Disappearing Bluetooth GPRS connections

[Wes Salmon]

Is anyone else having a problem with Bluetooth GPRS connections in connection manager self destructing? I've had it happen 3 times on two different devices in the past 4 days. It's getting a bit annoying. :)

[Duncan]

Very odd. I've had two GPRS connections on a 5450 and 2210 for a long time and never seen this happen - which makes me wonder if somehow your phone is triggering this?

[Janak Parekh]

Wes, what devices are you using? There were issues a few years ago about SQL Server CE messing up the database that the BT managers used to use...

--janak

[Wes Salmon]

I've had the GPRS Bluetooth connection setting self destruct 4 times now, twice on an iPaq 2215 and twice on an iPaq 1945.

I'm thinking is must have something to do with the Bluetooth GPS I pair up with, that's really the only thing I've changed before all this started to happen.

[BigDaddy]

Your devices are paired on both and you have the phone sets as the default bluetooth modem?

~BD

[Wes Salmon]

Yep, the device pairing stays intact and is visible in the Bluetooth Manager like normal.

[BigDaddy]

and in the connections settings you created a setting to connect to the internet ...for example mine says Cingular GPRS and uses my t616 as the bluetooth modem...Or is that the connections setting that is totally gone?

~BD

[Wes Salmon]

Yeah, it's the connection that I created (mine was called T-Mobile GPRS) that gets totally nuked. It still exists in the registry however, it's just not visible in Connection Manager nor am I able to connect with it.

If I try and recreate a connection with the same name, it doesn't let me so for some reason the Connection Manager is not able to see it to connect after it self destructs.

Last night I hard reset my 1945 *again* and setup 3 different Bluetooth GPRS connections to my T68i. This morning, only 2 of them are left. ARGH.

[BigDaddy]

Which ones did it keep? Is it deleting by creation order or by settings....Now that you say tmobile I am starting to remember things I might have seen in other groups...give me a few minutes to try to find where I think I saw them...

~BD

[Wes Salmon]

It deleted the first connection I created (and labeled #1), leaving #2 and #3 intact.

[Wes Salmon]

Ok, now I'm really frustrated. I hard reset my 1945 *again* today and did the following:

- Connect and partner with Activesync on my desktop.
- Sync my calendar and contacts
- Pair with my T68i and setup my T-Mobile GPRS connection
- Connect once by browsing to windowsmedia.com with Pocket IE
- Reconnect to my PC/Activesync to continue charging the device

I go out to get a haircut and come back, and guess who doesn't have a connection for T-Mobile GPRS anymore? That's right, me! :evil:

The only other thing I've done recently (since last weekend) was install Activesync 3.7.1. What are the odds that something Activesync is doing to my device is corrupting my connection manager settings???

I'm going to do a test in parallel between my 2215 and 1945, setup identically but on two different machines, one with Activesync 3.7 and the other with 3.7.1. If the one connected to 3.7.1 blows up my Bluetooth GPRS connection and the other doesn't, I think I may have found the cause.

[Wes Salmon]

Well I think I've recreated the problem pretty dependably and it seems like something *someone* had to have seen before. It's pretty simple.

- Hard reset a device
- Power it up and turn on Bluetooth
- Pair/Bond with a phone (T68i in my case) and follow the Bluetooth wizard through the process of creating an Internet connection with that phone
- Once finished, confirm the connection in Connection Manager
- Power the device down for about 60 seconds
- Power it back up and *poof*, your connection in Connection manager is gone. If you try and recreate it with the same name however, it says that connection already exists.

I've replicated this behavior on two 1945's and two 2215's. Anyone else see this type of bug on their device?

[BigDaddy]

Alright west this is what I have found...After spending a bit searching the Net...Seems what you are having issues with has to do with the reason why Windows Mobile (aka pocket pc 2003) has a new bluetooth connection manager....Also, I know you have heard this a few times, but go ahead and call HP tech support and see if they will toss their hands in the air and send you a new unit or atleast a Windows Mobile upgrade CD.

~BD

[Wes Salmon]

Ummm ... all 4 devices I've replicated this problem on are Windows Mobile 2003 devices. The fact that it's not one unit, but 4 that are failing consistantly leads me to believe that it's not a hardware problem with any one device.

[Janak Parekh]

Here's an idea: it sounds like you're using the Wizard to create the dial-up connection. Have you tried just bonding, setting the phone as the modem, and then creating the connection manually using the Connection Manager itself?

Unfortunately, I haven't used the 2215's Bluetooth a lot myself, so I can't say. My 3870 used to be pretty stable about this -- never had a disappearing connection -- but that's not really relevant here.

--janak

[Wes Salmon]

Yes, I'm using the Bluetooth Wizard to create the connection, as I suspect any other user would do upon receive a new device.

I had a friend test the same steps on a 3rd 1945 (5 test device overall) that I di which was to simply bond and create the connection. After power cycling the device his connection was also gone so this is not an isolated incident and quite reproducible.

I wonder how this thing made it out of HP testing with such a fundamental problem with a process that anyone with a Bluetooth phone would most likely follow. *sigh*.

My solution was to disregard the first connection (I named it "test") and after it self destructed on a power cycle, I create a new connection and it has stuck.