ActiveSync on the C600

[Guest armsy]

Ok I may not be the brightest button in the box!

But anyway, I've recently upgraded from a C500 to a C600 and here's where the prolem arises.

when I try to sync my phone with my pc all goes well for the 1st couple of minutes then a box appears saying "retrieving setting" and that's it. . . . it stays like this until I pull the USB plug from my phone.

after I do this another box appears saying stuff about problems and I should consult active sync help, (which I have done but there was nothing usefull).

Can any of you lovely people out there advise me on what I should do?

Please make your answers as easy as possible to understand

Thanks :)

[Guest Pondrew]

It sounds most likely that your firewall software is blocking the connection. Do you know if you're using the Windows default firewall software or if it's Norton/Zonealarm?

[Guest armsy]

I use Sygate personal firewall.

I did read on other peoples post that the fire wall may cause problems, but according to mine it should be allowed.

Would switching to the normal Microsoft firewall make a difference?

Thanks

[Guest Pondrew]

The test would be to temporarily deactivate the firewall you have first and try again.

I'd suggested reboot your pc and Smartphone. Deactivate the firewall. Then reconnect the Smartphone to the usb. If the problem was the firewall it should now run without a problem.

When we know that we can look at options...

[Guest armsy]

Thank you very much i did that and everything now works fine.

I also tried it with the Windows firewall and again it worked fine.

Thank you again for your help

:) ;) :)

[Guest Pondrew]

Glad I could help. Make sure you do have some firewall protection though, I didn't mean to suggest you could just leave your firewall off all the time! :)

Still, if you've switched to the Windows Firewall that should serve you ok.

[Guest G1LIW]

OK, this is an identical problem to the one I've got, and suspending the Sysgate firewall did NOT cure it.

I have an Orange SPV C600; I'm using the latest version of Activesync, v4.1 (downloaded from the MS website yesterday) I'm using Outlook 2002, loaded from the CD that came with the phone, the OS is Win2K, and the really confusing thing is that both AS4.0 and AS4.1 interface with my HP iPaq 1941 without a hitch even WITH the firewall active; the firewall is the sysgate jobbie, and I've added the rules as mentioned on the MS website, but again, it sticks solid on the retrieving settings screen, thus preventing my from synching the PC and the phone. As mentioned above, shutting down the firewall did nothing to cure the problem.

Following a suggestion from http://www.coolsmartphone.com/, I deleted AS 4.1, loaded (just in case) 4.0 from the CD; STILL no joy. It's been stuck in retrieving settings for the last ten minutes (the iPaq went right in and started synching with no dramas whatsoever - go figure). I am now, officially, NOT a happy bunny.

About the only thing I can think of is that my outlook PST folders are large - outlook.pst = 323mb, incomming.pst = 319mb, and archive.pst = 18mb; this, however, was NOT a problem for my iPaq, which logged in just fine earlier today.

The object of the exercise was to reduce the clutter I carry around - Will someone PLEASE tell me what the hell is going on with this - is this a common problem with smartphones? If it is, stuff the idea, I'll go back to a normal phone, and stick with my PDA - again going back to more clutter to carry around, hence defeating the exercise completely :)

I only got this phone yesterday, and I'm about ready to either (1) launch the damn thing into low earth orbit or (2) pull my hair out by the roots :) Speedy replies would be VERY much appreciated, folks.

Oh, and don't even THINK of suggesting I use WinXP - I've seen it, and hate it - Win2K is about as high as I'm prepared to go!

Roger

Edited June 11, 2006 by G1LIW

[Guest star-girl]

I upgraded my C500 yesterday to the C600 which became active early hours of the morning so this is the first chance I have had to sync it with my pc and yes you got it I had exactly the same problems. :) It stuck on retrieving setting. So after reading this post I exited sygate and all is well but the question is, is it a sygate problem or C600 problem as I am not prepared to sacrifice my firewall just to sync my phone all the time I have had enough problems with trojans, virus etc with my pc to last me a lifetime. It looks to me to be a sygate problem so maybe I'd best shop around for a better firewall any suggestions?

[Guest pavankp]

I upgraded my C500 yesterday to the C600 which became active early hours of the morning so this is the first chance I have had to sync it with my pc and yes you got it I had exactly the same problems. :) It stuck on retrieving setting. So after reading this post I exited sygate and all is well but the question is, is it a sygate problem or C600 problem as I am not prepared to sacrifice my firewall just to sync my phone all the time I have had enough problems with trojans, virus etc with my pc to last me a lifetime. It looks to me to be a sygate problem so maybe I'd best shop around for a better firewall any suggestions?

Can't you tell your firewall to let ActiveSync do its work? I believe the EXE is wcescomm.exe.

[Guest pavankp]

Oh, and don't even THINK of suggesting I use WinXP - I've seen it, and hate it - Win2K is about as high as I'm prepared to go!

Just to isolate the problem, you might conisder trying to sync with an XP PC. It's been so long since XP is out, I am not sure Microsoft fully tested the sync on it! Of course, if it does work on XP, you will have a tough choice to make :).

For the record, my outlook.pst is 373 megs, but I have no sync trouble.

[Guest Tech]

its not a common problem with smartphones, its the 3rd party software configurations that are clashing.

[Guest G1LIW]

OK, first things first. This doesn't solve my problem; sysgate, is NOT the problem in this case - ActiveSync will still NOT get out of "Retrieving Settings" when the firewall is closed down and non-operational.

star-girl - did you set sysgate as per the instructions on the Windows Mobile pages? did it still fail to synch, and was that when you disabled sysgate, to get it to synch? Further, how long did your C600 take, once connected, to retrieve the settings and get synching? Are you using XP or Win2K?

pavankp - Regards trying to sync on another machine running XP: Interesting idea, but NOT one I can immediately check, unfortunately.

Tech - Regards "Third Party" software. Care to be a bit more specific? WHAT "3rd party software configurations" are you be referring to?

Hand me a bone here, mate. I need help!

[Guest star-girl]

Ok just back online. Firstly Pavankp I did go onto sygate and tell it to allow the sync but it still refused without exiting it altogether. What I did find was after it worked and I ran sygate again still connected up to the phone it was no problem. I then had to leave the pc for awhile, disconnected my phone then came back and tryed to sync again as I have files to transfer etc and it said connected but wouldn't sync at all so yet again I had to exit sygate. :)

G1LIW Unfortunately I haven't seen any instructions I instantly came onto this forum did a search for C600 sync problems and read this post. Where are these instructions? It only took a matter of seconds to receive the settings once it connected. I am using windows xp as although I did love 2000 it didn't like our network when we went wireless broadband for some reason

One more question when the phone is in sync how come it doesn't say C600 but says wm_ my name, is it something to do with windows media player? Oh yes and another question as I will still be using my C500 and I tried to sync that again no problems, but there use to be a list of phones the pc worked with now it only lists the last one to sync. I hope you understand what I mean Im not that good at explaining sorry.

[Guest G1LIW]

OK, FIXED :P

Turns out the Sysgate appears to block everything, even when switched off. Only a complete removal of that firewall permitted ActiveSync to work - the phone is now fully synched :D Found this, btw, on the MS activesync newsgroup (news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.pocketpc.activesync) not twenty minutes ago :P

I've now replaced sysgate with Zonealarm, needless to say :D

At least I now know what's been plaguing me all damn weekend! :)

Be warned everyone - it IS most often the trusted firewall that's kicking you right up the wotsit, lol :) B)

Cheers for the help attempts, anyhow ;)

Roger

[Guest star-girl]

Glad you got it working ok I am begining to think of changing my firewall too :)

[Guest pavankp]

Glad you got it working ok I am begining to think of changing my firewall too :)

Yup, you can at least turn Windows Firewall on for the time being, which G1LIW with his archaic OS can not :).

I also see this WM_xxx thing, and it irritates me. I think the WM stands for Windows Mobile though. I went to some lengths to get it changed, by editing registry settings -- I think I tried changing the value Name under key HKLM\Ident -- but all hell promptly broke loose and I had to delete my existing ActiveSync partnership and recreate it from scratch. So I decided to live with it ;).

Pavan

[Guest armsy]

Hi its armsy here again.

After my problems with ActiveSync and uninstalling the Sygate Firewall and using Windows Firewall, I was a bit worried about protection still. So I tried Comodo Firewall which to say the least was C*@p it had all the same problems as Sygate.

Anyway long story short I now have the FREE Zone Alarm available here http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/cata...g=en&lid=nav_za and after a little bit of tweaking everything is working just fine and dandy!! :) :) ;)

[Guest G1LIW]

Just curious, but what tweaking did you do? I still have to shut down ZoneAlarm (yep, I've got the free version too!) to use activesync with my C600 - as I'm aiming to get broadband in the next month, this is obviously a major problem for me, so if you could reveal all, it'd be appreciated :)

[Guest armsy]

Sorry for not replying sooner but I've had the mother of all weeks at work so the computer took a major back seat.

What I did was shutdown Zone Alarm then Synced? (doesn't look right that) my phone then re-started Zone Alarm and went to the program control section and allowed everything ActiveSync related to My Trusted Zone

There were 3 items

ActiveSync Application . . WCESMgr.exe

ActiveSync Connection Manager . . wcescomm.exe

and

ActiveSync RAPI Manager . . rapimgr.exe

Then everything went OK

Good Luck

Sorry again for the late reply

[Guest G1LIW]

OK, I'll give that a whirl when I resync tomorrow - thanks for the reply :)

[Guest G1LIW]

Yep, good call - it works just fine now (FINALLY - Whoopeeee!) :)

Thanks :)

Roger

[Guest armsy]

I'm pleased you've had the same success as I've had. It took a while but I'm a happy chappy now, I hope this helps more people out there. However I couldn't have done it without the tips I got from this thread, so a BIG thank you goes out to all the lovely people who answered my needs.

Thanks again

Neil

:)