Scare this morning....

[reinbeau]

Had a scare today, I got into the office and took my iQue out of my purse, and hit the power button……nothing. Wouldn’t wake up at all! So, I stuck it in the cradle, figuring for some reason the battery had drained. No green light, it wasn’t charging at all! So I panicked :confused: and called Garmin. The tech told me to do a soft reset, which I tried to do, with no result. Tried it again , and then a third time, and finally got the Palm screen :) , the time screen, then Tealscript restarted, so at least I got it powered up. I noticed the battery indicator was down to about 1/8th. At this point I let the Garmin tech get off the phone, as everything now seems OK. What must have happened is the unit powered on in my pocketbook (despite the Covertec case) and I must have had total battery drain. At least I hot synch at the office, too, so if all had been lost I’d have been able to reinstall everything. I know this is a higher-tech unit than my lllxe, but I never had this problem at all with the old unit.

The Garmin techs are patient and helpful. What puzzled me was that even if it had powered up in my pocketbook, it should have shut off in 3 minutes, which is nowhere near enough time to drain the battery. The GPS antenna was completely closed. Is there anything else in the GPS area that might have kept the unit powered on, but with a sleeping screen?

[sigpro]

Ann, it happened to me once too. After taking it from the cradle, it did not want to start up, but I did a soft reset and it was fine. Has only happened once and I have no idea why?

[4482]

I had the same problem with my Que. I put it in a case at night with a full battery. In the morning there was no power. I called Garmin and they said to send it back. After thinking about it I thought just maybe it had turned on as I slipped it into the case. That was about 10 days ago. Since that time I have been very careful in putting it in the case and have not had any other power problems. I sure glad I did not ship the unit back to Garmin !

As the unit will go on by hitting any of the bottom buttons as well as the top on/off button, I may have even turned it on hitting the soft case on the bottom while carrying the unit. Next time...NO SOFT CASE.

Good luck

[ZiLT]

Which Covertec case are you talking about in your post?

Is it this one?
http://www.mobileplanet.com/private/palmgear/product.asp?pdept%5Fid=0&cat%5Fid=0&cat%5Fname=&dept%5Fid=3704&pf%5Fid=MPC00092&listing=1

[jetdriver]

The iQue really needs a hold button, like my old Clie. That way you can't inadvertantly turn it on by bumping the power button.

I think there are third party programs that allow you to only turn your unit on by using a series of button pushes, like a code - might help from turning it on in your purse.

[omnibus]

Originally posted by ZiLT
Which Covertec case are you talking about in your post?

Is it this one?
http://www.mobileplanet.com/private/palmgear/product.asp?pdept%5Fid=0&cat%5Fid=0&cat%5Fname=&dept%5Fid=3704&pf%5Fid=MPC00092&listing=1

Zilt, The red and the brown options were available, I have the brown one, close to a month ago. I really don't have any idea why there is a delay now.

[jkoslacz]

reinbeau, had a similar scare today too. I have set an alarm at 6 am (both beeper and vibrator) for the whole week, then yesterday got back home a bit late in the evening, forgot to take the iQue out of my shirt pocket and slept till 7 am. Today the iQue didn't want to start at all until I connected the charger. To my dismay I lost all data, including downloaded applications :( Even maps stored on an SD card weren't visible until I pulled the card out and inserted it again.

I agree with you that a high-tech unit should manage the battery in a more intelligent way. Maybe any alarms should be disabled once the battery is more than 90% drained ? By the way: is there any way to back up the used portion of RAM (including any preferences etc.) on an SD card ? That would allow me to restore the lost data without doing a hot sync the next time the battery drains out.

Jan

[reinbeau]

Originally posted by ZiLT
Which Covertec case are you talking about in your post?

Is it this one?
http://www.mobileplanet.com/private/palmgear/product.asp?pdept%5Fid=0&cat%5Fid=0&cat%5Fname=&dept%5Fid=3704&pf%5Fid=MPC00092&listing=1 Yep, that be the one! Only mine's brown.

[reinbeau]

Originally posted by jkoslacz
reinbeau, had a similar scare today too. I have set an alarm at 6 am (both beeper and vibrator) for the whole week, then yesterday got back home a bit late in the evening, forgot to take the iQue out of my shirt pocket and slept till 7 am. Today the iQue didn't want to start at all until I connected the charger. To my dismay I lost all data, including downloaded applications :( Even maps stored on an SD card weren't visible until I pulled the card out and inserted it again. I didn't lose anything, that's the odd thing, I thought it would be blank, but everything was there.

I agree with you that a high-tech unit should manage the battery in a more intelligent way. Maybe any alarms should be disabled once the battery is more than 90% drained ? By the way: is there any way to back up the used portion of RAM (including any preferences etc.) on an SD card ? That would allow me to restore the lost data without doing a hot sync the next time the battery drains out. Yea, the battery is definitely the weak point here. I wish they were replaceable, I wouldn't mind carrying AAA batteries with me. I've done that for years!

[ZiLT]

Originally posted by omnibus
Zilt, The red and the brown options were available, I have the brown one, close to a month ago. I really don't have any idea why there is a delay now.

Can you tell me where you Got it from?

[kokopeli123]

There have been post's on other threads where people have forgotten to do the 'stop navigation' button in the Que Routing Catagory after they were using the route to navigation funtion and this caused the battery drain. (The iQue continues to navigate until you tell it to stop sometimes even though you shut the antenna or unplug the external antenna.)

Could this be the cause?

kokopeli123

[reinbeau]

Originally posted by kokopeli123
There have been post's on other threads where people have forgotten to do the 'stop navigation' button in the Que Routing Catagory after they were using the route to navigation funtion and this caused the battery drain. (The iQue continues to navigate until you tell it to stop sometimes even though you shut the antenna or unplug the external antenna.)

Could this be the cause? Hmmm, I don't know. I hadn't used it to navigate since Sunday.....I wonder if it had been going in the background all that time? Thanx for the heads-up, I'll keep better track of that now!

An Update to this post:

I had used the navigation, yesterday, to simulate a route. I know I hadn't shut it off properly. I'll bet that's what did it.

[Hairy Potter]

Originally posted by jkoslacz
.. By the way: is there any way to back up the used portion of RAM (including any preferences etc.) on an SD card ? That would allow me to restore the lost data without doing a hot sync the next time the battery drains out.

Jan [/B]

I am using a program called BackupBuddyVFS on the Garmin. Whenever I want a backup I can press the backup button on the screen. I also have it set to automatically do a backup every night at midnight. All backups are to the SD card. I used it on my Sony Clie and had to restore from the backup after I let the battery dry out. It worked perfectly. I have installed it on the Garmin with no problem.

It will also perform additional backups to desktops above and beyond what the normal HotSync does (such as backing up data on the SD) on the PC. Backing up SD data takes longer but does give me a sense of security.

Anyone who travels and doesn't carry their PC to do an on the road emergency restore in the event of loss of all data should seriously consider BackupBuddyVFS.

[oupiglet]

I had this happen yesterday when I took my Ique off of the auto nav. charger. I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but a soft reset fixed it right up. Not sure why it happened, as the battery was fully charged.

[sigpro]

Same here, I think we have mixed two different situations. As mine was in the cradle also. When I did the soft reset, the Q came back on and the battery was fully charged.

[NCTRNL]

I have had the same thing happen on mine. I have not seen an explanation yet as to why this happens.

[kokopeli123]

I'm using the Palm 64mb Backup Card Plus. You plug it in the SD card slot and it backs up the entire iQue in a few seconds.

kokopeli123

[Robertp366]

I have the Garmine leather case. Often I press the Record button reaching for or putting away the iQue. That automatically turns on the iQue, and sometimes also starts recording - I've gotten some long files of noise....

[dacat]

Wondering whether there was resolution to the power drain issue?

Scenario:
Got home at 5:00pm put the Q on the desk, no case and full battery. Did some things around the house and had dinner. Come back to the Q at 8:00pm and 37% battery life left.
Haven't used the navigation for some days and verify that it was turned off.
Following day same thing except it wouldn't turn on. Ran and hooked in power and after a soft reset it powered on. Did not use the navigation that day.

Hope there is a solution.

Felix

[Robertp366]

I use a utility called CardBackup. [www.jkware.com] to back up the internal memory. This utility will also copy itself to the card, so you can automatically restore from a crash of any sort. The others mentioned probably will too.

One of my 256 cards has enough spare room from the detailed maps to leave room for this backup on it, so I don't need to carry extra cards. Not a big deal since the SD cards are so small. If you want to do a backup, you only need a 32 MB card, (that's all the memory in the iQue) which are pretty cheap.