Frequently Asked Questions
My backlight isn't adjustable/goes dim and I can't bring it back.
Turn off automatic backlight adjustment in WinMo (Settings -> System -> Power -> Backlight), and then you should be able to adjust it in Android.
Will this hard reset my device/trash my Windows Mobile install/make it unable to get back to Windows Mobile?
No. I guess in some very rare case, a bad boot could mess up some underlying phone settings and require a hard reset -- but it's never happened to me, or anyone else I've heard of, at least not with these kernels. How HaRET works is it bootstraps a linux kernel off of the SD Card and loads in into memory, then mounts the system and data files from the SD card. Nothing on the internal memory (ROM/nand) is ever touched. When you pull the battery or soft reset the device, it boots back up into WinMo as if nothing had ever happened.
My touchscreen is totally nuts -- upside down, backwards -- or just unusable.
Reboot and delete the ts-calibration file from the root of your SD Card. On your next boot, you will have the opportunity to recalibrate the touchscreen. Tap the points very lightly -- the touchscreen is very sensitive, and the calibration tool does not have any meaningful error checking, so it is possible to click the same point 2 or 3 times without meaning to.
CDMA Data isn't working.
Sometimes this is caused by incorrect or missing APN settings. When Android boots up, go to Settings -> Wireless & Networks -> Mobile Networks -> Access Point Names. You should see an entry with Name: Android (or CDMA Generic), and APN: internet. If this entry is not active, activate it. If you see nothing, hit menu (the button with the house), create a new APN, and put in the settings Name: Android and APN: internet. Everything else can be left blank/default.
If you are on a network that uses login name and password for #777 dial up networking, and none of this works, you can try the instructions
here, which may or may not help (you'll need your correct name and password).
The system fails to boot, saying something about "Cannot mount SD Card"
This is usually due to the card being incorrectly partitioned. Some have reported luck using the HP Disk Tool (
Google) to repartition and reformat. If you have access to a linux distribution, GParted can easily repartition. The correct state is one primary partition (the failing cards tend to have one extended partition, containing one logical partition).
Do I have to store all the files in the root of my SD Card? I'm a neat freak and it's giving me palpitations.
Old builds allowed you to store everything in /sdcard/android/. In the newer builds, this has been removed (as other android applications were dumping files in /sdcard/android/ and confusing the boot script). Now the boot script first looks for a rel_path=xxxx variable in the cmdline (in startup.txt) and then looks in /sdcard/xxxx/. If no such variable exists, it looks for a directory /sdcard/andboot/. If that does not exist, it looks in the root of the sdcard.
What should it look like when it boots?
chibiushi made a
Youtube video of what it looks like from opening up HaRET, to loading the kernel, to the Android home screen (and then to loading Sprint TV, which apparently works). It should look about like this. If you have 3d working, you'll get a boot animation during the point where he has a black screen, and if you need to create a data partition, the delays will be longer; but, otherwise, this is it.
Why aren't applications (Pandora, Facebok, etc.) showing up in the Market?
The chief cause of this problem is Android only displays applications it thinks will look right on your screen. It does this by reading the lcd.density setting. If this is set to 210 in startup.txt, then Android will display all applications. If it's set to 240 (which makes the screen display more applications without bars on the sides or other display problems), applications that are specified only for normal resolution devices will disappear. In order to get all apps back, change lcd.density to 210 and delete data.img, then connect to the market.
How do I transfer my Contacts?
Easiest way is to use
Google Sync to transfer from WinMo to your Google account, and then Android automatically will sync from there (as long as you tell it to sync contacts from that account -- which is, I believe, the default). Otherwise, you can export from Outlook to csv (comma-separated values), and then
import into your google contacts. Finally, a third method, avoiding both Outlook and Activesync (instead using PIM Backup) is
here.
Why does the LED in the D-Pad "breathe" when the phone is shut off?
This is a little debugging tool to assure that the phone is actually sleeping (i.e. in full power collapse mode). Sometimes this doesn't work, and when the phone looks like it's off, it's actually in full power mode. If you're annoyed by it, you can remove the LEDEffects application from the AndroidApps folder, and that should disable it.
Is there any way to stop the constant low battery warnings?
In the startup.txt file, in the cmdline portion, add the text (without the quotes, separated from the other values by spaces) "htc_battery_smem.fake=1". This makes the phone think it's always connected to a charger, with the only effect being that it no longer complains about the battery dipping below 15%
.
My device crashes immediately after I run HaRET and it says 'Loading Linux'.
A small number of phones (not phone models... just individual phones) have marginal memory. The default startup.txt contains an entry "acpuclock.force_turbo=1", which overclocks the memory. For most people, this leads to a small speed increase. For some, it makes the system unbootable. If you have trouble, just remove that part of the cmdline and try again.
What are all these FSCK___.REC files in the root of my SD card?
They are left by dosfsck, which checks the file system integrity of the sd card every time you boot. You can delete the files, or add the line "rm -f /sdcard/fsck*.rec" to your froyo.user.conf file in the CONF directory. It goes in at the end of the file, in the "custom_shells{" section. (Thanks to arrrghhh for this tip.)