Last Spring we changed mobile providers and I got a very spiffy, internet-enabled, touch-screen smartphone, the HTC Pure.
All in all it’s been a terrific phone, and I got the unlimited data plan just before the service provider ended it–so I can watch or listen to all the streamed AV content I can possibly download, as well as podcasts and so on. However, about three weeks ago it developed a rather aggravating problem. It has this feature called Voice Command (VC), which I’ve never used, but last month, it just started turning on VC by itself. What this means is that when I’m listening to stored or streamed content, I often hear the VC audio menu piping up, either reciting the choices or asking me to say something. When this happens, whatever audio I’m listening to is silenced. If it’s one of my stored mp3s, it picks up a couple of seconds later, right where it was cut off; but if I’m listening to live content, I miss that small part of the program. In addition to that, it often starts dialing the last number in my history, of its own volition. I have to keep my history empty all the time now, for that reason.
It seems to be worse when I have the ear buds and adapter plugged in. I’ve experienced trying to make a call using the ear buds, and VC starts dialing away–to the same number so I have a stack of several concurrent calls to that same number.
Needless to say there’s a screen option to disable VC, and I’ve tried that, but it doesn’t stay disabled. After a few minutes it re-enables itself.
From posting and reading messages on the product forum, it appears that the only way to put an end to this is to rename or remove the \windows\vcbthag.dll file, but I can’t find any way to do that. From the native file explorer, the option to do either of those things is disabled when I select the file. I installed Total Commander, a third party file explorer tool. This seems to solve the problem at first, because I can highlight vcbthag.dll and choose an option to delete it. The device appears to spin its wheels for two or three seconds and gives the impression that it’s doing as asked, but in the end an error message appears telling me that it could not delete the file. That’s all it is, no further details. I have been told that this file is in the ROM, which is why deleting it is such a problem. But whether it’s in the ROM or not I have got to get rid of it–or failing that, rename it, or replace it with a nonworking .dll of the same name. I’ve tried hooking up the HTC to my laptop, but if I do that, the Windows folder on the phone is hidden.
Usually I don’t like to ask specific technical questions here, but I’ve tried the obvious choice of specialized forums and haven’t been able to get anywhere useful.