Need activesync help

[fab]

Hello,

I'm a new ppc user with a Toshiba e830 and I'm having so much trouble with activesync I'm ready to go out and buy a Palm TX. I never had hotsync problems.

I have reloaded the program every single time I had to sync. I think the problem is my Norton 2005 but I don't know how to work around it. I have turned off script blocking but it doesn't help. Activesync is unable to find my ppc and gives me an error message - unable to connect..verify your dialup or proxy settings are correct, and try again.

I'm getting really frustrated by this. Please help. TIA.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Hi fab,

The first step I would take is to make sure I have the appropriate version of Activesync. For the Toshiba, this should be version 3.8 (on no account should you install AS 4.0) which should still be available from MS. Second, I would take the step of temporarily disabling Norton AND the Windows firewall - just to verify that these are not the problem.

[fab]

Thanks for the reply. I was pretty frustrated last night so I wasn't very clear. When I turn off Norton, remove activesync and reinstall, it works. As soon as I turn Norton on again, Activesync fails. I don't want to run my computer without a firewall.

Also, the Activesync version is 3.7.1, so I'll try to install that instead. Thanks for your help.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

I'd get rid of Norton and go for something like Zone Alarm, or the one on your router or modem if it has one - Norton is bloatware personified, and is extremely difficult to get rid of once its installed. Heck, I'd rather depend on the Windows XP firewall. However, if you really want to keep Norton, there should be a way to open the right ports to allow activesync connections. I picked up these port settings from Firstloox.org:

TCP:
990 , 999 , 5678-5670
UDP:
1900

I haven't verified that these are the correct ports, because my Activesync conncetion is behind my firewall rather than through it, but you might want to have a try.

[fab]

Well, Activesync 3.8 seems to have solved the problem.

I know Norton isn't the best option but it's been ok for me so far.

Thanks everyone for your help.

[PetiteFlower]

I use Norton and have had zero problems with activesync. Of course I only have Norton anti-virus and system tools, I don't have internet security, so that might have something to do with it. But if upgrading the version worked, then there's no problems!

[Sven Johannsen]

Working with firewalls can be very frustrating regardless of what sorts of things you are trying to accomplish. The fact is you have to put holes in your firewall to get anything done. If you don't open port 80 you won't do much web browsing. You can also tell the firewall that IE can do what it wants. In most cases once a firewall is employed, you get a rash of requests to let this, that or the other thing through the firewall. In some cases this is presented to the user as the process that is attempting to access the 'internet', WCESMgr.exe, which may not be recognizable, and in other cases it may ask if ActiveSync can access the internet, which is a bit more understandable. Still you may not understand why AS needs to access the internet just to sync your PPC. In reality, it doesn't. The problem here is that the AS process sets up a little network between the PPC and your PC which is on a different subnet as your PC is, even if it is just hooked to a single ISP line. The AS connection is a foreign connection and suspect. The MS firewall is pre-educated about AS and usually causes no problems. Others may take some intervention to allow the appropriate ports, programs and networks access.

It unfortunately is something that can only be helped with a significant amount of wizard work, mostly on the part of the firewall vendors I believe, to make their configuration more friendly to the average user. Somehow the user needs to be enabled to let the things work that he wants to work without unduly weakening the firewall.

Generally a firewall program has some way of looking at things the firewall is already set to block. You can normally change these. It would take someone with Norton that has it working so you could compare what you are blocking that they are allowing, without clearing Nortons config and letting it build the exceptions again.

So why did AS3.8 help? Probably because Norton saw it as a new program trying to do something and decided it was OK where it had decided 3.7 wasn't. Why is a mystery to me.