Intermittent GPS connection and
unscheduled shut downs
(Windows Mobile 5)
Overview
This patch is targeted at the small group of customers who have experienced unexpected software crashes or have persistent GPS connection issues after upgrading to Windows Mobile 5.
The patch will be most useful for customers who operate Dell Axim mobile devices or have GPS connection problems. It also addresses a separate issue that sometimes arises when users repeatedly connected and disconnected their GPS unit.
The patch can safely be installed by all users, including those who are not currently experiencing operational problems. Any customer who experiences an abnormal termination of GBM Mobile V4.1 should immediately install the patch. This patch should prevent those crashes. No other stability issues have been reported for GBM Mobile V4.10.
Background
Software exceptions (most commonly arising from transitory GPS connection issues) can cause GBM Mobile V4.1 to crash on Windows Mobile 5 devices from certain manufacturers.
The way the Windows Operating System insulates running programs from these extraneous conditions (by trapping software exceptions) was changed between Windows Pocket PC 2003 and Windows Mobile 5. It also varies between the operating system implementations of different hardware manufacturers.
With the V4.15 patch GBM Mobile fully embraces the Windows Mobile 5 exception handling mechanism regardless of the way the different hardware manufacturers have chosen to implement the operating system.
This is a minor software upgrade that only affects the way certain classes of operating system exceptions are trapped so that the erroneous data can be discarded before it is passed to the software and potentially gives rise to a system crash.
It is safe for all users to install the patch. End-users will not notice any significant changes to the user interfaces. There are no significant changes to the core GBM Mobile application code.
Download
Customers who are experiencing unexpected software crashes, or
who have persistent GPS connection problems should download and install the
patch immediately.
The V4.15 patch is available as a free download from the Exa-Min web site at http://www.geobasemap.com/downloads
This is an upgrade patch. It will need to be installed onto a computer with an existing GBM Mobile Manager (V4.10) installation. The patch will not install on any other software version.
Once the patch is installed on the support PC, GBM Mobile will need to be re-installed onto the mobile devices in the normal way (through the Set-up menu of GBM Mobile Manager).
Following the upgrade, the version of GBM Mobile on the mobile device (as shown on the ^/About menu) will be incremented from V4.10.0052 to V4.15.0065.