HTC Raider LTE ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) Update goes to white HTC Screen

HTC Raider LTE ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) Update goes to white HTC Screen

notes:
- phone is a Rogers HTC Raider LTE
- I cellular unlocked / carrier unlocked the phone months ago before this
- I HTC Dev unlocked the phone
- The phone is S-ON / Security-ON still, as I haven't S-OFF'd it yet

I went to do the Rogers ICS 4.03 update that was finally released on July 7th.

- downloaded the update over wifi
- initiated the ICS update
- during the update, the phone showed a download/progress bar several times in between reboots (at least 4 or 5 reboots, and new progress bars)
- it seemed to be stuck on a white HTC screen
- after waiting about 30 minutes for the update to finish (while still on the white HTC screen), I finally pulled the battery
- tried booting the phone several times
- started researching on the net
- came to the conclusion that I should try re-locking it first
- installed HTC Sync for this phone (including all 4 pieces of software and drivers that it suggested), no reboot of the desktop was necessary
- installed Android SDK
- second stage of Android SDK prompted to install the 4.1 (API 16) kit, I didn't install this, instead, I made sure to pick and install the following from the SDK Manager:
  - Under Tools: Android SDK Tools
  - Under Tools: Android SDK Platform-tools
  - Under Extras: Google USB Driver
- once again, no reboot of the desktop was required
- plugged my HTC Raider into USB on my computer
- held-down VOLUME-DOWN button while pressing and holding the POWER button until I saw something on the screen (should be HTC boot menu for Fastboot, Recovery, Factory Wipe, etc, etc)
- after it finished loading (it tries to run any updates on the internal (or SD?) flash cards first, I then chose the FASTBOOT option
- I opened a command prompt in windows (right-clicked and ran as administrator)
- ran "cd \Program files (x86)\android\android-sdk\platform-tools" to change to the correct directory where my android SDK tools were installed
- then ran "fastboot oem lock" which returned with:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>fastboot oem lock
...
(bootloader) Lock successfully...
FAILED (status read failed (No such file or directory))
finished. total time: 0.115s

- I then either powered off the phone or it rebooted, I don't remember
- I then held-down VOLUME-DOWN button while pressing and holding the POWER button until I saw something on the screen (should be HTC boot menu for Fastboot, Recovery, Factory Wipe, etc, etc)
- this time I chose Recovery.. I should have just booted it normally instead, I don't think I needed to choose recovery, but I'm including it here for completeness
- it then continued to show a black screen with a small phone and three green arrows (2 arrows circling another green arrow), and a progress bar
- I continued to watch it (the phone was still plugged into my computer USB cable)
- it got to the end of the progress bar, and sat there, I got a little impatient and was googling while I was waiting, and someone had suggested (on another phone model) that during their update when it stopped on a similar screen, they unplugged their USB cable from the phone, and it continued on, so I did the same, I don't know that it really needed to be unplugged... your mileage may vary, maybe having just waited a littler longer, it might have continued on anyways.
- the phone continued to reboot
- it eventually started showing a more light-green/bluey colored arrows (the first hint that the ICS upgrade is continuing!! yay!)
- it continued to do this for a bit, and eventually got to a new screen saying it was updating components or packages (I forget the exact words)
- it eventually finished updating and I was able to use the phone again
- I had one touchwiz (I think) crash fairly quickly after the update.. but everything has been alright since then (these touchwiz crashes were common when I was using/reorganizing my Producteev todo lists, so I can always try that again and see if I have more crashes)

Anyways... maybe this will help some people out.

Windows XP Update KB2481109 won't install

Ran into a few computers that would continually try to install Windows Update KB2481109 and fail. The logfile in c:\windows\KB2481109.log (or .txt?) mentioned that it didn't have the correct prerequisite.

Researching led to suggesting to install KB969084 first, and then try the KB2481109 update again if it comes up.

KB969084 is available here, or just google it:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=20609

I followed this method and it fixed the problem on several Windows XP machines.

Ubuntu Server 11.10 black screen no video after install

After installing Ubuntu Server 11.10 x64 on a freshly built server, after the eject disc and press Enter to reboot option, the system reboots, goes through grub, then shows a black screen, then shows nothing but a blank / black screen.

Thinking it was locked up at first, I decided to try my luck with a CTRL-ALT-DEL (control alt delete), and was greeted with the system rebooting, posting, going through grub, then black screen again. I first thought it was an issue of needing to use the new GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=KEEP, but I decided to google it, and found the post that my post title links to, and it suggested adding the nomodeset kernel option. I'm not sure if the other option might have worked as well, and if it is/would be a better solution... I didn't need to try it as the nomodeset option worked, and its very similar in how to go about fixing it anyways (editing the grub config).

Following the linked to poster's description (a good description for newbies) of what to edit in Grub didn't quite match the new grub menu / editing selection of Ubuntu 11.10 during bootup (I didn't see splash or quiet options that he mentioned in this new interface / menu), but I simply added the nomodeset to the end of the line that loads the kernel and its options.

After successfully booting, edit /etc/defaults/grub and add nomodeset to the following option in grubs config file for future boots:

sudo nano /etc/defaults/grub

add / update the following: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset"

then run "sudo update-grub"

Now during bootup, the screen still goes blank temporarily, but then comes back and works as normal.

Windows 7 Backup fails saying it skipped files

Using Windows 7 built-in backup system with the automated settings is simple... sometimes too over-simple, and lacking for easy adjustment.

Certain programs you install create their own user account on Windows 7 (and Vista or XP I assume). In my case, I was working on a system that has two programs installed that Windows 7 Backup complains about, Logmein Remote support Software and Quickbooks (2010, 2011, 2012 are all the same I believe).

When the Windows 7 Backup runs, it completes, but gives you a system warning saying that it has failed since it wasn't able to backup certain files (listed below in my instance).

C:\Users\LogmeinRemoteUser\Contacts
C:\Users\LogmeinRemoteUser\Searches
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser20\Contacts
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser20\Searches
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\Contacts
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\Searches

The article I've linked to in the title had a response from someone mentioning a microsoft Knowledge base (KB) article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979281

I used one of the Resolutions listed for Scenario 2, the 1st bullet point / resolution says:

- Create the missing LocalLow, Contacts, and Searches folders that are listed in the error message.

So I simply traversed to one folder below the folders listed in the error messages about files being skipping, and created new Empty folders with names that match the error message names (I had to provide / confirm administrative privileges to continue and take ownership to get into the folders).

I created new empty folders the same as the following:

C:\Users\LogmeinRemoteUser\Contacts
C:\Users\LogmeinRemoteUser\Searches
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser20\Contacts
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser20\Searches
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\Contacts
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\Searches

I then re-ran the backup and it didn't complain about files being skipped anymore, and now I can assume/presume that when (if ever) there actually is an error about a file being skipped, I will get the system warning message, and I will know there's a real problem instead of "ignoring" the warnings and never looking too closely since it used to warn after every backup saying the backup had either not finished successfully or had completed with errors (skipped files).

Troubleshooting Outlook 2000 Won't Start

This information is what I referenced during my research, which the poster also copied from an unreferenced source:

A couple things and posts I found while researching Outlook 2000 not starting:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Try starting Outlook once with the /safe command line switch for example from the Start > Run > type "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Outlook.exe" /safe with the quotes and the space before the forward slash. Note your path to outlook.exe may be different. If Outlook starts this way then the most common causes for the locking up are:

1. Corrupt messages in your Inbox.
2. Corrupt or damaged Toolbar.
3. Damaged view.
4. Add-in causing the error.

Resolution
For No.1 remove the first or last message in your Inbox depending on how you sort the Inbox.

If it is No 2 then renaming outcmd.dat (with Outlook closed) should clear the toolbars, search your hard drive for a file called outcmd.dat and rename it to outcmd.old then start Outlook (if this doesn't cure your problem then you can rename the file back to outcmd.dat and regain any customization of the Toolbars).

For No. 3 the running the /cleanviews command line switch will reset all views to default for example from the Start > Run > type "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Outlook.exe" /cleanviews with the quotes and the space before the forward slash. Note your path to outlook.exe may be different.

For No. 4 go to Tools > Options > Other > Advanced Options > Add-ins and uncheck all the add-ins. Close and restart Outlook, then add the add-ins one by one (closing and restarting Outlook each time) until you get to the problematic add-in. Depending on the add-in you may be able to remove it completely via Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and then re-install a
fresh copy. If after a re-install you are still getting problems with the add-in then uninstall it again close Outlook do a search for a file called extend.dat and rename it to extend.old and repeat the installation of the add-in.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another one:

How to find and run the Inbox Repair tool in Outlook

Let me fix it myself
The Inbox Repair tool is automatically installed with all English-language Microsoft Outlook installation options depending on your operating system.

For Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Windows 2000:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033\NT

For Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033\95

The Inbox Repair Tool installs automatically during Microsoft Outlook 2002 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 setup. Unlike the Microsoft Office 97 version of the tool, Microsoft Office 2000 does not place the Inbox Repair tool on a menu. To use the Inbox Repair tool, locate one of the folders by using Microsoft Windows Explorer, and then double-click the Scanpst.exe file.

Quickbooks 2010, 2011, 2012 Statements for Clients without active balances

We had needed to print a "statement" of account for a client that didn't have any outstanding balances. I think by default Quickbooks won't print/create a statement for a client that has a $0 balance, so I just had to figure out how to get it to print all charges and payments to the client during a time range.

Choosing the "Create Statements" on a client, then choosing "Statement Period from: xx/xx/xxxx to xx/xx/xxxx", under "Select Additional Options / Do Not Create Statements " uncheck "with a zero balance" and uncheck "with a balance less than 0.00" and any other options you might want to change.

This should produce a statement of charges and payments for a client between the specified date range.

fi.

HTC Amaze solid amber - orange - red light - won't turn on

Just wanted to post about a power-on issue I had with my HTC Amaze 4G from Telus (same model as T-Mobile, and similar hard-ware to the Telus SII X (same cpu)).

Scenario: I forgot to plug my HTC Amaze in before falling asleep. In the morning when I woke up, it was at 9% battery. Since I didn't need it right away, I thought I would just shut it down, and plug it in later to charge it up and continue using it. I tried to do just that... I pressed the power button until I got the menu that offered "shutdown" .. I chose that, and thought it was shutting down. I wasn't able to get it to power up later, and during some of my troubleshooting, I saw a recovery screen (but no backlight.. I barely noticed it because of the backlight not being on), which I used the volume up/down buttons to select shutdown from the menu and power button to select/press enter on the selection. After this moment, I never saw anything on the screen of the Amaze, no buzz, no backlight, no recovery without backlight or otherwise. I tried different Key combinations such as volume down + power button, then I tried volume up + power button... all with no result.

Long story short: I had been trying to plug it in all day to charge using a usb cable plugged into a computer. This did not work to recover the battery from its discharged power state. I finally rectified the situation when I went to bed again (and decided to try fiddling with it again before taking it in for warranty), and it ended up finally "charging" when I plugged it into the HTC provided wall charger. I later read online that USB cables plugged into computers or other "small" power sources (I'm assuming 5 volts and 500mah) that it just "trickle charges" (according to another HTC manual for another similar phone). The HTC wall charger has a higher output (don't have it here right now to check if it outputs higher volts, or just higher amps, or both). Once I finally got the charging light to be on solid amber / orange, I was able to turn on my HTC Amaze 4G without any problems like usual. When I finally got booted up again, it showed the battery charging, and only had a 4% charge at the time.

I'm assuming that when I chose "shutdown", it either failed to shutdown, or HTC's (proprietary?) feature of providing for faster boots by doing something that seems closely related to a "suspend", and ran the battery right dead, and the usb cable plugged into my computer, and into my cigarrette lighter was unable to actually charge the battery up in order to turn it on again... only using HTC's wall charger did it get enough juice to bring the battery back to life.

fi.

Windows Easy Transfer 7 Attempting to Reconnect

Using Windows 7 Easy transfer on a new pc (Win7 Pro x64) to try and get files and settings off of an older Laptop (XP Pro x32).

Using the Network method (10/100 wired).

After choosing files/settings to transfer (defaults in my case), choosing the destination user account, and destination drive for the files (default for C: drive (no choices for OS drive (C:))), and a blank formatted partition (target O:) for the secondary laptop source drive D: from the drop-down menu (advanced options), and entering the transfer code, starting the transfer, the transfer began. Unfortunately, the laptop is old and frail, and keeps heating up and crashing during the transfer process. Seemingly (as far as I've been able to tell from looking, and searching google) Windows Easy Transfer for windows 7 is missing the resume function as described in Windows Easy Transfer for Vista documentation (as shown in the 4th picture here, unless its missing due to using the network method? I don't have an easy transfer cable to try to see if it makes this option available, nor did I have time to try an external hard-drive destination for the transfer to see if it shows up then.

So... I'm stuck either doing a manual transfer of the data piece by piece (or rsync using a live linux disc or something), or attempting a full image dump using something like acronis (assuming it doesn't crash, or I'll have to pull the drive and do it with the laptop drive plugged into another machine).

Sucks... why did microsoft either remove the Resume option of Windows Easy Transfer, or limit it to only easy transfer cable transfers or hard-drive transfers (if such is the case... maybe someone can tell me if the resume is there for them in these 2 (transfer cable and external hard-drive) transfer modes with Windows Easy Transfer for Windows 7).

edit: what I ended up doing, (so far, middle of transfer so far) is setting the laptop up so it is getting even more airflow, have it beside an open window (and its -5 C outside), and a fan blowing on the laptop directly.

realistically, I don't normally use the Windows Easy Transfer, but the client wanted his new desktop PC to be as similar to his old laptop as possible (a common request these days).

flashplugin-nonfree: Package is in a very bad inconsistent state

I had some issues upgrading/removing flashplugin-nonfree on an ubuntu 8.04 desktop system, it came to be in a state where dpkg/apt/aptitude would say:

Package is in a very bad inconsistent state

and something about trying to reinstall it before removing it. However, it was an endless loop, and I tried several iterations of remove, reinstall, force remove, etc, but finally ran across the post I've linked to, and did the following to fix/remove it (I didn't try re-installing it, as I didn't need it):

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/flashplugin-nonfree.prerm
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq flashplugin-nonfree
sudo dpkg --purge --force-remove-reinstreq flashplugin-nonfree

This finally fixed it, and made it so aptitude/apt/dpkg wouldn't complain while installing/upgrading other packages now, and only needed to run once, not multiple times like it did during some updates because of the above error.

Linux Crashes, JFS doesn't FSCK on reboot, requires manual fsck

I had been having some issues with a machine getting hard-shutdown on semi-regular occasion when its UPS battery backup was failing, and we had some brown-outs. Every time the server would boot back up after power was restore, it wouldn't automatically fsck one of the tertiary JFS file systems, and I would have to login manually to do it after each power up if it was shutdown improperly.

I had googled before, and read the fstab docs, but none of the changes I had tried were working. I decided to give it another go tonight, and found the article I've linked this post to, at it was as simple as changing my fstab as follows:

OLD:

/dev/sdc1 /drive3 auto defaults,rw,noatime 0 0

NEW:

/dev/sdc1 /drive3 auto defaults,rw,noatime 0 2

And that fixed it so it would run FSCK automatically during bootup if the system wasn't shutdown nicely, even on the tertiary partition.

http://www.techspot.com/guides/253-take-ownership-windows-files/

Take Ownership of Windows 7 and Vista Files with a Shortcut

Handy information for Windows 7 Users facing "take ownership" issues on files and directories.

ddrescue dd_rescue gddrescue gnuddrescue myrescue ... which to choose?

I hadn't done a recovery in a while that needed special attention, and ended up wasting a bunch of time fiddling the the ddrescue variants before I found the one I had used in the past.

I fumbled around with dd_rescue for a while thinking that it was the one that I had wanted, since I thought I had remembered using the one that had a dash or underscore in the name previously. Unfortunately after having left it running over night, I found that it was not the one I was expecting, since I cancelled (CTRL-C) the command in the morning, and then tried to continue by simply entering in the same command again, only to find it repeated copying the same areas it had already done, so it wasn't being "smart" ... even though I had told it to use a logfile, and a bad block bbfile. This sent me on a search trying to see if I was running it wrong, or was missing something. Then I ran across a comment on the digg article talking about dd_rescue (2006), that happened to mention

"Dave Burton Says:
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:56 am

Rakesh,

Here’s a better link:
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=ddrescue
(That link finds both ddrescue and dd_rescue.)

The program described in this article is Garloff’s original dd_rescue.

The program which I very much prefer is Diaz’s newer GNU ddrescue."

This twigged my memory, as well as reading the rest of the comment, it pointed out that gddrescue (diaz's) provided for "remembering" what blocks it had recovered so it doesn't try to go over the same area twice.

I promptly installed gddrescue using "apt-get install gddrescue" and then tried to view the man pages, of course using "man gddrescue" ... however, this is where some of the ddrescue confusion comes in, "gddrescue" simply uses ddrescue for its binary and for its man pages... (confusing), since "dd_rescue" actually uses a package name of "ddrescue" (apt-get install ddrescue), while using dd_rescue for its binary and man pages (once again, confusing).

gddrescue (package name=gddrescue, binary=ddrescue, man=ddrescue) is the one I wanted all along (hence why I'm now writing a blog post so I don't forget in the future).

I had also tryed "myrescue", it has a really good concept, however, its execution leaves a little to be desired... I tried using it on a 200MB partition (that had no errors), and then used dd, dd_rescue, gddrescue on the same partition, all to different output files. After "rescuing" the partition 4 times, I compared all the output files to each other, the first obvious difference is the file size of the myrescue image was 1024 bytes smaller than the other 3 files. The "other 3" files are the same as each other according to diff, while the 4th (myrescue) file is tagged as being different from the others (obviously, if its size isn't even the same). I also noticed that if I used a different block size (larger generally), that when myrescue reached the "end" of the partition, it never "completed" while still using a bunch of cpu processing time, and just never letting go, or saying it was "done". I'm guessing there's a bug in there somewhere regarding end position or something like that.

Thats the end of the post for now.

edit:
Some useful links:
- Ubuntu DataRecovery Howto, do it yourself
- Comment regarding which ddrescue to use, reminding me that it is GNU ddrescue (the gddrescue package, but 'ddrescue' binary) that I found most useful in the past
- A nifty looking ubuntu image (iso or memory stick) already setup for data recovery (removing the need for internet to download most tools you would need for recovery work), and providing a lower over-head environment (command line only, no GUI), but also offers a repository that you can use to add the same recovery tools to an already installed or live copy of ubuntu, which you might have a GUI on already.

notes:
- for first run of gddrescue, it may be wise to add the --no-split (or -n) option, as described in the texinfo manual, it says:

--no-split: Do not try to split error areas. Allows a fast recovery of the non-damaged part of the file.

- after the first run, or if the first run is having issues, you may want to try the following:

hdparm -a0 -A0 /dev/bad-device

and then re-running ddrescue using the logfile you hopefully told it to use on the first (and any successive) runs of ddrescue, this command will disable any read-ahead that the hard-drive tries to do on your behalf, but also brings your copying rate to a dismally slow speed (100k-200k/sec in my case of recovery on an 80gb laptop drive attached directly by ide), so you may want to try your luck without disabling it at first

- check the texinfo manual for some data recovery execution examples as well