cravaus

Hardware/Software: Sony Vaio with a Linksys Class1 Dongle using the Widcomm stack on the PC side syncing to a Axim x51V using the Widcomm BT Stack for the PDA.

I synchronize a moderately large databases, my financial software, and my PhatNotes data base along with a contacts database with about 300 entries, a years worth of calendar/tasks data, and 7 days worth of email. I also have TomTom home, PocketController, and MobSync running in the background. What do you think? Is this too much for Bluetooth to handle?

This is what happens: I can synchronize by Bluetooth--but it crashes eventually. I will pair it up and synchronization starts as it should and it will occasionally do a complete cycle and then crash. After it crashes I can not sync with Bluetooth unless I restart the PC. It will not do a complete synchronization cycle unless I first do a hard wire synchronization. Then, it will sync once completely and then crash. If I try to transfer a file over Bluetooth it will crash if the file is too large (a 100 page book for instance).

What I have done: I have disabled my firewall and I still have the same issues. But, when the firewall is enabled I have also made sure that all AS features are allowed through the firewall. I have opened up file sharing capacity in the fire wall. I am allowing incoming and out going TCP/IP port 26675 for AS and 137-139 for file sharing; Outgoing UDP port 5679 in AS. I took these settings from the Microsoft site. I have also deleted partnerships and created new partnerships more times than I can count. It appears to work fine for a time and then it crashes again and I am back to the same process.

Pairing is not a problem. Synchronization happens but it is not consistent. Crashing is the problem.

cravaus

ActiveSync Firewall Issues
I will just blog what I have found out. I guess since apparently no one has answers yet. I noticed that even when the McAfee firewall is disabled, the Windows ActiveSync problem solver still said that there are filre wall problems. I completely uninstalled McAfee and completely uninstalled ActiveSync and deleted all files from C:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync and deleted all registry keys that had any reference to ActiveSync or my partnership. I reinstalled ActiveSync and set up the partnership without any virus protection or firewall installed (other than the XP Built in programs which I turned off). All went well. I then loaded McAfee and again I had crashes even when the firewall was disabled. I do not know why this is the case but I took a closer look at the fire wall and allowable programs. I found that the program "dbexport.exe" in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync" was not inclueded in my allowed programs list within the firewall. It is not listed in the ones to add on the Microsoft site. I added it. No crashes so far!

This makes since to me because the place where the syncronization would hang when using Bluetooth was at Access syncronization, PhatNotes, and PocketQuicken. Although ActiveSync would crash, MobSync and PocketControler would often continue to work (not always but often).

On the other hand this could just be a fluke. It often goes through short periods of working and then starts crashing. So good so far however. Expert openions about what is happening here woud be appreciated.

cravaus

Still no crashes with syncronization ever but it will still crash if transfering a file through active sync or if trying to load a new program by active sync if the file is over a meg or something like that. The work around is to transfer the file or cab through the widcomm bluetooth stack on the pc side with the file transfer utility in My Bluetooth Places. I can transfer large files with no problem using this. However I can only transfer to the My Documents folder and then from their I need to hand transfer it to where ever I want it on my PDA. So, this has been my work around. Hopefully this helps someone else out there.

Crash free syncronization and file transfer over bluetooth even with large data bases. It can be done.