Trouble Shooting Guide

This is a new section which documents how to resolve general problems with the A1200. Hopefully it will grow over time!!

WARNING: A lot of the A1200's/Mings being sold on Ebay are either outright fakes or refurbished phones (faulty phones put into a new case). It is also suspected that a batch of phones that failed Quality Testing and that should have been destroyed have somehow made there way to some dealers - as there has been a large number of phones with touchscreen and other problems being reported since July 2007. Always buy from a reputable dealer and make sure that the phone comes with at least a 1 year warranty. Buying from an unrecognized vendor to save a few bucks, may very well end in tears and an expensive paperweight!! See this thread for more on this and pictures.

If your A1200 starts acting up (File Manager stops working, Contacts or Call Records database corrupted, Missed calls icon not displaying, not receiving calls correctly, etc) then there are 3 basic steps you should perform which seems to fix most issues:

Turn off phone and take out battery and leave out for 5 min - replace and turn back on. This simple action often fixes wierd behaviour.

Perform Master Reset - this just puts all your phone settings back to default. None of your data is lost. Go to App Manager –> Setup and go to bottom and select Master Reset. Default password is 6 0's (000000).

If still no-go, perform a Master Clear. This should do it, but you will lose all your data on phone (address book, calandar) and content you have downloaded to phone memory (photos and sounds). Things on the SD card are not touched. So you should backup all your data with MPT, Superman or similar app before doing this. Go to App Manager –> Setup and go to bottom and select Master Clear. Default password is 6 0's (000000).

Note 1: Master Reset and Master Clear are accessable only when SIM card inserted - otherwise they are greyed out.

Note 2: If you have enabled Edge using the Radiocomm, you should avoid doing a Master Clear or Master Reset as it may cause your phone to continuously reboot. See following isse for details. Phone keeps Rebooting by itself!

Many users have recently had this problem. It has been identified that if you have enabled Edge using the Radiocomm SEEM edit, there is a known bug that if you later do a Master Clear or Master Reset this will cause your phone to start to continuously reboot.

There is a simple solution that is described in detail in the topic “Enabling Edge”” in the Guide to Modding Your A1200 on Motorolafans.com

File Manager Freezes or Stops Working → Reset to Default Status

There is a bug with some firmwares that if you change your File Manager to Thumbnail view it will cause File Manager to freeze. If this happens or if File Manager stops working correctly a Master Reset will fix your problem - but that will cause you to lose the settings for all your other apps also. If you just want to set the File Manager back to its default status you can do as as follows:

[You need to have EKonsole installed to do this. See list of PKG apps at top of sticky for where to get this program from.]

Open EKonsole and type:

Code: cd /ezx_user/download/appwrite/setup rm -rf ezx_mystuff.cfg

And your file manager will be reset to default setting. This commands remove the specific file that holds the configuration of the File Manager. When removed, its recreated at first run of the program, with defaults on it.

This command does not touch the settings of other stuff like a Master Reset does. What a Master Reset does is only to erase stuff on \ezx_user\, forcing ALL apps back to default.

An alternate method (if you have LINLOADER) is to create a simple ”.lin” script with:

Code: #!/bin/bash cd /ezx_user/download/appwrite/setup rm -rf ezx_mystuff.cfg

If your phone hangs when turning it on - freezing on either the motorola screen or startup wall paper of theme and if you have recently installed or changed your skin or theme then, unfortunately, what has happened is that you have filled up the phones memory and it no longer has enough space needed to reboot.

Even if you try to turn it off using the red power key, it will just beep and do nothing. The only way to turn it off is to take out the battery.

Section F Changing Skins in the Guide to Modding Your A1200 sticky has a more detailed explanation of what has gone wrong - but the only solution to this is to reflash your phone's firmware. Refer to the Guide for Flashing your A1200 on instructions on how to do that.

SD Card does not appear in File Manager

If your SD card suddently stops being displayed in your File Manager then try the following

1. Reboot phone

2. If still no luck then go to Viewer –> storage card then go back to File Manager and see if SD card has reappeared.

3. If still no luck then try a Master Reset

It could also be happening if you do not disconnect the phone from your PC properly. When the phone is plugged into the PC in MASS STORAGE mode, the control of the SD card is given to the PC. If you disconnect the hardware properly via windows USB RELEASE process (like you should do for any USB drive), then the SD card is restored to the phone. If you are just pulling out the cable, then the card may not be restored to the phone correctly. If this is happening, then simply plug phone back into the PC and use the USB release process.

Many apps (=midlet) need to be able to read or write files to the phone's directories, however, the MID2.0 security model was designed so that only signed midlets are able to have unlimited access to potentially dangerous operations such as filesystem access, connection with internet, sending SMS etc. If a midlet is not signed, then access is disabled (which means that when you run the app you are not even shown a File Open” menu option). In order to get a signed midlet, the developer has had to have purchased a security certificate from Motorola, which many developers do not want to do (especially for free apps) - so if you install these midlets on the A1200 they will not appear to work properly.

However there is a way to overcome this. Every app has a registry.txt file associated with it that can be edited to give the app the needed permission. See the Guide to Modding Your A1200 sticky for full instructions on how to locate and edit this file. Some apps that you need to do this for to get them working correctly are Quicknotes, Minipauker, Trekbuddy, cTunes and Anyview.

If phone refuses to read SIM card, try the following:

1. Tap on status bar in home screen. Switch off antenna tap ok on the bottom. Then switch on antenna again. (You may need to repeat this a couple of times)

2. If that doesn't work, change the network band to 850/1900 [dial pad screen –> Menu (at bottom left) –> Setup –> Tap on “Network setup” –> Menu –> Search setup –> Band and put it on 850/1900. [Edit: if phone is not reading SIM card at all then you will not be able to do this as Setup option will not appear on menu!]

3. After that close all those things and you should have service. Once you get your service back, repeat the steps and put it on automatic again.

If that does not work, other users had success doing the following:

a. Go to Setup –> usb mode

b. Change it to Mass Storage then turn phone off and on.

c. Card should now be able to be read.

If you are trying to install a .jar or .jad file and I will not let you select to install it to the SD card on the install popup (i.e. you can only install the app to your phone) then check how much free space you have left on your SD card. If you have less than 10-15mb of free space on your memory card then the install function will not let you select “SD card”. [Thanks to m41d3n for this great tip!].

If you accidentally lock your phone or a folder on the phone, then try the default password 1234. If this does not work then see this thead for a tool that may be able to unlock it.

If you password protect your SD card and then forget the password - there is no easy way to recover it (otherwise the password protection would be useless!!). The only known way is to use a tool as described on this thread. Touch Screen keeps Freezing

It has been reported by several dozen users that their touch screens suddenly stopped responding (or only responds intermittently). This is known hardware problem in some recent batches of Ming (first reported July 2007) - usually in phones bought off ebay. It appears that the touch screen can work itself loose as there is no fastening mechanism on the board - it is connected only by means of a flex cable. So any sudden shock could result in it coming slightly loose. If its in warranty, immediately get the whole phone/screen replaced from a service centre free of cost.

If its not in warranty then the only solution is to try these two things:

Easy fix: Reset touchscreen - When screen FREEZES, press your thumb gently in the center of screen for 5 seconds and it will reset the touchscreen. This is just temporary solution as the screen may freeze again later but most of the times it comes out of freeze and you can start working.

Slightly Harder Fix: open the screws at the back with a T6 screw driver, use a guitar pick to pry open the rear housing, then you need the pick to pry the board from its seating, do it gently. Remove and re-attach the screen, whyile prying the board off be sure not to break the small keys on the side. And then carefully put back the board. Make sure the keys are seated correctly by pressing them and listening to the click noise.

Footnote: All of the information presented in this write-up was obtained from user's postings from the various threads on www.motorolafans.com. A best effort was made to ensure it is complete and accurate including performing all of the steps presented on my own phone(Alpha43) - but there are no guarantees there are not errors!!

This Guide took many hours to research and put together. If you found the information useful, perhaps you would consider donating a few dollars to keep the Motorolafans site funded as it costs $60 each month in hosting fees. See the announcement at the top of the A1200 forum at www.motorolafans.com for details on how to do this or contact me (Alpha43 or Admin) for details on how to do so.

Special Thanks to Moderators Alpha43 and Kiwiguy @ www.motorolafans.com for the above information.