locked up

I have a BC796D that will scan great. Sometimes for an hour or so. Then will decide to lock on to a control channel and not scan again until I press scan button. I have reflashed unit to new firmware and then back to old fw. I also reprogrammed unit all over again (Banks and freqs) and checked...

I know how to do a full hard reset but I wonder if there is a soft reset that will not destroy existing programming. My 996XT locked up hard in Bandscope mode and I could not exit from it. Obviously I tried SCAN (which has always worked before) as well as various MENU options.... Neil Bell