Windows HotSync

[#1]

I have searched everywhere for a way to get my zire 72s to hotsync to palm desktop on my laptop (a dell E6500 running windows XP pro 32 bit) via a usb port and failed.  It used to work (6 months ago) but now fails.  I have tried clean uninstall of palm desktop (4.1.4e) including editing the registry.  The odd thing is that when you do this the computer reconizes the hardware as a palm device and (re)installs a palm driver (version 6.6.1.0).  When you look at device manager the entry palm handheld appears but no hotsync happens.  The hotsync manager is also running and I have selected local USB as the option - I do not have any com ports etc.  One odd thing is that setup for the hotsync manager does not have a USB option and when you click on the local tab you get the error "The selected com port COM 1 is not available.." (which I have found on a lot of other posts but none have offered a solution that worked for me.)  I did manage to get rid of this error message by changing the speed of the connection from "as fast as possible" to a baud rate of 9600 and using COM3 (the only option here).

I have also tried an older palm, a different cable and a lot of time with the same result.If I remember right the first time it failed was when I plugged in the handheld without desktop running which at the time I had set to only have hotsync running when the desktop was up. Windows installed a driver at this point and then it never worked again.

Thanks

Post relates to: Zire 72

[#2]

Try installing version 4.2 from my "Manual" link below.

WyreNut

[#3]

No luck there - in fact I did install 4.1.4e as it was the only one listed at http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/33529_en.html (that said 4.2 was not listed at all for windows - I guess things move on!). I would like to note however that the version number that came up (under help/about palm desktop) when I had 4.1.4e was only 4.1.4.  Now with 4.2 installed the corret version (4.2) comes up.  I should note I only did a regular install with a reboot this time but it must have changed something as windows reinstalled the palm driver on the first hotsync.

One thing I have noticed is that while you are attempting a hotsync then the hotsync manager stops responding - if you click on the icon to try and change which port etc then nothing happends until you cancel the hotsync on the Zire.  That makes me thing that the manager knows about the connection but is not doing anything with it.  Also the message "can not connect to post Com 1..." is no longer there but then I did fix that with version 4.1.4e.

IS a Zire 72s the same as a Zire 72? Could that be part of the problem?

Simon

[#4]

Another thought is that this system used to work (with 4.1.4) and then it stopped which implies some system/software update/install is the problem.

  I have a dual boot laptop (XP/Linux fedora core 10) so can test things there.  In the interest of getting to the root of this probIem I can reinstall an old image of the windows partition from Febuary, however only as a temparary test (and this would be a fair bit of work so I want to try anything else people can think of first.) 

How does the hotsync manager talk to the palm desktop?  Does it handle all the work and just write to the c:/software/palmone/<user> folder?