Since the topic of Apex resets has been on the list today, I am forwarding the below information on that subject from an old message. Please do as Joseph suggests and be careful with this information. If you have any questions on this information, direct them to Joseph because he seems to be the resident guru on this equipment. Richard Ehrler
----Forwarded message---- On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:15:58 -0800, Joseph Lee wrote: Hi folks, Since a topic of resets and explanation came up, I thought I'd just give a brief overview of what the resets do on the Apex: There are five resets possible on the Apex (in increasing severity): Soft (Warm) Reset, Hard (Hardware) Reset, Clear (Registry) Settings, Clean (ROM) Reset and Erase Data. The Warm Reset is equivalent to restarting a computer. To perform this reset, just press the Reset button on the Apex. When this reset is carried out, Apex will attempt to save information that it is working on, shutdown KeySoft and restart the unit. When the unit restarts, Bootloader comes up and loads the KeySoft image from ROM, displaying "starting keysoft" while it is performing its job. The Hard Reset is equivalent to forcibly shutting down and restarting your computer by holding down the power button (don't try this on your computer). To perform this, press and hold the Reset button for about five seconds until a beep is heard. This disregards whatever the operating system is doing and forces hardware restart to occur. If a memory intensive task such as writing to Flash was occurring when the reset was done, Apex will launch Scan Disk and attempt to scan the memory for errors. The Clear Settings is useful to return KeySoft settings to factory defaults. Not only it erases keysoft.ksd from Flash Disk, but also reloads flash files from ROM (those which were most likely missing from the ROM image). To perform this reset, hold down DOTS 4-5-6 (JKL) and press the Reset button. Hold down the keyboard keys until about three seconds after the beep sounds. The Clean Reset not only performs equivalent activity for Clear Settings, but it initializes RAM Disk (keysoft system disk) by erasing system information stored there and removes any extensions you've installed. (will not affect the licenses). When this is done, additional files for proters will be reloaded in addition to regular ROM image files. To perform this reset, hold down DOTS 1-2-3 (FDS) while pressing the Reset button. This reset should be done only when advised by HW (likely), since you need to reinstall programs. The ERASE Datai.e. Flash Disk Format is a hidden command under Support Information Mode which will perform Clean Reset and format at the same time. This reset should be carried out if cleaning the Apex of unwanted data or personal information is a must - will result in loss of data on both RAM Disk and Flash. To perform this reset, go to Support Information Mode then press BACKSPACE with DOTS 1-2-4-5-6( CTRL+Fn+E). When the warning message appears, press Y to confirm; upon doing this, Apex will shut down in order to format the Flash Disk, and when finished, will perform Clean Reset. There's another command, mostly used to restore files for Flash Disk from ROM (mostly things which are missing). To do this, go to Support Information Mode then press BACKSPACE with R(CTRl+Fn+R). As I always say in these kind of posts: use these at your own risk! A universal caution with resets is that you need to do them at appropriate times and when advised by the manual, other users and by HW, especially anything more severe than Clear Settings reset. I'd wish to talk about what really happens while Apex is booting, but because of technical nature of it, I'd rather not write about it for now (just that it goes through what any computer would go through). Hope this helps. My apologies (mostly at HW) if I'm giving out info that I'm not supposed to... Cheers, Joseph
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