help with install and start - major problems!!

blandmc

Member
Hi all -

Sorry to be a newbie, but I am having major problems.

I have a Windows 6.1 OS HTC Snap! phone. I downloaded Pleco and installed it to my 8GB microSD card in my phone view MS ActiveSync. The Pleco installation program on my PC said that installation completed successfully.

However when I looked at my phone there is no Pleco program on the home screen, it does not exist under the Start root screen, nor any icon in Accessories or Games or anywhere else. If I use File Explorer and look at the microSD card, I can lots of pleco files there (and nothing else was ever on the card before) but no way to start the program. I power cycled the phone and same thing... except a bigger problem.

Installing Pleco deleted all my:
- SMS text messages ever sent
- my entire Hotmail program on the phone
- All emails and ability to connect via Outlook to my work email server

What the heck?!? Has anyone had this happen? How do you successfully install? And how do you keep Pleco from killing your phone? And when you do install where is the program launch icon? Crazy!

I have not yet been able to fix my phone... I cant get my Outlook to work anymore... I reconnected to HOtmail, but the phone is now so insanely slow that it is obvious there are major problems now post-Pleco install.

Please help if anyone has any advice! (otherwise I have no option but to kill all info in my phone and re-install Windows OS to fix it I guess).

Thanks in advance for any help

-michael
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yikes, sorry to hear about all of that.

Before dealing with the Pleco installation issue, the first question is why all of these other items have suddenly stopped working; they're not really stored in a place where our installer would overwrite them, so perhaps the installation process itself brought out some sort of other issue in your phone.

Are other settings / other programs still working correctly (i.e. it's just these specific things that aren't)? Was there an actual Hotmail application that has now disappeared, or was it just a web link or something along those lines? How long had it been since you last used ActiveSync? Was it actually ActiveSync (on Windows XP) as opposed to Windows Mobile Device Center (on Windows Vista / 7)?
 

blandmc

Member
all other programs are still there and still working though as stated the device is incredibly slow now. I activesync every day with my device, so this is not the problem. The only change was the installation of Pleco. I have no idea how this installation acted like malicious software to kill my phone, but has anyone else had this happen? MOre importantly what is supposed to happen when you install? I certainly hope this is not the goal...
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
blandmc said:
all other programs are still there and still working though as stated the device is incredibly slow now. I activesync every day with my device, so this is not the problem. The only change was the installation of Pleco. I have no idea how this installation acted like malicious software to kill my phone, but has anyone else had this happen? MOre importantly what is supposed to happen when you install? I certainly hope this is not the goal...

Certainly not, and we're not aware of anything else like this happening before... the slow behavior is also odd, if you don't even have a Pleco program icon visible then I don't know how you could have ended up with our software running in the background (if it even is).

Try this first: delete the Pleco stuff from your SD card, then delete Pleco from Program Files too if you can find it in there, then reboot your phone again; does that fix the slowdown at least?
 

blandmc

Member
I deleted the previous outlook server settings and was able to get my work email back and re-sync'ed everything all good now, and after a few power-cycles the device seems to be OK... but, I still don't see the Pleco application anywhere.

Is there some special installation method besides downloading your program, installing via ActiveSync?
If it supposedly successfully installs, where should I look for the launch icon?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
blandmc said:
I deleted the previous outlook server settings and was able to get my work email back and re-sync'ed everything all good now, and after a few power-cycles the device seems to be OK... but, I still don't see the Pleco application anywhere.

Is there some special installation method besides downloading your program, installing via ActiveSync?
If it supposedly successfully installs, where should I look for the launch icon?

Well if you still want to give it a try I'd recommend using a Card Install instead; that avoids ActiveSync altogether. See:

http://www.pleco.com/manual/wminst.html#card

for instructions on how to do one of those; your phone should include an option to mount as a USB drive on your computer, so if you don't have an SD card reader you can access your SD card directly using that.
 

blandmc

Member
since i dont have a microSD card reader, I cannot do the "card install".
i re-downloaded the automated install 2.04 from your site, and tried again through activesync. same thing, it says it installed successfully, but i have no idea where the launch icon in. WHERE IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE? Could you please let me know where to look? At least this time it did not delete anything off my phone. Outlook email and hotmail still working... just cant figure out how I am supposed to launch this program. Please let me know. Thanks!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
blandmc said:
since i dont have a microSD card reader, I cannot do the "card install".
i re-downloaded the automated install 2.04 from your site, and tried again through activesync. same thing, it says it installed successfully, but i have no idea where the launch icon in. WHERE IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE? Could you please let me know where to look? At least this time it did not delete anything off my phone. Outlook email and hotmail still working... just cant figure out how I am supposed to launch this program. Please let me know. Thanks!

It should show up in Program Files just like any other program - not sure why it wouldn't be.

So there's no command on your phone to mount it as a USB drive on your computer? That would let your phone basically act as a card reader.

You could also try the instructions at:

http://www.pleco.com/manual/wminst.html#manual

which have you copy files manually using ActiveSync.
 

blandmc

Member
nope.. no options on phone like that... but I was wandering around the phone and saw a pleco directory, opened that up, and saw a pleco.exe file and selected it and it ran the program! Wow... What an insanely odd method to launch it. Is this your plan? No launch icon installed as per usual, but the phone user has to go into accessories, open file explorer, go up out of the default directory, find program files, pleco, and select a .exe file to launch? This is a horrible idea if this is truly the intention.

Then when I ran the program, it does not fit the screen well, and nothing works right. You cant select anything, the backspace button acts as a back to last screen button so you cant delete anything you type, when you select an English-Chinese dictionary, it seems to expect chinese input, but you disallow the standard phone buttons that toggle between english and chinese.

I originally saw a friend using Pleco on an Apple iPhone, and it worked well. So, it appears to me that you have designed this originally for an iPhone and then tried to make a Windows OS version... but obviously it is having major problems. For now, I have to recommend that no Windows OS user tries to use this... I am a pretty advanced Windows user... and it was extremely difficult to work with and VERY buggy. I know I will uninstall this and look for other solutions. I am disappointed that you do not have a good Windows OS solution for Pleco, but not much to do but move on.

Good luck.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
blandmc said:
nope.. no options on phone like that... but I was wandering around the phone and saw a pleco directory, opened that up, and saw a pleco.exe file and selected it and it ran the program! Wow... What an insanely odd method to launch it. Is this your plan? No launch icon installed as per usual, but the phone user has to go into accessories, open file explorer, go up out of the default directory, find program files, pleco, and select a .exe file to launch? This is a horrible idea if this is truly the intention.

That's not at all the intention, no - did you try one of those other sets of instructions I suggested?

blandmc said:
Then when I ran the program, it does not fit the screen well, and nothing works right. You cant select anything, the backspace button acts as a back to last screen button so you cant delete anything you type, when you select an English-Chinese dictionary, it seems to expect chinese input, but you disallow the standard phone buttons that toggle between english and chinese.

Ah, I finally figured out the source of your problems - the HTC Snap doesn't have a touchscreen, does it? Pleco isn't really designed to work on those - per the product info page:

Windows Mobile: Pleco 2.0 should run on any touchscreen-equipped Windows Mobile handheld / smartphone running Windows Mobile 2003 or later, including the HTC Touch series of smartphones and the HP iPAQ 110/210 series of handhelds. It won't work on earlier versions of Windows Mobile (Pocket PC 2002) or on devices without touchscreens like the Samsung Blackjack and Motorola Q.

That wouldn't necessarily explain the installation issues, but it would cover the interface wonkiness at least.

blandmc said:
I originally saw a friend using Pleco on an Apple iPhone, and it worked well. So, it appears to me that you have designed this originally for an iPhone and then tried to make a Windows OS version... but obviously it is having major problems. For now, I have to recommend that no Windows OS user tries to use this... I am a pretty advanced Windows user... and it was extremely difficult to work with and VERY buggy. I know I will uninstall this and look for other solutions. I am disappointed that you do not have a good Windows OS solution for Pleco, but not much to do but move on.

We actually wrote our Windows Mobile version first, and by all accounts it works fine on touchscreen devices; however, as we don't support your device (and are unlikely to do so in the future) I'm afraid moving on is about all you can do.

Very sorry for the hassle, and for not making the lack of touchscreen support clearer - for what it's worth, I just added a note to the download page about touchscreens (and Windows Phone 7 support) in the hopes of not putting anyone else through this much trouble for a product they can't use.
 

blandmc

Member
thanks for your attentiveness to my issues. Only last problem is your uninstall feature also doesn't work.
It says it has been removed from my device, but it has not. I'll have to find a way to somehow delete this... but can't find any way to delete it from MS ActiveSync (it is not registered as an installed program for some reason). file explore on device does not include delete, and MS ActiveSYnc does not allow looking at the storage card to delete those data files either... *sigh*
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
blandmc said:
thanks for your attentiveness to my issues. Only last problem is your uninstall feature also doesn't work.
It says it has been removed from my device, but it has not. I'll have to find a way to somehow delete this... but can't find any way to delete it from MS ActiveSync (it is not registered as an installed program for some reason). file explore on device does not include delete, and MS ActiveSYnc does not allow looking at the storage card to delete those data files either... *sigh*

Might be that Pleco was still running in the background during the uninstall; try rebooting your phone and then running the uninstaller again.

If that doesn't work, there are a number of free file explorer programs you can download that would allow you to delete files - just do an internet search for "windows mobile file explorer" and you should find lots of links.
 
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