S60Tips.com

One (may be two) of the most popular postings on this blog is about memory card locking. There are many people are asking me how to unlock password-protected memory card. The problem is they never put any password on it; and suddenly their memory cards are locked.

I have written two postings about memory card locking, i.e.:

• How to Unlock Password-protected Memory Card. The idea is to reformat the memory card. It should work most of the time, but you will lose all your data.
• Another Tip For Password-protected Memory Card - on Nokia Eseries devices, when you activate remote lock, it will lock the memory card as well.

Apparently, there are still a few cases where memory card is suddenly locked. My previous colleagues had this problem as well. What is the solution then? Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer if the two tips above don’t work. My colleague tried to call the memory card’s manufacturer. They said that he has to send the memory card back to the manufacturer. I am not sure whether they will replace it with a new one or do "magic" to unlock the card. They also mentioned this case sometimes happen on certain devices.

Anyone has other idea how to unlock memory card?

Update (9-July-2008): NSU now officially supports Windows Vista. See announcement here.

Nokia has recently released firmware updates for Nokia N95 family; but unfortunately not the North American variant yet. Since I have the classic Nokia N95 (a free gift for my participation at Forum Nokia Wiki), I tried to update my firmware as well. What happened? It won’t update on Windows Vista. There is an error message related to Nokia Service Layer Host Process (see screenshots below).

You won’t see this problem on Windows XP. It happens on Windows Vista only. Is there a solution to this problem? Should you just find an old computer with Windows XP? I found an interesting discussion at Nokia Support Discussions. Basically, what you need to do is retrying the update; but do not remove the USB cable or turn off the phone.

Here is the detail:

• Once you see dialogs like screenshots above; close Nokia Software Updater from Task Manager. You can display Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del or right click the task bar and select Task Manager menu.
• Do NOT remove USB cable from the phone or turn off the phone!
• Restart Nokia Software Updater. It will ask you to reinstall the software on the phone. Press Reinstall button and then press Retry button on the next dialog. If there in an instruction to remove battery and turn on the phone, do NOT do it. I tried it and it didn’t work.

PS: If the instruction above does not work; you may have to find an old computer with Windows XP.

Update ( 30-May-2008): The latest Nokia Software Updater currently disable support for Windows Vista. So, you won’t be able to use the above tip to update your firmware. The only way to update is use Windows XP.

Update (07-June-2008): Please visit my latest posting to run Nokia Software Updater on Windows Vista. It will allow you to use Windows Vista to update your firmware while waiting the official support from Nokia.

There are so many companies these days that provide automated systems to answer customer calls. They use it to direct the call to the “right” agent or to verify our identity. For example, you may be familiar with voice of a lady saying “Please press 1 for English”, “Please enter your PIN code”, “Please press 0 to speak with our customer representative”, etc.

We can automate our “answer” using dial sequences. Personally, I use this tip to enter my PIN code each time I dial my voice mail number. You can also use this tip for example to dial an extension number automatically.

The following pictures show examples of dial sequences. In this example, I dial number, +12345678, followed by “p” character, which means pause. After that, it enters my PIN number, 1234, followed by “#” sign. The “p character will pause the dial sequence for 1 second. If you find 1 second is not enough, you can enter more “p” characters (as shown in the right picture).

How to enter “p”? You can press * star three times.

The following picture shows how your screen looks like when your device is sending the dial sequences.

Compatible devices: S60 1st, 2nd, 3rd Edition, Nokia Nseries, Nokia Eseries.