Hey everyone. Well - the worst scenario happended. I was updating a Palm V OS from 3.1.1 to 3.30 and the thing crashed mid way through the update. Now I can't run the update at all and "re-burn" the ROM. Is there any way around this? What a pain :(

I should point out that when I run the OS update, I will be prompted to backup the data before the update occurs. However - there is no data to backup and from what I can tell, the existing OS might be dead too. The Palm V is just frozen on a black screen eternally. Since the backup never occurs, the update never prompts me to click 'next' once the backup is complete.

I feel your pain. Did you try a soft reset on the Palm? That's the first thing to try I think. If that doesn't work, the next step is the hard reset which wipes out all you data on the palm. But if you have all your files on the desktop and can access them, when you get the OS resolved, you can re-load them into the pda. Do you still have all the data in the Palm desktop? Not sure what you mean by "re-burn" the ROM. What OS are you running on your PC? If you have Win XP or Win ME, you could do a system restore to get it back to where it was before you started the update. Before I started the update on the Palm desktop, I copied all the files to another location on my hard drive (outside of the Palm folder - like in My Documents) which is recommended. I also burned a copy to CD, just as a precaution. If you can access all the files on the Palm desktop, I recommend you copy them to another location on your hard drive too. Hope this helps. And if these things don't help, I recommend this site which has a forum. Good luck. http://www.pdastreet.com/

Hi there - Well - the upside to this situation is that I have no data I need to back up. I picked this PDA up from a friend and am just trying to update the system before I put it to use. What I meant be 're-burn' is simply that I am trying to wipe the existing OS out and run a clean install of it. It seems that this existing system is in limbo so running a clean version over it would be best. I'm running Windows XP and have a working Sony CLIE as well as this toasted Palm V. I'm just not sure how to get around the backup prompt. Since I don't need to back anything up, how can I bypass it and just get to the update?

You are beyond my area of expertise now :) I suggest you try the link I posted and post on the forum there. Good luck.

Put the palm in debug mode by holding down the down scrool button while tapping the reset button. The screen should look all fuzzy then. When it is that way run the update software and the os should be upgraded. If you would like I can send you palm os 3.3 upgrade which is a permanent upgrade and not just a update to the existing one. Hope this helps you out. My email is tech230@att.net