Friday, February 18, 2005

hx4705 battery lock causes panic!

I had a brief panic this morning when my hx4705 wouldn't turn on. At first I thought that I'd accidentally let the battery run completely flat. As any PDA user can tell you, this is a bad thing because it means you lose data. It's an especially bad thing if you haven't done a back-up in a while (which I hadn't!!)

I plugged the iPAQ into the power and attempted to turn it on again. Still nothing. Then I tried using the soft reset button. Still nothing. I wondered if it was so flat that it needed to charge for a while before it would turn on. So I left it charging for a while and tried again. Still nothing. Other thing that didn't look too promising was that the orange power light on the iPAQ was not flashing. Even if the iPAQ was flat, this light would normally come on when it's plugged into the power.

I was quite distressed at this point. I was now hoping that the problem was indeed a flat battery (which meant I had lost a pile of data) and not something more serious, i.e. a dead iPAQ. I wondered if maybe there was something wrong with my charger, so I tried charging with my sync/charge cable. Still nothing. I pulled the iPAQ out of it's nice leather Sena case to check out the battery. It looked fine. Dearie me, I thought. What is going on??

Finally, after much distress, I realised what the problem was. The battery lock had been bumped into the 'unlock' position. It must be in the 'locked' position for the iPAQ to power up. I guess this just happened when it got bumped around in my bag.

I flicked the battery lock into the 'locked' position and used the soft reset button. It was an enormous relief to see the screen light up!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

I'm in need of some help. I really hope you can hear me out.

I bought an ipaq 6315 off ebay. I know, I know, I should know better. Anyway, it won't power on, even when I plug it into the adapter. I don't have a battery. I need to know if the unit is dead or if it's not powering on b/c there is no battery.

Could you please run a test for me? Could you please take your battery out, plug the unit it, and try to power it up? Make sure the battery lock is in the locked position so we know that's not the cause.

I have a feeling these units are battery sensitive since they care so much if the battery lock is on. There's a very good chance it will not power on without the battery. If that's the case, I'll go buy a battery. If not, I don't want to waste more money.

If you could help, it would really help me out.

Thanks,
Vinh a.k.a. hoping in Canada for some help :)

Jasmine said...

Hi there,

I'm pretty sure your iPAQ is not going to work at all without a battery, even if you have it plugged into the AC charger.

If I pull the battery out of my iPAQ then it will wipe everything in main memory, so I'm obviously not keen to try this!

Cheers,
Jasmine