An HTC DoA: Part 1

06. July 2010 · 3 comments · Categories: Android, Google, Hardware, Support, Troubleshooting · Tags: , , , , ,

When Google first offered the Nexus One in Canada (by making a GSM version for AT&T, which is compatible with Rogers, Telus, and Bell in Canada), I jumped on. I had my order in the day the web store was updated, and in my hands by the end of the same week. Despite the cost, I consider it the best gadget purchase I’ve ever made.

Fast-forward to last week. With my wifes birthday coming up, I thought it would be nice to surprise her with a trip to the local Telus dealer (her carrier) for a shiny new phone. After looking at their offerings (the only two real considerations were the Motorola Milestone and the HTC Hero), she decided that she’d come down with a case of Phone Envy and wanted a Nexus One as well.

So, no big deal – we ordered the phone and waited. Unfortunately, due to the stat holiday on July 1st, the phone didn’t arrive on Friday like expected and instead came in yesterday (the following Monday). I left the phone plugged in to charge, and when the light turned green to say all was well I fired it up.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Nexus One Boot Screen

The Boot Screen on my other, unlocked (and functional) Nexus One

After about five minutes of staring at the above picture (minus the lock on the bottom, as I hadn’t gotten around to doing that yet), I got the feeling something was wrong.

I powered off the phone by pulling out the battery, then booted in to HBOOT mode (hold down the VOLUME DOWN key while pressing Power). That worked fine, so I tried to enter recovery. Unfortunately, I was met with the same screen. I tried several more times for both normal mode and recovery without success. Then I gave up and called Google.

At this point, I’d like to point out that I’m fairly certain it’s just a software error. Unfortunately, the only way I could really do anything about that would be to Unlock the phone, which voids the warranty. As such, the call to support was warranted.

I called the number listed on the Google Phone Contact Support page (1-888-48-NEXUS) and after a few quick IVR choices I was greeted nearly immediately by a tech. He asked about the problem, what I had tried, and immediately agreed the phone was D0A and would need to be replaced. That’s when things started to go downhill.

The problem is that I live in Canada, and HTC has a different policy for international orders than their standard ‘send you a replacement and then send the old one back’ policy for domestic ones. If you live in Canada and get a DoA phone, you have two options:

  1. Send it back via their normal repair process and get a refurbished phone (no option for a new one)
  2. Initiate a ‘Buyers Remorse’ return, get a refund for the device, and then order a new one.

The choice was fairly obvious – I ordered my wife a new phone, so that’s what she was going to get. After gathering a little more information, the Google tech transfered me over to HTC support to process the return order.

As the new tech was going over the specifics, a thought occurred:

Me: Okay, so I do the return, and within 14 business days of you receiving the device and okay’ing everything, you credit the purchase price back, correct?

Tech: Yes, that’s correct.

Me: So what about the duty charge that I had to pay CoD?

Tech: Oh, that. Hang on. –Pause– Okay, I checked on that, and what happens is you’ll get some paperwork from us once the refund has been processed. Once you have that paperwork, contact Customs and they’ll be able to issue a refund.

So at this point, I may have to wait three weeks for credit from HTC (although apparently it usually doesn’t take that long), and then I can file a claim to get my ~$70CAD that I paid for taxes back.

All was said and done, and I prompted received a confirmation email repeating what the agent said. However, as of posting I still haven’t received a FedEx shipping label in my email as promised. I called HTC back, and they escalated the ticket and said they’d resend the label, so now I’m waiting on that. Once I’ve got the label in and the phone sent away, I’ll order another N1 and see what happens.

The pain begins in Part 2!

Howto: Find the Serial Number on a new Dell Monitor

23. June 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: "It's a Feature", Hardware, howto, Rants · Tags: , ,

I picked up a few Dell P2210t 22″ widescreen LCD monitors the other day.

Monitor - Front

Very nice!

As part of my asset acquisition process, I have to document serial numbers and assign an asset tags to each new asset. When I turned the monitor around, though, I ran in to a problem:

Monitor - Back

WTH?

Hey, uh, Dell? Did you forget something?

Well, actually they didn’t. Apparently all of the required labeling is too much of an ‘eye sore’, so Dell has decided to hide it:

Monitor Pop-Out - BackMonitor Pop-Out - Front

Pretty Sneaky, Dell

I would have appreciated it if Dell would have made more of an effort to point out where it is (I actually had to refer to the unpacking diagram to show me), but that’s it. Hidden with the USB ports is a small little pull-out card. Now that I know it’s there, though, it does make it easier to get a serial number off of a monitor when I have to figure out which asset belongs to which program when someone has inevitably pulled off the asset tag.

Fun Fact – Number of times the word ‘ass’ appears in this post: 6.

Dell Packaging

21. June 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Hardware, Tomfoolery · Tags: , ,

I ordered  a bunch of new kit last week, and in typical Dell fashion they decided to send the order to me as they get the parts, rather than just send it all at once. This morning, I received the first piece:

Dell Packing
Seriously, Dell? All that for one lousy DVI extension cable? Well, at least they’re still better than HP.

BIOS Updates on the MSI Wind U123

13. June 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: "It's a Feature", Hardware, Makes Sense, Troubleshooting · Tags: , ,

MSI Wind U123I’ve been updating the BIOS on my MSI Wind U123 religiously since I got it, hoping each time that the latest update will finally allow me to boot, well, anything other than DOS from my class 6 SDHC card (so far, no dice). Went I went to apply the latest update, though, I was greeted with a slightly different message than normal:

ERROR: BIOS has no flash information available

As it turns out, this message doesn’t actually state than the end of the world is near, or that you’ll never be able to update your BIOS. In fact, all it means is that the laptop isn’t connected to AC power and is running off the battery. Simply plug in your laptop and the update will run without issue.

Now why couldn’t they have just said that in the first place?

Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0x0000007e/0×00000006

27. May 2010 · 14 comments · Categories: "It's a Feature", Hardware, howto, Microsoft, Networking, Software, Troubleshooting, Windows · Tags: , ,
An HP P4015dn - This morning, the bane of my existence

An HP P4015dn - This morning, the bane of my existence

Note: Make sure to read over the comments on this post – there is some excellent advice there as well.

Windows 7 has been very good to me so far, but this morning I was literally pounding my desk in frustration over a printer issue. I just received two brand-new Dell Optiplex 780′s and was in the process of configuring the printers on them when I happened across this little message:

Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0x0000007e

Now here’s the situation. The computers are running Windows 7 Professional x64. The printer (an HP P4015dn) is connected to a Windows XP x86 machine and shared normally. Of all of our printers, this is the only one directly shared with a computer due to a wiring issue I have yet to correct (although now I’m going to make an effort to fix it). I have several other computers running XP and Vista (x86 and x64) that already print this computer without issue, so I was rather stumped. Then I realized I had attempted to install the Vista x64 Postscript drivers instead of the Windows 7 ones.

Unfortunately, Windows 7 no longer provides a dedicated ‘Printers’ control panel, and the ‘Devices and Printers’ one doesn’t have a Server Properties option to let you manage installed drivers. So, I stopped the print spooler service and manually deleted the drivers from C:\Windows\System32\spool\Drivers. When I tried to re-add the printer, though, I got this message:

Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0×00000006

Hmm. Google wasn’t much help, so I went to an old standby – I mannually added the network printer by choosing to create a local port (silly, I know). Here’s how to get this working:

  1. In the Devices and Printers control panel, choose Add a Printer.
  2. In the new window, click Add a local printer.
  3. On the following screen, select Create a new port, and then choose Local Port from the drop-down list and click Next.
  4. When asked to enter a Port Name, use the full path to the printer. For example, if your printer share is called Dave and is a computer with the name PrintSrv1, you would enter \PrintSrv1Dave as the Port Name. If you receive an error saying The network path was not found, check the computer name and share name, then try again.
  5. You should be asked to install a driver. Manually download the correct driver (in this case, the HP Universal PostScript driver worked for my HP P4015dn) from the manufacturer’s website and extract it to a folder on your computer. Then click the Have Disk… button in the Add Printer wizard and point it to that folder, then click OK and Next.
  6. Wait for it to install the driver.

At this point, the printer should be installed and functional. Print a test page to make sure everything worked alright, and then do a little dance (as long as no one is looking)!

From the Search Results: Processors

10. May 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Hardware, Makes Sense, Short · Tags: ,

To the person who found my blog by searching “does intel quad q6600 work with windows“:

Yes. Yes it does.

From the Search Results: Backing Up

07. April 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Hardware, Short, Support · Tags: , , ,

To the person who found my blog by searching for “raid 1 backup“, please note: RAID IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE BACKUP SOLUTION!

Any method of RAID (other than RAID0) is good for protecting against failing hard drives. However, it is by no means a backup solution, as it doesn’t save your data from things like accidental deletion, file system corruption, users, and malicious software. If you’re looking for a backup solution, investigate external hard drives, SAN/NAS devices, tape backup units, etc….

Please. For the sake of your data, get a real backup solution.

Short: Kensington 0, Me 1

22. March 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Hack, Hardware, Short · Tags: , ,

A Kingston Desktop Lock

Kensington makes a decent desktop lock. However, they’re nothing that ten minutes and a pair of wire snips can’t take care of – it’s a very effective way of unlocking a case when the key has been lost for years….

As a side note, the magnets in old hard drives make for a perfect method of removing small metal shards from ones flesh. Just sayin’.

Rogers, Android, and You

04. March 2010 · 8 comments · Categories: Android, Hardware, Rants · Tags: , ,

(Updated 04/29/2010) — YOU CAN NOW ROOT the Rogers HTC Magic! Details here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=627384 Exact steps to root are here: http://greatbigdog01.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/rogers-magic-post-e911-update-to-cyanogen-5-0-7-android-2-1/

I’ve posted before about my HTC Dream, and some of the run-arounds I’ve had with Rogers, but I haven’t posted about that recently. Rogers, it seems, is out to alienate Android users and seemingly could care less.

A little back story first:

In September of 2009, an Android user reported a problem with the Android 1.5 ROM where, if you had GPS enabled and attempted to call 911, your phone would crash and reboot. The issue was promptly fixed in the Android source, and all was good. The user then reported the problem to Rogers, who did nothing.

Fast-forward to January. Rogers comes under fire for the issue and disputes having known about the problem for several months. The make an update to fix it, and push it out. To make sure that their asses are covered, though, they tell everyone that it’s a Mandatory Upgrade. “If you don’t upgrade, we’re going to disconnect your data.” And, on January 24th, 2010, they did. All HTC Dream and Magic users lost data for at least a day. The official word was that if you upgraded to the new ROM, you’re connection would be restored within 24 hours.

Those who didn’t update not only lost data, but starting receiving daily telephone calls and text messages telling them to upgrade. Some people even had their outgoing calls redirected to Rogers Customer Support (and reportedly, even 911 calls were affected by this, although Rogers denies this happened – Update: see the comment from RogersMary below).

Eventually, Rogers released a waiver users could sign that would allow them to continue using their old ROM and get their data back (although some people had gotten around this by phoning Technical Support and having them manually enable the data connection, with mixed results).

Then, for a five-day period (February 9th through 14th), Rogers re-instated their free HTC Dream to HTC Magic upgrade program (for users who purchased an HTC Dream before December 31st, 2009). I took part and received a shiny new HTC Magic at no charge, and promptly sold my still-rooted HTC Dream.

Okay, back story over. What’s the deal with the new ROM?

Well, there’s what you need to know. If have a Dream or Magic that’s still rooted, you can simply upgrade to the newest Radio image (available on the XDA forums if you do a little searching). This will allow you to keep your root, as Rogers’ network uses the Radio Version String to determine whether or not you’ve upgrade (it simply looks at the radio version string when your phone connects to the network). Alternatively, you can sign the waiver above and you’re fine as well.

If, however, you already performed the ROM upgrade (or received/purchased a new Dream or Magic from Rogers after the beginning of February), you’re in a little bit of trouble. Here are the relevant details. The new ROM contains:

  • An updated Kernel, which contains a fix to the Root Privilege Elevation Exploit used by Flashrec. In short, the One-Click Root no longer works.
  • A new ‘perfect’ SPL (version 1.76.2010 SAP50000). This one comes with Security On and Fastboot disabled. As such, Magic users can no longer simply boot from a new recovery image and flash.
  • Strict sigchecks are now in place, which prevent running the RUU with the previous ROM from working (HBOOT reports a Main Version Error if you try to run the RUU or use the rom.zip as a SAPPIMG.zip).
  • The Gold Card method no longer works. This is an odd one, because it seems to process, but then exits without error. It isn’t likely that Rogers disabled it – rather, they probably changed how it operates (update: it appears that even when using a Gold Card, it still does a Main Version Check – as such, none of the existing SAPPIMG.img ROMs will work, as they are all older versions).
  • There is an engineering SPL floating around the internet, however without a way to flash it, it currently does us no good.

As such, Rogers users with the Mandatory Update are currently boned. In order to gain root, we need one of the following:

  1. A new Kernel Root Elevation Exploit that will allow an application like Flashrec to load a new recovery image.
  2. A newer ROM that we can inject the engineering SPL in that will allow Fastboot (edit: although this is *very* difficult, if not impossible to do while keeping the signature in tact)
  3. An answer to why the Gold Card method is failing, and a fix for that (edit: I’ve re-created my gold card and tried again, this time with no other specific errors. I’m on the lookout for a newer SAPPIMG that works with 32A Magic’s that has a higher version than the Rogers ROM – that may well be the key). Update – the most likely reason that the gold card method is failing is that it doesn’t bypass the Main Version check. As such, we’re still stuck until a newer SAPPIMG is leaked with an engineering SPL.
  4. An easier-to-use JTAG method (see XDA forum link below).

Until one of these solutions is found, we’re stuck with 1.5. So far, solution number 2 looks like our best bet, as Rogers has announced that Magic users will receive an Android 2.1 update (with Sense UI) sometime soon – when this update comes out, it should be possible for an engineering SPL to be injected in to the update. Until that happens, we’re stuck without access to a number of newer apps (like Google Goggles and Google Earth), and flaky Bluetooth.

The important things to take away from this are the following:

  • If you care about rooting, NEVER perform a ROM update from Rogers unless you’re prepared to lose the ability to root, possibly forever. When the 2.1 update comes out, avoid it like the plague until it has either been deemed safe, a de-fanged version has been released, or someone has ‘fixed’ it to allow rooting.
  • Watch the XDA forums for information regarding updates.
  • Don’t trust Rogers.

Update: In response to a comment below, here are a few of the best threads for information on the rooting effort:

Additionally, I’m currently selling my Rogers HTC Magic. Yes, it has the update applied, as I received after the update was released. If you’re interested, send me an email. Currently asking $300 OBO.

Support: I Want This Guy On Speed Dial

25. February 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Hardware, Support, Troubleshooting · Tags: , ,

Although today has been a real Gong Show, my morning was brightened by, of all things, a chat with Dell Support:

10:04:03 AM System You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat
10:04:03 AM System Connected with ***_Oliver_******

10:04:08 AM ***_Oliver_******: Hi, thank you for contacting DELL Canada support, my name is Oliver, how may I help you?

10:05:01 AM Laslow: I have a system that is unable to POST. If I remove the video card and use the onboard video, it POSTs fine. If I take the video card from an identical unit and try that, it also works fine. It appears that the video card is defective, and I need a replacement sent out.

10:07:13 AM ***_Oliver_******: I’ll do my best to assist you with this one.
10:07:48 AM ***_Oliver_******: I could see here that system is an ***** and warranty is active until *****.

10:07:55 AM Laslow: That is correct.

10:08:58 AM ***_Oliver_******: I’ll replace this.
10:09:13 AM ***_Oliver_******: Would you like me to send an onsite tech ?

10:09:21 AM Laslow: No thank you – the part will be fine.

10:09:33 AM ***_Oliver_******: May I have the shipping address?

10:09:58 AM Laslow: ***** ***** ***** *****

10:11:23 AM ***_Oliver_******: By the way, may I know who’s the registered owner of the system?

10:12:46 AM Laslow: ***** ***** ***** *****

10:13:28 AM ***_Oliver_******: Thanks. I’ll go ahead and process the case and dispatch. This would take me about 5 minutes. Hold on.

10:13:34 AM Laslow: Thank you.

10:13:39 AM ***_Oliver_******: Would you like me to send the reference numbers thru email instead?

10:13:50 AM Laslow: That would be greatly appreciated.

10:14:49 AM ***_Oliver_******: Please wait for the part next business day. Return to us the old part not later than ten days once the replacement part is received. You could use the same box that came in with it.
10:14:54 AM ***_Oliver_******: Anything else I can help you with?

10:15:09 AM Laslow: No, that is fine. Thank you very much! You have been very helpfull!

10:15:19 AM ***_Oliver_******: Would you like me to contact you to followup on this?

10:15:36 AM Laslow: No, that will not be required.

10:17:39 AM ***_Oliver_******: Ok. Thank you! Thank you for choosing DELL, have a good day!

10:17:51 AM Laslow: Thanks again!

This is probably the first time that I’ve spoken with Dell where I haven’t had to fight to get the part I wanted, but where the turn-around time was less than 15 minutes! I’m completely and utterly shocked! Also, that was the shortest 5 minutes I’ve ever had to wait for them to process the dispatch request.
Edit: Sorry for the poor formatting – WordPress also hates me today.
« Older articles
Newer articles »