Ex Ipaqer

ActiveSync 4.0/4.1 + WM5 can screw up in many different ways. I know, because I've spent the last few weeks troubleshooting ActiveSync problems with my x51v on both my office desktop and my home laptop. Turns out they were different problems, both of them complicated. It looks like some lucky people turn out to have relatively simple AS problems. Others like me are not so lucky.

Anyway, after trying every suggestion I could find on this board and others, and despairing of ever getting AS to work on my Thinkpad X32, here are all the things I finally did to get it working. (Also, I should point out that my laptop AS problem was rather subtle: I could sync by infrared but not by USB.)

1) Uninstalled ActiveSync (I had installed a number of versions, the last one being the new, official 4.1)
2) Went through the registry with regedit and deleted all occurrences of the string "activesync"
3) Deleted the c:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync\ folder and all files and subfolders underneath it.
4) Rebooted.
5) Made sure BOTH ZoneAlarm and the Windows XP firewall were disabled.
6) Exited Cisco VPN and stopped all XP services related to Cisco VPN (if you have a VPN client, you should either do this, or, if you have the Cisco client, it appears to be sufficient to deselect the "Stateful Firewall" option -- this turned out to be absolutely essential).
7) Reinstalled the officially released 4.1 version of ActiveSync.
8) Did the sync.

On my desktop, in addition to the above except #6, AS only worked after I plugged in the ppc and, while it was trying to sync, found the "Windows Mobile" device driver in Device Manager, deleted it, unplugged the ppc, and then plugged it back in and let it recreate that driver.

Then, to get ZoneAlarm working again with ActiveSync, I gave across-the-board permissions to the four executables in the ActiveSync programs folder, and put the AS IP addresses (169.254.2.1 and 169.254.2.2) in my trusted zone.

Now, was all this necessary? Maybe not, but I did try many individual smaller things that had worked for others, to no avail (uninstalled and reinstalled AS over prior installations, unplugged and then recradled the ppc while it was turned on, disabled my firewalls, exited out of my running Cisco VPN client so there was no visible indication it was running, although the service turned out to still be screwing up my connection). And it's clear from other posts that some AS problems go beyond even these solutions, such as problems with individual items in the sync list that are only fixed when you sync things one item at a time, until you identify the culprit.

Common sense dictates that you try the easiest things first and work your way toward the more labor intensive stuff. But don't shirk from trying the full monty if the piecemeal approach doesn't work.

EI