My Slider locked up (frozen computer icon screen) ..yet I managed to save it?
Yesterday my Slider finally suffered from the same problem that a lot of people on here have experienced. Based on the responses in other threads in the archives, it seemed like there was nothing I could do and that my Slider was finally dead after an entire year of never having any lock up problems.
What happened was I turned off the phone Sunday night before going to sleep, and when I turned it back on Monday morning it seemed like it was starting up as usual with the little start up noise, but then it suddenly cleared the screen and displayed its "frozen" screen which shows a computer icon on the top left and a phone icon on the bottom right, just like in this old pic someone posted long ago:
For hours, this is all it would do. I tried turning the phone on over and over again...taking out my new battery and putting in my old one...taking out the battery and leaving the Slider plugged into the charger and turning the phone on that way...but nothing seemed to work. No matter wtf I did, this frozen screen would always appear within a few seconds of turning on the phone.
Something I noticed though which I guess none of you guys looked into was that while the Slider is powering on - if I started pressing keys on the phone, I could keep the software alive a few seconds longer and postpone that frozen screen from coming up. After about 20 minutes I was getting bored and frustrated, so just for the hell of it I wanted to see if I could make it into the options menu before the phone froze...and I was successful. Thanks to the few seconds the software gives me before it freezes the phone (and the fact that the Slider recognizes every key that you press as soon as you turn on the phone), I took this a step further and somehow managed to save my Slider by making the phone go into the Service Programming menu right after the hour glass fades away, but I had to perfom this right after the phone turns on.
You have to press these keys in rapid succession (without any long pauses) as soon as the hourglass comes up otherwise the frozen screen will kick in after the hour glass disappears: press 1-1-1-1-1-1 (that's 1 six times) - then press OK (which goes into the hidden Options screen) - then press DOWN once (which highlights Programming) - then enter press OK (brings up the Service Programming security screen) - then punch in the six digit Security Programming Code (SPC) that corresponds to your phone (the code for my Metro Slider is 976600 while other SPCs are 868666 123456 654321 000000 etc...do a search on here to find the SPC for your provider's phone) - then press DOWN.
As soon as the hour glass went away I was inside of the Service Programming menu and the phone was staying on/that computer icon freeze screen was no longer coming up. My phone didn't have any service (since the service is suspended when you go into the Service Programming menu) but at least now I finally got the phone to stay on for a whole minute. That was somewhat exciting after not being able to do jack with the phone all day. After this, I left the phone alone for a few minutes (I went into some of the settings but didn't change anything) and then exited. Well the phone rebooted and the problem occurred again, so I repeated this process a second time...and for whatever reason after the second reboot it started working fine again. I don't remember if I had to do this more than twice to get the phone to work again but all I know is the phone isn't freezing at start up anymore.
Futhermore, you could possibly use this trick just to get your Slider to stay on long enough to access the memory with BitPim or PST (if that wasn't previously working).
So to break that down for you, as soon as I see the hour glass when I turn on the phone, I punch in:
1-1-1-1-1-1-OK-DOWN-OK-9-7-6-6-0-0-DOWN
Wait a couple minutes....exit Service Programming. Phone reboots. (Repeat again if necessary)
You guys who are experiencing this problem with the computer screen freeze should give this a shot. I don't know about Sliders that are stuck with the "dog.c" error screen though. With my problem, my Slider's splash screen/music would at least load before the phone would lock.
(On a side note - I haven't hooked the Slider up to my data cable in over 2 months nor downloaded anything to my phone in a long time...so I'm guessing this failure I had was not a memory overflow related issue. Nevertheless..the phone was stuck in its "download mode" for whatever reason and this was the only way I managed to get around it without having to flash/reset the phone.)
Last edited by MetroPieceofShi; 12-14-2004 at 05:35 AM.
thanks for the trick! when that happens to my sliders i hook'em up to the pst and reload a backup of the nvm settings. takes 30 seconds, and doesn't overwrite files. but for those without the pst this is a valuable workaround
hahaha i remember when i took that pic on the table(when i brought the phone in the pool with me), yea, i paid $50 for a new one(sept 04), and guess what? i took the "new" one to the beach and brought it in the gulf of mexico with me....that was this past saturday, i just took it to the verizon kiosk in the mall yesterday....i told them i didnt know what happened (i noticed the red crap didnt go away from the water) and they overnighted me a new one for nothing! $0.00 for a new, scratchless, SE47...hahaha..the only prob is, my battery is completely f'd, so i guess i need to buy a new one, but still, i pwned veriz0n like whoa. so just try to tell them you dont know what happend with it, if you have that red crap behind the battery intact, tell em, "hey man, what about my manufacturer warrenty?" they should give you a new one, and if not, threaten them that you'll go to cingular, and if that doesnt work, just do the $50
I'm going to bump this because it may help people who have this common problem, and don't have access to a data cable. Others will tell you the phone is dead...but it may not be so. Try this method. It saved my Slider several times when I thought it was dead.
Last edited by MetroPieceofShi; 06-11-2005 at 05:29 PM.
My kyocera se487 did the same thing-- computer and green arrow pointing to phone. I however had like a split second where it would be booted up to dial numbers. My trick was while the hour glass was spinning, I would tap it face up on the table and I think it jarred it a little and it gave me more time to do the fancy code but thanks a bunch for posting because now my phone is working too! Took 2 times to get it to work though.
The simple solution is to use PST to read the the phone and make a backup. The reflash with a known good bin file, then reload you backup. You will lose nothing and should be fine.
Does Verizon still send SE47's? Mine's brand new...but if it ever gets all scratched up, I wouldn't mind calling VZW up and having them ship me a new one!
I KNOW where the Search button is...I'm gonna ask my question anyway!
I just now had the exact same problem with my slider (same as in the photo). While this trick did work to get me into the ervice menu, no amount of rebooting fixed the phone, had the same "Connect to PC" icon.
What did fix it was disconnecting the battery and letting it sit for a few minutes. Re-connected and all is well. Was able to make a phone call even.
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