I got a new phone today (I returned the LG 8500 I had for a Samsung SCH-i730.) It worked fine out of the box, but I was told I should upgrade to windows mobile 5, cause it’s so much better than pocket PC 2003. Well, that worked like a piece of shit.
I downloaded the updater, and it warned me that it wasn’t configured to use Microsoft Active-Sync 4.2, just 4.1 and older, but I had no way to get 4.1, and I figured it would be fine. Well, it got to about 73%, then froze. (I should also take this minute to mention that the update window takes up the whole center of my screen, and cannot be minimized and demands to be on top, so I can barely use my computer for anything else, since all I have is some free space above, below, and to the sides of the window.) I took the thing out of the cradle, and stopped to updater with task manager. When I turned the phone back on, it was the firmware screen with some message at the bottom. I tried to update again, but since the phone wasn’t in the OS, my computer and the updater didn’t recognize that it was there.
Well, eventually, the phone “fixed itself” and windows mobile 5 booted up. Everything seemed fine that I could tell, except that it wouldn’t sync with active-sync. AS would just freeze when connected. So I found out that I can boot the phone into “emergency mode” and re-install WM5 that way (since it wouldn’t do a regular re-install since it detected WM5 already running.)
That worked about as well as everything else. I did get it to boot into the emergency mode, and the updater started…then froze at 2%. It couldn’t connect to the device. SO I removed it from the cradle, and tried again, but now the phone won’t go into emergency mode, even though I’m doing what I did before (turn it on while holding the send and end buttons.) Instead, I just get a ‘formatting root’ message at the bottom. I tried to install WM5 anyway, and it seemed to work, but got to 74%, and then the updater froze.
So now my phone is sitting there, saying ‘formatting root,’ and in general being a giant pain in the ass.