I have a iPAQ 4150 PDA which I have been syncronoising to MS ActiveSync for about 5 months via USB lead.

Recently I have tried to connect the PDA to the PC but getting the green whirly icon trying to connect forever. Shortly after putting my PDA in the cradle it makes the disconnect, bing-bong sound (instead of the Bong-bing connected sound).

I have disabled all the firewalls (Win SP2) and tried hard reset the PDA and reinstalled the ActiveSync application!!!! I am running Win XP home.

Alex

Did you reboot your PC after disabling the SP2 firewalls? I was having similar issues. I had disabled the firewall while the iPAQ was docked and then when undocked. It wasn't until I restarted my laptop, let the firewalls come up normally, set the iPAQ in the cradle and when the firewall notifications came up I let activesync have access in the dialogue box in those notifications. After that I've had no more problems with firewall and activesync.

Yeah...tried all that, might remove SP2 and see what happens to my system.

I had a similar problem.
I did a system restore on my pc. And that took it back to prior to installing some new software to my ppc. Have you installed anything new. If so this could be the problem.

I had the same problem after changing ISPs. As an experiment I uninstalled my ISP, made a temporary connection to the Internet and then tried to Sync. Everything worked normally. I then re-installed the new ISP and tried again. It worked perfectly and I haven't had a problem since. Just another one to chalk up to the ghosts of cyberspace.

I just had a similar problem with my Ipaq4155. My synch options include Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, and Mobile Favorites. ActiveSync would establish the connection, find the changes, and then minimize. It keeps 'whirling' and mousing over the icon in the system tray says it is looking for changes, but it never resolves anything. Re-opening ActiveSync just re-starts the process. I un-checked Mobile Favorites from the ActiveSync options, and now everything syncs OK. I have no idea why this problem suddenly appeared, as I have always sync'd Mobile Favorites and no changes were made.

Based on my experience, I'd suggest turning off the ActiveSync options one at a time and try to find if one of them is causing the problem. This is not an ideal solution, I know, as I do not yet know how to solve this problem.

I too had an occasional problem when syncing my iPaq 2210 with my PC running XP Pro (not upgraded to SP2). AS would open but never connect with the PPC. Over time, I noticed that the probelm occurred when I docked the PPC soon after the PC had booted up. If I booted up the PC and then waited a few minutes before putting the PPC in the cradle, there was no problem.

It seems that in my case, the PC takes some before it is ready to accept the USB connection of the PPC.

See if waiting a few minutes solves the problem.

Note: When AS doesn't work the first time, no amount of waiting will allow it to work again in that session. Reboot the PC and wait before docking the PPC. This is my experience.