I've used a lot of Pocket PCs, upgraded quite a few of them as well. But recently I found myself totally stumped by one of them.

The Dell Axim X51 is what you'd call a pretty good handheld platform, it's supported by Dell so you can use it for your corporate clients, has Wifi, Bluetooth, and most importantly has both a CF and an SD slot. Which is very important to me cause my job requires the use of a CF tag reader.

Only problem was when we first received the Axims I found a little problem with it, I couldn't open the CF card's serial port more than twice without having to pull the reader out and put it back in again. At first I thought it was the reader's fault but after going through a few more I concluded that it was the Axim's fault. Searching through the web I found that other people have encountered the same problem as I did and Dell was being quiet on the topic of fixes.

Finally a few weeks ago Dell released a new firmware update that very specifically said

FIXES SERIAL PORT CONNECTION PROBLEM

Alright, finally I can get my stuff working! So I download the firmware update and ran the update program, so it installs the latest boot loader and then it tells me to hard reset the Axim on the cradle so I do so but... the confirm hard reset screen just flashes by not allowing me to confirm. So I tried again... and again.. and again...

I call Dell, first they told me the usual follow the instructions.. so I told them I did. Long story short, they tell me that my unit has been corrupted and they'll send me a replacement. So I tell them I've got ANOTHER Axim in the office if that upgrade also fails they're gonna have to send me another one. They tell me to try the upgrade on a different machine.

It DIDN'T WORK!!

So in the end, I send the Axim's back to Dell they upgraded it, and the tech support person was sooooo pleased to tell me that the upgrade worked WITHOUT a hitch. So I told her.. yes, I'm too stupid to follow simple instructions. To which she started apologizing profusely, then I said ok.. my machine's aren't good enough to upgrade the Axims. She started apologizing profusely again.

In the end, I got my upgraded Axims and they work perfectly. I still don't get WHY I weren't able to upgrade them myself.. it has got to be my fault!