Recovering from the Fatal Reset Loop

So, your Palm OS organizer is in a "Fatal Error" reset loop.You can't get it to start no matter what.This can happen sometimes either after installing a new program that is corrupted or a program can get corrupted due to other problems. If you have just done a backup then it's not too scary. But what if you are away from your computer and really need access to your PDA?

The problem is that when you do a reset, one of the things that the OS does is send a "reset" notification to every program on your PDA.This allows programs to set up their pending alarms again, hack controllers to restart hacks, DA apps to be reactivated, etc.The only problem with this nifty way of restarting all the apps is that it also starts your troublesome program causing you to reset over and over again.

The normal thinking on this is that you have to do a hard reset to clear this up.The only major problem with this is that you might be away from your computer at the time.Maybe it's been a couple days since your last hotsync.Maybe you just got done making some major changes in your datebook that you don't want to lose.

Well good news. You DON'T have to do a hard reset to clear up this problem. A free program called ResetEmu can save the day. It's free and it's tiny using only 4K of RAM. If you download it now, you will be ready to recover from the "loop of death" even if you are away from your PC. If you have not downloaded it yet, that's OK.Of course will need someway to install the program before you can recover.

Here is how to recover from the dreaded hard-reset on your Palm OS organizer.

  1. Perform a warm reset.This is done by holding the "Scroll Up" button on your PDA while pressing the reset button.You should continue to hold the button until you see the Palm logo appear. Holding it longer will not hurt anything.Performing a warm-reset prevents the operating system from sending the "reset" notification to all your programs.
  2. If ResetEmu is already installed, you can skip to step 3. Otherwise, install ResetEmu either by doing a HotSync or copying ResetEmu onto your Memory Stick and then copying it to RAM.
  3. Run ResetEmu.It will allow you to send the "reset" notification to each program one at a time. When one of them crashes you will know which program is corrupted.
  4. You will have to perform a warm-reset again (see Step 1) to start your PDA. Once it has started, delete the offending application discovered in step 3. Using a program like Filez, McFile or MSGate will allow you to delete the application without trashing associated databases. Alternatively if you think you have a good copy on memory stick you can copy it back from there or you can hotsync a new copy over to replace the corrupted copy.
  5. Perform a normal soft-reset by pressing the reset button without any other buttons.Your PDA should start normally.If it crashes again, go back to step 3.You may have another corrupt program.

If you have ResetEmu already on your PDA you can perform this recovery anywhere. If you don't have it installed you will have to be around a computer to get ResetEmu installed. Needless to say I highly recommend getting this file on your PDA now to avoid getting stuck somewhere away from a computer.

ResetEmu is free and can be downloaded from PalmGear

You're strongly advised to download it from there, as it's more likely to be up to date, but if it were to disappear, a copy is found here.