[Scott8586]

I've had a 32GB playbook since May. I've had trouble with it and I'm trying to understand if everyone experiences this, or if I may have a faulty unit.

Starting with a fresh reboot, everything seems fine, WiFi works well with my router, linksys WRT54GL, running DD-WRT version v24RC4. I can use it for hours like this. Mostly browsing NYTimes, Google, or using a RSS reader, or this site, playing games.
If I turn it off after using it, no problems.

If I let the PB go into standby with the wifi on, after I wake the PB and start trying to use it eventually is will get stuck: problems may start with browser failing to start, or apps quiting unexpectedly but eventually the UI will freeze, or sometimes the device will spontaneously reboot. Often I will have to do a "power button hold" shutdown and reboot to get back to normal function.

If I turn off the wifi before it goes to sleep it will seem to do better, but not always.

In the time that I've owned it, I've had the two-red-LED-flash error twice, which required a DM based reinstall of the OS. In an attempt to clean it up, I have also done a security wipe before re-installing the OS. Both times, I have *not* restored a backup in hopes of getting a clean install, just re-download stuff from appworld, and dropbox.

I currently have OS2 installed but (aside from OS2 bugs and differences) I'm still experiencing problems after coming out of standby.

Can anyone confirm what I'm seeing as par for the course, or does standby work more reliably for everyone? How often do folks have to use the power button hold trick?

Thanks for any help.

[kbz1960]

I've had mine freeze up on me twice but it always works coming out of standby. You're probably out of the 90 days? Since you've done wipes and dm installs and that doesn't help it sounds a little like hardware. Is this with it plugged in, not plugged in, both?

[Scott8586]

I've had mine freeze up on me twice but it always works coming out of standby. You're probably out of the 90 days? Since you've done wipes and dm installs and that doesn't help it sounds a little like hardware. Is this with it plugged in, not plugged in, both?

It doesn't seem to matter if it's plugged in or not. Thanks.

[Scott8586]

After a couple days of debugging, this is what I found. When the PB wakes from standby it asks for a DHCP refresh. Something in that process is broken: after standby wakeup I also saw the PB stop using a proxy I had setup in the wireless config.
Could be a fault in my DHCPD server, or could be the PB, I don't know.

Short term solution: provide a fixed IP address. That will only work at home though.

[JeffyPooh]

I have the same router, but with OEM firmware. I've not seen the same symptoms.

My PB does seems to need a Restart (multitasking not working reliably) at least once a week.

[Scott8586]

I have the same router, but with OEM firmware. I've not seen the same symptoms.

Just a clarification, my wireless router is actually a bridge, invisible to the network except for the administrative IP address. The machine serving IP addresses is running NetBSD 4, with ISC dhcpd, but its a pretty vanilla setup.

[Superfly_FR]

well, I found OS2 quite buggy regarding wifi. Enough to make me downgrade, and feel happy again (even if I did enjoy discover a snap preview of QNX)

[Scott8586]

After a couple days of debugging, this is what I found. When the PB wakes from standby it asks for a DHCP refresh. Something in that process is broken: after standby wakeup I also saw the PB stop using a proxy I had setup in the wireless config.
Could be a fault in my DHCPD server, or could be the PB, I don't know.

Short term solution: provide a fixed IP address. That will only work at home though.

Followup, and for anyone else who might come across this:

So all the above is a red herring. The proxy stuff is broken but that's not the source of my problems. I was still having crashes still related to standby, but not necessarily, wifi. To further debug this I had done a security wipe, and downgraded to 1.0.7 using the DM. I tried static IP, downgrading to WPA security. I was continuing to have easily reproducible crashes/hangs simply by letting the playbook enter standby.

Since I could reproduce it, I called RIM: I was passed the 90-day period, but they still spoke to me for free.

The CS representative trusted me that I had gone through security wipe and a complete reload of 1.0.7, without having restored anything from backup: the cleanest system state I could achieve. After taking down my information and the symptoms, she went away and came back with this:

Her: what is your backlight timeout?
Me: 2min
Her: what is your standby timeout?
Me: 5min
Her: Please set them both to 5min.

I thought to myself, "yeah right" but...

I did, and I haven't had a crash/hang/spontaneous reboot since, and have gone in and out of standby more than ten times. Clearly there's a bug in there somewhere, but as long as I'm not experiencing it, I'm good with that.

I am *such* a happy camper!

[kbz1960]

Followup, and for anyone else who might come across this:

So all the above is a red herring. The proxy stuff is broken but that's not the source of my problems. I was still having crashes still related to standby, but not necessarily, wifi. To further debug this I had done a security wipe, and downgraded to 1.0.7 using the DM. I tried static IP, downgrading to WPA security. I was continuing to have easily reproducible crashes/hangs simply by letting the playbook enter standby.

Since I could reproduce it, I called RIM: I was passed the 90-day period, but they still spoke to me for free.

The CS representative trusted me that I had gone through security wipe and a complete reload of 1.0.7, without having restored anything from backup: the cleanest system state I could achieve. After taking down my information and the symptoms, she went away and came back with this:

Her: what is your backlight timeout?
Me: 2min
Her: what is your standby timeout?
Me: 5min
Her: Please set them both to 5min.

I thought to myself, "yeah right" but...

I did, and I haven't had a crash/hang/spontaneous reboot since, and have gone in and out of standby more than ten times. Clearly there's a bug in there somewhere, but as long as I'm not experiencing it, I'm good with that.

I am *such* a happy camper!

Thanks for the update. An odd one.

[FF22]

Scott:

Interesting. Mine are both set for THREE minutes and I've not had problems.

[Scott8586]

My guess is the important part is that the values are the same. If get bored, I'll play around some more...

[kbz1960]

Just looked at mine. Plugged in 5 and 5. On battery 1 and 5. I haven't had the problem.

[Scott8586]

Just looked at mine. Plugged in 5 and 5. On battery 1 and 5. I haven't had the problem.

So I did the experiment: moved the timeouts to 1min backlight and 5 min standby while on the battery. After exiting from the first standby all Hades broke loose (apps spontaneously quitting, AppWorld quitting in the middle of a download), and eventually a spontaneous reboot.

Moved back to 5 and 5, and it's acting fine again.

I take from this that something is wrong with power management or display systems in my PB. Lucky me. At least I can seem to work around it.