My Two Cents

Windows Mobile Tip 1: The Storage Card2 problem | Jun 21st 2006

One fine morning you wake up and find that your pocket IE is not working. Cursing Microsoft, you launch Newsbreak to check your latest news articles and get annoyed that this application too is not working. Worse, even your pocket Outlook has gone for a toss. You start blaming Bill Gates now.

dw_mobile_h_rgb.jpg

Well, the problem really is because of all the tweaks that you made on the Windows Mobile OS. In order to free up the Program memory and storage, most geeky users edit the registry to store data in the Storage Card – the IE cache, rss cache, outlook mails, PIM data etc., You edit the registry and change storage locations to something like "Storage Card\IECache" and the like. Well, there is nothing wrong in it and it is a good idea indeed. Unfortunately, if there is some error in the Storage Card, your Pocket PC or Smartphone may not be able to locate this folder, and so it automatically creates a folder by name "Storage Card" in the memory! When your SD card is inserted back or restored, your phone or pda gives it the name Storage Card2, since there is a folder already by name Storage Card.

Solutions:

If this happens, all the shortcuts/launchers for applications that are installed in the Storage card will stop working, though you can still launch them by going to the respective folder in Storage Card2. You cannot delete "Storage card" folder because some applications may be using files from here. The solution? Rename the folder! Once you rename, immediately do a soft reset. Once the OS boots again, quickly locate this renamed folder and delete it. Now you can insert your SD/CF card back and you will see it being properly named as Storage Card. Peace.

 

PS: This is my first article in a series of tips and tricks that I am going to publish for Windows Mobile users.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

Posted in Microsoft, Smartphone, Windows Mobile

31 Comments »

  1. Mate, you rock.
    I was just about to die because all my programs stopped working.

    You fixed them.

    cheers

    Comment by Nathan — November 29, 2006 @ 7:12 am

  2. Kudos from me as well. I just installed a program that insisted on writing a log file to my storage card, but apparently the storage card wasn’t initialized properly at the time when it started logging. Next thing I know my Storage Card is “Storage Card2″ and I had to jump through hoops to kill that Registry setting or change log file locations. I appreciate this information.

    -Peter

    Comment by Peter — December 6, 2006 @ 3:39 am

  3. @Nathan, Peter,
    Thanks. Glad that I can help

    Comment by jaganath — December 6, 2006 @ 8:12 am

  4. Is there anyway from having to repeat this operation multiple times? I have a HP HW6925 (even occurred with the HTC 8125) and I will have to repeat this process at least once a week. Although a quick fix, the repeativeness of it is annoying. Is there a permanate fix for this, an OS fix, upgrade download… or any hint of a fix of this problem from MS? Thanks.

    Comment by Bryan — January 18, 2007 @ 4:43 am

  5. @Bryan
    If the problem is occurring so often, I think it may be with your memory card. Use another mem card and see if the problem persists.

    This is a very rare phenomenon. For me it has happened twice in my 5 years usage of Windows Mobile ! (4 devices in total)

    Comment by jaganath — January 18, 2007 @ 1:25 pm

  6. Hi there:

    Thanks for the tip, it works for the most part…I have my atachement back on the actual stroage card, but I cannot delete the renamed “storage card” file. WM5 error states that it is a system file..etc.

    I am using a unlocked unbranded HTC-s620.

    Please let me know if there is something i need to do to fix this.

    Thanks.

    Comment by Peter Masih — January 20, 2007 @ 7:44 am

  7. Thanks for the advice.

    Question:
    This corrected my problem and my attachments & emails are being stored on my storage card. However, when I click on the attachments, I get an “Unable to display the attachment.” error. Can you help?

    Comment:
    In case anyone has this issue, everytime I soft booted my PPC 6700, it kept renaming the card back to storage card2. Someone suggested on another website to remove “messaging” from the “today” window. That did the trick.

    Thanks in advance for your help.

    Comment by Greg — February 6, 2007 @ 11:33 am

  8. You are a genius ;)
    Just solved it now, very easy, rename, reset :)

    Thank you so much

    Comment by kiwi — February 8, 2007 @ 4:29 pm

  9. I needed to remove my device from sync, then do a soft reset before I was allowed to rename the file (problems with a sharing violation), but then it worked as advertised. Thanks.

    Comment by Allen — February 20, 2007 @ 11:07 pm

  10. The storage card drivers are loaded at a lower priority than the Today screen and/or the Inbox/Activesync, so when the system boots and the process starts, the folder “storage card” is unavailable to the OS and process, so the OS creates one for the process to use.

    Comment by Jim — April 16, 2007 @ 1:25 am

  11. The ultimate solution would be for the storage card drivers to load before anything else starts, which I am researching now, but as yet I haven’t found that answer.

    Comment by Jim — April 16, 2007 @ 1:27 am

  12. Thanks for this cool blog…you just saved my day!

    Comment by Ling — April 28, 2007 @ 6:20 pm

  13. THX U SSSSSSSSOOOOOOOO MUCH! U r great! Ive been trying to figure out how to fix it for the longest time

    Comment by Me — May 16, 2007 @ 8:59 pm

  14. Dude u rock.

    One other thing. Im now using windows vista which comes with windows mobile device center. Does anyone know how to get the emails attachments in outlook stored in the storage card instead of the main storage when syncing?

    Comment by Blazed — June 28, 2007 @ 12:26 am

  15. Thank you! You just saved me a whole load of time! Much appreciated… Carlos

    Comment by Carlos — September 16, 2007 @ 10:23 pm

  16. Man,

    1. I got this problem
    2. Googled. “Windows Mobile + Storage Card 2″
    3. First hit is yours. went in that.
    4. problem solved….

    I wish all problems in my life to solve like this..
    Thanks a lot.
    –
    Mkrishnan.

    Comment by Murali Krishnan — January 3, 2008 @ 7:46 pm

  17. Dude, kudos!

    I’m from Brazil, living and born. You addressed so simply an annoying issue! Thanks a lot, my stupid Treo 700WX was giving me a message of “low storage capacity” or something. And I realized NOW with your help that everything was going to the internal memory under an internal folder named “Storage Card”. And my crappy Kingston was named “Storage Card2″ – bummer. Thanks a LOT! Hugs from Brazil!

    Comment by Rafael — January 4, 2008 @ 7:54 am

  18. Thank you so much dude!

    Comment by gnash — February 1, 2008 @ 5:19 am

  19. Great tip – I just got this nice 2 GB card and was shocked to see that everything stopped working. A quick Google turned up this tip – excellent work. Cheers

    Comment by Sanjeev — February 15, 2008 @ 11:03 am

  20. Hello,

    A slight variation on the fix for me:

    I am using an AT&T Tilt (aka HTC TyTN II) with a 2GB MicroSD card that was coming up as “StorageCard2“, and had to create a “\Mail\AttachPath” directory on it first before deleting the “StorageCard” directory.

    Regards,

    Aryeh Goretsky

    Comment by Aryeh Goretsky — February 19, 2008 @ 12:42 pm

  21. You dudes rock!! I just had this problem and squashed it in minutes thanks you this blog! WOOT!

    thank you all!!!!!

    Comment by flipfone — March 1, 2008 @ 2:15 pm

  22. Its even easier than explained above. With the Pocket PC booted, delete the Storage Card folder. The Storage Card2 folder will still remain. Remove the physical memory card until Storage Card2 folder vanishes from File Explorer. Now place the memory card back in. It will now reappear as Storage Card. No need to reboot.

    Comment by Jason F. — March 20, 2008 @ 6:08 am

  23. Man, I THANK you. Suddenly, and without even a reboot, my Samsung SGHi780 had created a folder “Storage Card” and renamed its actual Storage Card to Storage Card 2. Just about nothing worked anymore. Delete the folder, soft reset, say cheese.

    Comment by LocalJoost — April 11, 2008 @ 11:46 pm

  24. thnx a lot. i thought I hat to format my sd…

    Comment by hairypotface — May 5, 2008 @ 4:49 am

  25. I just upgrade from windows mobile 5 to 6. After a successful upgrade, I re-inserted my storage card into my blackjack. Now now of my files are recognized on the storage card, in fact they are renamed. .jpg are now xxxx.jpg.2dde555 same for mp3 and movie files. Renaming the file doesnt work, and when I transfer them back onto my laptop, I can’t open the file there either. Please don’t tell me I lost all the data on my storage card :( help please!

    Comment by Peg — May 10, 2008 @ 11:16 am

  26. FIXED!! Had to remove Messaging from the Today screen first, deleted Storage Card, reset with my real Storage Card in, FIXED. thanx!!!!!!!!!

    Comment by joarc — September 1, 2008 @ 1:36 am

  27. Great information for the solution… indeed is as easy as Jason F informed

    Comment by Jorge — September 4, 2008 @ 4:04 am

  28. Автор молодец! Тема почти раскрыта. Приглашаю почитать мою статью о авиалегкобыстром автомобиле будущего

    Comment by Авиалегкобыстрый автомобиль — September 25, 2008 @ 12:15 pm

  29. Hi, i had the same problem and i solved it doing the same, but the las time it happens i couldnt manage to rename or delete the storage card folder not even from activesync, it says “error renaming file
    cannot rename “storage card”: acces is denied be certain that the file is not write protected and is not currently using”
    if someone knows how to solve this i would be very thankfull. help me please!!

    Comment by Gabriel — December 6, 2008 @ 6:20 am

  30. what rename??? where how…how does one rename ?
    ok I command it “renamed”!!!!

    ummm…”open seseme?”
    “presto”?????
    wtf?

    rename where ?
    how?
    if your going to suggest something then explain it for the layman!

    Comment by kohl — February 14, 2009 @ 5:09 am

  31. Thanks. This happens me all the time. Used to reset the whole damn thing…

    Comment by Mr Sefe — April 6, 2009 @ 11:13 pm


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