 30 sec, then drop phone down and choose Keyboard backlight, uncheck turn off in daytime, change to 8 seconds. Click OK
32. Click Screen, then Text Size Tab, move to second smallest. Click OK
33. Click Connections Tab, click Connections, Click Advanced Tab, Click Select Networks, Under My ISP, click EDIT, Click General Tab and change My ISP Name to Verizon. Click OK to close that. Click OK again and again until you reach the Connections tab on the settings screen. then close that and go to the Today screen.
34. Soft Reset.
35. At this point I have the "perfect" non-synced, no programs installed phone for me. All settings on the phone work. I have no problems, am able to turn on WiFi and Bluetooth, turn them off, call voicemail without hitting any keys, and all power features are setup. The phone is ready for the first sync.
36. I plug the i730 in to sync. Remember no Partnerships are installed, so you have to set one up. I hit next until the Select Synchronization Settings page comes up, and I uncheck any additional software or items except Calendar, Contact, Favorites, Inbox, and Tasks. I also go into the settings on Calendar and change past appointments to 26 weeks and I change inbox to be 10 days and only do the first 100 lines. I then click next and finish and let it sync. You will notice the name you entered in Device ID showing up in the Sync window and everything should sync. I now do a soft reset, wait until the phone comes on and sync again.
37. After it's finished syncing, I setup a couple of more items, namly, registry editor and numlocker. Both of them are backed up on my computer in a folder called programs, which two sub-folders, one called PHM Regedit, and the other Numlocker. I copy this over to my empty SafeStore using the computer to do it. So in SafeStore I now have a folder called Backup (which is generated by the phone), a folder called Programs (with those two programs listed in it, a zip is attached to this with them setup my way, both programs are free), and there is a ignore_my_docs files.
38. Create a folder called My Documents in SafeStore and delete the ignore_my_docs file.
39. Double click the Programs folder, and double click Numlocker Folder, right click Numlocker.exe, click copy, navigate to \Windows\Startup\ on the i730, then Right click and say, paste shortcut. Rename shortcut to Numlocker.
40. Navigate back to \SafeStore\Program\PHM Regedit\ and right click regedit.exe, navigate to \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\, right click and paste Shortcut, rename to PHM Regedit or Regedit. At this point I also rename Terminal Services Client to TS Client to shorten the name.
41. I now pickup my i730, and soft reset it. Yes and I know, I said no software installed, well this was manually installed stuff, and stuff that should have been built in, so it doesn't count.
42. I now edit the registry and make a couple of modifications.
43. I add an entry to make the date show up with the time, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shell and then add a string value named TBOpt and value of 3. Other settings can be:
0 = Nothing is displayed
1 = Only the Time is displayed
2 = Only the Date is displayed
3 = Date & Time are both displayed
The normal setting should be 1 (time only)
44. I now remove the click from the today screen, so Setting / Today / Items Tab, and Remove Date, Click OK, then back to the Today screen.
45. Soft Reset. The date should be right above the clock now.
46. I then use PHM again to change my start page on IE to google.com:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
Change the Start Page key to whatever website you want. (as pointed out a very P IE friendly page is:
http://www.google.com/xhtml
So this might be a good site to have as your start page.)
47. I next change and entry right above the start page called search page. This is the value I change it to:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%s
This will allow you to search on google.
48. I now change my Internet Cache to be in SafeStore instead of MainMemory:
\HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\
I change cache = \safestore\internet\cache
I change cookies = \safestore\internet\cookies
I change History = \safestore\internet\history
49. Now I limit the size of the cache:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\Cache\Content
and change CacheLimit = 3072
This makes the cache only 3 MB in size.
50. I now exit PHM Regedit and soft reset.
51. Now if you go to File Explorer and SafeStore, you should see an Internet Folder. This is where the Cache is stored, and now it's smaller too...
52. I now copy my ringers over to the i730, so put the phone back in to sync, and create a folder in safestore called Ringers. Then copy all the ring tones you want to this folder. These need to be WAV files or Midi files, and these are ONLY the ringtones, no notification sounds.
53. Take the phone off the cradle and use PHM Regedit to edit this key:
HKCU\ControlPanel\SoundCategories\Ring
and change Directory = \safestore\ringers\
54. Exit out of PHM Regedit and Soft Reset
55. Go to Settings / Sounds and Notifications /Notifications, drop down event, go to Phone: Incoming Call, and all your ringtones will now be listed in the Ring Tone box.
56. Now I copy the tones I use for my notifications into the \Windows\ directory and setup the reminder, text message, and voice mail. Then after those files are in there, go back to Settings / Sounds and Notifications /Notifications, drop down event, and change each of those notifications.
57. Open Notes Program, cancel out of the current note, and you will now be in the Notes All Folders area, click Tools, then Options. Change Save to: SafeStore.
58. I get rid of the Big Dialer (keypad ready screen), these instructions are in the FAQ.
59. I also open Contact, click Tools, Options and enter my Area Code, this way it auto inserts it when creating a new contact.
60. I go into Calendar and click Tool and options. set it to show 7 day week, click Appointments tab, and change default reminder to 1 hour. I also change the meeting requests to be sent via my main e-mail account, once I get this setup.
61. I now go into the Messaging app and setup my POP and IMAP accounts, not putting on any active connections, and NOT doing a send and receive.
62. After setting up my mail accounts I go into tools and option there and tell it to keep a copy of my sent mail under the messages tab and I switch storage of attachments to SD on the Storage tab.
63. At this point do a soft reset. This is where I back up my phone. It has a few tweaks done, but no major "hacks". This is my absolute perfect setup. Everything works. I have no information in the IE Cache, I have no Bluetooth partnerships, no WiFi networks setup, my today screen is pretty much empty, all my personal information is on there, and it's ready to go. So launch Sprite and make a backup, storing it on an SD card.
all i can say is
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