Activesync losing partnership information regularly

[James Lavery]

Hi all,
We've got an application which transfers data between a .NET
application on the PC and a CF application on a Pocket PC (in fact, a
Symbol PPT2800).

Things are working fine - except that ActiveSync regularly loses the
partnership - meaning that we have to soft reset the PPT2800, and
establish a new partnership.

While this is not too much of a problem for us, it is a pain for our
customers - does anyone know of a solution?

One option I would be happy to implement would be the automatic
re-establishment of the partnership through code, if possible.

Thanks,

James

 

[Daniel Bass]

Active Sync stores data on the device about the partnership so that should
the device be cold booted, it looses this info, and doesn't correctly
recognise the scanner.

I've found a great work around, and that's adding a DWORD key called
"GuestOnly" to
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows CE Services"
and setting it's value to 1.

This means that active sync never pops up, and never tries to establish
partnerships. Great if you have a situation where people don't want to sync
their own PDA's as well, and you need to connect to the scanner without any
fuss.

Hope that helps.

Dan.

 

[James]

Hi Dan,
Thanks - that sounds promising.

However, we need to be able to transfer our files to/from the device -
can we still do this as 'guest'?

(I haven't got a device to test against right now - had to ship our last
cradle to a customer!)

James

 

[Daniel Bass]

James

Yes you can. The partnership facility allows you to synchronise data between
two devices when they are connected, the "guest" facility connects you to
the device but without the synchronisation of data. This means that as a
guest, you can still transfer files, as well as using the RAPI libraries to
drive the device as well.

If you're running PocketPC 2002, you can download the .Net Compact Framework
and use VS .Net to develop your applications. I use OpenNetCF
(www.OpenNetCF.org) libraries which comes with a Communctiona.Desktop
library that allows the PC to send and pull files to and from the device.
Works like a charm.

The fact you don't have the device means that testing the scanner
functionality's most likely out the window, but you can still try out the
file exchanging with the emulators.

Thanks.

Daniel.

 

[James]

Dan,
That's great - will try it out.

Thanks again,

James