Category Archives: Hardware

Unfortunately [android app] has stopped working

A few years back, I had some time to kill and my AT&T Samsung Captivate smartphone was stuck using Android 2.2 (aka “Froyo”), so I decided to look into installing alternate firmware on my phone.  It was surprisingly easy.  By the end of the night, I was up and running with Android 4.2 (aka “Jelly Bean”).  My old phone had a new lease on life!

Over time, I’ve run into some quirks here and there, leading me to learn a lot more about Android.  One problem that I’ve periodically run into is that after installing a fresh ROM, within a few weeks, I will start receiving message stating “Unfortunately, [app name] had stopped working.”  Often time the app in question wasn’t even one I was using.  Within a few days, they notices would come so frequently that my phone was useless, leading me to reflash the ROM.  I’ve tried several other fixes over time, but nothing has really seemed to fix the root of the problem.

Fast forward to tonight.  I had noticed that my SD Card wasn’t really being used.  In digging around, I realized that my phone listed its internal memory as sdcard0, whereas the removable SD Card was listed as sdcard1.  As I started moving files around and altering programs to use my true SD Card natively, I noticed that my errors had gone away.

Long story, short:  I recommend that you use a storage visualization app such as Disk Usage to get a true picture of what your storage situation is like.  Clear space on your device by deleting unnecessary files or moving pictures, movies, etc. over to your true SD Card.  Finally, tweak your Camera app’s settings to save to the SD Card natively.

Installing a Blackmagic Intensity Pro on 64-bit Windows7

I help out with the webcasting duties at my church.  We recently purchased a new machine to replace on old WinXP Pentium4 box that had been around since the beginning.  The new box was very similar to the other two webcasting rigs we have (both Windows7 on Intel i5 processors), except that it had an Intel i7 processor on board.

When we went to install the Blackmagic Intensity Pro video capture card, we were prompted with something the other two rigs never required:  a firmware update for the card.  I’ve never been fond of firmware updates as I’ve bricked a handful of motherboard over the years.  This firmware update was repeatedly failing despite following the instructions to the letter.

Fortunately, after some hardcore Google-fu, I ran across this forum thread on Blackmagic’s support site.  It turns out there’s something about the power saving features in this OS/Processor/Chipset combination that was the culprit.  Disabling the power saving features by switching to the “High Performance” power profile did the trick.  The firmware update sailed through and we were webcasting in minutes.