Verizon likes to make things complicated for their cell phone users by blocking the ability to set mp3s in the music folder as ringtones, but where there’s a will, there’s always a way.
The easiest way is to email them to your phone from a computer by sending it as an email attachment to yourtendigitphonenumber@vzwpix.com (i.e. 5555555555@vzwpix.com). The only problem with this method is that some people report that Verizon will compress/lower the quality of the recording. It also costs $.25/message.
The method listed below is free, but slightly more involved and complicated. It also involves using third-party software to hack into the phone and should only be done with extreme caution. If you’re inexperienced with BitPim or worried about turning your expensive cell phone into a brick, then use the first method or buy the ringtones from Verizon.
Here are the instructions for the brave-hearted. I’ve tried this and it works flawlessly.
- Install the USB driver from the CD that came with your phone.
- Download and install the latest version of BitPim (currently 1.0.6.20080804).
Connect your phone to your computer with the supplied USB cable.- Open BitPim and go to Edit – Detect Phone. Select “Yes” to run settings.
- Choose “LG VX9700 (Dare)” from the drop-down menu beside Phone Type.
- Click “Browse” to select the USB communications port that your phone is currently using. It should appear as “LGE CDMA USB Serial Port.”
- After selecting “OK,” BitPim should recognize the phone connection and display it in the bottom status bar.
Select “File System” under the menu tree on the left-hand side of the program and expand the blue folder that appears on the right side.- Drag and drop files into the following folders: pictures use brew/mod/10888, ringtones use brew/mod/10889/ringtones. Keep ringtones under 500kb for best results.
- Once files are transferred, close BitPim and restart the Dare. Your files should appear under My Music and the ringtone selector.
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71 Comments
I had problems transferring pictures from my cell phone (LG Dare) to the computer until I remembered the old saying “When all else fails…then read the instructions.” Go to the User Guide that came with the phone and turn to page 70 under the topic of USB MASS STORAGE and read the instructions. The key is to have a micro SD card in the phone for this to work.
@ Jack: You are correct, but Verizon’s software won’t allow mp3s that are transferred using that method to work as ringtones.
The “File System” doesn’t appear when it detects my phone. What should I do? It detects the DARE though.
NVM. I did it by using the Send/Export Data. THANKS! Ray Lamontagne ROCKS!
Do you know how to upload videos from my pc to my Dare? I can’t find a tutorial anywhere. I tried converting my flv to mpeg1 and sent it to my phone by USB mass storage and bitpim and both didn’t work.
@ Joe: I have no idea. See if you can find what you need here.
So i’ve added the ringtones through bitpim. No problems with that. However, how do you get them off?
@ Kaci: In BitPim, right-click on the file you want removed and you’ll see several options.
so…i am mentally challenged becuz apparently my phone wants to blow up on me everytime i try this! i cant drag anything anywhere! i wanted to put music on my phone like i had on the envy 2. my sister did it to i just dont get it. i upload the disk cuz they told me to, then i do all the stuff on this page and still wont let me do ne thing…PLEASE HELP!
Do you know how to upload videos from my pc to my Dare? I can’t find a tutorial anywhere.
K.I uploaded a ringtone to my phone and it worked once k. so i tryed more and either i forgot, of sumthin. i red the your instructions many times.Do u drag to your phone or to rhapsody first or wats up k. help plez….!!!.
i meant to put in there that it dosnt work anymore lol k thanx.
This is ridiculous. I don’t have (or want) (or need) an SD card, but everything’s leading me to believe that I’m screwed unless I get one. I just want to transfer pictures to use as wallpaper. It won’t accept the emails because the file is apparently too big. Bit Pim doesn’t recognize the usb plugin as my phone and I can’t force it.
I’m going insane.
I see that Bitpim still hasn’t figured out how to access ringtones off the microSD card. I don’t want to move all my music from my card to my phone just so I can make custom ringtones. Anyone found a solution to this?
i did everything
and i dragged the file to the ringtone folder
but it doesnt show up under my sounds
what do i do?
@ Ben: Make sure you reboot your phone, then go to ringtones. If the file size isn’t larger than 500kb, it should appear.
Hay Joe I have fingured out the file sys not being there you have to go to view and check mark the view file system then click on the file system botton under T9 editor and open the root folder and will get the file system data from your phone . Hope this helps you good luck
Ok, finally figured it out. Follow the directions and you end up with the ringtone file you want on the right pane of the BitPim window. THEN, highlight the file and click the move data icon to the phone on top. In other words, once the file is in the program you then have to tell the program to copy it too the phone
Does anyone know how to clear the auto complete memory in the Dare’s browser? I’ve cleared the history and memory, but it still auto fills when typing in the internet address bar. Any ideas? Thanks.
Is there *any* way to program the music files on your microSD card into ringtones without having to move those files to the phone memory??
Thanks for the tip!!! I haven’t had any luck elsewhere. One thing to add… You may want to download “WavePad Sound Editor”(for music) to edit your music first..
Here’s the web address: http://www.download.com/WavePad/3000-2170_4-10276212.html
Then, you’ll be able to adjust the file size,song length and type of file(it works best if you change file type to mp3).
Just wanted to say.. Thank you! I got it working!
However, how do I delete a created ringtone from the phone? (not in BitPim).
Great tool. Thank you for this post.
after restarting my lg dare, i see that there is still an audio file under call ringtone. however, when i go to bitpim, i dont see the file there. however, i do see the other mp3’s that i transferred. Sorry, the file that i am trying to get rid of that i just cant delete is a .MID file. please help. thanks.
I downloaded the BitPim program and start working on what you told me.
But, I got stuck at the part where you want me to find “File System” under the BitPim tree..
Can someone tell me what I did wrong? o.O
I meant.. that File System isnt there on my BitPim
@ TheFake: Choose View – View File System and make sure there is a check mark beside it.
how do you stop the ticking?
@ randy: You return it.
That’s what I did.
John
((((Posted September 19, 2008 at 1:15 am | Permalink
Thanks for the tip!!! I haven’t had any luck elsewhere. One thing to add… You may want to download “WavePad Sound Editor”(for music) to edit your music first..
Here’s the web address: http://www.download.com/WavePad/3000-2170_4-10276212.html
Then, you’ll be able to adjust the file size,song length and type of file(it works best if you change file type to mp3).)))))
it works!!!
if the ticking you are talkin about is the touch tones,
just turn them off in the touch setting menu.
set to none.
@ Easy: The ticking sound was coming from the ear piece when a call was in progress. Several users reported the problem on Howard Forums and some suggested that it was the proximity sensor that turned off the display when the phone was pressed to your head. It would tick like a wrist-watch, but about twice as fast.
Some have also reported that the latest firmware release for the phone has fixed the problem. Too bad it took this long, because that was the only reason I didn’t keep my Dare.
Did the ticking noise have anything to do with hacking into the phone to get mp3 to be ringtones? Or did that happen before then?
@ Matt: No. The ticking is/was a common problems with these phones from the beginning. Looks like the update fixed it, though.
Thanks for this. I always hated the idea of having to pay to put a sound as your ringer when you can load MP3s onto it that aren’t set as ringtones.
Verizon REALLY wanted their money for you to listen to your own music on your own phone.
Wow…this is great! thank you everybody!! this has been a great help
I cant find the USB driver from the CD that came with my phone i may have lost it the only CD that i have is reference guide, is there another way i can install my USB driver or do i need the cd?
@ Amy Jo: Check the manufacturer’s website to see if it can be downloaded.
Hey does anyone know why an mp3 won’t send using the email method? I was able to get a basic text sent from email to come through, but and email with an mp3 attachment won’t go through. What am I doing wrong?
I figured it out, it was because i had spaces in the filename
Is there a way to get video on it as well?
THANK-YOU so much! I searched high and low for a way to do this… so this website was perfect! I just had one question, anyone know how to do games?
I downloaded this programs and it was working fine for about a day and then I started getting a message saying that VERIZON was blocking anything that I was trying to send to my phone through this program.
using this method can easyily brick a phone if your not carefull. its much safer to stay out of the file system. on the dropdown menu on the left open media then select ringers. then click on the music note with a plus sign on it. browse for an mps you would like to convert to a ringtone. a window will open, click the convert button. once the proces is done move the start and end flags till you have the ringtone how you want it. click ok. walla you have a custom ringtone. now click the button with the arrow pointing at the phone. checkmark ringtone an make sure ringtone is on add, if its on replace all you will lose all your other ringtones. click ok and your done. the ringtone gets transfered and your phone resets itself. no messing around inside the file system. chances of bricking phone, slim to none
@ Bill, convert the video file to .3g2. you can find programs to do this by searching in google for .3g2 converter
Hey guys I’ve used bitpim before on my lg 8100 to get ringtones but for some reason I cant get my new Dare to work. The problem is that my computer doesnt detect my phone. I’ve downloaded the driver for the phone and I know its not the cable or usb port because the phone starts charging when I plug it into the computer. Any ideas what I’ve done wrong?
try to powering down your lg dare and then connect the usb cable
how do you get the images OFF the LG dare
to get the pic’s off the phone use bitpim. Make sure you check off wallpaper!
PLEASE USE http://www.mobile17.com because it will save you a lot of headaches and is very ease to register/use. Also, if you want to e-mail pictures to your phone, simply attach a pic as an attachment in an email and send it to (your number)@vzwpix.com
i can not get the file share to show up so i can not figure out how to put ringtones on my phone. it is the lg dare
ok so i figured out how to put ringtones on my phone but i know this is really stupid how do i make songs smaller so i can put them on my phone.
I found the filesystem file, but I can’t expand the blue folder. Everytime I double click it I get an error message. Somting like, Failed to open communitcations-COM5 COM5: could not open port \\?\COM5 .
Does anybody know how to open this? I really want to put ringtones in my Dare!
Please, help me!!!
Nevermind lol
I figured it out! I didn’t realize that BitPim didn’t detect my phone.lol
Anyway, thank you for this article!!!It really helped me a lot! lol
I followed Johns suggestions…everything worked great until I tried to add to phone, said “failed to auto-detect the port to use. I couldn’t detect any candidate ports” What do I do from here?
Thanks
i have tried everything that you and other users have suggested but everytime i try to open up the file system it always says that COM5: could not open port. it says that my phone is manually set. so what do i do now?
how about trans to sounds so then i can send them to others?
Just wanted to say thanks for posting the info up. Must admit, new phone is rather nifty, however can be pretty frustrating at times.
On another note, I’m impressed by your website as a whole and your expression of your thoughts. I stumbled here based on the phone question, but kept reading beyond. Keep it up!
ok i have tried everything it says here, but for some reason the ringtones still doesn’t show up. When i look under the file system, it is there in that file, but it doesn’t show up in the phone????? How do i fix this?
Thanks, Brian, for the info and your website. Your intructions are very clear. It took BitPim some time to recognize my phone and I didn’t need to do steps 5 or 6. I used Audacity for the conversion to mp3, making sure the size was under 500b. I needed to check View Filesystem, in the View menu, in order to proceed. Instead of drag/drop, I right-clicked in the ringtone folder and chose add new file. Worked perfectly!!
Thanks so much for a very clear and informative post. I had no idea where to look in BitPim for the pictures. It was slow having to copy them one at a time to the PC, but at least it can be done.
I have now cleared room on the SD card and switched where pictures are saved to so I can just use a card reader in the future.
I have the LG Dare now just upgraded to it from the orange Env and I know of a good program that you can use to make your own ring tones for free and then send them to your phone as picture message. It’s called Tonethis. You will however need one other program to use Tonethis and it’s Microsoft’s .net framework. After downloading and installing both program start up Tonethis then click on the browse button and then choose what song you want to make ring tone with from wherever you have it on you computer. Then choose which part of the song you want up to so many Kb but you want to select the whole song first by highlighting said song. To do that just move you mouse pointer to the box where the song has loaded then, click from either the far left or far right sides and drag to the other side to hear the song. now watch as the song plays so you can see the number for the part you want begins and the number of where that part ends. after selecting the part you want click upload and it will be sent to your phone. To get the programs here the links to them. Tonethis… http://www.tonethis.com/ .net framework……… http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en
I got my phone about 3 weeks ago and with the help of this article
I was able to get this to work on my Verizon/Dare. I used wav format and was able to transfer with a somewhat difficult learning curve. But my phone was defective and I had to exchange it; subsequently I have tried to repeat the process and get the ringtones back on my phone but to no avail. Though I am not completely sure I am doing what I did previously, I am trying to be sytematic and rational.
My files are still on my computer and under ringtones on Bitpim;
I clicked on the file and then the add to phone icon (though I had read somewhere that to avoid the conversion process one had to press shift and add. Didn’t work.) The file looked like it was sent to the phone, the phone rebooted, but the file wasn’t available when I went into sound settings>> call sounds>>>to choose the new ringtone.
I tried removing my mini card and repeating the process, but still couldn’t find the ringtone. I looked in My Music on the phone, but didn’t see the file, and couldn’t find any indication that it was there.
Also, I kept getting a white screen indicating that something was updating.
I want to do this transfer via the cable; I don’t have a data plan and have disabled email and web. i did it before and I hope to again.
I am baffled! Any ideas? Thanks for any help!
SK
@ Sue: If the music files are stilling showing up on Bitpim from your previous phone, then I wonder if Bitpim is showing you a cached information. Here’s what I’d try:
1. Make sure the ringtones you want are still available somewhere on your computer.
2. Connect the phone and open Bitpim. Browse to the ringtone folder on the phone and delete the ringtones that you added to the old phone.
3. Reboot your Dare and then restart Bitpim.
4. Add the ringtones to the phone again from the location on your computer that you verified earlier. You should see them pop up in the Bitpim window when they have successfully transferred.
5. Restart your phone and see if they are there.
If this didn’t fix the problem, go back through the steps for discovering a phone to make sure that Bitpim is displaying the file system for the phone that you are currently using and not the old one. Then repeat the steps in the original post.
Hope this helps!
hey this helped me so much…. just one question… i keep getting the message…… COM4: could not open port \\?\COM4: (5, ‘CreateFile’, ‘Access is denied.’)…….. it happens when i try to open the subfolders for folder /
Ok this may be a little late since many of these post are older, but I hope those who needed the help with getting pictures off the dare to their PC come back and see this. I almost was going to use Bitpim to get these darn photos off the Dare, but gave it another shot without it. You don’t need to use this program to get the pictures off. The problem seems to be when you first connect the Dare via the USB to the PC, it automatically connects because its default is set to “Ask on Plug” in the USB Auto detection area and the only options it gives are to Music or To data. (Being the skeptic I am I would think Verizon does this purposely). This way, the LG Dare drive displays, but just music folders show and not pictures or video. What you have to do is disconnect, but leave the USB plugged in so it’s just charging now. Go into Settings and tools, but select Tools, scroll down and select USB Mass Storage and it will connect to the PC a different way and will show the Dare as a removable disc(THIS IS OF COURSE IF YOU HAVE THE PICTURES ON THE SD CARD, which you should). But this time its shows a folder called Mypics where your pictures are, so open it up all your photos on the Dare display. You can now just copy and paste or cut and paste them all to your PC. You don’t have to do them one by one either! And it comes in the normal size too! Also, if you’ve taken videos, you’ll see the videos under myflix folder. I haven’t looked at ringtones, but there is a folder also listed for sounds.
OK, I’ve followed all of the best of the above advice…I’ve managed to get my ringtone onto my phone, but I can’t select it because I get the error message “non DRM protected file”. The file is my own property, I recorded it so there are no copyright issues here (for anyone that cares)…does anyone know how to override this issue? or, alternately, how can I add DRM to my mp3 file? I should add: I have the Telus Mobility version of the LG Dare, which I’m finding out, is a LOT different from the Verizon.
Well, after some surfing, and some trial-and-error, I found out how to get ringtones onto a Dare on the Telus network…when you configure Bitpim you can’t let it autoselect the phone, you have to manually select VX-9100 (not 9700 which is the phone model #). Then using the Tree view, add the mp3 file into the File system/brew/mod/ringtone folder. No DRM error came up this time.
How can I use the .jar files (games) on my Dare? I have 80 or so games, hooked the phone up via USB and tranferred them into a folder I named phone games. I can’t find them on my phone? Any help would be great.
Thanks.
I understand this post is a little late, but I just found this discussion board so I figure this could be useful to somebody out there.
Use http://www.Mobile17.com to get free ringtones! I had trouble with getting ringtones on my Dare, but wasn’t frustrated enough to possibly turn it into a “brick.” You can use this website to create ringtones from your own music on your PC or Mac.
Follow the directions on the website to upload your song of choice and cut it down to the snippit of time you want. Once you make the ringtone, just send it to your phone as a picture message (recommended).
The only tricky part is actually making it a ringtone; once you open the message, it doesn’t automatically become one. You have to click the options button on the bottom right of your screen WHILE THE RINGTONE IS PLAYING and choose “save as ringtone.” Voila! Ringtone on a Dare!
On the “chose comm port” , nothing shows up. HELP !?!