[pcstrebel]

Is there any difference between the two and not just people saying oh yeah totally. Does anyone have any proof? Just wondering cause people on here still say pull the bat but why waste the time to remove the back and take the battery out when you can do a reset from the key board? Not trying to start a debate just wondering if I should be pulling my battery every now and again rather than just resetting with the key board. Thanks

[John Clark]

Same thing. Sometimes, on some devices, it takes two alt shift del's in order to get the full reboot.

[SaneinOne]

Some users find a battery pull (hard-reset) to recollect more application memory than a soft-reset (ALT-Shift-Del). I tend to perform a soft-reset for ease of sake and generally only do a battery pull after upgrading/downgrading the OS.

[Caspan]

There is a big difference between the 2 and the whole question revolves around why you are doing the reset.

1. If you are reseting your device because you installed some software and you want to reboot to ensure the install worked or startup services start, then the keyboard method is just fine.

2. If you are having issues and glitches it is most likely on the hardware/software level or something is in memory that is causing crap to happen. If you do a soft reboot you are using a software program to tell the hardware to reboot, but if the device is malfunctioning can you trust it to do its job properly? The reason why you are trying to restart is because its not, and the problem might persists when you reboot.

It's like the difference between selecting restart on you home machine as to pulling the cord from the back. If you remove all power from your device it does not have an option, after the capacitors discharge (max 30 seconds...) That's why they tell you to unplug your devices at home for 30 seconds to make sure the capacitors have 0 power in them and there is no way the device could remember or have residual memory of what it use to have which was causing the problem. Your device has no way to keep data in volatile memory (memory that cant survive without power). Be assured your data and files are stored on NON-volatile memory as it does not require power just like a thumb drive. For volatile memory it doesn't have an option once the power is gone it can't remember. But it could misinterpret/miss a software request to reset itself because the software that is making the request is running in the same place where there are problems so it's a catch 22 situation.

So to conclude it is always better to do a battery pull if you are having hardware/software issues or glitches cause it gives it a chance to do a full reset on the hardware. if your just uninstalling software and chose don't reboot right now then you can do the soft reset as there should be nothing to interfere with a proper reset of the device through software.

[John Clark]

The blackberry is not a pc and you can't really compare them. The two reboots do virtually the same thing. alt shift del also clears glitches, etc. Really, it just doesn't matter.

[Caspan]

Originally Posted by John Clark

The blackberry is not a pc and you can't really compare them. The two reboots do virtually the same thing. alt shift del also clears glitches, etc. Really, it just doesn't matter.

No its an electronic device that either A. has constant power or B. does not, and their is a major difference between the two. I worked in electro tech for a while and if you think that reseting memory through built in routines triggered by a software call is the same as the device starting up from a cold state you are hugely mistaken. there are different routines that are followed on a cold boot then a warm boot. Again if the device is having issues because of buffer over flow or bad routine you cant trust it to do its job. More then most likely 90% of the time it can and it will function fine, but is it worth pulling out your hair the other 10% when it is a hardware issues that needs to be cold reset.

The comparison i was making to my home machine was not a device to device comparison but to the fact that electronic devices have different routines they follow from a cold boot as aposed to a warm reboot.

We have a server in our server room that will not warm reboot because hardware is just broken or firmware is bad. We have to do a cold reboot and it works every time and this is the same principal that when deprived of power it will boot different then if just given a reset trigger.

Hardware in the BB is no different they have 50+ or however many things that all have to communicate in perfect harmony and if one starts off beat it can take the whole thing down. but if its playing to its own beat you cant exactly expect it to listen now to commands it went wrong for a reason and failed to listen to its basic operation instructions

So I will disagree with you 100% that they are the same. To the end user it produces the same result visually but physically they are apples and oranges.

[r_ss]

Originally Posted by John Clark

The blackberry is not a pc and you can't really compare them. The two reboots do virtually the same thing. alt shift del also clears glitches, etc. Really, it just doesn't matter.

Hard Rest and Soft reset is two different ways to reboot.

Hard Reset is a Hardware Reset

Soft Reset is a Software Reset

[John Clark]

Not necessarily. That may be the case with a PC but not usually with handheld devices. The old Palm Pilots had a soft reset which just rebooted the device and a hard reset that wiped all the data and reset it back to factory settings.

Both the battery pull and the alt shift del are soft resets on the BB as far as it's OS goes.

It's merely symantecs.,

[Caspan]

Originally Posted by John Clark

Not necessarily. That may be the case with a PC but not usually with handheld devices. The old Palm Pilots had a soft reset which just rebooted the device and a hard reset that wiped all the data and reset it back to factory settings.

Both the battery pull and the alt shift del are soft resets on the BB as far as it's OS goes.

It's merely symantecs.,

Please refer to my post above.... again take it from someone who has programmed in micro circuitry and board design they are 2 different things...

John Clark can you give some explanation to prove your side. I'm not going to just say your wrong I gave detailed explanation as to how they are different and you just keep saying nope their the same with no feedback as to why. I want to know if I'm just arguing your professional opinion or if you have some background in the innerworkings of the device. I can't say 100% for sure for Blackberrys because I don't make them, but if they are like every other design they are most likely the same and everything I learned in electro tech would back that.

Would like to see some incite if you have any.

P.S. I think you mean semantics not anti virus company Symantecs and I don't agree with that because it's far from semantics because how chips work are not opinion their fact you can argue fact, you can't argue opinion and the meaning, or an interpretation of the meaning is opinion based not fact.

[Aroc]

The main difference with a battery pull is you can remove power for a longer arbitrary period (say 30 seconds or more). No momentary warm reboot can replicate that. This works across various devices that have microcontrollers yet aren't PCs. Maybe the device does through the same software startup procedure (point one), but the effects on the circuits and logic gates (point two) is sufficiently different when all power sources have been removed for a sufficient period of time (including draining the capacitors). John may be arguing point one and Caspan may be arguing point two, but I can't be certain.

[John Clark]

Wirelessly posted (BB 11020)

Yes, I meant semantics. My bad.

Effectively, on the device there is little difference between the two. I've never seen something that was fixed with a battery pull that wasn't fixed with the alt shift del.

As far as removing power, yes it is obviously different on the circuitry, etc. However, for the purposes of this thread the battery pull and the alt shift del will get the same end result.

[ldr]

Let me tell you something: I had a problem a couple of times that my BB wouldnt send or receive any data after driving for a long time (and passing a lot of GSM cells). EDGE/3G was displayed and everything seemed to be fine but the BB didnt send/receive anything in any app.

I used the keyboard reset a a couple of times but it didnt solve the issue. Only after I pulled the battery the network responded. I had the same issue several times after that so it seems that there is a difference...

[Aroc]

What I don't like about the alt-shift-del is most of the time one has to do it twice get the full reboot. I've seen some OTAFM reconciles from the server to than handheld (read/unread, deletes) stop propegating until the battery is pulled. We've also seen some issues with the travelers where if the device has been on for 3-6 weeks (or more) and they've been few a few countries during that time, they have a harder time locking onto full data support (network in all capital letters, or the network was all caps - yet seemingly not working) until they pull the battery. I had them try the alt-shift-del, but it wasn't always correcting the issue. Some of it may have been getting them to explain the concept of the slow versus fast reboot. So now I have them trained to pull the battery when then get off a plane in a new country. I'm convinced through observation that sometimes you need a battery pull if you are having network problems, there is just seemingly no way around it. YMMV.

Similar to the SYNC service book. For a while when we noticed problems with address book entries not synchronizing from the handheld to the BES, I'd just disable/enable wireless Address Book Sync or simply resend the service books (which should amount to the same thing, right). And this would correct the issue most of the time. RIM had been trying to convince me that I need to first delete the Desktop SYNC service book from the handheld, then repush it from the server. I kept arguing that my way accomplished the same thing and their suggestion had a combersome step that had to be accomplished from the handheld. RIM said no, but couldn't offer any proof. After trying it their way it seems to work 100% of the time. I suspect the battery pull versus alt-shift-del might fall under the same category. Part voodoo, part undocumented differences.