vB Easy Archive - New SE P910a user sync issues

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New SE P910a user sync issues
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Posted by: neuroking

Hi all,

Just got my 910a last week, and love it so far, but I am having a ***** of a time getting it to work with my PC. When I restart the PC the 910 is detected, but if I remove it and replace it in the cradle, it will never be reconnected until restart. I cannot back up my phone, because it is never redetected after the restart sequence.

I checked out the troubleshooting on the SE site and they say to disable the COM ports in the phone manager CP, which I did. I tried uninstalling, reinstalling, repairing installations. Nothing.

Any suggestions? WinXP all service packs, firewall permitting all components.

Thanks in advance.

Posted by: trublu

Quote:

Originally posted by neuroking
Hi all,

Just got my 910a last week, and love it so far, but I am having a ***** of a time getting it to work with my PC. When I restart the PC the 910 is detected, but if I remove it and replace it in the cradle, it will never be reconnected until restart. I cannot back up my phone, because it is never redetected after the restart sequence.

I checked out the troubleshooting on the SE site and they say to disable the COM ports in the phone manager CP, which I did. I tried uninstalling, reinstalling, repairing installations. Nothing.

Any suggestions? WinXP all service packs, firewall permitting all components.

Thanks in advance.

had the same problem but realized that when i push the phone more firmly into the cradle it worked. that might work for u.

Posted by: jatooley

I had the same problem with my P900. I found that if I open up the sync settings, and click the usb and off, the computer will then find the phone.

Posted by: neuroking

Hrm, tried both and nothing. Do you guys have the cradle plugged into the comp or a hub?

Posted by: CarlGalgano

I also had problems initially, but after a while (uninstalling and reinstalling) got it to work and it has been reliable since. I have my sync station connected directly to the PC, not a hub. Also, I can get the IR connection to work just fine as well.

Posted by: neuroking

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the software 15+ times now. Played with settings, followed instructions from the SE site and here, tried different USB ports.... NOTHING.

I'm on the verge of returning the phone. If it can't sync it's WORTHLESS. I got it to sync on the last install, but then it launched 20+ instances of AddinMon.exe and Outlook and I had to restart (after which it wasn't detected again!) since teh CPU usage on a 3GHz system was at 100% for 15 minutes after it said sync was successful.

*&#%^$*&#$&*#^$*&^#$&*# Seriously, was this software written by a retarded 5 year old squirrel? I am remarkably disappointed.

Posted by: CarlGalgano

I am with you that the sync software is not that great. I am used to the Palm sync, which is very quick (less than a minute for my treo) and always works. Even MS could figure out Active Sync for Windows devices. Although not as fast as the Palm, it does work as well.

Having said all that, I have had zeros issues since I had my initial woes. I too was ready to send this phone packing. While I think the sync is WAY to slow, it is working, and I can load software onto the phone as well, and also can use the "myp910a" icon to "explore" the phone's internal and card memory (slow but works)

On thing that is puzzling me is the sync speed. On my Palm, the USB sync was blazingly fast, but an IR sync was pretty slow. With my p910a, the sync speed for USB and IR seem to be exactly the same. (takes 5-10 minutes to sync).

Do you have IR available to you? Perhaps you will have a better time syncing via IR?

I hope you can get past this, because after you get synced, I think you will like the phone.

Posted by: seatart

Try the following
Turn off all firewalls, especially zone alarm which I could never make work.
Right click on link (Squiggly in task bar) select properties uncheck usb then check again,(Note com port used, mine is 3).
Go to control panel/phone monitor options and under ports try reserving/unreserving the correct port.
Try deleting the port then restarting and the system will assign another port. I don't think it likes to share ports(irq's).

Posted by: neuroking

Okay tried those suggetions. I have ZA, which I disabled. Did teh various checking unchecking, but wasn't sure how to 'delete the port'. I found it in the device manager (the dock was set to COM3), and uninstalled it. Windows detected the dock on restart and installed the driver. It assigned the same COM port - 3- which is why I think I may have done something wrong, and the same problem persists. The phone is immediately detected on restart, and never again afterwards until the system is restarted.

Is there another way to reassign the COM port? Thanks for the suggestions!

Posted by: neuroking

Actually, I found the Port selection in the Device Manager settings for the cradle. I set the Port to 20.

Could someone please post their settings in the Device manager and the Cable section of the p910a control panel. I noticed that the flow control settings and port speed were different on the phone and the PC (before I even touched them).

Hopefully I'm getting closer. SE has been of no help. They blame it on Outlook or a 'registry issue'. I am 100% it is neither.

Posted by: CarlGalgano

Nureoking: Can you browe the phone (should have a myp901a icon on your desk), or install software to the phone. If you can, then it has NOTHING to do with "an outlook registry entry" I hate getting the blow off from tech support people. They blame it on MS (easy to do) and close the ticket.

I will be happy to post the info you requested in device manager tomorrow when I get to my office. Hopefully someone will get it to you before then. BTW, I am on Eastern time.

Also, What version of the software are you running? I think the latest version is 3.4.

Posted by: CarlGalgano

Well, I do have my phone with me, here are the settings under control panel>cable:

Cable status = PC connect
Baud=115200
Parity= None
Stop bits=1
Char length=8
Flow control= CTS/RTS

I also have under IR
IR status=PC connect
I also turn it on when I want to do a sync via IR.

I'll get you the device manager details tomorrow.

HTH

Posted by: neuroking

Thanks for all the help.

Here are the more detailed symptoms.

- The phone is detected at PC startup if it is in the cradle. It is also detected the first time it is inserted in the cradle if the PC starts up with the phone OUT of the cradle.
- During the period where it is detected, the Phone icon appears in the taskbar. I can browse the phone, and the Phone Connection link in the taskbar says the USB connection is connected.
- While the phone is connected, I can sync with outlook, but something wonky happens each time at the very end. Sync is successful, but either 25 instances of Addinmon and outlook launch, or the sync says that it completed successfully, but trying to launch the backup program results in the error message that the phone is busy and try again later. No PC processes are taking up any CPU in the second case.
- If I remove the phone from the cradle, the phone icon disappears, and the connection link detects that it is not connected.
- When I place the phone in the cradle after removing it, the phone connection link detects that the phone is connected (solid wiggly arrow). BUT, the phone icon does not appear, and I cannot browse the phone contents.
- When teh phone is detected, if I try to Backup the phone, I get through the restart, and the phone says it is backing up (no progress bar), but the system doesn't detect the phone and the process times out. The phone remains on teh backup screen and cannot exit it in any way except pulling out the battery.

I'm running Phone R4B002, Bluetooth R2F, Organizer R3A04, and CDA R3A04. PC is WinXP SP2.

I am going to try removing all spyware blocking, browser bars (yahoo and google), and firewall (Zone Alarm). I ahve tried manually disabling all of these after boot when testing the phone and they've had no effect, but maybe one of those background processes is mucking things up.

Oh phone settings are the same as yours, PC settings I have are:
115200, 8, none, 1, and none (flow control). Under advanced I have COM20 (I changed it), 4096 for trans and receive, lat 16, 0, 0, and nothing checked on the right.

Thanks again.

Posted by: CarlGalgano

Wow, my guess is, your device setting are correct, but obviously something is not right. I know how you feel, and last Friday as I was doing my initial install, I had all the problems you describe, but uninstalling and reinstalling go me going, and I have had no problems since. I also have ZA running,

Any chance you have another PC to try it on?

Under device manager on my PC I find the SEMC DSS SyncStation on COM3.
Port settings:
BPS=115200
Data bits=8
Parity=none
Stop bits=1
Flow control=None

On the Drive tab, it says I am using driver version 1.0.2115.0, date 12/17/2002.

Dont know if any of this helps or not. I wish I could help you more, but I am a relative newbie to Symbian.

But ask away, I will try to help.

Posted by: CarlGalgano

One more thing, I think I disabled ZA when I did my initial install. Dont know if it helped or not, but it is something to try.

Dont ya just love when technology saves you time.

Posted by: neuroking

Success!

I took a good 3 hours to mess with it. I uninstalled all browser bars, firewall (ZA), anti-spyware programs, and remnants of my Sony Clie/Palm. Turns out ZONEALARM was the issue. It was not just enough to deactivate it, or allow all P910 programs permission, it had to be COMPLETELY removed from the system. I tried reinstalling ZA after the phone was working and the same symptoms appeared. Now things work well.

New question: What the hell do i do now about a firewall and antivirus program? Can't use ZA, I hate Norton since it messed my other computer up last year. What are you guys using?

Posted by: seatart

Unfortunately I use Norton IS. I don't particularly like it but my 910a works with it.

Posted by: Synergie1

I just got my P910a today and LOVE IT! No syncing problems whatsoever, but I did notice a few things that might have been overlooked:

INITIAL INSTALLATION: Extensive experience with cellphone usb cables has taught me DO NOT plug in the usb cable until you are done installing the sync software or the pc wont find the phone! If you did it that way and are having trouble, uninstall and do it over.

Once the software is installed, leave the cd in the drive and plug the phone into the cradle FIRST, then the usb cable into the usb port on the desktop pc. You will get a popup asking to install drivers. Select 'find automatically' and windows will find the correct driver on the cd. You will have to do this a few times as there are seperate drivers for the sync station and the phone... apparently anyway. I think I had to go through that twice.

After the initial install... reboot your PC. You should now be able to leave the sync station plugged in and just plug the phone into the sync station and the pc should find it no problem.

SYNC TO OUTLOOK: Outlook MUST be your default mail application. I use Thunderbird normally... no biggie, I just get that annoying popup asking me if I want Thunderbird to be my default every time.

If you have trouble syncing, open Outlook on your desktop computer and just minimize it. Mine wouldn't sync the first time until I did this. Again, easy to resolve. I just had it minimized on my desktop.

Hope tis helps a bit...

Anyway, I love this phone! It's much mroe than I hoped for and I am going to sell my PDA now! For what I used it for, it's been replaced by the P910a! Plenty of UIQ apps out there! And I love the themes!

Posted by: trublu

Quote:

Originally posted by neuroking
Success!

I took a good 3 hours to mess with it. I uninstalled all browser bars, firewall (ZA), anti-spyware programs, and remnants of my Sony Clie/Palm. Turns out ZONEALARM was the issue. It was not just enough to deactivate it, or allow all P910 programs permission, it had to be COMPLETELY removed from the system. I tried reinstalling ZA after the phone was working and the same symptoms appeared. Now things work well.

New question: What the hell do i do now about a firewall and antivirus program? Can't use ZA, I hate Norton since it messed my other computer up last year. What are you guys using?

mine works fine with ZA. i just made sure that i gave each each pc suite component access in ZA.

Posted by: neuroking

Quote:

Originally posted by trublu
mine works fine with ZA. i just made sure that i gave each each pc suite component access in ZA.

I did the same, but it just never worked. I've had other issues with ZA messing up programs in the past and thought I'd try it again. Always messed up Bit Torrent and a few other programs I can't remember.

I am using PC-cillan Internet Security 2005, and so far so good. Around as good as ZA on resource management, so snappier than Norton, and I feel better about the AV protection, since it is a more mature product.

Posted by: CarlGalgano

Quote:

Originally posted by neuroking
Success!

I took a good 3 hours to mess with it. ........... a great bit snip.......

New question: What the hell do i do now about a firewall and antivirus program? Can't use ZA, I hate Norton since it messed my other computer up last year. What are you guys using?

Neuroking, EXCELLENT. I'm glad you got it working, I though you might bail.

I am using zone alarm just fine with the sync software. I did have enable some programs to allow access to the network, but once I got them setup, it works fine. I was doing some googling and found a list of the programs you have to allow internet access in ZA.

Posted by: CarlGalgano

Quote:

Originally posted by neuroking
I did the same, but it just never worked. I've had other issues with ZA messing up programs in the past and thought I'd try it again. Always messed up Bit Torrent and a few other programs I can't remember.

I am using PC-cillan Internet Security 2005, and so far so good. Around as good as ZA on resource management, so snappier than Norton, and I feel better about the AV protection, since it is a more mature product.

While i use ZA I really dont need it most of the time. At home I am behind a firewall, and at my office I am behind a firewall. The only time I really need it is when I use my Sprint vision data card on my laptop. h

Posted by: neuroking

I swear if this phone wasn't some sweet I would have returned it, but I had to put out the extra effort.

Trend Micro's PC-Cillin seems to be playing nice, so I'll stick with that for now. But it might be a good idea to post which components need to be allowed for Zone Alarm to function properly, in case someone stumbles on this thread later. Post em if ya got em!

Thanks again guys and gals!

Posted by: Calculon

No problems with McAfee!

Glad to hear you got it to sync.

Posted by: CarlGalgano

I switched my laptop access for mail from POP to Exchange yesterday so I had to reinstall the PC Suite, but I did not have any problems. I did have some serious duplication in my calendar and contact and todo lists, but that was mainly from user error. I found a tool to remove all the dups, and then did a total full sync back to the phone. I am in good shape. Sync to exchange rather than outlook works fine, and using Profimail with IMAP is VERY cool.

Posted by: jatooley

I have finally given up on my P-900. It is the greatest phone out there but with one critical flaw. It does not RELIABLY sync it's information with your Outlook. I have tried every setting, I have tried the newest sync programs. I have tried 3 different versions of Outlook. I can not get the calendar to sync properly. I finally tried the new Audiovox SMT-5600. OK, it doesn't have a stylus but let me tell you what I have found in the last week:
1) It syncs perfectly, every time with my Outlook. Plug in the USB cable, and everything is synced. Wow, it is possible.
2) The opera browser is WAY faster on the SMT-5600 than the P-900.
3) 99 Speed Dials instead of 10
4) The method of looking up a contact to dial is phenomenal.
5) It is super small

The bottom line is this: when it comes to synchronization with your outlook, you can't beat a Microsoft OS phone. After all, 90% of us own Microsoft OS computers. it's like tyring to get a Ford transmission to hook up to a Chevy engine. It doesn't make sense and it won't work.

I haven't totally given up on the P-900. It makes a great second phone.