red/white/blue/green screen of DEATH!!

[wingtong]

Has anyone else experienced this and/or may know what caused this so that I can avoid it next time?

I woke up one morning to find my treo 700p trying to sync even though it is not connected to a computer. I pick cancel and the sync attempt returns moments later. (this goes on and on). So I take the battery out and back in and the screen asks me if I want to delete the ROM! I say no and it takes me to this red/white/blue/green screen of DEATH! I take the battery out and back in and the same thing happens. I do this serveral times. So I took a gamble and said Yes to the prompt to delete ROM, then it proceeds to ask me if I want to load ROM from sd. If I say no, the screen of DEATH reappears. If I say yes, it says it cannot find the ROM and then the screen of DEATH appears again! Called Palm/Verizon and troubleshooted by soft/hard resets, etc. Finally Verizon said they would replace it.

The only non-std programs I run on the treo are Chatteremail and PDAnet. I was running PDAnet the night before for up to an hour connected to my laptop and browsing the web. One of 2 things could have happened or non of the above. First, after not having the laptop plugged into a wall outlet, I plugged it in and I think I noticed around that time that the treo screen flickered which may point to a power surge issue since the treo is getting trickle power from the USB connection. But the treo continued to work fine until the morning after. Second, since I use PDAnet and was online for over an hour, perhaps a pda/computer worm combo infected my system? (note, I do have winxp with standard firewall running and mcafee virusscan on laptop)

OK, so I got my replacement treo, reloaded and resynched. Last weird thing is that after synching, I tried putting my original sd card that I've reformatted back into the slot and a message came up on the screen saying somthing like "cannot load program from sd" (from my bad recollection). So, long story short, if a rogue program had gotton into my computer/treo system, it may have been saved on the computer during a prior synch? I say this because of the message saying that it cannot load the program from sd and this is probably so because I had reformatted the sd and so whatever was on the sd was no longer there? And if this is the case, this happened prior to the night before's web access (via pdanet).

Anyhow, anyone else ever experience anything similar? I want to know what to avoid if possible. Thanks.

[wingtong]

strike that last part about the sd card. I just tried taking the sd card out and placing it back in and I slipped and the card popped back out which is what also happened that last time I got the message about cannot load the program from sd, actually, it says something more like cannot find the startup program for the sd. So I think at least that part was a user error.

[rachris2]

wingtong... Sounds to me you got a bad Treo that went into a death spiral. There are accounts of these all over the internet. I've had my 700p (Verizon) for less than 2 wks and had to replace it.

The only thing I'd be interested in knowing/seeing is the screen of death you refer to. But other than that, assuming all is at peace right now, I'd chalk it up to A Bad Treo Day.

[wingtong]

I've already chalked it up as a bad treo day since I've gotten my replacement treo. But it would be helpful to find out what potentially caused the red/white/blue/green screen of death so that I can avoid it. I had my treo for about 5 months so whatever happened can happen anytime. I don't want to have to send my treo in every 5-6 months and I think my limited warranty will expire soon, anyhow. I am now hesitant to connect my laptop to the treo via pdanet for web browsing for any extended period of time (if in fact this is a causal factor).

And by the way, believe you me, you don't want to see what the red/white/blue/green screen of death is like. From my recollection, it is 4 rows and 2 columns of rectangles, each with a solid red, white, blue, or green color. And you can't do anything from that point. If you've ever had your computer boot up in the "blue" screen of death, that is what it is like.

[rachris2]

Your description of the screen of death is intriguing because it sounds virus-like. You may be correct in thinking that being connected to the internet could have played a role in the problems you experienced. Especially since you had many months of use before the problem came up.

OTOH, the screen of death could have been good memory gone bad. Too bad we can’t get autopsy reports from dead Treo’s and determine cause of death. Only Palm knows for sure what’s going on. And they aren’t talking…:embarassed:

[Kreth]

Your description of the screen of death is intriguing because it sounds virus-like.

Actually, it sounds like a bootloader screen, which also matches up with the OP's description of being prompted to load a new ROM. Something got hosed in the ROM. It probably could have been fixed with a ROM update, but if the carrier's willing to make good with a replacement, then why bother?