New Partnership on PC. Name in Use

[Birdman]

Because of problems I have been having with AS, I re-installed AS 3.7.1 and I am now establishing a new partnership with my XDA. The "name" of the XDA (and my old partnership) is Pocket_PC. When I now try and set up a new partnership with my desktop it won't let me use Pocket_PC to name my device because it says the name is already in use. But if I use another name, won't that screw up all of the files I currently sync in the Pocket_PC My Documents folder?
Is there anyway I can "delete" the partnership from the PPC without doing a hard re-set?

[townsendtribe]

You can delete the partnership from the File menu in ActiveSync when the PDA is not docked. Then it will sync when you dock the next time.

[Birdman]

I tried that, but it still gave me the message that the name is in use. Now that the unit is undocked, the AS dialog box says "No Partnerships" and the "Delete Partnerships" is grayed out. Yet when I try and establish a new partnership and name it Pocket_PC it gives me an error that the name is in use.
I can use a new name but then I suspect I will lose everything in my "Files" sync folder.

[townsendtribe]

Well, creating a new name will not delete the files in another folder... that part should be safe, then you can just copy over the files to the new sync folder once the partnership is set.

[asfalloth]

Copy all of the files and folders out of your desktop 'pocket pc documetns folder' whatever its currently called.

then navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\Joseph\Application Data\Microsoft\Activesync\Pocket_PC (ps the Application Data folder will bw hidden, you need to select 'show hidden files and folders' under your tools/folder options in your my computer window.

Delete any folders you find INSIDE the Activesync directory, but not the Activesync directory itself.
Once this is done you'll find that any name including the default first time partnership name will work like a charm. once your all sync'd up again just copy the files and folders you backed up earlier back into your newly created desktop 'Pocket_PC documents' folder.

All Done.

[Sven Johannsen]

Actually you want to get rid of the Pocket_PC name anyway. The underscore in that name causes networking problems if and when you ever get connected via WiFi or such. With a Pocket_PC My Documents folder on the desktop, deleting the Pocket_PC partnership, should result in a prompt as to whether you want to delete that folder.

Your having seemingly deleted the partnership, your not mentioning such a prompt, and the folder still being there, tells me something didn't go right with the deletion and there are still some Pocket_PC residue somewhere. That would explain the odd 'you are using that name' issue. You could probably go and find the folders associated with that partnership and the associated registry entries and delete them, but picking a new name would be easier, has benefits, and would make your PPC happier.

[Birdman]

Thanx for all the help. I established a new partnership, used the name Pocket_PC3 (I had not yet read the post about not using the '_' in the name) and then copied over all the files from my old Pocket_PC My documents folder to the new one.

It worked fine. I believe the problem can be traced to some email in my Outlook inbox which was causing the problem. I probably could have saved a day of messing with it by just deleting some offending email messages in Outlook.

Oh well, it's working again for now.
Next week my work computer will be updated to XP so I will have to start again with a new partnership anyways.

[Ripper014]

In order to delete the old partnership you can not be sync'd to the desktop...