Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1

I have a Toshiba Portege M400-S933 with the most current BIOS loaded (3.6). I
also have a Treo 700W with the 1.22 update installed (Windows Mobile 5.0).

Originally the Toshiba was running Windows XP Pro, with ActiveSync 4.5 and
Outlook 2003. Syncing was working fine (calendar, contacts, notes, files) and
to get my Toshiba online (tethered USB connection) I was using June Fabric's
PDAnet 1.73 and recently upgraded to PDAnet 1.80.

About a month ago, I did a clean install of Vista Business (with format)
onto the Toshiba notebook and also installed Office 2007 (without Outlook
2007).

I believe Vista Business comes with Windows Media Device Center (WMDC) 6.0 -
and initially it detected the phone and I've been syncing without a problem.
However I wasn't sure how to get online without PDAnet, so I had installed
PDAnet 1.80 back onto the phone, and getting the tethered connection via
PDAnet was working fine.

But about 1 week ago, I decided to install WMDC 6.1, since it was available,
even though I wasn't sure if I would benefit from it. What a mistake that
was! Since then, I have not been able to sync with Outlook 2007. However, I
could still get online with PDAnet, so to some degree, the phone was being
recognized by WMDC for that purpose only.

However, when plugging in the phone, no matter what I try, in Device Manager
under "Portable Devices" I'm getting a yellow asterisk next to "Windows
Mobile-based device". Apparently the driver just isn't working.

Windows Firewall was not in use, as I am using Trend Micro PC-cillin
Internet Security 2007 (but I have stopped it and ensured the services were
also stopped, before attempting to reinstall WMDC). Windows Defender service
is not running. No other virus/spam software installed.

I have uninstalled both VPN devices I had (Cisco VPN and Sonicwall VPN).

I do not have OneCare installed.

To my knowledge, I have no other conflicting software installed (parental
controls or optimizers).

WMDC 6.0 under "Connection Settings" has a check-mark next to "Allow USB
connections" and "Allow connections to one of the following" but only
Bluetooth is a current option (under 6.1 there were other COM ports listed
and I had tried specifying each one). "The computer is connected" to is set
to "Automatic".

As mentioned when I connect the phone, when it's set to RNDIS, under "Device
Status" I'm getting a "Code 39"; Location is "on UMBus Enumerator". WMDC
shows "Connecting" for several minutes, but then simply states "Error".

I did try doing a hard reset on the phone. No effect (except losign all my
data, and now not being able to sync!!!!)

I have tried a different USB cable and different USB ports on the notebook.

Under "Programs" on the phone, I did try running UsbSwitch, which toggled
the phone to Serial USB. At that point Device Manager adds "Mobile Devices"
and "SmartPhone USB Sync" is recognized and installed correctly. However WMDC
doesn't connect and sync, it simply states "Error" even with Serial USB.

Trust me when I tell you, I have been through every combination of the tips
found on the following pages (deleting the driver, downloading updates from
Microsoft, uninstalling WMDC 6.1 and deleting all files and installing WMDC
6.0, etc etc etc. Nothing gets me syncing again.

http://www.modernnomads.info/wiki/index.php?page=Windows+Mobile+Device...nter+Tr

http://www.developerfood.com/wmdc-artemis-disconnects/microsoft-public...ndows-v

http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/faqs/wmdc/index.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=...rosoft.

I am so frustrated with Microsoft right now.

Any suggestions, other than go back to Vista and ActiveSync, which I do not
want to do.

But after going through this, I will never recommend Vista to anyone.

Hi Darren,

I am not sure whether the following information will help in your situation
but I had something similar happen to me recently and found that rolling
back to WMDC 6.0 worked for me.

In my case, I have two devices connected to my Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
computer with Outlook 2007. I synchronize them separately, not at the same
time. One device has WM5.0 and the other has WM6. I found that when I
downloaded the WMDC6.1 update, my WM6 device stopped sync'ing to Outlook
2007. Interestingly, my WM5.0 device continued to sync'ing fine in this
configuration.

I concluded that there was an issue with sync'ing WM6 devices with Outlook
2007 when using WMDC6.1. Rolling back to WMDC6.0 fixed my problem.

The steps I used to get back to WMDC6.0 were detailed in my post titled
"Sync problem on WMDC 6.1 fixed by rolling back to WMDC 6.0" dated 14 Sep
2007. For convenience, I have pasted that information below. I hope it helps
you.

Regards,
Neville Lang

==================================

Hi all,

I caught the post by Copenhagen (a few posts before this one on the
PocketPc.ActiveSync forum) and I will have to agree that the only way I
could get my newly upgraded Windows Mobile 6 device to sync was to rollback
WMDC 6.1 to the original WMDC 6.0.

Here is my setup:
* Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit computer with Outlook 2007
* Dopod 838 Pro Pocket PC phone with Windows Mobile 6 (WM6)
* Dell Axim X51v Pocket PC with Windows Mobile 5 (WM5)

Since I am a developer in Windows Mobile, I use the two devices for testing
though I mainly use the Dell Axim for development testing and the Dopod
phone I carry with me everyday.

Up until about a week ago, everything was fine - I was able to easily sync
both devices on WMDC 6.0 when they both had WM5 on them. After coming back
from holidays, the ROM image upgrade was now available from HTC for my Dopod
phone so I decided to upgrade it. After that was upgraded, I (automatically)
downloaded the WMDC 6.1 (for 64-bit) update thinking that it would be
necessary for my Dopod WM6 phone but that is when I discovered that my phone
was not sync'ing now. However, when the phone was disconnected I then
connected my Dell Axim, it sync'ed quite OK. From these symptoms, it appears
that there is a problem with the WMDC 6.1 update and WM6 devices since my
Dell Axim is still working quite OK with WMDC 6.1 using WM5

After reading Copenhagen's post, I rolled back the WMDC 6.1 to the original
WMDC 6.0, since that was still available on the Microsoft website. In
following Copenhagen's steps. I too found that when I tried to manually
delete all files in the C:\Windows\WindowsMobile folder, some DLLs were
being held. I tried downloading the Unlocker program referred to in that
post but found that it did not seem to work on my Windows Vista Ultimate
64-bit setup. When I right-clicked on any of those files, the menu did not
have the Unlocker item listed. I gave up on it and removed Unlocker.

Here are the steps that I performed during this cycle of events that has got
my Dopod phone with WM6 sync'ing again with WMDC 6.0:

-- Uninstalled the two Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1 items from the
Control Panel > Programs and Features list
-- Manually deleted the contents of the C:\Windows\WindowsMobile folder.
Initially I could not delete some DLLs but once the two "Windows Mobile
device connectivity" services were stopped from the Task Manager, I was able
to delete the rest of the files in the WindowsMobile folder, except for the
en-US folder containing the *.MUI files. I could not delete them and so
decided to leave them.
-- Using Regedit, I deleted all entries from the following two keys that
related to my two devices:
* HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows CE Services\Partners
* HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Portable Devices\Devices (I left
in the entry for my memory card)
--- Using Windows Explorer, I deleted all files in the following folder:
* C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\ActiveSync\Profiles
--- With my two Pocket PCs disconnected, I tapped on Start > Programs >
ActiveSync > Menu > Options, highlighted the Windows PC and tapped on and
the Delete button. Both of my PPCs had two entries in here so there could
have been some confusion on the desktop at some point, so I deleted both of
them. They do not sync with any other computer.
-- Rebooted (Restarted) my Windows Vista computer

-- Reinstalled WMDC 6.0 from the Microsoft Download website.
-- Recreated the two relationships from my two devices, and they each did
the initial long sync
-- I then tested each device that it could perform a sync not long after it
was reconnected, and they both now sync perfectly. I also tested that making
any changes to some contact details in Outlook 2007 would update the devices
after a sync. and it did.

I am now happy again.

I did notice that after I reinstalled WMDC 6.0, the C:\Windows\WindowsMobile
folder did not have the wmdSync.exe file, which I thought was unusual
because everything was sync'ing perfectly, even after another reboot of
Vista. I had thought that sync'ing was dependent on wmdSync.exe since it
replaced the WCESMgr.exe program in ActiveSync in earlier Windows operating
systems. This will be another thing to follow up at another time. Since I
had a copy of the file, I simply copied it into this folder, including its
sister file wmdSync.exe.manifest.

I hope this information might become useful to others who come across this
post and I hope Microsoft tries to find out why this problem has arisen in
the first place. I will await the next update of WMDC 6.

Regards,
Neville Lang

==================================

Hi all,

I should have mentioned in my previous post that the reason I did not want
to use the more common "End a partnership" feature of WMDC > Mobile Device
Settings is that I found that when this feature was launched, it not only
removed the partnership registry items and partnership disk files but also
automatically removed an important folder (to me) and that is the
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Documents on <username> <device name>. I have
many documents and notes in this folder and, if I had not backup this
folder, all of my documents would have been lost. I did this in the past and
have now manually remove partnership(s) as described in my last post, hence,
my description of the removal of certain registry entries and disk files.

Regards,
Neville Lang

==================================