Fellow Aximians-

I have a Axim X5, the 300Mhz 32 Mb version and attempted to upgrade my OS to 2003 yesterday. (Brief rundown of the process) There are two steps 1. backing up your ROM and 2. the actual upgrade itself (ie. Transfer of files from the CD to the device) During the second step when the progress bar got to about 13% or so my connection (thru ActiveSync ver 3.7.1) would drop and the process would eventually display a message saying that the upgrade was incomplete…or fail…something to that effect. I would then have to establish a new connection under a new name i.e. Pocket_PC, Pocket_PC2, Pocket_PC3, etc. After the 7th connection I decided to call Dell technical support. I talked to a technician for about an hour and we basically ran through the same procedure that I did 7 previous times (I even tried to upgrade thru a guest connection) and sure enough it failed again at the same location. The tech I was talking to then put me on hold for about 20 minutes, when he returned he told me that a lot of people were having problems upgrading to 2003 and that I should send the CDs back for a full refund. Of course I asked when a new upgrade CD would be available and he said that it was out of Dell’s control and that it was up to Microsoft to release it.

From reading the other threads it seems like some of you got the upgrade to work. Did anybody else experience problems like me? I welcome any thoughts or comments.

Thass

If you have a 32MB or larger CF card, you can install the new ROM image from it directly (bypassing ActiveSync and the associated troubles) using this method

Things are not looking good. I can't copy anything to my Axim without loosing the connection. Not even with Explorer.

Use a card reader then.

Aximians-

I think I found the answer to my problem; regarding my continuous dropped connections. It seems that anti-virus software (Macafee or Symantec) will interfere with the file exchange of ActiveSync. My speculation (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the anti-virus software is checking the file exchange for potential bugs…ActiveSync freaks out and drops the connection.

Thass

Possible. Also, personal firewalls may interfere with ActiveSync functioning.

Yeah I see that now. I had no idea all this stuff was related.
Seems I have some reading to do.

I want to close out this thread.

The problems that I had installing the upgrade 2003 OS to my Axim (and attempting to install any software to my Axim) were caused by anti-virus software and or the firewall that are associated with my PC at work. 2003 upgrade installed just fine at home, on my less secure machine (no firewall).

Signing off.