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Pidon BM170 – Understanding the ULDR Menu

27 01 2012

So to round of this weeks technical series on the Pidion BM170 we’re taking a good look at the ULDR Menu. I guess some people would call this the “boot” menu or Boot Loader but essentially it’s a small hidden menu where you can do a few things with any Pidion device that can be really useful. This blog is good to go for all Pidions, so if you have a BIP-1300, 5000, 6000, or 7000 or even the older BM150R this is all good stuff for you too!

One word of warning before we delve in to this. Fiddling in the ULDR menu can seriously damage a Rugged PDA, I mean actual hardware damage can be if you don;t know what you’re doing so whilst this blog will show you what you can do with it, you must consult with your reseller before doing anything. We are happy to help too so just ask if you want some help.

Getting into the ULDR Menu

First we have to get the ULDR menu up. You do this easily by performing a hard reset but this time instead of pressing the “OK” key you hold down the “Send” key for 5-10 seconds. Instead of resetting or reloading the OS on the device, you’ll quickly see a DOS style menu pop up like the one below.

The Pidion BM170's ULDR Menu

What do the 5 sections do?

There are 5 menu items and we’ll talk about what each does here:

1. Download Image

You won’t really use this at all. It allows you to download an OS image using various techniques. However the best way to do this is to use the SD card method found in (5) below.

2. Delete Hive Registry

This does exactly what it says on the can, I can’t say I personally remember using this feature before. It can screw your device up though if you’re not careful!

3. Format FlashDisk

This feature will format your FlashDisk or ProgramStore area. It will basically delete and format the whole area. If you do this and then try to hard reset the device, it will still reset but you may be missing some essential patches and startup files. This is good though if you really want to lock your device down and hard wire them to your own applications.

4. Nand Format and repartition

Now this is a useful feature because it allows you to fiddle with the Rugged PDA’s memory. from here you can alter the ProgramStores size from the default setting of 55MB. This is really useful if your apps are large and you want to try to cram everything into the persistent storage area of the device. You can also reduce the size to if you just want to use the device in a more generic smartphone manner. This will increase the ROM you have in the device.

Be warned that when doing this you will wipe the device totally and you will need to reload the OS again (See 5 below).

5. Image Reload

This allows you to re-image a device with a new OS. We can’t give out OS images willy-nilly so its a feature we use here rather than the end users for licensing reasons, however you can re-image your device from here if you have the right OS and boot files.

We do get asked what the ULDR menu does a lot here, and whilst it is a useful tool, this blog is really to show you what can be done, rather than what you should be doing yourself so always consult with your reseller before attempting anything in this article.

www.ruggedandmobile.com

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Tags: Picion BM170 ULDR Run Down, Pidion BM170 Boot Menu, Semi-Rugged PDA
Categories : How To, Top Tips

Pidion BM170 – Hard Resetting and Cleaning Down Completely

26 01 2012

I’ve found myself doing a bit of a mini-tech blog on the Pidion BM170 so far this week! So far we’ve looked at the Power button functionality, how to reset the BM170 and today we’ll be looking at how to clean the BM170 completely down. This blog is good for all the Pidion devices, so if you’ve got a BIP-1300, 5000, 6000, 7000 or a BM150R, then this is all valid stuff for you too!

But we know how to hard reset the little semi rugged PDA now, from Mondays blog, whats all this about cleaning the device down? I hear you say, well one of the tricks a rugged PDA has over its smartphone cousins is something called persistent storage. This is usually a folder that can store all kinds of things in it from patches, persistent programs like bar code scanner apps but most importantly it can store your own solutions and apps making the device resistant to hard and soft resets. It is an essential process to keep Rugged handhelds running in the field.

However this can also be your worst enemy when you’re trying to fault find or just want to get the device cleaned down right back to factory settings.

To do this you need to go and look at the “ProgramStore” folder. Its right in the top-level of the devices folder structure and you will notice it has the little black icon marker on it.

The Pidion BM170 ProgramStore

Essentially this needs to be reset to the factory standard before you perform a hard reset. Go back and ask your reseller for a copy of the original ProgramStore folder, or come talk to us and we’ll help. We just need your serial number and the build on the device which is easy to find and we can send you the original ProgramStore folder for you device.

Copy this new folder to the device, overwriting the one that’s there, Hard reset the device and then it should be totally cleaned down for you. An alternative way of getting hold of the ProgramStore folder is to take a copy when you buy your devices. Make sure the build number of the device’s ROM is the same as it’s likely you’ll need to keep a different copy for each build you h ave….thats life I’m afraid!

Just a quick word of warning about this. If you play with this folder and delete stuff that the OS needs to rebuild itself, then you can potentially break the device so always get advice before fiddling with this folder on the Pidion BM170.

Tomorrow we’ll get technical and I’ll take a look at the ULDR menu and talk you through what it is and what it does.

www.ruggedandmobile.com

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Tags: Pidion BM170 Hard reset and Clean, Pidion BM170 Hard rest, Pidion Hard Reset
Categories : How To, Top Tips

Pidion BM170 – Altering the Power Button Behaviour

25 01 2012

One of the things we have been asking Pidion to change on their devices for ages was how the Power Button behaves on their devices and a few months ago they answered our customers prayers by providing a new full power button feature on their newer devices. This FAQ works on the Pidion BM170, BIP-5000, BIP-6000 and the BIP-7000 too but we’re using the BM170 as the example on this one as it’s asked for most on this device.

Finding the Power Button App

Hidden in the depths of the settings you’ll find the power button set-up application. It’s actually a new tab on the “Buttons” application which can be found in”

Windows Button -> Settings -> Personal ->Buttons -> Then click on the right tab twice and you get the power button screen as shown below.

We’ll talk you through the 3 options you have here

Power Control feature

This feature allows you to select from 3 options

Default – This means the button will just put the device into hibernate (Unattended) mode. It will not do anything else with the device.
Set Sleep/Wakeup delay - This simply tells the device the delay you want to put on the hibernate and wake up of the device. The power button will still only hibernate the device but if you want to put a delay on the button action so that a 2 or 3 second press is required rather than a a quick press then select this option and put the desired time from the drop down menu. This is useful to stop the device from waking up accidentally whilst in your pocket or tool box.
Deep Sleep - This now changes the power button so that a short press will hibernate it and a long press will actually turn the device off completely. You get a little confirmation box pop up before the device actually switches off.

Hold Control

This feature isn’t that obvious at first but it effects how the behave button behaves.

The hold button short press can be set to launch a whole load of things.

Just click the tabs in the Buttons application until you see the “Program Buttons” screen and you can select what this does.

For instance the hold button is ideal as a launch key for the camera application. This replaces the old, fixed hold functionality of the button that basically just locks the Semi Rugged PDA into the Lock screen. This functionality is still useful though and indeed hasn’t gone away. It is now operational on a long key press of the Hold button.

The Hold Key

This feature here sets the delay you want that to happen.

So setting this value to 5 seconds will mean in this example that a short press will put my device into the camera app, a 5 seconds long press will lock the device. Hope that makes sense to everyone!

Wake Up Lock

This will automatically require you to unlock the device when it wakes up if selected. If not then the device will wake up and the screen will be live just where you left it. This is useful again if the device wakes up in a pocket, the screen will effectively be disabled so you can;t make any accidental phone calls.

Hope this helps people, as always don’t forget that we are the Number 1 Pidion experts here in the UK. If you want any more help at all then just come and ask us and we’ll be happy to help.

www.ruggedandmobile.com

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Tags: Pidion BM170, Pidion BM170 Cradle, Pidion BM170 Power Buitton, Pidion Power Button
Categories : How To, Top Tips

Pidion BM170 – How to Power Down and Hard Reset

24 01 2012

The Pidion BM170 has become quite a popular little Semi Rugged PDA and we get a lot of requests on how to do all kinds of things with it, this blog looks at how to power down, soft reset and hard reset the device.

Power Down

Older BM170′s operated in a very ”Rugged PDA” manner, the power button only put the device into unattended (hibernate) mode. This is a very low power state so don’t worry too much but on newer devices Pidion have changed the behaviour of the power button so you can now hibernate and power the device completely down on a longer press of the power button.

Soft Reset

Easy peasy, there’s a little recessed reset button on the right hand side of the device as you look at it. You do need something quite slim to operate this, and the bundled Pidion Bm170 stylus is designed to allow you to press the reset button. This soft resets the BM170.

Hard Reset

This is a bit trickier and sometimes needs a couple of attempts before you get the knack. All you do however is hold down the round OK button. Now keep that button held down and now press the soft reset button as in the Soft reset instructions above. Don;t let go of the OK button, keep this held down for 5-10 seconds after you have pressed the soft reset button.

You’ll know if this worked because the device will go into its set-up mode. If not it will just boot back into windows Mobile.

Hard Reset and Clean

A hard reset will not necessarily clean the Pidion BM170 down to factory settings. If you have been using the persistent directories on the device then you also need to make sure that these are set-up prior to a hard reset. The directory you need to look at is called “PidionStore”, it’s right in the top-level root of the BM170′s directory structure and you can go right in there with file explorer. This directory is where you can put all your setup and hard reset resilient applications but of course if you want to clean down the device then you have to sort these out too.

There are 2 ways round this.

Option 1 - What we would recommend is that you either take a copy of your PidionStore folder when you buy your device and keep it safe, or come and ask us here for help. If you get the wrong files in this folder it can cause the device to become unstable.

Option 2 - Put the device into the ULDR menu and format the PidionStore folder back to its original state. I’ll cover this in a later blog this week where we explore the ULDR menu of the Pidion Devices.

www.ruggedandmobile.com

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: Pidion BM170, Pidion BM170 Hard Reset, Pidion BM170 Power, Popular Semi Rugged PDA
Categories : How To, Top Tips

Motorola ES400 – How to Power Down and Reset

14 09 2011

So to continue this series of of blogs about resets and persistence we’re just going to take a look at the rugged PDA resets you can do with one of the most common Semi rugged PDA’s on the market right here. If you want to see a lot more FAQ’s like this or even request one form us then just come and ask us here. The Motorola ES400 is a great little semi rugged PDA and there are a few ways to reset the device, all with increasing severity. We list them all here:

Hibernate (Unattended Mode)

To put the device to sleep, simply press the power button. This puts the device into a very low state unattended mode that is very close to being totally off in terms of power usage.

Power Down

To turn off the ES400, simply press and hold the power button until you see the screen to the left. Press the “Power Off” button on the screen when and the ES400 will be totally powered down as if the battery had been taken out.

Soft Reset

Press the power button and the 1 and 9 keys on the keypad and hold them all down at the same time. The device will soft reset itself which deals with any glitches or application running issues you might have. A soft rest doe snot not delete or reset any of the device’s settings or installed applications, think of it as rebooting your laptop.

You’ll know if the device is soft rebooting because the Motorola Boot screen will have “OS-Reboot!” in tiny words near the bottom of the screen.

Hard Reset

Motorola call this a Clean Boot and this is how you get your Rugged PDA back to factory, default settings. Motorola have 2 ways of hard rebooting their devices:

Clean Boot with Application Wipe

1. Unzip the contents of the clean and wipe ZIP file, found here: https://docs.symbol.com/downloads/405Bw65xxDBA000001.zip, to the root folder of an SD card
2. Place the SD card in the device to be upgraded
3. Place the device to be upgrade an A/C power
4. Navigate to the SD Card and invoke the program STARTUPDLDR.EXE

1. Unzip the contents of clean and wipe ZIP file to the ES400 \temp folder
2. Place the device to be upgrade an A/C power
3. Navigate to the \temp folder and invoke the program STARTUPDLDR.EXE

The update will take about 1 minute to complete. Please do not remove the device from A/C power during this time.

Clean boot without application wipe

You use the exact same method as above but using a different set of files, found here: https://docs.symbol.com/downloads/405Bw65xxxCB000001.zip

If your Device is locked

lastly I wanted to add to this post what happens if the device is PIN locked or won’t go into Windows Mobile for some reason. We get device sback form loan all the time here with all kinds of software on them that lock us out of the device. This means you can’t get to the StartUPLDR file to initiate a clean. Cheers to Thomas in the comments below for pointing this out to me!

What you need to do in this case you do is get the device into it’s boot mode. You do this by performing a sof reset, but when you see the boot load screen you must quickly press the power button and camer button together. It takes a few times sometimes to get the timing right. This will then force the device to look for the SD card and it will clean it down to an out of box state.

www.ruggedandmobile.com

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Tags: ES400 clean boot, Motorola es400, Motorola ES400 soft reset
Categories : How To, Top Tips

Pidon BM170 – Understanding the ULDR Menu

Getting into the ULDR Menu