Psion netBook Pro Troubleshooting Guide

A netBook Pro. On a machine whose touchscreen has stopped responding, try pressing firmly on the badge on the keyboard bezel before assuming the digitiser has failed — and reflash the ROM before assuming anything is broken at all.

Fault-finding for the Psion netBook Pro, the Windows CE .NET 4.2 machine of 2003.

Almost nothing carries over from the EPOC netBook. The processor, the operating system, the display and the backup batteries are all different, and so are most of the diagnostic routes: on a netBook Pro a great many faults are cured by a ROM update rather than a screwdriver.

Psion Teklogix published a user manual with a troubleshooting chapter, and it is the nearest thing to service documentation that exists for this machine. No service manual, exploded view or parts list is known to survive for the netBook Pro any more than for its predecessors.

⚠️ Before you start

• Always switch the machine off before removing the main battery.
• If both the main pack and the backup cells go flat, everything in internal memory is lost. Only the flash folder survives.
• When removing everything for a hard reset, take the backup cells out before the main pack and put them back last, so they are not drained needlessly.
• Anti-static precautions throughout.

Step 1: work out which revision you have

You can tell the two hardware revisions apart without opening the machine. The moulding on the rubber cap over the proprietary Honda-connector port reads either:

• "RS232" — the earlier revision. Serial only; serial sync cable; no built-in modem.
• "RS232 - USB" — the later revision. USB over the same connector, a built-in landline modem, and a USB sync cable in the box.

This matters before you diagnose a "dead modem" or a "dead USB port": on an early machine, neither exists.

Step 2: try a ROM update before a repair

Four public ROM images were released after launch, with interim builds available through customer support, and they progressively fixed the faults that got in the way of daily use. Rothberger, who used one daily, describes updating as urgently advisable.

Documented launch-firmware defects, all fixed by later ROMs:

• IrDA configuration broken out of the box, to the point of making the port nearly useless.
• Sluggish graphics and screen redraw.
• German localisation strings truncated in dialogue boxes.
• Battery nagging at 50 % remaining rather than at a genuinely low level.

One limitation survived every update: there is no generic IrDA modem profile in either language version, so infrared dial-up through a mobile phone needs registry entries made by hand.

The last released Windows CE 4.20 ROM image, the BooSt supervisor-mode document, the user manual and the technical brochure are all still hosted by Paul Vigay's Psion archive.

Symptom table

Psion netBook Pro — fault symptoms

Symptom	Likely cause	Action
Touchscreen ignores the stylus entirely; the recalibration applet starts to open then does nothing	Corrupted ROM files rather than a hardware fault	Reflash with a later ROM image. This is the documented case: an owner in 2011 found the badge-press trick and the calibration applet both useless, and corrupted ROM was the diagnosis.
Touchscreen drifts or mis-registers, and pressing the badge above the keyboard helps temporarily	The screen cable fault inherited from the EPOC machines. Whether it affects the netBook Pro was an open question even in 2011	Try the badge press. If it helps, treat it as the Series 7 fault and follow the procedure in the Series 7 guide — Psion's own advice for the earlier machines was a cardboard wedge under the cable.
The machine will not turn on	Peripheral card, flat pack, or a stuck system	Psion Teklogix's own order: remove any peripheral cards and connections; recharge the main battery (a deeply discharged pack will not let the machine start until the AC adaptor is reconnected or a charged pack fitted); then soft reset; then hard reset.
The machine will not turn off	Not a fault — a power scheme setting	Check the automatic switch-off time under the Power icon in the Control Panel.
Keys unresponsive, or the machine switches on to a blank screen with good batteries	Locked-up system	"Try a reset if the keys on the unit do not respond, or if the NETBOOK PRO appears to switch on, the batteries are good, but the screen is otherwise blank."
The battery percentage is wildly wrong	The gauge has lost calibration	See Psion netBook Pro Battery Service. Four specific events reset it to "Not calibrated".
The machine warns about the battery at 50 % remaining	Early ROM behaviour, not a failing pack	Update the ROM.
A hinge is broken or missing	A known weak point on this machine	See below.
The lid covering stands proud along one edge	Factory fitting problem, present from new on many machines	The rubberised covering replaced the Series 7's leather and on a good many units was "quite sloppily glued" and not seated flush in the lid recess. Re-adhering it is cosmetic work, not a repair.
Rubber port caps missing	They stand proud at the corners, are easily pulled out of their sockets and "sooner or later tear off"	Extremely common. Not a functional fault.
Cards are awkward to change without lifting the machine	Not a fault. The PCMCIA and CompactFlash slots sit close to the base by design	—
A quiet buzz from the display	The CCFL backlight inverter. Psion's specification sheet identifies the panel as an SVGA TFT transmissive display with a CCFL backlight, so there is an inverter, and a faint whine at some brightness settings is characteristic of one	Reported on machines when new and described as barely perceptible, so treat it as normal rather than as a fault. No inverter failure has ever been reported on these machines.
Everything in internal memory lost	Both the main pack and the backup AAA cells were allowed to go flat	Not recoverable. Use the flash folder — about 10 MB of non-volatile storage whose contents survive a hard reset or the complete depletion of both batteries.

The hinges

Treat a netBook Pro hinge as a known weak point. Machines turn up for sale with a hinge, characteristically the left one, broken or removed — in one 2023 case a dealer had six units all missing the same hinge. Collectors discussing them noted that the problem is not simply age: "If you search around the interwebs, you can find some old discussion of the problem back in the noughties, so those hinges broke even when they were new."

This is not universal — owners of intact machines report the mechanism as excellent, with a switch built into it that can suspend the machine on closing and wake it on opening.

If you are buying, buy one with both hinges. If you are repairing one, the collective advice from people who have done it on comparable machines is sobering:

• Old plastics are brittle, and a machine that has already lost one hinge may be telling you about the condition of all its plastic.
• Adhesive repairs carry their own risks — the adhesive can attack the plastic, or fail later.
• A sticking or misaligned hinge is arguably worse than a cleanly broken one, because it loads the whole assembly. A catastrophic hinge failure can take the screen, the case and the board with it.

Prevention is the realistic strategy: open and close it as little as you can bear, avoid repeatedly adjusting the screen angle, and store or carry it in a hard case so it is not compressed.

Resets

netBook Pro reset procedures

Reset	Procedure	What survives
End a task	Alt+Tab, or Ctrl+Alt+Delete for less than three seconds, opens the Task Manager. Select the unresponsive task and press End Task.	Everything else.
Soft reset	Any of: Start → Run → warmboot → OK; hold Ctrl+Alt+Delete for three seconds; or press the reset button, in a hole to the right of the right-hand Shift key, for about a second. If the machine turns off, press Esc/On to bring it back — only necessary when the reset switch was used.	Changes to open files are lost. Other files in internal storage "will almost always be safe". Using warmboot.exe saves registry changes.
Hard reset	Remove all batteries and AC power. The machine reboots once the main battery or AC power is reapplied. Remove the backup cells before the main pack, and refit them last.	All running programs, unsaved information and anything installed to the RAM disk are lost. Anything in non-volatile flash storage — including registry settings written there — is preserved. May delete the ActiveSync partnership, which then has to be recreated on the PC.

Note the manual's own warning: a soft reset after a program failure can, though unlikely, lose the contents of internal flash storage or prevent the reset working at all, in which case a hard reset is the only route.

Power schemes

A machine that "goes to sleep too quickly" or "never sleeps" is usually configured, not faulty. The Power Schemes tab holds separate settings for On AC Power and On Battery Power, each with three cumulative timeouts: Switch to Dim, then Switch to Stand-By, then Switch to Suspend. The machine reaches Suspend only after all three have elapsed in sequence.

Psion Teklogix recommended a total of about 10 minutes, and specifically a 10-minute Switch to Suspend delay on the Battery Power scheme. Setting a timeout to Never does not affect the others but does hurt runtime; set all three to Never and the machine stays on indefinitely. Waking from Dim and Stand-By is near-instantaneous, so generous timeouts cost nothing in responsiveness.

Their other runtime advice: turn the screen brightness down, work from internal storage rather than a memory card (writing to cards costs more power), and remove communications cards when not in use.

What is realistically repairable

Part	Repairable?	Notes
Firmware	Yes, and try it first	Four post-launch ROM images exist; the last is still hosted publicly. A great many netBook Pro faults are firmware, not hardware.
Touchscreen that ignores the stylus	Usually	Reflash before condemning the digitiser.
Battery pack	Yes	Three 18650 cells and a controller board. See Psion netBook Pro Battery Service.
Backup cells	Yes, trivially	Two alkaline AAA cells behind a user-accessible cover.
Lid covering lifting at the edges	Yes, cosmetically	Re-adhering it is straightforward. On many machines it never sat flush from new.
Rubber port caps	No	Not replaceable, and commonly missing. Keep the ones you have — the Honda-port cap is how you identify the hardware revision.
Hinges	Marginal	Adhesive repairs are possible but risky, and old plastics are brittle. A donor machine is the safer answer where one can be found.
Built-in modem / USB over the Honda port	No	A property of the hardware revision. An "RS232" machine will not gain either.
Internal Flash and RAM	No	Soldered. A failure means a donor board.
CCFL backlight tube	In principle	The panel is a transmissive TFT with a CCFL backlight, so a dimming screen is a tube or inverter question rather than a panel one. No replacement source is known, and no failure has yet been reported.

Capacitors

The netBook Pro is not a recap candidate. No report of a failed capacitor on any machine in this family exists in the surviving record. The reasoning, and the two situations where capacitor work is nevertheless justified, are set out in the Series 7 troubleshooting guide. For recognising a genuinely failed capacitor when you do meet one, see Capacitor Failure Symptoms.

Related pages

• Psion netBook Pro · Psion netBook Pro General Maintenance · Psion netBook Pro Battery Service
• Psion Series 7 Troubleshooting Guide · Psion netBook Troubleshooting Guide
• Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage · Recommended Tools