Database Develop

Could Windows Media Player get any worse???

Before anyone mentions it, I am aware TCPMP is the preferred media player for a lot of folks. I am not a big fan, as it requires me to spend a lot more time converting Playlists and MP3 files (so I can trim down my home preference for 256kbps MP3 -> something smaller for on-the-go)
And... I am supposed to get these features out of the box with what I have already paid for and installed, however, I have been fighting with Windows Media Player syncing for 3 nights now.
I think the gist is that the sync is taking forever and keeps losing a connection part of the way into the sync. I used to have this happen with XP under several different permutations of Active sync and WMP but figured WM6 and Vista would have corrected this issue.
So it has not, and to try and get things moving, I thought why don't I just copy over my files from my old flash cards (since they were already converted to 160kbps wma). Still doesn't help as even though the song is on the flash card WMP still goes through the conversion step before checking to see if the song is already on the device. So I am stuck wating for over 700 songs to be "reconverted".
In addition, the few songs I mistakenly purchased via WMP in the pre Urge days pops up a rights prompt on my mobile device asking if I want to download the license. Clicking yes brings me to a web page that shows a button to validate "I already own this song" that can not be clicked!!!!
I mapped some buttons in WMP Mobile, and now when I try to navigate to the start menu with the buttons, the dPad up and down let me walk the menu items, but clicking the center button does nothing, as WMP will not transfer control of this button to the OS.
And, as if this isn't enough already, in the new WM6 version, you still can not navigate the library tree using the dpad, you must use the stylis, how funnoying!!!
Shouldn't MS be able to get this right??? How many iterations of both the PC and WM versions of this software have they made and I still can not do something so simple as to select a list of playlist to be synced and have it ork!!!!! It's no wonder Apple is kicking their butt. I am not a big fan of iTunes/iPods, but at least they work!!!
Is this just par for the course? Shouldn't we expect these programs to work out of the box as advertised?

jgermuga said:
Could Windows Media Player get any worse???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In a word, yes, it could.
Don't know if it will though. How was this program advertized to work out of the box? I have read nothing about that.
Use Window Mobile Device Center instead to transfer your files. You mention something or other about playlists but I can't figure out what you mean or how you want it to work, but I hope you find an app that can do all that for you, to replace WMP.
The phone works great for me. Just think outside the box a little and stop relying on WMP to do so much work for you if you don't like the way it does it. Apple has a way of making products that have a WOW effect, but which will show severe limitations after the initial thrill wears off. TyTN II is much better in ways of customization, flexibility and features if you take the time to tweak and adjust stuff.

Dunno about playlists, but I just drag and drop mp3s over to the sd card using a card reader. No activesync file size issues, converting issues, ect. Heck, AT&T says the tilt can handle up to a 32 gig sd card, so why shrink them?

jgermuga said:
Before anyone mentions it, I am aware TCPMP is the preferred media player for a lot of folks. I am not a big fan, as it requires me to spend a lot more time converting Playlists and MP3 files (so I can trim down my home preference for 256kbps MP3 -> something smaller for on-the-go)
And... I am supposed to get these features out of the box with what I have already paid for and installed, however, I have been fighting with Windows Media Player syncing for 3 nights now.
I think the gist is that the sync is taking forever and keeps losing a connection part of the way into the sync. I used to have this happen with XP under several different permutations of Active sync and WMP but figured WM6 and Vista would have corrected this issue.
So it has not, and to try and get things moving, I thought why don't I just copy over my files from my old flash cards (since they were already converted to 160kbps wma). Still doesn't help as even though the song is on the flash card WMP still goes through the conversion step before checking to see if the song is already on the device. So I am stuck wating for over 700 songs to be "reconverted".
In addition, the few songs I mistakenly purchased via WMP in the pre Urge days pops up a rights prompt on my mobile device asking if I want to download the license. Clicking yes brings me to a web page that shows a button to validate "I already own this song" that can not be clicked!!!!
I mapped some buttons in WMP Mobile, and now when I try to navigate to the start menu with the buttons, the dPad up and down let me walk the menu items, but clicking the center button does nothing, as WMP will not transfer control of this button to the OS.
And, as if this isn't enough already, in the new WM6 version, you still can not navigate the library tree using the dpad, you must use the stylis, how funnoying!!!
Shouldn't MS be able to get this right??? How many iterations of both the PC and WM versions of this software have they made and I still can not do something so simple as to select a list of playlist to be synced and have it ork!!!!! It's no wonder Apple is kicking their butt. I am not a big fan of iTunes/iPods, but at least they work!!!
Is this just par for the course? Shouldn't we expect these programs to work out of the box as advertised?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're absolutely right, WMP mobile sucks in every which way. Don't let the purists tell you otherwise and if they do, suggest they try playing the same media file with HTC audio Player and compare the memory usage between them! WMP is on its Nth iteration, its part of Windows Mobile core applications and it still bites, how could this possibly be? I guess it's right up there with Microsoft's battery draining implementation of RIM/Blackberry push email.

borealcool said:
You're absolutely right, WMP mobile sucks in every which way. Don't let the purists tell you otherwise and if they do, suggest they try playing the same media file with HTC audio Player and compare the memory usage between them! WMP is on its Nth iteration, its part of Windows Mobile core applications and it still bites, how could this possibly be? I guess it's right up there with Microsoft's battery draining implementation of RIM/Blackberry push email.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't go pointing fingers at push e-mail for battery drain. I would look at for ISA server/NAT/Firewall for the battery issue. You most likely have the HTTP(s) timeout set too low. It is set too low by default on all of these solutions. So you have to manually change it. That WILL dramatically lower the battery consumption of push e-mail.
Here is some more information; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905013
activesync battery timeout direct push active sync exchange isa firewall

lewcamino said:
Don't go pointing fingers at push e-mail for battery drain. I would look at for ISA server/NAT/Firewall for the battery issue. You most likely have the HTTP(s) timeout set too low. It is set too low by default on all of these solutions. So you have to manually change it. That WILL dramatically lower the battery consumption of push e-mail.
Here is some more information; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905013
activesync battery timeout direct push active sync exchange isa firewall
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yay, registry tweaks for understaffed , overworked and underpaid IT departments. Here is some light reading for you as well: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=5915
The part where he says Microsoft's pings cost you 12 Mb a month and where RIM solutions get you 12 days of battery life is particularly interesting

Jim_R said:
Dunno about playlists, but I just drag and drop mp3s over to the sd card using a card reader. No activesync file size issues, converting issues, ect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I do. The easiest way.
Jim_R said:
Heck, AT&T says the tilt can handle up to a 32 gig sd card, so why shrink them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Holy crap! Are they serious, or is that market speak for "about 8 gig really"?

Yes, WMP sucks. It doesn't save my playlists, bugs trying to do so and often loses playlists due to common error and requires me a few minutes to fix and a few hours to recover.
However TCPMP stops playback when I close the screen and I hate it just for that.

Mr.Clark said:
Holy crap! Are they serious, or is that market speak for "about 8 gig really"?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What this means is that the Kaiser/Tilt is compatible with the SDHC format. The biggest capacity the SDHC format will ever be will be 32gb, however, the biggest one that even exists right now is 8 gb, and the biggest one that you can actually buy is 6 gb. Don't expect a 32 gb micro sd card anytime in the near future.
By the time micro sd cards reach 32 gb, I'm guessing the SDHC protocol will be old news anyway.

borealcool said:
Yay, registry tweaks for understaffed , overworked and underpaid IT departments. Here is some light reading for you as well: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=5915
The part where he says Microsoft's pings cost you 12 Mb a month and where RIM solutions get you 12 days of battery life is particularly interesting
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not a registry tweak. In this case it is a simple setting in ISA. There are registry tweaks as well, but most are covered in updates.
12 Mb is okay with me, our data is unlimited. So it is much cheaper then BB.
Later, Lew

Mystery storage memory bloat

My storage memory seems to steadily but significantly grow and grow. It is now at 98% full and I can't find any space. Normally after a hard reset and installing all of my data and apps this figure is in the 80% range. I do keep my temporary internet files cleaned out by removing everything from Windows\Profiles\guest\Temporary Internet Files which can generally free up a very large amount of space, say 10+ MB or so. The obvious additional pieces of information are:
-no new large files added
-quite a few SMSs - but not a thousand, maybe 50-200 total
-no new programs installed
-the mystery bloat seems to be in the Windows directory which is now 138MB (seems odd) as reported by Resco Explorer
I have used find large files feature and have thoroughly browsed my Windows directory and just can not find the large file(s) causing this. Could this be some kind of memory leak? This is the second time this has happened and the last time I resorted to a hard reset which drastically improved the problem (got rid of it and got me back down to the 80% level again which it seemed to stay at for quite some time). I really do not want to get in this mandatory endless hard reseting loop.
BTW: AT&T device and ROM, bloatware removed by reset during bloatware installation at start up. Any advice greatly appreciated.

you sure your removing the PIE cache by opening PIE and selecting to clear history and delete files by going to tools/options in PIE? thats the most common place you get internal memory getting eaten up. ive had 40mb go through PIe because i forgot to delete the files through the PIE settings

Thanks. Emptying that directory does the same thing. Just to be sure I did that anyway. No change. At 96% now. Ugh.

Give us a list of...
Device, is it a stock AT&T Tilt or one of the beta's we are hearing about?
Firmware, items shown on startup from soft reset!
Installed Apps/Cabs,
cause you could have something storing log files that you don't know about!
then we can have a reference of where to go!

OK here goes...
R 1.27.12.11 (std AT&T)
G 22.45.88.07H
D 1.57.00.00
Aps (in addition to std. ROM):
Opera
G Maps
Resco Expl+Today
TT6
iGuidance4
PC MAME
Calc98
Kaiser Notification (LED control)
TCPMP
World Card Mobile
Weather to Go (Tonaya)
MS Voice Com.
MS Live Search
Flash Video Bundle
Thanks again!

Look for a file named Today in the Windows directory. I noticed this on my Tilt ROM and it was steadily growing. It's safe to delete.

Also check your email, this can grow rapidly if you get attachments.
?Glitch

Does google maps save it's map cache to the storage card? I thought it didn't. If not, that would likely cause your memory to drop if you use google maps a lot.

Thanks so much guys.
@URPREY: The only file like that is Today_Order_23Jul07.cab and it is a whopping 3kB
@?Glitch: I only use SMS not MMS not e-mail, I think these guys are pretty darn small.
@snoogisnguy: I thought google maps downloaded everything it needed sort of in real time and cleaned stuff up in real time as well. Can you point me to a directory to examine for large files?

Bribe
OK hate to resort to a "bribe", but this problem is killing me. $25 to the person who can solve it. I'd be happy to simply make another donation to the forum as well.

Google maps keeps almost everything it downloads, if you use that a lot that would be my first guess.
check My device/application data/GoogleMaps and the file cashe-GLM.
Mine's about 2M and i rarely use it.

Try memmaid from Dinarsoft. It can evaluate your storage usage, including the google cache and tell you what is taking up the space. It's got a free 15 day trial.
http://www.dinarsoft.com/memmaid/

hard reset and start again... might be an issue that you may never find
on another note, why dont you sync up to windows and check the file/folder size of each one you have... theres not that many and so it should only take a few minutes
atleast that way you can narrow it down to what area of your phone is taking up so much memory... and then narrow it down to a file hopefully
just an idea

swamp2 said:
Thanks so much guys.
@URPREY: The only file like that is Today_Order_23Jul07.cab and it is a whopping 3kB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which file explorer did you use to check? The file that was on mine was a hidden file and had no extension so I only saw it with Total Commander. It grew very quickly and I had to delete it several time. I believe it was a cache file for the today screen. I use an RSS today plugin and I think that's what caused it. I have no issues after changing to a cooked ROM.

dunneldeen said:
Try memmaid from Dinarsoft. It can evaluate your storage usage, including the google cache and tell you what is taking up the space. It's got a free 15 day trial.
http://www.dinarsoft.com/memmaid/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks guys! All of the other suggestions, although great ideas, turned out to not be the culprit. The one above, with some more detective work was the winner. Memmaid located a folder called ~Recycled that was 15+ MB. It is a bug (or maybe even a "feature") in Resco Explorer that it does not show this directory ewven when you check show everything such as hidden, system, in ROM, etc. This directory held some files that were cached images from web browsing as well as other unidentifiable files. Memmaid also nicely deleted the entire directory. All was well until I got a bit too aggressive and used Memmaid to move all of the application caches to the memory card. This made my system very unstable, slow and almost unuseable. Luckily I could get back in Memmaid and undo those changes. Anyway a bit of a long struggle but finally this very annoying and crippling problem is solved. I really hope this thread helps out others with a similar problem.
As a follow up question does anyone know how to prevent such bloat in this directory in the first place? Seems like a very crippling feature of WM wihtout access to this directory.
dunneldeen: Was your suggestion enough of a solution that you want the "bribe" money? Thanks again either way!

You simply have to remove "recycle bin" feature from Resco Explorer settings, so your files will be deleted as soon as you do it and they will doesn't go to the recycle bin that in theory you have to empty manually, like your do with the one on your PC.

Storage Issues

I have searched for this extensively, but i can' seem to find anything about this subject. It could be my searching skills, or I might not know what I'm looking for, but sorry if this has been answered!
I have installed touchflo 2d, a few free programs, and i dont do much messaging, about 500-1000 a month range. But every once in a while i experience a message saying "you're device is running critically low on memory" so i deleted a few programs i dont use anymore, and everything was fine.
I have been keeping my eye on it, and it seems my storage space is decreasing slowly by the hour. It decreases by about 1 mb every 2 days. i have searched through the file explorer, and i have NO idea where my storage is going.
Thank you in advance
O and ive had my kaiser for about a year, and before the touchflo 2d i never had any problem such as this.

buddah33 said:
I have searched for this extensively, but i can' seem to find anything about this subject. It could be my searching skills, or I might not know what I'm looking for, but sorry if this has been answered!
I have installed touchflo 2d, a few free programs, and i dont do much messaging, about 500-1000 a month range. But every once in a while i experience a message saying "you're device is running critically low on memory" so i deleted a few programs i dont use anymore, and everything was fine.
I have been keeping my eye on it, and it seems my storage space is decreasing slowly by the hour. It decreases by about 1 mb every 2 days. i have searched through the file explorer, and i have NO idea where my storage is going.
Thank you in advance
O and ive had my kaiser for about a year, and before the touchflo 2d i never had any problem such as this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What ROm are you using and what other third party apps have you installed...try temp clear to clean everything up also...

i honestly don't know what ROM I'm using, how do i find out?
third part apps are:
Amaze - never used
g-alarm
opera 9.5
palringo
skyfire
s2u
pocket CM contacts
and google maps, but that came with touchflo

what type of messaging do you do?
Are you sending and receiving 500-1000 text messages a month or are you sending and receiving more like 5000 text messages a month? What kind of messages are you receiving? Pictures? How about email? Are you saving every email you receive to your Tilt? Attachments too? If you have multiple email accounts with a lot of attachments and multimedia text message often, these can eat up memory space faster than you would think.

I don't know what's your problem but using dirmap, you should easily be able to fix it.
Dirmap scans your memory and gives you for every directory the amout of memory used.
You can do a search on google or find it here : http://www.pocketpcfreeware.com/fr/index.php?soft=1414
Good luck.
Thomas

I was having a similar problem and finally realized that i hadent been clearing my opera cache. After doing this I freed up almost half of my phones memory.
hope that helps

Clear all your temp files and browser history. That's the hidden storage space that a lot of people forget to clean up. Also try and move any number of files, videos, photos from your phone onto your storage card. This should free up some valuable space. Check to see how much of your phone memory is free right now.

[email protected] said:
Clear all your temp files and browser history. That's the hidden storage space that a lot of people forget to clean up. Also try and move any number of files, videos, photos from your phone onto your storage card. This should free up some valuable space. Check to see how much of your phone memory is free right now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Make sure you empty your deleted emails. Are you using the latest version of viigo? I've found a problem with it on my Tilt. Every time I use it my storage memory usage increases. Uninstalling it brings memory back to normal.

thanks guys, but i don't use opera very often, and i delete all my emails and messages after i receive a few. i do appreciate the help though

buddah33 said:
thanks guys, but i don't use opera very often, and i delete all my emails and messages after i receive a few. i do appreciate the help though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey Actually i was facing the same problem then i had removed PocketCM and Opera. I think pocket CM slows down the speed day by day. Go for icontact.
Regards,
Siddh

buddah33 said:
thanks guys, but i don't use opera very often, and i delete all my emails and messages after i receive a few. i do appreciate the help though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
when ur reading your emails did you have them save them to SD card or device memory...to check your rom go to settings and then system then device information...and that will tell you what ROM....

You know, It would probably make sense to ask you how much space you have on your phone right now. Check both storage space on the phone and free program memory. Also the SD card.

buddah33 said:
i dont do much messaging, about 500-1000 a month range.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL, and that's supposed to be "not much". I send/receive like 5-10 a month, and never exceed 100-200 in the inbox without deleting on hard resets every ~6 months

ClearTemp app is the way to go
I have to agree with the Coleslaw Copper, the simple app cleartemp is the way to go. it will automatically identify and (upon your acceptance) will clear out all the little things that can bog down your phone's system, including your temp file, cache, and i believe your deleted mail. A very sensible way to address your memory problem. Also, redirecting your everyday items to your storage card will help.

installed applications on storage card. Will they work after total phone reset?

Awhile back (4 months)I installed a weather program from here to add my town to the weather page on my touch pro. Ever since I did this it crashes touch flow. I have been searching for a fix ever since and nothing has fixed it.. I have searched the forums here and tried several solutions to no avail.
I am at the point that I guess I'm ready to reset the phone and start over. I have quite a few programs installed on a storage card and want to know if they will work after a total reset or do I need to find the app installs for all these programs while I can still see what I have installed on here?

the links to launch the apps will no longer be there. its always a good idea to save the "source" cabs in a directory on the storage card. if you need help, i have a massive collection of apps in cab format, just gimme a shout.

Indeed, programs often require registry edits, and occasionally require the registration of libraries, file types, and other issues that make SD card installation an unfriendly alternative.
Better to do as drdrewdown mentioned, and make yourself a repository. I put mine on 4shared (see my sig, lower right), just to make sure I have what I want/need from anywhere. Even SD cards break down, sometimes.

Gone frm an HD2 mass media storage to HD7...

This is probably by far my biggest drawback to the HD7. I used to use my HD2 as a mass media storage device, instead of carrying a flash drive and a phone that could do the same. I LOVED being able to plug my phone in and having access to all my pictures, files, music ect. My biggest use was an excel spreadsheet that I updates daily with bills paid, confirmation numbers events ect. I plugged my phone in, opened it, made changes, and then saved right on my phone, quick and easy. I use this on the go a lot to look up certain things, which is why I preferred having it in my phone to use Office Mobile on the go when needed.
Now this is a huge pain. My work uses MAC's which we can't download anythign on (only iTunes is on there at least) I usually update this at work ) The only thing I can think of is maybe uploading it to the skydrive, and going online to get it anytime I need it or sending it to my e-mail daily after every change (which could be various times in one day). Instead of opening my excel and opening right up. It will be easier once Excel can open skydrive files directly. But this is still the issue of saving it on my desktop and then uploading it to my skydrive.
This is the only drawback in my eyes for a non removable storage card!!! I didn't think I'd care but being unable to just "open" my memory card to transfer all my pictures, music, videos, files ect that I had my my HD2's card is not making me a happy HD7 user. I don't have a home computer to just use Zune to do all this either.
Does anyone have a simple solution? Do you think that xda developers would ever come up with a CAB to be able to access the phone as a mass media storage device? I realize if they do it will probably be a long wait if they do, but I hope that they can... (I would most definitely "buy that person a beer" with a PayPal donation!)

it seems you may be able to use a OneNote table for that, OneNote already has support for SkyDrive built in, let me know what you think there.

ckacey said:
it seems you may be able to use a OneNote table for that, OneNote already has support for SkyDrive built in, let me know what you think there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will check it out and see. I've only had the phone since lats night so I'm still finding my way around the whole thing little by little.

the way to make the tables on the web and desktop versions is to press tab while on a line.
on the phone don't forget to check the option for online sync of oneNote, from within the program I think, if not, it's under applications > office under the main system settings