Need one last breath for a Treo

September 21, 2008 6:30 PM

I need to resurrect a dead Treo 755p for a last ditch effort data backup

My six month old Treo crapped out on me this afternoon. The past couple of weeks, it's been doing a soft reset by itself. I chalked it up to it needing the new software update but haven't gotten around to getting the memory card required.

Today, I went to use it and the screen was completely black, but all the keys were lit up and pulsing. The little status light on the upper left corner is/was orange.

I tried doing a soft reset (taking out the battery), then tried doing the reset where you take out the battery and replace it while holding the up key. No dice. I took the battery out for about a half hour to see if that would help, but it didn't make a difference. I even tried it without the battery, using only the AC adapter. The screen was still black, and the keys pulsing.

I called Sprint CS, and they were (surprise!) less than helpful. They told me that since I have the insurance, I have to call the insurance number in the morning and deal with them (rather than just going to a Sprint store and have them replace it). The Sprint CS rep said something about the phone insurance people sending me a temp phone while I sent them the Treo to be evaluated and replaced. Um. I didn't realise I'd be up for musical phones when I took the insurance option.

I was hoping to sync it so that I could at least get my calendar information off the phone. I tried using the actual USB cable instead of a cradle, but the computer didn't even acknowledge the phone.

Any ideas or am I SOL?

posted by dancinglamb to technology (4 comments total)

Hate to be the bearer of bad news... but invasive surgery aside -- she sounds dead.
posted by SirStan at 7:26 PM on September 21, 2008

Can't help with your actual question, but if you end up with another Treo, I recommend a program called NVBackup. It performs a full backup onto the SD card, and you can schedule it to run every night. So if something like this were to happen again you could just pop out the SD card and restore it onto the new Treo.
posted by jclovebrew at 9:32 PM on September 21, 2008 [2 favorites]

You could take apart the unit and make sure all the ribbon-cable connectors between boards are seated properly. Since the 755p is a NVRam unit, it should be right back where you started if you can get it to get going.

Best of luck!
posted by Orb2069 at 10:37 PM on September 21, 2008

Mechanical failure of a solid-state device is pretty bad news. If youre feeling crazy you can do something like put it in the freezer for an hour or so.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:06 AM on September 22, 2008