05-15-2002, 07:01 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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ActiveSync is Evil, Part 1
In the past week, I've had two major data losses, all courtesy of ActiveSync. There's simply no other way to say this: ActiveSync is the worst piece of Microsoft software I've encountered in my entire life. Never have I encountered an application capable of such wanton destruction of data. It's like a poisonous viper - you think you know what you're doing with it, but the slightest misstep, and you're dead. I'll write up the REALLY bad one later today, but here's what just happened to me last night. I'm still pondering the issue, half in shock.
I had reformatted my hard drive on Saturday, and I've spent a few days installing XP, all my apps, and getting things tweaked the way I like them. Over the past few days, I've been using Pocket Excel to create a technology budget for my church. I also took an inventory of all the computers they have - I spent around four hours on both of the documents. Today I installed ActiveSync, thinking "This should be nice and clean." I docked my Jornada 565, and it recognized that I had a previous partnership (from before the format). I told it that I wanted to only partner with this computer (thus deleting the previous partnership data). It then went ahead and compared the data on the Pocket PC and on the desktop. As I knew it would, it recognized that there was different data on the Pocket PC vs. the desktop. It gave me the deadly prompt: "Combine, replace, or remove?"
One would think that "Combine" would be the good thing to do, but as anyone who has done that several times will tell you, you'll end up with massive duplication of your data - and there's also a mysterious birthday shifting bug that will sometimes move all your birthdays off by one day. I've seen this happen time and time again. The screen shot above shows "Favorites, Files" because I had to sync my iPAQ 3870 in order to get this screen shot - when I docked the Jornada, it prompted me for action on "Calendar, Tasks, Inbox, and Contacts" - no mention of Files or Favourites. Since I knew I had added no new contacts, appointments, email or tasks - only the two Excel files - I thought it was safe to chose "Replace" as the option. It would simply replace all PIM data, and sync the files from the Pocket PC to the desktop PC. Right? Wrong.
It purged all the new files from the My Documents folder on the Pocket PC, deleting the two Excel files I had created. There's no trace of the data - I checked in this folder, which keeps copies of deleted synchronized data:
C:\Documents and Settings\ Jason Dunn \ Application Data\ Microsoft\ ActiveSync\ Profiles\ LittleShogun\ Synchronized Files Backup
But I discovered it only keeps track of documents on the PC, not on the Pocket PC. So, incredibly, I've lost both those Excel files and can't get them back. Why did ActiveSync delete files when I only told it to replace PIM data? Why doesn't it prompt the user when it's about to destroy data? I'm really kicking myself because I was going to make a copy of the My Documents folder on the Pocket PC just in case, but I thought "Nah, I know what I'm doing" - famous last words. Have you ever lost data due to ActiveSync? How did it happen? Vote in the poll!
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05-15-2002, 07:34 AM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 548
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It happened to me way back when I was just starting out with with Windows CE... at that time 2.01.
Now with Windows CE 3.0... the same problem still remains. It is a problem if you are not careful...
Files are volatile in a PPC. It isn't backed up and there is no recycle bin. That is why they always say back up your data.
Since 1999, I've been moving all my documents and excel files from the main memory to the storage card... why? You can't erase the one in the storage card by accident. And whenever I reformat my PC, I make sure that I synchronize my PPC to my desktop first and then back up my PIM. I also make sure that the My Documents folder of the PPC is empty and that all te documents or files have been transferred into a CF card or written onto a CD or saved in a zip disk.
Whenever I create a new partnership, I always select overwrite PPC data... so actually if you are asking me if I ever lost any data with my Pocket PC in a way that nearly resembles your experience... No... never... I've been too careful about it.
Anyway... next time you do that, please remember that PIM data can be backed up in the PC or the PPC... and all docs/file in the My documents folder can be moved to a CF card for safe storage until all formatting and setup is done.
ppcsurfr
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05-15-2002, 07:38 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6
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Does microsoft hear our complaints?
Jason,
Thanks for bringing this up. I thought i was the only one having this problem. I have seen no updates for the past several months either to the pocketpc website (check their columns, reviews, howtodos etc) nor have I seen any statement acknowledging the bugs and assuring the customers that they are working on them..
Is microsoft dreaming that since they have windows monopoly, they can force users to buy pocketpc (to some extent, that was the reason I bought it, now i am rethinking as palm is moving to OS 5).
Whatever happened to pocketpc club membership? I receive an email once in 6 months saying that the club is still alive!!!
I have only found hating my handheld more than loving it eventhough, the hardware and software specs are great. I like the idea of seemless linking to word, excel, email etc. But whatever you say, the basic pocketpc apps (calendar, todo, notepad) are crappy and the UI is not yet upto par with palm (i just love the idea of multiple drop down menus which are hidden!) Alternatives such as pocketinformant, agendafusion do some good but they are no match to datebook.
Eventhough i used palm only for a few months, i am now tempted to move back again and buy sony (if only they had CF instead of that propreitary stick)..
Ok, before everyone thinks I am rambling, can jason or dale coffing or anyone with direct contact with microsoft pocketpc management tell if microsoft is sleeping!!
-ram
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05-15-2002, 08:04 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 35
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ActiveSync Synchronization is evil - backup is slow but good
I learnd early on that synchronization is useful for what it does... keeping things synched between your "running" (ie unchanged) PC and a "running" (ie didn't freakin' hard reset itself) PocketPC.
For any other situation, you'll be sorry if you don't set ActiveSync to "Automatically Backup" on each sync.
Yes, it's slow as heck (especially over USB or Serial... not to mention IRDA -- Ethernet or 802.11b is much more livable) but it's _SO_ worth it.
When bad things happen (and with old iPaq's battery life and lack of backup battery they often enough do), I'm so happy to be able to connect with a Guest partnership and do a Restore.
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05-15-2002, 08:53 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 170
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I am a huuuuge pocket pc fan, and I think Palm's are ridicously outdated by them (which they are technologically).
Anyway, I havent touched a Palm for the last 3 years, always using a Pocket PC, and had to go through several repairs, dead bateries, etc, and restoration of data. The whole works, you could say, and also missing files, duplicated entries, etc.
This last month I have been programming for the Palm platform. Dealing with the devil, you might say, but it is what the client wants. No filesystem, dead simple OS. Although I prefer programming for the Pocket PC (familiar programming, very similar to PC, file system, way much faster cpu, higher res, etc) in this Palm is still unbeatable. Hotsync WORKS. Erase all your Palm's memory, hotsync it again using the same user, and everything is back to where you left it. It is a pleasure. All has to do with that everything on the palm, including programs, are databases.
Activesync is more... ambitious in what it tries to do. And it works wonderful, most of the time... but as Jason can now say, when it doesnt... well, it can ruin your day badly.
Sorry Jason. Hope the lost is fast to recover.
Sincerely,
Juan Miguel Venturello
But as
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05-15-2002, 09:13 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 90
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I've never understood why ActiveSync doesn't have an option that allows you to overwrite the desktop from the handheld. Often I've had to resort to my 'PIM backup' on my Palm V, as this allows me to simply overwrite all the Outlook data on the desktop with the PDA's data.
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05-15-2002, 09:26 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 2
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Hmm, I remember *someone* who posted a topic about how bad Palm's HotSync was and how good ActiveSync 3.5 was, not so very long ago... :twisted:
Anyway, yes, I've had problems with ActiveSync before - namely the duplication of files.
Like everyone, I don't understand why there is no "Handheld overwrites desktop " option like in HotSync. This option would be great to keep my two desktop PCs synched with the same info instead of the weird copying that sometimes goes on.
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05-15-2002, 10:04 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 212
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Oh boy. Dont get me started on ActiveCrap. Oops, too late.
Ill tell ya, Jason, my experience with this RottingStync software is really bad, too. You can read this and tell me whether what you dealt with is as bad as my circumstances.
But first things first... HEY MICROSOFT! REQUEST... GET YER HEADS OUT OF THE SAND! FIX THIS SOFTWARE! HOW LONG WILL THIS TAKE FOR YOU TO FIGURE OUT THAT A `FROM THE GROUND UP REWRITE` IS NECESSARY HERE?!?????? YOU WILL NEVER HAVE THE MARKET SHARE YOU WANT IF THIS IS THE BEST YOU CAN DO. End Request.
OK, now that thats over, let me tell you, I cant agree with you more about how bad this software is. How does MS expect to achieve the success theyre looking for without fixing this? The answer is, of course, they cant. Everybody knows this.
I have a lot of files on my system, but forty percent of them were text files. The key word here is `were`. Word, Excel, and plain text files. So I had all of these files in the sync folder on my system. But I sold an Ipaq that I had. So I no longer needed this partnership on my system. Just moments before I was going to back up the files on my laptop, I cleaned up a few things, which included deleting this old partnership. I didnt uninstall Active Sync, I just deleted the partnership, thinking that the files would be left, because, why wouldnt they? Oh no. Of course not. ALL of my files were deleted. All of them. This crap software didnt ask me if I wanted to keep my files, send them to another folder, send them to the recycle bin, or anything. This software asked me absolutely nothing. And there is no trace of the files. Anywhere. It just assumed that because I was deleting this partnership, that I didnt want all of my precious files and information. HUH?!? Why would MS write software so blatently stupid like this? Maybe I wanted to delete the partnership because I bought another pocket pc and wanted to establish a NEW partnership. Maybe I deleted it because I wanted to transfer my info to another system and no longer needed the partnership on the first system. There could be a million reasons why someone would delete a partnership. The act of deleting a partnership has absolutely nothing to do with information created on my laptop. Of course I want to keep this information! Peoples lives are contained on the hard drives of their computers. We spend weeks, months, years developing these files, and MS thinks that when deleting a partnership, this means that all of this precious information is no longer wanted or needed. Yeah, Microsoft, Im just going to discard all of my files because life just cant go on without Active Sync running on my system. Stupid. RottenStync is pathetic to say the least. Software should be written to be smart enough to realize that preservation of data is number one in all circumstances.
So instead of going out and maybe buying myself a new DVD player and some movies or something else thats fun, I have to spend this money to have a data recovery engineer try to recover the files, which of course, is expensive and time consuming, and leaves me without use of my system for as long as it takes for this procedure to be completed. Maybe I should send Microsoft a bill.
Youd think after fifty billion complaints, theyd figure out that its time to do a rewrite. No more wimpy patches or upgrades. They need to discard this crap like garbage and start all over from scratch. No consumer should be inconvenienced like this. Ever. I made no mistakes here. This is just simply a poor excuse for software. I know others have had luck with this software, but these users are, without a doubt, in the minority, because most of us have just had too many problems with it. It just makes me boil.
I love pocket pc`s. But a piece of advice to anyone purchasing one... If you see the name ActiveSync, turn and run. Far and fast. Dont use it. After all of this, could I be expected to think differently? How could I ever trust it in any other circumstance?
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05-15-2002, 10:42 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 396
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Notes can vanish without trace too. Lost some important stuff that way.
All it would take is to stick them in Outlook's "Deleted Items" but no chance - gone for good.
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05-15-2002, 11:30 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 95
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ActiveStink is even more fun if you have partnerships between your Pocket PC and two computers. From time to time one computer will be absolutely convinced that all of the data on your Pocket PC is new and has never been synced before, giving you the dreaded 'combine, replace, delete, managle all data beyond recognition' dialog box. Ugh.
I too wish there was a 'my Pocket PC overwrites everything option.' I've found that if the PC has no data and the Pocket PC has data, then combine will work just like a 'replace with data from my Pocket PC' option would. The workaround I use is a) on my work PC which uses Outlook connecting to an Exchange Service I cancel out of the dialog box, delete the partnership, then delete all of my data in Outlook and move the 'My Pocket PC Files' folder to a backup location. Then I sync, recreate the partnership, and choose combine. b) On my desktop PC which uses Outlook locally without an Exchange server I cancel out of the dialog box, move the 'My Pocket PC Files' and my local Outlook file (for me it's in c:\Documents and Settings\my user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst) to a backup location and delete the originals, then recreate the partnership, and choose combine.
It's worked every time for me so far and I always have a backup of the data on my PC.
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Linear Mode
