Asked By Barry Watzman
22-May-08 04:06 PM
I have a GPS unit (Amcor 3900) that has become mildly corrupted and I
need help fixing it. This device is a general purpose Windows CE
device, it's hackable and I can access it with Active Sync 4.5. The
corruption is mild in that the unit still works but the GPS function
doesn't.
There are two problems, or perhaps one manifestation of a single problem.
The first problem is that there is a file with a corrupted file name
that I can't erase. The file name shows as a tiny square, and when I
try to erase it I get a message:
Cannot delete file
A file name cannot contain any of the following characters: \?:*?"<>|
The file shows up as zero-length.
The second problem is that when I try to put the GPS software onto the
disk, I get an error that the disk is out of space before all of the
necessary software is transferred. This software should fit ... but
something is eating up some space on the flash drive in the unit.
My guess is that the zero length file (which was possibly a folder)
occupied space on the drive that was not returned to the free space pool
when it got corrupted. Essentially, I need to run some equivalent of
All of this is in a folder that is exclusively for the GPS software.
Windows CE (a label says .NET 4.2 Core) itself is apparently ok.
My knowledge of this software is limited ... about 5 years ago I did
quite a bit of work on an iPaq and at that time I knew CE fairly well,
and was using registry editors, etc. But I've forgotten almost all of
that stuff.
Anyone have an idea how to proceed? This is one of three of these units
that I have, the other two are ok, and I have a CD that has the GPS
software and that can be used to reload it as long as Windows CE itself
isn't damaged (which it isn't). That, in fact, is what I'm trying to do
but I get the "out of disk space" error when trying to copy things that
SHOULD fit. I've checked (as far as I can) what else is on the flash
disk, including the entire disk (e.g. Windows CE itself) and my
conclusion is that there are no files taking up empty space, but rather
it looks like the effective space on the drive has been reduced by (my
speculation) erased files whose space was not returned to the free space
pool.
Thanks for any help.