I had a problem with my bt headset today (the headset did not go into standby mode between calls) and rebooting the headset didn't help, so I rebooted (used the menu to switch off) the n900 as well. A bad decision.

Now all localized strings show up as some kind of software labels, eg. instead of displaying the current time, the status area reads "wdgt_va_24_time" and in the phone application buttons I see "call_bd_idle_view_dialpad" and "call_bd_idle_view_select_conta".

If I go to settings (or "copa_ap_cp_nam", as it reads now) , I see that the phone has been set to "cpal_fi_pr_device_language" of "Dansk" and "cpal_fi_pr_your_region" of "Afrikaans (South Africa)" (last time I checked, this was "Bahrain". If I change these to English, the device reboots - and returns to these faulty settings again.

I have seen this once before and the only way I could get the thing working again was to reflash it (and then install and configure all applications again). I don't want to spend yet another day fighting with this, so I'm asking for help.

Does anyone know how to fix this without starting from scratch again? It must be something trivial like a missing file or something - but what and where?

[I have been extremely unhappy with the n900 since I got it. I find it hard to believe that a company like Nokia would release such alpha quality software (missing features, bugs, 10-60 second delays when starting and switching applications, etc.). :-( ]