5800 XM lifestory - get your popcorn ready people

Question

Hello everyone. This is my first post here as I don't know where else to put it. It is quite long as it will go through alot of problems I have occured and I dont know what to do so please help. It may give you soloutions to some of your problems too.
I recently got a Nokia 5800 XM with a 1 year music store download subscription card. I got this in August 2009. I started off using the phone as a rookie to Nokia s60 5th edition phones. All I could say was that I was greatly, very greatly, satisfied with the product. It exceeded all expectations and work flawlessly. Until the day when the phone did NOT recognise the 8gb memory card within and the photos in the gallery had their thumbnails missing (even though the photos were listed!). It was strange, this never happened before.
This happened a few months later from the day i got it. I turned the phone off, took out the battery, put the memory card in, put battery back in and turned it on. The splashscreen with NOKIA in blue came up (as the phone vibrates and then starts). After that these things happened (to keep it short):
A1) The first time i did this it asked for a lock code (i set it). I put it in and everything is OK.
A2) Next day I turned my phone on, entered code, went onto home screen and stayed STUCK on it. I tried pressing the menu button but it would take about 2 minutes to get to the menu 2 5 minutes to load any sort of application!
A3) Same day: I tried accessing the memory card from Windows XP computer (SP3). The computer froze and crashed.
A4) Same day: I tried accessing memory card from PC suite by choosing PC Suite mode from the phone. This worked for a day and then this too would crash and cause the computer to end the program.
A5) Same day: I tried accessing memory card by putting the phone into Mass Storage mode. This worked completely and I was able to back up some files (pics, songs, vids etc).
A6) Next day: As a test I tried accessing the memory card from a different computer. I got the same results as in (2), (3) and (4). This test made me conclude that the memory card was corrupted (which was pretty strange as I never did take it out of the phone ever since I got it!).
A7) The day after that I turned the phone on and guess what? It took about 20 minutes to get to the lock code and the touch screen was not responding to me pressing the numbers.
I made the decision to format the memory card by using my computer (windows XP). I could access it through Mass Storage mode so it made things alot easier. I formatted the memory card WITHOUT uninstalling ANY of the applications  that were originally installed to the memory card. This, of course, was a bad move but I was desperate as I needed the phone to work. If you ever do install lots of applications onto a memory card (install them one by one) you will notice that even the phone memory gets used up very slightly. What happened was that I had half a program on the phone (including all of my music Licenses, phone locks and registry for alot of programs and themes).
SO after the format I put the card back into the phone. It recognised it and showed the message that said something like, "Readying memory card". This took a few minutes but after that it went. I then immediately updated my phone to the latest firmware (which was v21 at that time) and put my backed up files onto it again. That fixed a whole load of errors from before.
A few months later a few of the thumbails for my pictures went missing again. The day this happened the phone became slow and unresponsive too. I decided to update the phone's applications and firmware again. This, again, fixed the problem but not for long.
In November 2009 my phone was slowly 'failing':
B1) It would randomly switch off even during a use of any application and even when I was making a call.
B2) NEW: every time my phone was left on its own for about 5 minutes the screen would only display lines of colour, not text or anything related to the GUI of the phone. Just lines. I noticed that the phone was stone-cold at that point. So a little heat (rubbing it in hands or leaving it in my warm pockets) would solve it and it did.
B3) Making phone calls would take AGES! It took about 5 minutes for the sound that shows a connection to the other phone would come up!
B4) No dial tones - sometimes when I dialled a number there would be no 'beep-beep' of the integers being put in (regardless if I was in Silent profile or General with the volume put at maximum)
B5) Internet fail - the phone would not connect to any sort of connection wether it be mobile internet to any Wifi spot.
B6) Transparent images - web graphics and transparent images that should normally blend in witht the background had, for some reason, a grey filling. This never happened before and I took note of it.
B7) Facebook malfunction - when the new 'touchscreen site' for facebook came out, I was enthralled to see a site that uses the functions of the phone only (just touchscreen). However it worked fine for a few weeks but after that if I clicked on a name of one of my friends it would 'glitch' Basically the same page would load (before I clicked on someone) and the header of the page (that said 'Facebook' with the tabs 'home', 'profile', 'friends' and 'inbox' in a blue background) would all be DUPLICATED to the bottom of the page. This would happen again and again and they would act like separate 'processes' or 'pages' in one page only.
B8) Facebook transparent glitch - the new touch site has a notifications area on the top-left of the screen. Normally it would show an image of a whiteboard with lines on it if there were no notifications. If there are it would show up as a red square with a number in it showing how many. This happens but the number has white 'cut outs' like scissors cut around it harshly leaving jaggy edges and pixels and NO transparency.
B9) Connection to WLAN lost - this happened between 20 seconds and 30 minutes of connecting to ANY wifi spot.
I checked for firmware updates and updated to v31 or v38 (one of those two). This fixed problems (3), (6) and (8) for another few months. After that I was happy with the phone even though it still had all the other problems.
January 2010. A new year, a new hope and, of course, new dilemmas
Phone was fine until the memory card got corrupted. How did that happen? I took a picture of my new barbecue machine and when it says 'processing image' underneath the battery DIED and the phone shut off. *sigh* I charged the phone and went to that picture that I took (when the battery died) and it had no thumbnail. This was expected. I opened it and it said 'corrupt file'. After that I deleted it but it couldnt delete it! I tried deleting it through 'File mgr.' and 'X-Plore'. Didn't work. Tried it through windows through USB mass storage. Computer crashed.  Took MMC out of computer. Computer magically fixed! Corrupt memory card. I didnt try it on another computer but I was sure the card had 'gone bad'. So this time I first backed up the stuff I wanted from there, uninstalled everything from the phone (except for some themes which I forgot) and then formatted the card.
After the format I realised I missed the sisx themes to uninstall. They had not gone from the themes list but It showed that they were installed to the phone memory - something that I had NOT done before the format. I installed everything to the memory card.
I slowly worked out (over the weeks) that everytime I installed something to the memory card there would be some sort of 'remnants' left behind after a format. I got this because after the 2 formats I got another problem and a solution:
C1) Music player custom Equalisers - all had been deleted after the format and there were none in the list. However when I went to make a new setting and pressed 'OK' after choosing a name for it and setting the levels it would sound as if all the levels were back to 0. I rechecked and found that the name was saved as Preset 1 and NOT what I chose it to be (I named it 'My Own') and the levels were, in fact, back to 0. What I worked out was that if I wanted them back then I would just leave the name how it came up (Preset 1, Preset 2) and leave the equaliser levels on 0. Guess what it would be saved as?? The first one in the list before the format! It was called 'Pop my way' and the equaliser levels were exactly the same as before the format. I did the same thing 5 more times and I recovered all of my old custom equaliser levels and settings.
C2) This is EXACTLY the same for the notes application. I had a full list of notes before the format and a blank list after the format. I just entered a blank note and they came up magically as my old ones with all the info' saved on them!
February 2010 - I made a habit of checking for updates every week. The last update was on 29th December 2009 (software version 40.0.005 custom version 40.0.005.C03.01). Ever since then there had been no software updates. Just application updates. I updated my Nimbuzz application and there was something called Scribble Powered by Python. It was a drawing tool (4 MB?!?!) and turned your phone into a mini version of MS Paint. Rubbish! Didn't need that. Didn't install it. Got errors installed it and error gone.
March 2010 - Unexpected breakdown of phone. Same problems as (A7, B2, B7, B8. B9) and a few new ones:
D1) I went onto the Download! app. It wanted update. I gave it update. It changed to Ovi store. Looked nice, a bit sluggish and hard on the RAM but it was fine. I downloaded lots of stuff from there, it was a great app! UNTIL the dreaded update of version 1.05(611) which installed halfway and then somehow, unexpectedly, the progress bar would stop and then it would say 'update error' and close, leaving me blinking foolishly at the screen. I tried again and again and again. Same update, same error. Now there is a new one out and I cant update to that either because it says 'Update error'
D2) Nokia Music Store application for my phone now cannot even get to the main screen from where i can search or choose tracks from. The only place I can get to is the store selector from which you choose what country you are from. If I click on UK (where I live) it displays an error message saying, "Music Store: Unable to perform operation". I had this error before on the web browser but it soon went later on. No matter how many times I click on it the same message will keep on coming and coming. I even tried the Music store from my PC which leads to the next problem.
D4) Nokia music store for windows XP. Now updated to Nokia Ovi Player cannot and will not recognise, connect and sync the music from my phone in any of the USB modes the phone is on (PC Suite, Media Transfer, Mass Storage, Image transfer << NONE OF THOSE) this is something completely new and did NOT happen before the formatting of the memory card! The phone isnt even recognised in Music Store/Ovi Player and asks for a phone to be connected whereas PC Suite/Ovi Suite recognises it and fully works. I even tried pressing the 'Sync' button in Ovi Suite on the music page and it says something like 'Could not transfer'.
D5) The ovi store application will NOT update from Ovi Suite. The error message given says: "Internal error - could not update ovi store".
<<<<<<<<<<ALMOST FINISHED PEOPLE, JUST 2 MORE THINGS>>>>>>>>>>
After all this rubbish I decided to do a full master phone reset to the phone memory only. I took out the memory card and did a hard reset. Everything back to normal. Updated everything on the phone. Put memory card back in..... 'readying memory card'... the smart thing was that it scanned the memory card and automatically installed ANY sisx, sis, JAR files automatically and put all the media files into the library automatically. Hence the name smartphone. I, on the other hand, didnt wait for it to finish as it was taking a good hour to do so and I tried cancelling it, tried to turn the phone off, took the card out and then put it back in (which worked but restarted the 'card-readying process') so i took the battery out as the phone went stuck on the readying bit, put it back in and turned it on. The apps were installed but only some of them were and the had their icons missing. This was expected as I had force-stopped the installation processes. I manually installed everything and all was back to normal.
And now, I am here writing to you people to help me out because I have almost all the problems listed back into operation and I dont know what to do. I am not giving up yet - it took me a year of torture to get to this stage and I think I might win this battle
So... any ideas for salvation?? lol

Answer 1

That was something to read! - I don't know any exact solution to your problems.
It might be your phones hardware, might be a false fw install, might be a corrupted memorycard or even a faulty memorycard making problems again and againg. And you might wanna take it to a Nokia care point for an inspection.
But what I would check out is those themes and apps youre mention.
I have both n97 and 5800 with no such problems, but I once had similar issues with my n95 8gb after installing a couple of "homemade" themes from different websites, zedge.com amongst others.
I use nimbuzz on both of my phones, but have no trouble with it, but there could be other problems.
Try also not to force stop any installation as things can get corrupted even though it seems ok in the first place.