Do you recognize this problem?
You start TomTom, choose the destination and start driving. At the first junction you notice the voice has a low volume, so you wait till the first traffic light and check the sound volume in TomTom. This is already on the maximum setting! Apparently the system volume is on a low setting. You park the car, stop TomTom and you find out that the system volume is indeed very low. You put this on a high volume, start TomTom, choose the destination, wait for a connection with the satellites en drive off. Your total delay is 5-10 minutes.

Do you recognize this problem?
You are driving to your appointment and the last part of the route is in an unknown town. You have to concentrate on the traffic and the map and voice of TomTom. Suddenly there is a popup on the screen that reminds your appointment in the agenda. The screen is blocked! You know about this appointment, because you are driving to it! You try to get rid of the popup wile your driving in the town and there is a lot of traffic. With a smartphone you also get popup notifications for incomming e-mail, SMS, MMS, RSS, missed call and voice mail.

These two problems gave me and a colleague Peter Boot a lot of irritations and as a result I wrote a program to counteract it. This program first puts the system volume on the highest setting and after closing TomTom lowers it to the original setting. Next it starts TomTom and closes all notifications (popups) from the agenda program as long as TomTom is active. In WM6 it also blocks notification popups for incomming e-mail, SMS, MMS, RSS, missed call and voice mail. Both problems are solved this way. It does not close other notifications like for instance a low power popup.

TomTomStarter operates independently from TomTom and cooperates with all recent versions. It makes no changes to the TomTom software. So it is save to say that any problem with TomTom is not caused by TomTomStarter.

You can download the deinstall program with the links below:
TomTomStarter deinstaller (12 KB) or its mirror here.

Languages and versions:
TomTomStarter was originally developed for the Pocket PC Mobile 2003 & WM5. It blocks the appointment reminder popups when TomTom is active. It is tested on both mobile types. It offers support for the English, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch language. It also has support for French and Portugese language but this has not ben tested. It is freeware.

Version 2 offers no improvements for WM2003 & WM5, so there is no need to upgrade from version 1. Now there is a freeware version 2 for WM6 for all languages. The popup reminders in WM6 are not the same as the one on WM5, they are called 'bubbles'(see picture). In TomTomStarter for WM6 not only the bubbles for appointment reminders are blocked when TomTom is active, but also the bubble for a incomming e-mail, SMS, MMS, RSS, missed phone call and voice-mail. After you exit TomTom the bubbles will popup again for new notifications.

The program is written in C# for .NET version 1, installed on a Pocket PC Mobile 2003, WM5 & WM6. TomTomStarter version 2 works for all the mobile version. It was not easy to write the program for .NET version 1, because the functionality off version 1 is much less then version 2. I used PInvoke very often. I advise everybody to use .NET version 2 as much as possible.

Installation procedure:
It is always wise to make a backup of the memory before installing any program.
The installation is very simple. Put the program somewhere on the Pocket PC. Start it on the Pocket PC. It will search for TomTom. The name of the program that starts TomTom will be changed. TomTomStarter will take its place. You get a once-only message with the directory where TomTom is installed. After that TomTom will be started. You can use all the shortcuts that TomTom has created. Because of the installation procedure TomTomStarter will be slow the first time. The next time you use it, it will be much faster.

Deinstallation procedure:
This is also simple. Put the program somewhere on the Pocket PC. Start it on the Pocket PC and it will search for TomTom. Everything will be restored in the original state.

Important for experienced Pocket PC users:
When TomTom is installed on WM5 & WM6, and you choose for the option "Install on the storage card", TomTom will still install 6-8 Mb of data in system memory. Because the Pocket PC has very limited system memory this can be very annoying. I could not implement a system update for the bluetooth because I had not enough system memory available. On my Pocket Pc I have moved the complete "\Program files\Navigator"* directory to the storage card and started TomTomStarter from there. This works fine! If you want to free up some valuable system memory you move the complete "\Program files\Navigator" directory yourself to any location on the storage card. You leave the empty directory "\Program files\Navigator" intact. You start TomTomStarter for the first time and it will install itself in both Navigator directory's. All old shortcuts can be used after this operation!

*On the Dutch version of the Pocket PC the directory "Program files" is called "Programmabestanden". Every languages has a different directory name.

Support for other languages.
The program supports the English, German, Italian and Dutch version of the Pocket PC. If you want to use it for an other language, you send a mail at info@klaes.nl with an answer to the next three questions:
- What is the name of the language?
- What is the exact name of the directory \Program files\Navigator\ on your Pocket PC?
- What is the exact title of the notification popup of the agenda program. On the English version this is "Reminder". The program closes popups that match this exact title.

Update Description:
v2.0:
- Support for Windows Mobile 6 (all languages).

v1.4:
- Support for Spanish language.

v1.2:
- Gives support for the German and Italian language.