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.
