I have a compaq ipaq that the battery went dead on yesterday. I placed it in the charging cradle today and now am unable to retrieve my previous saved data. The battery has died before but when placed in charging cradle and then turned back on after charging all the info on the system was there. What happened this time, and can I retrieve what I had on the unit prior to today's charge?

If the battery dies the whole thing does a hard reset after being left for about a week or two. How long did you leave yours for before charging again? The only memory that is not affected is the small backup flash memory unit. All of the other memory is set to factory default. Matt matt@bbcomputing.co.uk www.bbcomputing.co.uk

I got a low battery sign on Friday and then used it for two calculations on Saturday and placed it in the charger when I got home. I thought I would have had a longer time frame before all info was lost. I faithfully charge every time the low battery signal comes on, which for me is every four to five days. I have left it in my briefcase before while on a business trip for 1 week and when I returned the unit was dead, but after charging all my info was still there.

Hmmm then this is a mystery to me. The best advice i can offer is to backup every time you see the low battery icon. Unfortunately PDAs are quite unreliable in this respect. Get an external SD card (or whichever one fits your pda) and back things up onto there. Sorry i couldnt help more. Matt matt@bbcomputing.co.uk www.bbcomputing.co.uk