I have an HP6925 Mobile Messenger and an AXIM X50v that work very
intermittently.
The HP6925 causes a device plugged in event when plugged into the USB. A new
folder shows up in device manager called Mobile devices and a device HP USB
Sync show up. WMDC shows the Smartphone in the lower left in light blue
letters but the status is not connected. I can open the HP6925 and go to
Settings | Connections | ActiveSync Mode and select RNDIS Sync Mode. The
device manager goes through a new device recognition and The Mobile Devices
folder goes away. If I change back to USB sync mode The mobile devices shows
up again. The HP USB Sync shows up. A new folder Portable devices shows up
and a new device PocketPC shows up. WMDC goes into a sync mode with the
little wait icon circling a on the device syncs. If I unplug the device and
plug it back in The Mobile devices folder goes away and then come back with
the HP USB Sync device. The Portable Devices folder goes away and does not
come back and WMDC again shows the status not connected. I have to go
through the force RNDIS and the force USB Sync each time I want to sync.
I have the HP6925 configured for direct push from my exchange server and
that works perfectly to keep my mail, and calendar instantly up to date. As
a matter of fact I get the email on my HP6925 several seconds before I get
it on my desktop directly connected to the exchange server with a 100M
Ethernet connection in a domain with only 7 users.
The Dell AXIM X50v had a different but basically unusable history of
experiences with VISTA 32 (build 6000) and WMDC.
First it was a Windows Mobile 2003 SE device and worked very intermittently.
It may be similar to the experience I am having with the HP but I could not
find an application to switch between RNDIS and USB modes. I finally decided
I would try to apply the ROM update to convert the AXIM from 2003 SE to WM5.
I started the ROM upgrade and the ROM upgrade program gave me the warning I
was going to loose all the data on my AXIM and it basically did a hard reset
leaving my device empty. It then crashed. and would not continue. I
contacted Microsoft and they said they had change the interface for doing
ROM upgrades and I would have to contact Dell to get a different version of
the 2003 SE to WM5 upgrade that supports VISTA. Dell support said I needed
to contact Microsoft because it works with XP and they had not been given
any tools for converting the installation to be compatible with VISTA and
since the X50v has been replace with the X50v they had no plans to make any
VISTA compatible changes for the X50v anyway. I was able to find an XP
machine and redo the WM5 ROM upgrade, but it did not help the reliability of
connections with VISTA.
I have been able to get the X50v with the WM5 ROM upgrade connected to the
VISTA machine a few times but it is very intermittent. Also the X50v does
not have the application for switching between RNDIS and USB sync mode so I
cannot use that trick. When I plug it in the USB port the system goes
through a USB device recognition but I get no errors and no Mobile Device
folder and no Portable Device folder and WMDC does not even list the AXIM as
a device either online or of line. Every once in a while it will connect
correctly and it shows in the Mobile devices, Portable Devices and connected
to WMDC.
I reported these issues several times on Connect during the beta and after
the RTM was released. I never got any response other than having the issues
closed with no explanation as to why.
Bill Walter
