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Droid spontaenously wipes e-mail configuration

BGK

New Member
Out of nowhere, some time yesterday morning, my Droid deleted the configuration for all my non-GMail accounts. Around 10:30ET, I selected the email shortcut to check my personal POP3 account, and I was greeted with the e-mail setup wizard, rather than a list of accounts. I power-cycled the phone, but the configuration didn't come back.

I re-entered all of my e-mail account configurations. My POP3 accounts work, but I found myself back in the earlier Hell of my Exchange account not updating my inbox. As before, as a total hack workaround, I set up a second Exchange mailbox (I'm also the Exchange admin), had mail from my main box copied to this secondary mailbox, then added that as a second Exchange account on the droid. Naturally, this second account works fine.

I called Verizon support, which couldn't seem to understand the problem I was having. What they did say is that I'd need to pay $44.99 for my data plan instead of the $29.99 I'm currently paying. The rep said this was required to use Exchange with the Droid, and that that's why my phone wouldn't sync. I told them three different people at the local Verizon store told me I didn't need the $44.99 plan, and how did that explain how the account had worked for ~10 days and my secondary account was still working? I got dead air. She offered to "temporarily enable the $44.99 plan" to see if that would fix the problem. Of course, it didn't.

She forwarded me to Motorola support, who sent me two PDFs: one on how to configure an Exchange account, and the second on how to check if my Exchange account supported active sync. I told them I knew how to do the former, and I knew that syncing was enabled because...I'm...the...Exchange...administrator. He also suggested I try the Touchdown app...even though Exchange support is supposed to be built in.

I then got bounced to second tier support, which did little but tell me I needed to factory-reset the phone, and if that didn't work, see about getting a replacement because "one of your free apps probably corrupted the phone." I stewed about that for about half an hour, then factory-reset the phone. Twice. Both times, after re-adding my account, I still can't sync.

I did try the free Touchdown app, and it works for e-mail, though it won't sync the calendar and contact list.

So, anyone experience anything like this? Should I see about getting another new phone, since it's ridiculous to maintain two Exchange mailboxes?

Also, does anyone have a definitive answer about which data plan is required? I have a family plan, not a business account.
 
As far as the data plan you will need the 44.99 plan to use with your exchange server. That statement was correct. As far as your other issue I am not sure. I have installed TouchDown and RoadSync and both sync my calander and contacts as well as the Email app. You may have something faulty with the device. How did you set up your account initially on the Droid.

email addy and password
choose exchange
enter Domain/user ( you must have the domain name in there )
Server address ( owa.domain name.com or mail.domain name.com)
then next.

That is how mine is set up.
 
mine did the same thing today
simple two simple POP3 account, all setting vanished, clicking Email only got me to the initial setup screen. Down in Settings - Accounts & Sync Settings my two pop3 accounts had also vanished. Looks like all my emails are gone too.
I have nothing related to imap or Exchange.

My two best guess are:
1.that I have in settings the, 'allow apps to be installed that are not from the Marketplace'. And that one of the items I have recently updated (like Dilbert or Cardio Trainer. Or the new free Advanced Task Manager was running, and its 'ability' to kill the Email client somehow crashed the whole thing.

2. I have my Droid set to check two pop3 account, every 5mins. And I also have my PC's MS Outlook open 24/7, and its also hitting the pop3 servers once every 10mins or so. Perhaps they are fighting each other, timing out, and that causes a fatal android crash which wipes the whole thing.
 
Or the new free Advanced Task Manager was running, and its 'ability' to kill the Email client somehow crashed the whole thing.

There are a nontrivial number of references to this problem in the various forums. There is some discussion that a common element among those who have experienced this problem is using Advanced Task Killer. I've already removed it, but my configuration is still broken. There was also one poster who mentioned he removed Advanced Task Killer, but his accounts disappeared again after two weeks without issue.

Motorola second tier support acted as if I had face warts when I mentioned the disappearing accounts. He said they had no reports of anything like that. I offered to be their first report, and send them a dozen links to discussions on the subject.
 
As far as the data plan you will need the 44.99 plan to use with your exchange server. That statement was correct.

It is? I have the $29 plan and Tounchdown works fine with my exchange server....

Ditto.. I can bring down my corporate Exchange Email with the $29 plan. The VZW guy told me I needed the $45 plan but after going through this forum, I found out that I didn't.

I also lost my settings for that Email account last night at some point. I had this exact same problem with my HTC Mogul - it would spontaneously drop my Exchange Email settings. However this seems like it might be a common theme for the Droid if all of us lost the settings last night - was there an update pushed out at some point?
 
I have experienced the same problem twice in the last few days since the upgrade.

It just happened perhaps 10 mins ago. I was reading a message about 30 mins ago, and picked up the phone again and it was reset.

It was of course pretty quick to setup again, but it is certainly a bug. We have not seen this on other droid in our exchange environment. I have experienced a few times where mail stopped syncing, and a reset of the email app got it working again.

Jeff
 
I have experienced the same problem twice in the last few days since the upgrade.

It just happened perhaps 10 mins ago. I was reading a message about 30 mins ago, and picked up the phone again and it was reset.

It was of course pretty quick to setup again, but it is certainly a bug. We have not seen this on other droid in our exchange environment. I have experienced a few times where mail stopped syncing, and a reset of the email app got it working again.

Jeff
I just experienced the same thing. The settings for my 2 POP3 accounts were gone and all I got was the setup screen. I never had a problem before the update but I have read posts from others who have. I am also losing my SMS threads even thought they are nowhere near the 200 message maximum per thread. This happened to me twice this week.
 
my mail accounts disappeared today also. I had ATK installed, but uninstalled it right after i did the update on the 9th cause i thought it might be causing my browser scrolling lag (id didn't fix it btw) so i don't think ATK had anything to do with it. I think it's google's way of trying to get people to move over to gmail. sly bastards!

or maybe it's the (insert # here) day email bug, every xx days your email disappears...
 
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Add my name to the list of people this has happened to. So far it has been twice and both times with 2.1. The only thing that I can think of that happened both times is I left email open then dimmed the screen by pressing the power button.

One of the things I have tried to fix this issue was reset the phone back to factory then apply the manual firmware upgrade featued on Engadget. So far so good.
 
In my situation it was not corporate exchange email that was involved. It was 2 pop3 email accounts that lost their settings.
 
Whoever mentioned the Advanced Task Killer, kudos to you on that -- all three of the phones I am seeing this issue on have that installed. So does mine of course, and I haven't lost my e-mail account. I wonder if that could be the cause of this problem! I have some exclusions set in ATK, including the messaging, email, gmail and a few other apps. I do use the "Press to End" widget that kills all the apps quite often but I have never had this issue like my other users have. We all have Droids. Some have had the problem on 2.0, and now all of them have experienced it again on 2.1. One guy has had this happen to him 3 times now, the others all twice.
 
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