Monday, September 25, 2006

HP iPAQ Pocket PC hx4700 - hard reset

Hello!

Periodically I see something or learn something that I want to share or think others may be interested in. Tonight that happened again, and this time I couldn't find the answer to my question with Google. So it's time to start a blog.

My wife gave me her HP iPAQ Pocket PC hx4700 (again). I had previously "upgraded" it to Windows Mobile 5 (WM5). So after she gave it to me, I tried to hard reset it (the latest phrase may now be "clean reset"). Hard resetting with WM5 turns out to be different than with previous versions of the operating system. You still press the power, calendar, and task buttons concurrently and then press the reset button in the hole on the bottom. But this is where it changes. When you do this, you will see three lines in red:

Enable KITL
Clean Registry Hive
Format Storage

Next to each one of these lines is "No" or "Yes". You can move through the lines by pressing the calendar button, and you can toggle the "No"/"Yes" by pressing the task button.

To hard reset the device, make sure "Enable KITL" is set to "No". Set the other two to "Yes". Next (get this!) press the record button on the side of the IPAQ - and wait. It will take a while.

Good luck!