Does ActiveSync recognize your Pocket PC as a guest?

[Ed Hansberry]

Occasionally, ActiveSync 3.5 will recognize my Pocket PC as a guest. 99% of the time I simply undock and redock and all is well. Sunspots I guess. But I know that some of you get the Guest mode more often if not every time. The first thing you should do is make sure you have ActiveSync 3.5 build 12007 installed. This is what is at <a href="http://www.pocketpc.com">Pocket PC.com</a> in the download section. To see which build you have, launch ActiveSync and select Help|About.<br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2002/20020809-activesyncguest.jpg" /><br />If that doesn't work, undock your Pocket PC, launch a command prompt in Windows and type <i>regsvr32 msxml3.dll</i> at the command line. You should get a quick message that the DLL was registered. Now, reboot your PC and soft-reset your Pocket PC. Hopefully, your problem will be solved!

[ppcsurfr]

And I know someone who had that problem because he would sometimes hit ok and sometimes hit cancel when logging into Win 98.

[paris]

cheee did god send you to help me or something????

Well i had this problem yesterday (atually my boss)

My boss has an H3630 and i yesterday upgraded it to Pocket PC 2002 Operating System. I did install all the alpliactions and updates from compaq and had everyting running like a charm.

I did create a partnership in his laptop and did Syncronize it together with all the data sucessfully (the installation and upgrade was made on my laptop)

I thought i had done a nice work there and my boss was totally satisfied! Well not, after he tried to synchronize the h3630 again it would regognize it as a guest what ever i did. I did reinstall active synch and did create a partnership but nothing again. I was getting nervous i thought that the upgrade to pocket pc 2002 had something to do with it. So i did a hard reset and tried to synch it but nothing again, did another hard reset but this time i tried to synchronize it with my laptop which worked like a charm. So i did figure out that pocket pc 2002 had nothing to do with it and that windows was f...ed on my boss laptop.

i will try the command you told me on monday and see how it goes.
Hope will solve the problem.


A Big thanks

Paris
www.cyusers.com

[palmsolo]

I just performed a hard reset and wanted to make a fresh install of all my programs, but wanted to keep my partnership. You can do this by creating one, deleting, copying, etc., but I recently found a program that does it all for you and also allows you to sync to multiple computers. It is called ManyPartners (http://www.mydocsunlimited.com/html/manypartners.html) and only costs $5.95. I am not affiliated with them at all, but just found this program to be very useful. They have a 15 day trial that you can give a whirl to see if it works for you.

[topps]

Occasionally, ActiveSync 3.5 will recognize my Pocket PC as a guest. 99% of the time I simply undock and redock and all is well. Sunspots I guess. But I know that some of you get the Guest mode more often if not every time. The first thing you should do is make sure you have ActiveSync 3.5 build 12007 installed.


What does this sub-version do that earlier builds don't? Just helps with the Guest problem?

If that doesn't work, undock your Pocket PC, launch a command prompt in Windows and type regsvr32 msxml3.dll at the command line. You should get a quick message that the DLL was registered. Now, reboot your PC and soft-reset your Pocket PC. Hopefully, your problem will be solved!

What does that DLL do?

Chris de Herrera has a FAQ on ActiveSync Registry Settings which also looks at this issue a wee bit.

Then M$ has their standard (although less than helpful) recommendations in their Kbase.

It sure would be nice to have an overview of what is going on in these situations, what the underlying problem is, when to try what fix etc.

Several of my users have had the Guest only problem and it has been a bit hit or miss as to which solution works.

[gamboagarcia]

This happens very often to me. I found that the problems is not ActiveSync but the PPC it self.

Why??? I dont know!!.

Just unduck, soft reset, dock. Voila!! its done!!

Hope this help.


BTW, the regsrv32 command is not in my library! I got an error message

[Ed Hansberry]

What does that DLL do?
It is part of MS's data Access components. XP has MDAC 6 or 7 installed by default. Outlook/Office installs some version (4-6?) when on other OSs. this DLL has something to do with XML and apparently this is how AS recognizes your device. AS doesn't seem to do anything to it during install, which would explain whe reinstalling AS does no good.

[PHactotum]

I had just purchased my first PPC device (a Toshiba e740) after working with the original Palm all these years. I installed the software that came with it and tried several new things, everything was going well.

Then I disconnected, reconnected and I was guest. Everytime there after I was guest. I deleted the partnership, reconnected, created a new partnership, disconnected, reconnected, I'm Guest!. What the heck. MS really does write sloppy code I thought.

I worked with Toshiba, they had me soft reset, hard reset, always the same thing. They then asked me if I could try it on another PC. What the heck I had a test machine. Loe and behold everything worked. I was no longer guest. I went back to the original machine, still Guest.

I resigned myself to planning on rebuilding my original machine as soon as I had the time.

In an unrelated converstation, I was talking to a friend about IE and whether he felt IE 6 was stable enough to upgrade to. On his advice I upgraded. I saw a great side effect of the upgrade, I was no longer guest.

It ends up that my IE 5.5 installation had become corrupted and not everything was working like it should have. Reading the above article I relized that maybe by re-registering the xml dll I might have solved the problem as well. One of the other things that wasn't working was the connection wizard for the PPC. It gave an error about XML not being loaded.

Short story, corrupted installtions of IE may cause problems with partnerships.

PHactotum

[Dr. Smooth]

This happens very often to me. I found that the problems is not ActiveSync but the PPC it self.

Why??? I dont know!!.

Just undock, soft reset, dock. Voila!! its done!!


I have seen the exact same thing, and I am definitely using build 12007 of ActiveSync. Don't get me started on Active Sync! I can't tell you how many times I've had to remove duplicates and reset reminders on recurring tasks. Say what you will about Palms being underpowered, etc., but I never had these problems syncing a Palm, even through third-party conduits.

[ironguy]

I did the dll trick and it didn't seem to make much difference. I still occasionally get synched as a guest. When this happens, i soft reset and resync. That usually clears the problem.

[Jeff Rutledge]

I tried this as soon as it was posted. My 3870 haven't been recognized as a Guest yet. Based on past performance, it should have happened by now. Here's hoping it's not just a case of "lucky so far"...

[dvydra]

For what it's worth, I had this problem for 2 weeks.
It would only connect as guest, unless I deleted all partnerships and recreated a new one. It would then sync fine, but once you unhooked it, it would never work again. (rinse and repeat)

I tried soft resets,
hard resets followed by restoration of backup from SD,
hard resets followed by restoration of backup from PC,
installing IE6SP1,
reinstalling AS 3.5,
installing AS 3.6,
installing AS 3.1,
a variety of registry hacks and cleaning.

Nothing worked. Today I got extra desperate and hard reset my PPC (it's a Toshiba e310 btw) and reinstalled all my apps one by one, and picked up contact and meeting data from Outlook. I didn't restore any backups or anything.

AND... It seems to be working so far.

I think that my problems started when I renamed my PPC from "Pocket_PC" to something else. I think that the partnership between my PC and PPC got royally stuffed somewhere.

Anyway, so far so good. Good luck to all my fellow sufferers.
Daniel

P.S. It's weird how much stuff you realise you don't need when you are reinstalling all your apps.

[Roscoe731]

My Questions:

1. Is there anyone successfully syncing with ActiveSync 3.5 on Windows 95?
2. Are there any other suggestions that could help the below situation?

I recently purchased an iPAQ 3955 with Pocket PC 2002. I'm running Windows 95 SR2.1 with ActiveSync 3.5. When I first set up a partnership, syncing is fine....UNTIL I disconnect the iPAQ from it's cradle. All subsequent connections are recognized only as guest. If I remove the partnership and reinstall the partnership, syncing is fine again.....until I disconnect again....and on and on. I have tried everything I could find:

- Upgrading to ActiveSync 3.6.
- Soft resets.
- Hard resets.
- Uninstalling and reinstalling ActiveSync.
- Installing the MSXML3.DLL setup from Microsoft's website.
- Registering the MSXML3.DLL.
- Registering the MSXML.DLL (before I upgraded).
- Upgrading to Internet Explorer 5.5.
- Different combinations of the above with many, many reboots.
- Installing all updates available for Windows 95 (including DirectX8.0...don't know if this could have any effect, and it didn't in my case).

An administrator at work installed ActiveSync 3.5 on my work computer for business stuff, and it works fine (on Windows 2000).

I've talked to HP technical support, but they don't know what the problem is other than ActiveSync 3.5 does not support Windows 95 (however, I can establish a partnership in the first place, just can't re-establish it). They suggested that maybe upgrading to Internet Explorer 6.0 would help, but I'm not sure I want to do that because it can not be uninstalled back to Internet Explorer 5.5 and I'm only running Windows 95 on a Pentium II 266MHz. Also, there's no guarantee that this will fix the problem (ActiveSync 3.5 requires Internet Explorer 4.01 SP1 or later).

The other option they suggested was downgrading to ActiveSync 3.1, but I found that 3.1 will not work with my Pocket PC 2002. So, another option is to upgrade to Windows. The only commercially available version of Windows that I would consider is Windows XP, but my system barely meets the minimum requirements (so it would likely choke on XP). This brings me to the option of purchasing a new computer to run the new operating system, but who wants to spend $1,000+ for a new system when this computer serves all my needs except for one: ActiveSync 3.5.

It seems like I may be forced to make a new purchase to support my new iPAQ. You would think that someone would fix this problem, or am I in the very small minority? Any help would be greatly appreciated since the whole syncing process is getting frustrating. Thanks in advance.

[Ed Hansberry]

Get XP. You'd be surprised how well it runs on lower hardware - much faster than NT4 and Windows 2000. RAM is so cheap, max that out. I have it on a 256MB PII 366 laptop and it is very acceptable.

You can't install IE6 on Win95 IIRC. Beginning with IE6, Office XP, ActiveSync 3.5 and a number of other apps, MS has stopped even trying to see if stuff runs on Win95.

[Janak Parekh]

Get XP. You'd be surprised how well it runs on lower hardware - much faster than NT4 and Windows 2000. RAM is so cheap, max that out. I have it on a 256MB PII 366 laptop and it is very acceptable.
The only important thing for XP is RAM - lots of it. At least 192MB. If you can't do that, get *cough*Windows Me*cough* - it does the job and has similar requirements to Win95.

--janak

[Roscoe731]

Can someone help explain the connection messages below?

This is further information regarding my previous posting about syncing successfully once, and then guest connection from then on once I disconnect and reconnect (until I delete and recreate a new partnership, and which point the same cycle continues. This is a copy of the text contained in my Wcescomm.log file. It looks like some sort of problem occurs where ActiveSync tries many different ways to connect until it changes the connection to Guest. I am trying to connect via the comm port because AvtiveSync will not recognize my USB ports (even though Windows 95 SR2.1 has USB support).

01/18/2003 13:48:45.860 - Windows CE Services (3.5.12007) Communication Logging.
01/18/2003 13:48:45.860 - Logging file auto-purge after a successful device connection.
01/18/2003 13:48:45.860 - Connection: Process connection from IP address 0x0100007f.
01/18/2003 13:48:46.630 - CesProxy: Accept on port 990, IsWinsock 1, hResult 0
01/18/2003 13:48:46.630 - TCP: ....S., 192.168.55.100(1029) => 192.168.55.101(990) Seq=6879618-6879618 Ack=0 Win=8192 Len=44
01/18/2003 13:48:46.630 - TCP: .A..S., 192.168.55.101(990) => 192.168.55.100(1029) Seq=8499394-8499394 Ack=6879619 Win=32768 Len=44
01/18/2003 13:48:47.720 - CesProxy: Accept on port 990, IsWinsock 1, hResult 0
01/18/2003 13:48:47.720 - TCP: ....S., 192.168.55.100(1030) => 192.168.55.101(990) Seq=6880718-6880718 Ack=0 Win=8192 Len=44
01/18/2003 13:48:47.720 - TCP: .A..S., 192.168.55.101(990) => 192.168.55.100(1030) Seq=8500490-8500490 Ack=6880719 Win=32768 Len=44
01/18/2003 13:48:49.370 - CesProxy: Close Win socket 990
01/18/2003 13:48:49.370 - CesProxy: Close PPP socket 990
01/18/2003 13:48:49.370 - TCP: ...R.., 192.168.55.100(1030) => 192.168.55.101(990) Seq=6880909-6880909 Ack=8500531 Win=0 Len=40
01/18/2003 13:49:05.570 - ComSerial: Device disconnected from serial cable.
01/18/2003 13:49:05.570 - Proxy: Change connection state 0.
01/18/2003 13:49:05.570 - CesProxy: Close PPP socket 7438
01/18/2003 13:49:05.570 - CesProxy: Accept on port 7438, IsWinsock 0, hResult 80072714
01/18/2003 13:49:05.570 - CesProxy: Close PPP socket 5679
01/18/2003 13:49:05.570 - CesProxy: Accept on port 5679, IsWinsock 0, hResult 80072714
01/18/2003 13:49:05.630 - CesProxy: Close Win socket 1026
01/18/2003 13:49:05.630 - CesProxy: Close Win socket 990
01/18/2003 13:49:05.630 - CesProxy: Close PPP socket 990
01/18/2003 13:49:05.630 - CesProxy: Accept on port 1026, IsWinsock 1, hResult 80072714
01/18/2003 13:49:05.630 - CesProxy: Close Win socket 990
01/18/2003 13:49:05.630 - CesProxy: Accept on port 990, IsWinsock 1, hResult 80072714
01/18/2003 13:49:05.680 - CesProxy: Close PPP socket 7438
01/18/2003 13:49:05.680 - CesProxy: Close Win socket 7438
01/18/2003 13:49:05.680 - CesProxy: Close PPP socket 5679
01/18/2003 13:49:05.680 - CesProxy: Close Win socket 5679
01/18/2003 13:49:06.950 - Serial: Starting device detection at 115200.
01/18/2003 13:49:06.950 - ComSerial: Change DTR to 1.
01/18/2003 13:49:10.960 - Shut down desktop passthru TCP2UDP component
01/18/2003 13:49:10.960 - Connection: Prep for a new socket connection.

Thanks in advance, and thanks for the replies to my previous posting. Perhaps an OS upgrade could be unavoidable.

[Ed Hansberry]

Can someone help explain the connection messages below?

I am trying to connect via the comm port because AvtiveSync will not recognize my USB ports (even though Windows 95 SR2.1 has USB support).

01/18/2003 13:48:45.860 - Windows CE Services (3.5.12007) Communication Logging.

AS 3.5 and Win95 simply will not work. The only hack/workaround I have seen that sometimes works is to install AS 3.1 then buy Intellisync and that might sync with your Pocket PC 2002 device.

[Roscoe731]

Thanks for the help. I just upgraded from Windows 95 OSR 2.1 to Windows 98 SE and syncing is working GREAT, even on the USB port. I no longer get the guest connection. For those of you with older computer running Windows 95 and who would like to upgrade to Windows 98 SE, you can still get an upgrade copy from the Staples web site (http://www.staples.com/default.asp) while supplies last (currently $99.99).

Thanks again, Ed.

Ross :D