Possible fix for Dell Axim X51/X50-WM5 Known Problems

According to a recent post on the official Dell Axim forums which claims the information came from a tech support rep, on November 24th, Dell is going to release a download that is supposed to fix some of the known issues for these devices.

Those issues are relevant to devices upgraded to WM5 and those devices which shipped with WM5 and include (to quote from two other posts in the same forum):

1. Leaving an SD or CF card in the unit drains the battery, even with it powered off. Leaving both cards in drains it twice as fast as one.

2. Leaving a CF card in the unit may cause it to disappear when the unit is powered on. Restoring the card requires a soft-reset.

3. Leaving an SD card in the unit may cause it not to turn on at all if the battery is below about 85%. Removing the card allows the unit to turn on normally.

4. Frequent error messages regarding GWES.EXE, a core Windows file that handles the graphic user interface. Disabling Error Reporting will prevent this annoying message, but the errors probably still occur.

5. Setting the unit in the cradle with it turned off may result in the so-called "White Screen of Death"; the screen turns on solid white and the unit becomes totally unresponsive. A soft-reset is required.

6. Leaving an SD-card in the X51v and let it go to "sleep"-mode - makes it impossible to turn on except using "soft-reset"

Thanks to a client who is also a friend, I recently acquired an x51v, the one with 256 megs of ram and it shipped with WM5. I noticed many of these above-named problems, especially the disappearing C card and white screen and it was very disconcerting. I was aware that many programs were not yet configured for WM5, but I was prepared to live with that for the time-being.

Some people have been exchanging their devices, something I've been considering, while others who went the upgrade route are apparently rolling back their operating systems to WM2003se. A post in the same forum notes that Dell has posted "a download for the X50v to change the ROM back to pre-Windows 5.0 installation".