Why PalmPilots Crash

Drop your Palm machine

Doing this often makes the whole thing lock up, the only way out is normally a hard reset.
Dropping it (especially on a hard surface) can disconnect some of the gold plated memory board connections from the motherboard socket. With luck you might be able to wiggle the memory board back into place without it losing power. If you are unlucky the disconnection will have wiped the memory already.
Adopt strategies to prevent yourself ever dropping it: If you do drop it, work out what went wrong and never risk your PalmPilot in that way again.

Load Lots Of Hacks

They can conflict with each other and cause a crash. These crashes can seem to happen in applications other than your hacks. It is often very helpful to uninstall all of your hacks and then reinstall them in a different order. Open Hackmaster and uncheck the install boxes to the left of all the applications. Then check them in a different order. If you get lots of unexplained crashes it might even help to delete them from your memory and then re-load them. Do not forget to uninstall before deleting!

Delete An Active Hack

Use HackDelete Hack to prevent yourself from doing it. Even though I knew that you shouldn't delete an active Hack I still slipped up from time to time. This stops you from doing so.

Run The Batteries Too Low

The voltage level of batteries slowly decreases as you use up their power. Below a certain voltage your memory chips will lose all their information. The Palm machines minimise battery use by going into sleep mode as much as possible - even when the screen is on the CPU may be asleep.

Playing games that perform lots of computation and have high screen refresh rates (eg. Reptoids) is the fastest way to use power. Use of the backlight only doubles power use for a light load program.
Even when your machine is not in use there is a small power drain, needed to keep the memory alive and to respond to buttons being pressed to wake the processor up. In addition there is power loss due to natural self discharge of batteries - this occurs even when they are in their packaging.

Don't leave your PalmPilot in a drawer or cupboard - use it regularly, then you can act on the low battery warnings: insert new batteries when warned. If you leave it at home when you go on holiday make sure that there is enough power in the batteries before you go - fit a new set if necessary.

Run The Memory Too Full

Many applications need extra working memory to run in. If you run at too much above 90% full you can end up crashing.

Use Rechargeable batteries

They can save you lots of money (I use them) BUT they lose power very quickly at the end of their life. Download and use a utility to change the automatic warning and shut off voltage levels to higher values than the default settings. The default levels are for alkalines and are not appropriate for rechargeables. (I set mine to Warning at 2.2V, Critical at 1.98V). Carry a spare set of batteries with you at all times if you use rechargeables. If you don't do this you run the risk of an alarm causing such a rapid drain of power that the batteries dip below the Voltage required to maintain the memory.

Trial Lots Of Applications

Eventually you will load one which crashes on you, or which corrupts memory and causes a standard application to crash. Some applications are badly written, I have had my address book crash every time I opened it, I cannot believe that this was a 3Com fault.

Take Out The Memory Board

Taking the memory board out disconnects it from the batteries and back up capacitor. No power wipes out all the contents of your memory.
This is the quickest way to wipe your memory clean - intentionally or not.

OR: Live Dangerously!

If you are like me, you will drop your PalmPilot from time to time, use rechargeables and try lots of Applications and Hacks.

HOWEVER, I do make very frequent backups with BackupBuddy, keep memory at about 90%, carry a spare set of batteries and try hard to never ever drop it again!

I have ordered the reasons above by how often each crash has happened.

Last updated 7th Feb 00