Solved the "Not Allowed" Problem with my memory card! Using the FULL RESET command.

Ahh it feels good when you beat your head against something for a long time and finally research and troubleshooting-thinking solves the problem.

The problem, as described in the previous post, was that whenever I steered the phone to show me the files that were available on the microSD card, the thing would simply give the lovely "Not Allowed" message. No way to access the movies, pix, whatever I had on my card. NOTE that this was not the regular, predictable "Not allowed" message that accessing the microSD would give you if you had just recently inserted the thing but not followed it with a turn-on-and-off. This problem was different -- it was persistent and couldn't be resolved at all. Simply put, it sucked. My 1 gig microSD was the source of most of the fun on my T809.

About the fix: It's pretty simple. The general principle in troubleshooting things that don't respond to most of the simpler solutions eventually becomes: RESET the damn thing. However, I found that the normal reset command was not strong enough. To give the full history, My first attempt at this "reset" philosophy was to initialize the memory chip (after backing up its contents to my computer through a microSD card reader.) Well, this was not possible because the Format command for the card is actually inside the part of the phone's commands that was out of reach because of the "not allowed" command. My second "Reset" attempt was to use the phone's built-in "reset" command that is in the settings section, under Reset Settings. Well, that reset all of the cosmetic customizations that I had set on the phone -- key tones, wallpaper, but the "not allowed" problem continued. Argh.

The ultimate answer: I did a google search on the net, and found a user forum on HowardForums (one of the excellent phone enthusiast websites along with phonescoop and mobiledia) where a guy told someone else of a FULL RESET command on the phone. Simply put, this worked. Here is what to do: (1) Back up your data, pictures, movies, etc., by using the samsung PC Studio software that comes with the phone (or is available from samsung's site.) (2) issue the full reset command, which is to enter the following code on the phone's keypad: *2767*3855# and be very patient while it resets the phone. It tells you to NOT turn off the phone or do anything until a full minute after it turns itself back on. So, obey that instruction and wait like five minutes or something. and lastly, (3) insert your microSD (if it wasn't already in the phone) and then of course turn the phone off and on again.)


Problem solved! you can visit your chip's files. Thank god. I bet that full reset command would fix the annoying "Bluetooth Activate" error problem... but it's a pretty drastic solution when that problem will just fix itself automatically after a couple days anyway.