I decided to try to wake the Palm Pilot from it's persistent vegetative state tonight... perhaps this alone is evidence of some masochistic tendency.

First I checked my email and found a response from Palm's techies... The first time I emailed they suggested doing a hard reset and removing all data from the Palm -- "third party application conflict" they suggested. So I did this... when it didn't work I wrote to let them know it didn't work. Tonight when I checked my email I found a new tech person had reviewed my problem and had decided that I must not have done what the first person told me to do... so he repeated the same advice.

Thus I decided that it was time for some drastic action. I cajoled the recently deceased back into life, found a series of button presses that pretty much worked some of the time to get it to start up and wrote to Palm again... my response is below (ever read the story about the guy and the little bars of soap at the London Hotel?):

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hi again,

The fatal exception continues to occur without installing anything after the hard reset. I don't have time to even try synchronizing after renaming the back up file because the device itself ceases functioning before that can happen. I have now successfully erased all information off of the Palm Pilot and the problem still persists before I get to try the hot sync ... thus it seems to me that it must not be a third party software conflict.

When I reset it now it flashes the Powered by Palm splash screen repeatedly with an accompanying speaker noise that sounds like a skipping CD. If I apply pressure to the top of the device (pinch the molding above the top of the screen) it stabilizes to a solid splash screen but proceeds no further (and the sound cuts out). Then when I reset it again the power turns off and it sits there doing nothing. It sometimes works to get the power to turn back on again if I press another of the buttons along with reset or do another hard reset, or some combination of these options (other times this still doesn't work and it sits there lifeless). I have now once gotten it to stay on without giving me an error screen, but then when I try to click on something it's frozen and none of the buttons work (including the power button)... thus I have to reset again and start the process anew.

Ah... I've gotten a new Fatal Alert: "MemoryMgr.c,Line:3726,Non-word-aligned handle" (Reset)
Hmm... clicking the on-screen reset button doesn't work... back to the beginning...

Soft reset... nothing... soft reset while holding the memo button... nothing... soft resent while holding the task button -- powers on... splash screen and freezes. Reset. Repeat previous process -- power on... splash screen, loaded screen, select date and time screen, click done, fatal exception. Soft reset... nothing... repeat process -- power on, fatal exception before splash screen... reset... nothing... repeat process (I think you get the idea.)

I did this with and without the memory expansion card in the machine as well. I also mixed in a few more hard resets to see if it would make a difference. Nope.

I'm at a loss here... would you like to trade me for a new one so you can do research on it... maybe it's possessed =o)

Thanks for your continued help.
++++++++++++++++++++++

If nothing else, maybe they'll at least get a laugh out of it and quit trying to give me the same advice again.