Axim x51v
ActiveSynch 4.1
Windows XP Pro
Built-in PIM


I spent a solid day yesterday fighting with this crapware. It all started when I happened to notice that not all my notes were there in Outlook on my desktop. As I had Pocket Informant installed, I thought it might be that so I uninstalled it.

Still no good.

After fighting for several more hours, I was somehow able to pull off a complete Notes synch by playing with synching files between Axim and PC. Don't ask me how I did it, because I couldn't explain my methods other than that I had to delete/rename/move/copy the Notes subdirectories on Axim/PC various times in various ways before ActiveSynch would recognize:

"Hey there needs to be a synch here! There's something DIFFERENT between the PDA and PC! Maybe I should look at the situation again!"

THEN, once I got that done, my TRUE hell began: email. Realize that by this point, I had already wasted almost my entire day at work fighting this. And since I work for myself, this is NOT a pleasurable experience.

For whatever reason, ActiveSynch would not see all my email folders. They would not show up in the folders you could choose to synch. Well, no better idea, I synched what I could EXCEPT that now ActiveSynch placed two or THREE copies of the emails in a folder or two! grrrrr

So I UN-selected the synch on that folder. And . . . nothing. So I rebooted both the PC and the PDA. And . . . it worked. Hmmmm. What do you call software that doesn't work before a reboot and that DOES afterwards? Crap.

Battling the email thing took several more hours . . . this time at home. After countless reboots and playing with folders, I finally got the correct number of emails to show between the PC and the PDA in each folder. (The missing folders would show up as selections one or two at a time during the course of this)

RIGHT when I was battling the last email folder to synch, I get the "there's been a problem synching and you may lose everything since your last synch!" (which I *DID* of course, notes, tasks, EVERYTHING).

After THAT, had to wait for the monster synch (a "first time" synch EVERYTHING synch). And now the best I have is all notes showing up, all email folders with the correct number of emails in each, BUT many emails in several of my folders are "empty" when I open them!

The battle continues into another day . . . <sigh> soooooo . . . other than just bitching, I guess I'm asking

1) Whether anyone else has had similar problems with the setup I'm running? or ActiveSynch 4.1 / WM 5.0

2) What they finally figured out . . . ?

3) Is there any other PROVEN synching software that does everything between Outlook desktop and Axim (and files) that DOESN'T just randomly cause problems like these?

Panoramic


Ohhh, and I forgot to mention that TWICE during this whole ugly process my PC blue-screened (of death). Pretty DAMNED impressive considering I'm running XP Pro. AND pretty damned lame considering that the PC is a **DELL** laptop (with, of course, a DELL PDA).

One thing that I found in order to pinpoint the problem was to uncheck all sync options (in active sync window - tools, options). And then one by one add the calendar then sync. Add the contacts then sync, etc. There could be a conflict with one of the options. Mine was with favorites. I know how frustrating it is to not be able to sync, especially when in a hurry.

Ken van

I feel your pain.
Compare to HotSync (Palm), the Bill Gate's sync program should be rename Active-Stink.

We should start a poll on that.

Marc G