Develop Bugs

hacking out the account balance / transaction notification

Hi all,
This is a cool phone and all, but i'm on the verge of returning it because of one completely ridiculous feature: I'm a using Cingular in the US and after any transaction, be it making a call or receiving a text message, I get a notification on the phone letting me know how much it cost and what my account balance is. This would just be a minor irritation if it weren't for the fact that when it does this, it plays the 'notify' sound, at near to full volume, regardless of any of the phone's sound settings.
This essentially makes the phone useless for me a good portion of the time as the only way to shut it up during a meeting or whatever is to power it down completely.
I've tried disabling every windows sound setting i could find, putting it on silent, vibrate, whatever, that notification (appears as a bubble next to the connection strength icon with the heading "Phone") will always play, always full volume. In desperation i tried deleting notify.wav from \Windows through activesync and total commander, but it's write protected and you can't change its attributes. Cingular themselves call it a feature of their prepaid plan and can't disable it despite my railing.
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas that I can use to disable this stupid "feature", registry or otherwise, I'd LOVE to hear it.

Threaten Cingular saying that you let the whole world know that they are not willing to work with customers under any circumstances after the money is in their hands because of your simple request to have them remove a simple unwanted feature.
There are 2 reasons I say this:
1) Since "Cingular themselves call it a feature of their prepaid plan" it will happen regardless of any phone you use from them.
2) PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
(It may not go your way as seen in reason 2 - but at the same time after seeing reason 2 would you buy a motorcycle from that company that resides in Milwaukee WI. or recommend that anybody else you know do the same? )

Well I thought about that, but from cingular it's just a clunky product and second rate customer service, which, you know, happens.. The fact that I can't control the sounds my phone makes is a little more ridiculous. It basically doesn't have a silent mode, and should. So that's what I'm focussing on.

zwitterion said:
it plays the 'notify' sound, at near to full volume, regardless of any of the phone's sound settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once again, this is not the fault of the phone but Cingular overriding the settings in their "feature of their prepaid plan".
----
When speaking to them about this do it in a polite mild tone manner.
Here is what I would do:
I would call customer service and ask to speak with their supervisor.
When that person gets on the phone, ask for their supervisor.
Repeat process as many times until you can get no further - each person will be more reluctant to bump you up.
Once you get the highest person you can speak with, they will be more willing to listen to your issues because it has reached them.
Focus on their inability to remove unnecessary features - that cause disruptions during important meetings because of a SMS sent - at the customer's request & poor customer service (that is reason why you wanted to speak with the highest person possible.)
Do not focus on the phone itself because it will happen on all their phones.
Also tell them that you have plenty of friends that are not happy with their current provider and are asking everybody about their provider & calling plans (leave it at that - that is making a threat towards them without actually saying it - let them think it).
If nothing gets resolved, then revert to STEP 2 in my previous post.

Thanks for the advice longhair, I might get to the point of doing that. Right now though I'm more interested in the phone itself - Cingular after all just broadcast crap over the air - it's the phone's decision what to do with those signals, and right now that decision is "torpedo useability with an intrusive and unmodifiable notification noise". I write software, i'm pretty sure that somewhere in this little brick of transistors & code is a way to make for a real silent mode, I just need to figure out how.

zwitterion said:
- Cingular after all just broadcast crap over the air - it's the phone's decision what to do with those signals, and right now that decision is "torpedo useability with an intrusive and unmodifiable notification noise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By what you are describing, the phone itself is not the problem but the provider - Cingular in this case.
I am using T-Mobile with the same phone and the service is much better than I had with Orange (Cingular's name out here).
Good luck and keep us updated

sorry i can't help with the sound issues - sounds rubbish! ... but you could try putting your phone into flight mode when in meetings etc to save you fully resetting it!! at least until you find a solution to the problem... stick with it!

I used ActiveSync to explore to \windows under 'My Device' and copied notify.wav to my desktop. I then used an audio editor to make it silent and copied it back.
Now when I get the notifications it still plays the notify.wav but it is silent. You could change it to any sound you wanted. The reason you couldn't delete it was that it was read-only.
I didn't try deleting the file itself but I would guess it would work. If not just replace it with a silent wav file...

Yeah that's what I ended up doing. Well actually I created an empty.wav, copied it to the phone, searched the registry for the ref to the notify sound, changed it to point to empty.wav and bob was my uncle.. I had trouble overwriting notify.wav itself due to permissions.

Can anyone post the key to edit to get rid of the notify.wav sound? I have a Cingular ipaq hw6515 and if I edit the only key that has the notify.wav value I still get the same anoying sound. The file is protected by windows, so I cant delete or edit it to make it silent. I just called Cingular and they say its a feature and there is no way to turn it off.....Thanks

i THINK the key was 'InCallBuzz' from memory but I don't remember where it was.

Humm, I had changed it and it didnt do anything. I will delete some of the keys to see whats gonna happen. Im crossing my fingers.... thanks for the tip anyway

didnt do anything, even after a soft reboot.... must be a Cingular custom setting....

keep in mind that if you change the InCallBuzz.Sound key to something completely bogus (or delete it), your phone will play some default sound anyway. That's why I had to change it to 'empty.wav' and make sure there was an empty.wav on the phone.

Dudes, thanks for all your help. I went back to XP rather than Vista, and the XP explorer allowed me to change the notify.wav file. Now I have a silent file instead of the original and it works perfectly.
I guess Vista is less permissive than XP.
Again, thanks for all your help.

Interesting that Vista turned out to be the difference...
For those without access to XP, I wrote an installer cab to do the replace.
It should replace the notify.wav with a silent one then ask you to reboot the device. I tested it out on my HTC Wizard and it works. Really the only work it is doing is copying one file so it should just work but you never know...
-jalex9

Does anyone know of any register hack to remove the notification balloon as well?

Suppressing the notification message
See my post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=2248890
-Kevin

Something is not right ... !!!
I have the same phone, and the same service, and the same bloody horrible notification messages everytime I so much as look at my handset - it tells me that did not cost anything and my balance is ...
However, something is not right with your handset because I can control the volume of the notify message when it arrives - it plays at whatever volume my handset is set to.
Sorry I can't tell you why, I am not very technical, but I thought you might like to know it should not play at full volume.
As a second matter of interest, I have also been talking to Cingular about turning the bloody message thing off.

I did not have to change the notify sound to an empty wav. Just did the reg edit to kill the bubble (linked to above) and it killed the sound as well. Also, worth mentioning is the cab file (above) cannot be un-installed if you decide you want your sound back for any reason so you'd need to manually undo what it does.
I mention this because I was having trouble with something on my phone keeping my phone awake after the notification (sound & bubble) popped up. After the reg edit, the notification still gets sent to your phone and, if it's in standby, wakes it up. You just won't hear the sound or see the bubble. Without the sound, I quickly realized I did not know my phone was sitting in my pocket with the backlight on. I needed my sound back! No big deal really, but should be noted so there are no surprises.
I finally found the program keeping my phone awake after the notification was port splitter. So, I changed some settings and put back the reg edit. Now I have no balloon and no sound when the notification arrives. When Cingular sends it to my phone, it lights up full for 30 seconds then dims then goes completely dark into standby mode.
Hurray! I hated that "feature" even though I could control it's loudness by lowering the whole phone's volume. I also hated OK-ing out of the bubble all the time. Thanks sdkevin for the simple reg edit that killed two birds with one stone!

How to save in call volume level?

Everytime I get an incoming call, I always need to use the job wheel and turn the in call volume up to the highest level (its currently one below that on every incoming call).. how do I get the phone to save the volume setting to always be on the highest level?

Same problem here. I would be interested in that too.

Same problem. But only after reboot, until that it's saved. (using Dutty's WM6 Premium)

same prob, only in reboot. Goes back to one below full. Using vpg wm6 3.0

Try a program called "phone alarm". The in-call volume level is one of its profile configuration options. It works pretty well.

Yeah, but why do I need to install a damn program just so it remembers my settings? Thats not a very good solution Doesnt phonealarm have a bunch of today screen and other crap I probably wont use?

cirial said:
Yeah, but why do I need to install a damn program just so it remembers my settings? Thats not a very good solution Doesnt phonealarm have a bunch of today screen and other crap I probably wont use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly. I don't need any profile app, because I use just Sound On/Off. Why should I waste memory? In addition, I do reboot 2-3 x a week, so it is not a huge problem. Altough some elegant solution would be welcome.

Anyone else have any suggestions besides phonealarm?

Same problem. All versions of WM6 seem to have this problem. Looking for solution too.

Hopefully its fixed in the final version... or, someone finds a solution..

I'd suggest (and I don't have to do it this weekend as doing my loft and have a new phone to sort out too) that someone does a full Reg dump from standard install and then same after that software (which I've never used) is installed and the settings sorted and phone rebooted - and then uses windiff or simlar to find out what's changed.
It should be fairly easy to isolate the reg setting that does the trick, if it is actually a reg setting that we're after.
It could be a reg setting that resets itself after a boot (like the landscapeoffonratation setting) or it might not. If it's not, we're in business. If it is it'll be a bit more complex but still probably still doable.
If someone can isolate that reg setting it's an easy business to either cook it into a rom as it'll just need a rgu file, or to put it into a cab.

Maybe a solution
Hi all,
I would suggest playing around with those registry keys:
HKCU/ControlPanel/Notifications/ShellOverrides
and there the following value: SavedVolume
and
HKCU/ControlPanel/Volume
and there the following value: Volume
Didn't try any other value for myself, just a hint
for all thos around who want to try and maybe report
if you have success
Olioaglio

Tytn & Xda2i Subtle differences..help!

Hey everyone
Well, for the past 3 years i have been using the XDA 2 I and I really love it. Recently , however, I had considered buying a 3g handset. I managed to pick up the HTC TYTN on ebay.
Firstly, Active sync 4.5 just doesn't work!! crashes more often than i can count.
Secondly, for the first time ever the built in outlook program will chack my emails over WIFI, the 2i never accomplished this for me, I could ONLY do it on GPRS. but while there are favourable differences there are two simple ones which annoy me most and I am wondering if anyone knows how to disable , or registry hack the option.
1) after sending a text, and the little envelope appears at the top of the screen confirming the send, the 2i gave a gentle 'pip' where as the tytn make a loud tone noise... i cannot find a software option to turn this off... can it be done? if not how?
2) when checking my credit, i don't call vodafone 2345 number, I type *#1345# and get the balance displayed on my screen.. the 2i made NO noise as the commande succeeded, but the tytn makes a big song and dance with yet another tone... once more, can't find a way to turn it off... can anyone think of possible solutions?
Thank you for your time,
.........IB a n e

Has anyone encountered these problems? any ideas?
cheers

Dude, for the message tone, use Schaps advanced config 2.xxx(do a search and you'll find a .cab file). This allows you to shut off the message sent confirmation sound. As for the other, I cant tell you but is it the same as an sms recieved sound? If so you might have to look in your settings>sounds & notifications>notifications for anything that might cause this. also make sure that in settings>sounds & notifications>sounds that "events(warnings, system events) has been unticked. This gets rid of a heap of annoying sounds. hope this helps.... Cheers

wow, excellent advice, thank you. The snapps program was already on my tytn actually, and it worked a treat!
As for the other noise problem... its not the same as the text tone, and I checked all the tones, none correspond to it. That option in sound has been unticked already, i hate all those lil sounds!
but with the sms confirm gone, i can live with the text balance noise.. just mute for a second
cheers once more mate, i appreciate the help.
..........IB a n e

Vibrate during appointments

Dear All,
I found that the above option is not working anymore for the last couple of days.
Not sure if it is because of one of the following cabs that I installed.
1. Spike's Mic Neo Task bar
2. [email protected] color tf3d
Any ideas what would be the cause. Help is greatly appreciated
Yogam

I don't see how my theme would interfere with that. The CAB package only replaces several manila files and png files. No registry changes.
Have you checked your Sounds and Notifications settings?

ohyeahar said:
I don't see how my theme would interfere with that. The CAB package only replaces several manila files and png files. No registry changes.
Have you checked your Sounds and Notifications settings?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry mate, no offense, I am not at all saying that yours did it. I just mentioned that these are the things that I installed off late.
Yes I did check on it and the setting is 'Set to vibrate during appointments' which is not working. Any help?
By the way, I am not a techie guy hence seeking some help here

No offense taken. Just trying to help. As you can probably guess, I have both of those items you mentioned installed on my device. And I've just did a test.
I've set the Sound Profile to Automatic. Then I've created a new appointment so that it would occur right at this very moment I'm testing. As expected, my device switched to Vibrate mode as indicated on my taskbar. I made a call from my home phone to my TP2. As expected, the ringtone did not play while the device vibrated.
So, if you have your Sound Profile set correctly and you indeed had an active appointment, your device should be switched to vibrate mode automatically. If not, I have no more ideas for you mate, but it's definitely not my theme or Spike's taskbar.

ohyeahar said:
No offense taken. Just trying to help. As you can probably guess, I have both of those items you mentioned installed on my device. And I've just did a test.
I've set the Sound Profile to Automatic. Then I've created a new appointment so that it would occur right at this very moment I'm testing. As expected, my device switched to Vibrate mode as indicated on my taskbar. I made a call from my home phone to my TP2. As expected, the ringtone did not play while the device vibrated.
So, if you have your Sound Profile set correctly and you indeed had an active appointment, your device should be switched to vibrate mode automatically. If not, I have no more ideas for you mate, but it's definitely not my theme or Spike's taskbar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you.
But I also later realized that I changed my ring type to 'Vibrate & Ring' and as a test I changed it back to 'Ring' and guess it seems to work ok. So may be that it was the reason.
Thanks for your inputs.

If you have touchflo disabled. Where do you set this option to vibrate when you have an appointment setup ?

yogam1 said:
Dear All,
I found that the above option is not working anymore for the last couple of days.
Not sure if it is because of one of the following cabs that I installed.
1. Spike's Mic Neo Task bar
2. [email protected] color tf3d
Any ideas what would be the cause. Help is greatly appreciated
Yogam
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Yogam
On investigation, I *think* the Automatic Profile might fail if there's no reminder set for the appointment. Does that help?

Also noticed that all-day appointments cause problems: when I add an all-day appointment for tomorrow, the Automatic Profile switches to vibrate straightaway. Don't know whether it'd switch tomorrow if I set an all-day for the day after, though.
Incidentally, the Automatic Profile seems not to switch for "Free" appointments.
So see, too, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=525533 where agentdr8 recommends ageye's G-Profile. I've not tried it but it looks good

Hmm... I've had a quick look and from the forums G-Profile seems to suffer from problems inherent in WinMo such as problems with all-day appointments and Wi-fi in standby
(http://forum.ageye.de/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=735&p=3274&hilit=all+day+appointment#p3274)
So I think my solution at the mo is to stick with WinMo's Automatic Profile functionality remembering:
1) set a reminder for an appointment during which I want a little vibration (sorry)
2) mark all-day appointments as Free, unless I want a little vibration...often (sorry)

davidcopus said:
Hmm... I've had a quick look and from the forums G-Profile seems to suffer from problems inherent in WinMo such as problems with all-day appointments and Wi-fi in standby
(http://forum.ageye.de/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=735&p=3274&hilit=all+day+appointment#p3274)
So I think my solution at the mo is to stick with WinMo's Automatic Profile functionality remembering:
1) set a reminder for an appointment during which I want a little vibration (sorry)
2) mark all-day appointments as Free, unless I want a little vibration...often (sorry)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Mate,
Sorry, didnt look into this thread for quite a while as I got it sorted out, probably due to some up mess ups in my appointments. But it was working fine after the day.
Thank you very much for taking the effort to send me a PM
yogam1

You're very welcome

TP2 does not notify when not on silent

Good morning,
I seem to have a slight problem. Whenever I take my phone off the silent mode (which is not a lot) and put it either on notify with a sound or buzz it does not do anything when I get a text unless I leave the screen on. Strangely enough it does work when I get an incoming call.
Is this because I have it on silent for days on end? Or is there something wrong?
Even though its not a massive problem for me, it is somewhat annoying sometimes, as at times I want to be notified
Hope someone can help me!
Regards,
priscilla

I believe this the same problem I am having! Was just about to make a post about it.
The message tone doesnt go off when the recieving a new message. Never really wondered whether it had anything to do with turning it off silent before though.
I've had mine for about a week and this issue is really frustraing me, as I've recently had a major ear operation which has rendered me half deaf. So its not helping much
Any help would be great!

Notification Reminder
I was having a lot of trouble with my new TP2 because I was missing all my notifications. The thing is in my pocket always but I had to pull it out and look at the screen every 15 minutes just to see if I was missing anything.
The solution for me is a program that I use on my Treo Pro:
http://discussion.treocentral.com/treo-pro/177846-treo-alert-pro-treo-pro.html
This nifty little thing will keep bugging you (if you want it to) until you pay attention.

giving this a bash, cheers mate

i had the same issue. i found two different problems. 1 touchflo would not enable all the sound when taken off silent. i disabled touchflo and had this problem again. after some research i went to settings/sounds and notifications/notifications tab. the box was unchecked for programs and alarms. checked the box no more problems

kibbles-n-bits said:
i had the same issue. i found two different problems. 1 touchflo would not enable all the sound when taken off silent. i disabled touchflo and had this problem again. after some research i went to settings/sounds and notifications/notifications tab. the box was unchecked for programs and alarms. checked the box no more problems
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, I think that that is my problem! I'll give it a try later as I'm off in a few minutes
A big thanks to all the other people that gave a solution too If this doesn't work, I'll try the program.