T-Mobile Wing - Changing the page pool to reclaim program memory

Three days after changing the page pool to 6MB, the Wing is stable. However an application seems to be leaking memory, I am down to 3.4MB after using HTC Task Manager Stop All function. This is fine for running most PIM and email oriented applications. It is not enough for the camera, SlingPlayer, and mapping applications. It looks like I will need to reboot every couple of days. I can't complain, the environment with the 6MB page pool is still considerably better than with the 12MB since so far I have not had to reboot during the day.

For now, rebooting just seems to be a fact of life, unless I spend the time to find the offending application and then what. My plan is to automate the reboot process, I have decided to use the scheduling mechanism in Sunnysoft's Backup Manager (my review here). It can force a reboot before and after the backup and allows you to schedule by day and limit the number of backup files. I plug my Wing on my night stand every night, I have scheduled the backup to run at 23:59 everyday and store up to 5 backups on my SD card. We will see how well this scheme works, regular backups are a very good thing to do anyway.

I decided to copy my blurb from Monday on changing the page pool here. This is too important to be mix in with other subjects.

To change the page pool, I meticulous followed Paul's instructions found at MoDaCo here. After a little bit of soul searching, do I risk it or not, I took the plunge with a 6MB page pool update. I can't thank Paul enough for his writeup. After 24 hours, I can load the camera and SlingPlayer when I want, no reboot required. Life was already good with the Wing but it has just gotten much better. One minor caveat about the article, it is for the HTC Touch, although the two phones share the same base architecture, the Wing's addresses are slightly different:

• Part02 of the my ROM starts at hex 0x39d0000 instead of 0x40d2000
• The direct address in my ROM is 0037B55A instead of 0037B558

Your Wing could also be different, so make sure you follow the instructions precisely and substitute the addresses from your ROM. I decided to go with a middle of the road approach with a 6MB pagepool. From all the posts I have read, everyone is pleased with 6MB. Some individuals are reporting lock ups with 4MB and I don't think 8MB gains enough to make a substantial difference.

I also want to thank Willem Jan Hengeveld (aka itsme) for the tools that made the ROM update possible, as well as Maël Hörz for building a simple and powerful hex editor, HxD.

If you are interested in learning more about the page pool, here is a paragraph on MSDN which describes the Windows CE 5.0 page pool. Remember Windows Mobile 6 is built on Windows CE 5.0 not 6.0. Windows CE 6.0 is being used to build Windows Mobile 7 and will revolutionize our devices memory utilization. Hopefully hardware manufacturer like HTC will come to their senses and add more RAM.

For those who are not comfortable with hex editing, Paul over at MoDaCo has put together an application which modifies the ROM image (link).

It also looks like the utilities to read and write the ROM, used for the page pool fix ,can be used to make other custom changes. Hopefully more changes can be made to increase free memory...

Comments

[Chris]

I have a suspicion that the offending application is the newer version of ActiveSync. I am experiencing similar situations and have to reboot every other day. The only active applications I have running daily are ActiveSync, Messaging, SPB Diary, SPB Pocket Plus, SPB Phone Suite, SPB Brain Evolution and Fizz Weather. Since I didn't have any problems with these versions on my MDA I assume it has to do with whatever changed on the Wing / WM6. So without any scientific knowledge or reasoning I just have a feeling it's ActiveSync. Maybe it's something to be researched. It's not a fatal flaw on the Wing, but I have noticed that after 3 days at the most I stop getting email on my Wing, which I attribute to memory issues.

[Stephen Skarlatos]

Funny you say that about ActiveSync, I have thought the same. It is the only application that is always active...

[PAtrick]

after installing ITSUTILS_preparation.cab, how do you remove/un-install it? I t doesn't show up in Remove Program. Thanks.