I've been using PlecoDict for more than a year now on my Acer N50 running Windows Mobile 2003 2E. Just recently I've started getting sporadic error messages when I try to run the program. The error box that pops up is titled "No Dictionaries Installed" and it reads: "Cannot locate any dictionary data files. Please double-check that you've correctly installed the files to your Pocket PC." Like I said, this error message is sort of sporadic--it doesn't occur every time I try to run Pleco. But when it does, I can't run the program. Usually after doing 2 or 3 soft resets I am able to run Pleco, but the error message has been popping up more and more lately. I have a feeling that this may have something to do with my SD card, possibly that it needs to be reformatted, but I'm not really sure what that involves. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
"No Dictionaries Installed" Message
- Thread starter mewaters
- Start date
That certainly might fix this, yes; a hard reset / wipe of your device's memory might also be a good idea, even on desktop PCs I usually recommend that people wipe / rebuild their system once every year or two (I do it about once a year myself).
Unfortunately there really isn't a good built-in method to format a memory card on Pocket PC (strange omission on Microsoft's part), I think you'd need to use a utility like http://www.cnetx.com/format/ to do it if you don't have some other device that supports SD cards. If you have a digital camera that takes SD cards, though, you could put the card in that and use the camera's built-in format function to reformat it, and of course if you have an SD card reader for your PC (a lot of laptops have them built in now) you could reformat it like a regular Windows drive that way.
If that doesn't help, to hard reset an N50 and wipe its memory you do a soft reset while holding down the left and right application launch buttons below the screen (Today and Messaging). After doing that, reinstall Pleco and hopefully it should load more smoothly from that point on.
Unfortunately there really isn't a good built-in method to format a memory card on Pocket PC (strange omission on Microsoft's part), I think you'd need to use a utility like http://www.cnetx.com/format/ to do it if you don't have some other device that supports SD cards. If you have a digital camera that takes SD cards, though, you could put the card in that and use the camera's built-in format function to reformat it, and of course if you have an SD card reader for your PC (a lot of laptops have them built in now) you could reformat it like a regular Windows drive that way.
If that doesn't help, to hard reset an N50 and wipe its memory you do a soft reset while holding down the left and right application launch buttons below the screen (Today and Messaging). After doing that, reinstall Pleco and hopefully it should load more smoothly from that point on.
It looks like what's happening is that the Pocket PC simply isn't recognizing the SD card--in fact it doesn't seem to be recognizing any sd card at all. what fun. i'm installing to main memory instead, which takes up a good half of what's available. hopefully it won't be too much of an ordeal to import flashcards and such...
my desktop computer and laptop both definitely recognize the card, but the pocket pc doesn't seem to recognize any sd cards at all. i've tried putting sd cards from my 2 digital cameras in the pocket pc and neither of them seem to be recognized either. one sort of strange thing is that the laptop i just bought does produce a message that there may be something wrong with the sd card that was originally in the pocket pc, but then it checks the card over and says everything is fine and all its contents are accessible.
one other thing: around the same time i started having this problem, I had changed the settings on my pocket pc so that it wouldn't power-off automatically--ever. i was annoyed by the fact that every time i was running pleco and the power on my pocket pc went out, i wouldn't be able to use pleco directly after turning the pocket pc back on. pleco was still running, but for some reason the fact that the pocket pc had turned itself off and had then been manually turned on again caused the dictionaries to be inaccessible. i could search for a word, draw a character or whatever, but no results would be found. that meant that every time that i would restart my pocket pc with pleco originally running, i'd have to exit the program through the dict menu and then restart the program from scratch. (incidentally, now that everything is installed on the unit itself i no longer have this problem. if my pocket pc turns off while i'm running pleco, i can immediately resume using the program when i turn on my device) i am thinking that whatever computer thingamajigs inside the pocket pc connect to the sd card may have gotten fried or worn out because of my frequent use of pleco combined with switching those automatic power-off settings.
one other thing: around the same time i started having this problem, I had changed the settings on my pocket pc so that it wouldn't power-off automatically--ever. i was annoyed by the fact that every time i was running pleco and the power on my pocket pc went out, i wouldn't be able to use pleco directly after turning the pocket pc back on. pleco was still running, but for some reason the fact that the pocket pc had turned itself off and had then been manually turned on again caused the dictionaries to be inaccessible. i could search for a word, draw a character or whatever, but no results would be found. that meant that every time that i would restart my pocket pc with pleco originally running, i'd have to exit the program through the dict menu and then restart the program from scratch. (incidentally, now that everything is installed on the unit itself i no longer have this problem. if my pocket pc turns off while i'm running pleco, i can immediately resume using the program when i turn on my device) i am thinking that whatever computer thingamajigs inside the pocket pc connect to the sd card may have gotten fried or worn out because of my frequent use of pleco combined with switching those automatic power-off settings.
That could be it, yes, I don't imagine they spend a lot of time testing Pocket PCs with auto-power-off disabled. Not sure what would have caused that original problem with dictionaries disappearing on auto-off... has anyone else experienced this? The database engine is supposed to detect that that's happened and reopen the files when it does, so it's rather strange that it would be failing to do that.