Opinions on KB Article re: AS problems & Hard Reset Solution

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Fuego - 29 Oct 2004 14:39 GMT

I'm interested in knowing what people think about the following MS
Knowledgebase article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;829089

Although this article would appear to be applicable to my problem, it Seems
to me to be not only a total "cop-out", but also indicates a major flaw in
the ActiveSync implementation.

Furthermore, it gives no indication as to what the problem is, or why this
is the fix.

I personally can't believe that you have to do a hard reset, re-install all
your apps and data, and re-configure all your settings and preferences, just
to get ActiveSync back and working, simply because you performed several
hundred soft resets over a period of time. Surely there is a setting, or
flag, somewhere that can be changed?

Let's not even go into the justification for having to do several hundred
soft resets, but I'll just say iPAQ 3870 with WM2003 ;)

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AlanS - 29 Oct 2004 17:04 GMT

> I'm interested in knowing what people think about the following MS
> Knowledgebase article:
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> Let's not even go into the justification for having to do several hundred
> soft resets, but I'll just say iPAQ 3870 with WM2003 ;)

Perhaps you should investigate the causes of multiple posts next?

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Fuego - 29 Oct 2004 17:50 GMT

> Perhaps you should investigate the causes of multiple posts next?

Thanks. I did, prior to your suggestion.
It was MS's News Interface on their Support/Helpdesk page which is
mis-behaving, as has been noted in a previous post.

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Beverly Howard [Ms-MVP/MobileDev] - 29 Oct 2004 18:15 GMT

I tend to agree with you... this does not sound right.

The description _sounds_ like a very old problem where the solution is
to reboot the PC rather than hard reset the PPC-PE.

Here are some related issues;

It is a known issue that multiple AS connects will prevent further
connects until the _PC_ is rebooted

Another problem that I have researched is that if the USB port is
changed after the initial connect and sync is made, Activesync gets
"lost" trying to communicate with the original usb port rather than the
current connection port... see http://BevHoward.com/ASync.htm#USB

The steps listed at that location should accomplish the same thing that
the hard reset would.

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]

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Beverly Howard [Ms-MVP/MobileDev] - 30 Oct 2004 00:38 GMT

See the previous thread for an alternate approach of registry patching...

this KB appears to be related to a ME2003 "first release" bug that was
addressed in ME2003se, so take the "Applies to..." is way too broad.

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]

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Fuego - 31 Oct 2004 03:16 GMT

> See the previous thread for an alternate approach of registry patching...
>
> this KB appears to be related to a ME2003 "first release" bug that was
> addressed in ME2003se, so take the "Applies to..." is way too broad.
>
> Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]

Thanks Bev, but I believe that the KB article is correct - it's just that
the solution is too draconian and it does not tell us why this should be a
problem.

My symptoms were exactly as per the KB article and I do not doubt that a
hard-reset would have fixed it. A soft reset only makes the problems worse,
since around 2 or 3 erroneous events are left in the notifications database
for each soft reset. Over time these mount up. I had 1371 events in my
database, which after cleaning it up came down to 25.

Raj Pillai gave me the fix in another thread (one of my duplicates) pointing
me to a site with a bug fix program for cleaning-out duplicate and erroneous
events from the notifications database. Here is the URL he gave:

http://www.scarybearsoftware.com/ppc_cn_overview.html

If you are suffering from this problem, you will find that when starting a
sync over USB/Serial (not IR or WiFi or BT) ActiveSync is very slow (up to a
minute) to get going on the PPC when you cradle it. I believe what then
happens is that by the time AS on the PPC is ready, the Desktop end has
timed-out, so the PPC disconnects.

Once you clean-up your notifications database, AS will pop-up immediately on
cradling and work like a charm.

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Fuego

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