Wow!  I received a lot of mail on this one!

First, thanks to all who wrote - I appreciate your time and comments.

The most common response was "sounds like a hardware problem".  And it may
be.  I'll be doing a scorched earth install on the Journada one of the next
few nights.  If the problems quickly recur, the hardware will certainly be
suspect.

However, others had their own horror stories, and they point to hardware
problems of a different sort:

1) a Journada user has had his unit corrupted by airport x-ray machines
    twice when he put his Journada in his carry-on bag.  Thus, he recommends
    having the Journada hand-checked.  His symptom was that the contacts
    list was corrupt, and contained garbled data.

2) when battery power becomes low, the Journada's memory can become
    corrupt (damaged calendar).  There were two reports of this.

3) if the Journada's battery power is low and it has shut down due to
    insufficient power, a reminder or alarm going off seems to be
    enough to corrupt the Journada's memory.  The symptom seen was the
    blinking button wouldn't stop blinking.

Bingo!  A person who has experienced the blinking button from hell!
Hmmm.  I only remember getting the power warning once, and that was months
before the blinking button syndrome.  Is it possible that some bit got
flipped and it took months for the corruption to spread and to cause my
current problem?  Who knows.

Has my Journada been through an airport x-ray machine?  Yes.  Come to think
of it, I did pass my Journada through an airport x-ray machine shortly
before my first problem, back when the unit was new.  I was picking up a
relative and put it in the plastic bin with my cell phone, calculator, ID
badge, keys, etc.  In looking back at an old calendar, it went through the
x-ray on a Friday evening, and I don't think I used the Journada until the
following Monday, which would have been when I noticed the problem.  I
still have to wonder whether the strength of the x-rays in the airport
scanner are strong enough to corrupt a Journada's memory while not
affecting the memory of a Nokia cell phone and HP-16C calculator.

At any rate, it looks like a full reset and scorched earth install are in
my Journada's near future.

Thanks again to all who wrote!

John

At 2002-03-25 02:09 PM, John Korb wrote:
>QUESTION:
>Does anyone know how to (other than a reset and scorched earth full
>reinstall) to get the blasted blinking button at the top of the Journada
>540 to return to normal operation (stays off unless there is an alarm, then
>blinks for 5 minutes or until button is held for 3 seconds)?
>
>BACKGROUND:
>I've had an HP Journada 540 for about 15 months now.  The hardware has been
>great.  The operating system/software has been a problem.  I've never added
>or deleted any software.  I've run it straight out of the box.  It took
>only 11 days for the "Today" screen to decide to, after password
>acceptance, display "today" and the date, with the remains of the keypad
>used for password entry still visible, but no tasks, calendar, etc.
>visible.  Changing the checkboxes in Settings/Today has no effect on what
>is displayed.  I've lived with that for over a year as HP told me I'd need
>to do a reset and reinstall from scorched earth.  Somehow a reinstall after
>only 11 days seemed like a bod omen.
>
><snip descriptions of other software problems>
>
>DETAIL ON MOST RECENT PROBLEM:
>There is a little button at the top of the unit that blinks when you have
>an appointment, glows orange when the unit is charging, glows green with
>the unit is charged, and should be off most of the time.
>
>It isn't.
>
>First it decided to blink 24 hours a day.  First it blinked orange all the
>time.  After 3 days it changed to blinking green when the unit was powered
>off, and orange when powered on (display active).  After 4 more days it
>entered an mew mode - alarming every 30 minutes, morning, noon, and night,
>making that annoying alarm sound.  That behavior gained it some
>"environmental testing" - spending about two days and nights (when the
>temperature was in the 40's during the day and 20's at night) in my
>vehicle's glove compartment (where it was outside the house and I couldn't
>hear it alarm all night).  For some unexplained reason that behavior lasted
>just short of two days at which time it entered the current mode.
>
>Currently it is quiet and doesn't blink when powered off, but blinks all
>the time when powered on.  I've tried disabling alarms, but that doesn't
>seem to have any effect on it.  While its current mode isn't as annoying as
>previous modes, it is still a RPITA.
>
>Any help will be appreciated.
>
>John (a future Palm owner)
>
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