Calibration fails after hard-reset

[EricCartman]

Hi folks,

I'm new and hope you can help me with a problem I've been having with my wizard. Recently it began to de-calibrate. Re-calibration failed because when I tried that, I couldn't point to the cross in the middle of the screen (the first of the calibration points) - it just wouldn't react. After many tries and pointing with my finger the calibration in the middle seemed to work and continued with all the four corners, but started all over again. I could do this ten times, it didn't matter. Only after I let it alone for a few minutes the calibration stopped and I was able to return to WM (trying to live with a de-calibration sucks).
So it seems that the de-calibration was the very thing that prevented me from re-calibrating my screen. :(

I read about this phenomenon, it seems to be quite common, yet I could not find a solution for it.

Anyway, I did a backup of my data and did a hard-reset, hoping that this might do the trick and reset whatever wrong calibration was stored. Unfortunately this was not the case. After the hard-reset and bootup, the initial calibration failes for the exact same reason as explained. Problem is, now simply waiting a few minutes to get to WM won't help, it's still waiting for calibration, which, because of de-calibration, cannot be completed.

Is there

a) any way I can skip this initial calibration attempt (some button, I read something about this, but couldn't find anything specific) so to at least get to WM and use my wizard using buttons

b) a solution for this calibration problem besides repairs (I don't have warranty for it, so I guess I wouldn't pay that much, but get another phone)

?

I appreciate any help on this, so far it cost me many hours, but now I'm stuck with my wizard and there is no way I can use it as long as I don't get an answer to at least my first question.

Also: Is this a hardware problem (I could probably get another display, might this help?) or software?

[ashasaur]

To me it sounds like the digitizer on top of the screen has got something wrong with it. Did you perhaps drop or let your Wizard get hit? If so, it may have just barely cracked the glass digitizer, and that would cause your problem. I hope that helps some!

[ktemkin]

If your touchscreen (digitizer) seems to be intact, it's possible the ribbon cable has simply come lose. Sadly, this happens more frequently on the slider-type devices than on clam-shell on bar designs. I believe that's not an easy repair; I'm pretty sure HTC resistance welds their touchscreen ribbon cables directly to the LCD module.

If you're the type, you could try poking around with a soldering iron, but it may not do much good.

If you want to completely eradicate the on-startup calibration, you can overwrite Welcome.exe on the device; this will get rid of all the "Welcome to Windows Mobile" hoopla, as well as the first-time calibration. Good luck using an uncalibrated touchscreen, though.

[veda_sticks]

put a file called welcome.not on your storage card in the root directory, this will skip the welcom and calibration after a hard reset.

[EricCartman]

hi,

first, thank you for all your comments so far.

in another thread (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=306849&highlight=alignment) somebody said that just cleaning the borders of the display might help. i disessembled my wizard (if you are interested in knowing how to do that, here's a page (http://www.ppc-phones.de/punforum/viewtopic.php?id=9426) where it shows how to replace the display of a vario, it's in german though) an did just that (there was lots of dirt there), checked all cable connections, sadly it changed nothing.

so i will try to replace the whole display unit (that is, if i find one), hopefully this will help.

i will also try putting welcome.not onto my memory card (the file must contain nothing else, i suppose?), so to at least have control over my wizard using buttons. that i will do tomorrow, unfortunately i have no cardreader where i am right now.

i also thought that probably another solution (for getting access to my wizard, not for the calibration problem) could be possible. since i backed up my system just before the hard-reset (using sprite backup), i wonder if it is possible to somehow restore that backup without actually having to go into WM and the sprite backup program. is there a way to do that with just using the memory card with the backup on it?

[mikendawn]

page (http://www.ppc-phones.de/punforum/viewtopic.php?id=9426) where it shows how to replace the display of a vario, it's in german though) an did just that (there was lots of dirt there), checked all cable connections, sadly it changed nothing.

so i will try to replace the whole display unit (that is, if i find one), hopefully this will help.

-------------------------------


FYI - I had a very similar problem, and I had to replace the whole LCD/Digitizer assembly. Not too expensive, but not very cheap either. Nonetheless, better then getting a whole new phone, as I had to do when my SX56 died :(

[EricCartman]

put a file called welcome.not on your storage card in the root directory, this will skip the welcom and calibration after a hard reset.
that worked perfectly. :)

as for the original problem (de-calibration), that remains unsolved. after overriding the initial calibration attempt (using welcome.not) it was of course not possible to navigate WM with the stylus, just by using buttons. another attempt of calibration failed also, but that was to be expected, so i restored my backup, hoping to find myself right where i had started (still de-calibrated, but at least manageable until i get a replacement for my display unit).
surprisingly, after the backup restoration the display was as de-calibrated as before, right after the hard-reset (in other words totally). so where that leaves me now is with my original WM minus the possibility of stylus navigation (which sucks).

anyway, thanks again for all the help, i'll keep you posted when i get the replacement display unit.

btw, is there a way to calibrate my smartphone via my pc?

[ktemkin]

Well, there's no way to 'calibrate' it, and if your touchscreen is broken, this won't help, but just in case it's an odd software glitch, or your touchscreen is partially intact, I believe the calibration is stored in the registry.

I may be wrong, as I won't have my Wizard for testing until later this week, but if memory/google serves, the following registry tweak should give you a baseline calibration.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\TOUCH
"CalibrationData"="1922,1957 3330,639 3317,3276 600,3230 609,677 "

There are a number of remote registry editors that will allow you to edit this from the PC. If your touchscreen seems to work better with this edit, you can try tweaking the numbers manually- I believe it treats the touchscreen as matrix of 3900x3900 touch points, where lesser numbers are closer to the top right; the calibration numbers in the string are the X,Y coordinates of the points you touch for each of the five X's in order.

[EricCartman]

Well, there's no way to 'calibrate' it, and if your touchscreen is broken, this won't help, but just in case it's an odd software glitch, or your touchscreen is partially intact, I believe the calibration is stored in the registry.

I may be wrong, as I won't have my Wizard for testing until later this week, but if memory/google serves, the following registry tweak should give you a baseline calibration.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\TOUCH
"CalibrationData"="1922,1957 3330,639 3317,3276 600,3230 609,677 "There are a number of remote registry editors that will allow you to edit this from the PC. If your touchscreen seems to work better with this edit, you can try tweaking the numbers manually- I believe it treats the touchscreen as matrix of 3900x3900 touch points, where lesser numbers are closer to the top right; the calibration numbers in the string are the X,Y coordinates of the points you touch for each of the five X's in order.
ingenious! with your help i was able to restore the calibration from above, so to at least be able to use my stylus again - at least to a certain extend, since the calibration coordinates you posted are not 100% precise and definitely need some tuning.
after a soft-reset to get the new registry values loaded (not just inserting the stylus into the reset hole, this way the new values are lost; you have to turn the device off and on again) i tried again to calibrate - it failed again, for the same reason as at the very beginning (clicks on the middle crosse were not accepted).

i have 2 explanations for this:

1.) my display unit IS damaged and simply does not accept clicks in that area

or

2.) the first coordinate is wrong.

i did some thinking and calculating on this. i don't fully agree with you when you say that the coordinates refer to the upper right corner. if you hold the device like you were using it (not in landscape mode), the point 0/0 is actually the one down RIGHT. only if you're thinking in landscape mode is it down left.

anyway, since the coordinates for the four corners seemed more or less ok (although i wondered why points on the same axis differ in their coordinates, which they shouldn't), i did some calculations and came up with these coordinates for the middle-point: 1361,1312

this is how i went about it:

(3330-609)/2=1360.5
(3230-607)/2=1311.5

i tried them (leaving the others as they were), but they horribly failed and i had to hard-reset my wizard to start all over.

still, i do not understand why the other coordinates seem to be correct, yet my calculation was wrong. 1922,1957 for the middle just seems totally wrong to me when i look at the other coordinates which work fine.

do you have any thoughts on that?

what would also be very helpful would be the actual coordinates from a wizard which is correctly calibrated. anyone reading this with a working wizard, please share them with us.

[joemanb]

if you look at the screen using portrait orientation the UPPER RIGHT corner is 0,0. that's why the numbers for the final calibration cross (upper right) are the smallest.

you should have added instead of subtracted (then divide by 2 like you did) to get your midpoint.

If the upper left calibration cross is 3280 from the right side, and the upper right calibration cross is 620 from the right side (about the same distance the upper left is from the left side of the screen) that would mean you would have to ADD to get the total width. Your method yields the distance from calibration cross to calibration cross (divided by 2).

I think ktemkin is right, the matrix is about 3900x3900 with the mid point to be around 1950,1950

so a "PERFECT" calibration would be something like:

1950,1950 3280,620 3280,3280 620,3280 620,620.

Of course, the touch screen isn't perfectly aligned with the LED so we need to calibrate, and this is also why the numbers from a different phone don't quite work right for you.

[EricCartman]

hi again,

i got my replacement display-unit a few days ago (cost me 25,50€ on ebay, a pretty good deal, i guess) and just installed it into my wizard.

after booting up the calibration immediately worked, so, as i suspected, the display unit was the reason all along.

but that's not all, i want to share something else: when i first booted up with the new display unit, the colors on the display seemed somehow "wrong", as if the display was reduced to a lower amount of colors than it was supposed to have. my suspicion was confirmed when i loaded the waterfall picture that's by default in MyImages, it didn't look right at all.

i then remembered that such problems can occur on a pc when your screen is not correctly attached to your graphics card (maybe because your cat fell over the cable). this can happen when the connection to a single pin (or more than one) is not correctly established while the other pins work fine. this can result in the screen showing the usual images, but with strange colors.

i therefore dissassembled my wizard and checked all connections. i hadn't put the little plastic stripes over the connection cables where they are connected to at first, because i thought that those weren't really necessary if you got the connection right. but after checking all the connections, i made sure to put (as it should be) those little plastic stripes over the cables, securing the connection even more. after booting up, i sure got my screen working as it was supposed to.

so, finally, i thank you all for your help, i am very happy that i was able to repair my wizard, it now works perfectly again.

i did get myself a hermes some time ago, which now replaces my wizard, but hey, that really doesn't spoil the relief of having repaired the wizard. i now have to decide if i keep it as a replacement (in case something happens to my hermes) or sell it on ebay, now that it's working again.

[grigi]

Ciao!
first -> srr my english is terrible

i have dimond 1 and a had same problem. After Hardreset system want calibrate display and calibrate display and calibrate display........

I try take down folie (screen protector) and everything is fine :)

Its my solutions