Samsung saga - voice command failure

The voice command for dialing suddenly stopped working on my samsung saga giving an error of "voice command has encountered a problem. restart voice command and try again". I tried several reboots including taking the battery out. The problem persisted.

This is extremely aggravating in that I was no longer able to use my phone in a hands free mode while driving.

I did some checking and someone had posted that they removed the messaging option from the voice command control panel.

To do this, go to
- Start
- Settings
- Voice Command
- Then uncheck the messaging option
- click OK
- try the voice command

The above worked for me. By the way, the problem was preceeded by my phone locking up and not allowing access to apps I had loaded such as youtube and google maps.

So far, the fix appears to be working.