I have been trying to fix an HP iPAQ h4150 Pocket PC, which runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003, for not synchronizing the Inbox items properly after an intentional hard-reset. Every single email in Microsoft Outlook on the desktop computer does not sync to the handheld if it contains an attachment -- no matter wheter it is a TXT file, a JPEG file or a DOC file.
Websites and newsgroups such as the followings
Google Groups: 4150 inbox unresolved attachment
Google Groups: unresolved inbox
suggest us to delete the ActiveSync partnership or to delete the file
Someone on the newsgroups mentioned about unplugging the handheld from the cradle, soft-reseting it, and putting it back to the cradle to start a clean ActiveSync session.
Since I set Pocket Outlook on the iPAQ to store attachments on the SD Card, another relevant theory from someone on the newsgroup microsoft.public.pocketpc is that the folder to store email attachments on the SD Card could be missing, and we should try to disable Pocket Outlook from storing attachments on the memory card, then soft-reset the handheld (with memory card put in place), and re-configure Pocket Outlook to store attachments on the card.
A good friend of mine who is a leading expert in Pocket PC in Thailand also suggested that, like his h2210 iPAQ, there could be an Inbox synchronization bug that if we don't have enough free space in the "storage memory" and the "iPAQ File Store", the handheld wouldn't sync email attachments properly, leaving emails with attachments in the "unresolved" state.
One more theory is that I could be experiencing a problem with ActiveSync 4.1, which is not supposed to be used with the h4150 which runs Windows Mobile 2003, as ActiveSync 4.1 was aimed at Windows Mobile 5.0 devices.
I followed every single suggestion. I even cleared up the iPAQ File Store to have 1.3 megabytes space and the storage memory to be almost 10 megabytes free. I also uninstalled ActiveSync 4.1 and entered Windows XP safe mode to remove ceutil.dll and rapi.dll under c:\windows\system32 and two DLLs two DLLs remaining in c:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync, which according to this thread is the trick to completely remove ActiveSync 4.1 and rollback to ActiveSync 3.8.
To no avail, all these tricks and suggestions do not help. After all, with 2 days of experiments, my Inbox still do not sync properly -- every single email with an attachment ends up being an unresolved inbox item.
Until now, I just had an MSN chat session with a friend who uses an h4150. After explaining the situation to him, he bet there must be something wrong with my Pocket Outlook.
Immediately, a hard-reset idea popped up. Here's what I did:
Like a charm, emails with attachments now synchronize properly. I tested this with the emails containing TXT document and JPEG pictures. Every email synchronize perfectly, as it used to be!
Thank you very much everyone for helping me on this problem.
Keywords: pocket-pc, windows-mobile, emails, troubleshooting
Update: Feb 14, 06 (Valentine's Day):
The Inbox items from Microsoft Outlook on the desktop (well, actually, an IBM ThinkPad laptop) have been syncing properly to the h4150 so far. Despite I now filling up the iPAQ File Store, leaving only 100KB space left, the emails with attachments still sync properly to the Pocket PC. Therefore, the following assumption from my expert friend (posted above and quoted again here) is not applicable to my case:
Websites and newsgroups such as the followings
Google Groups: 4150 inbox unresolved attachment
Google Groups: unresolved inbox
suggest us to delete the ActiveSync partnership or to delete the file
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application DataMicrosoft\ActiveSync\Profiles\HandheldName\repl.datto reset the synchronization status of the handheld so that everything would be overwritten by the content from the desktop.
Someone on the newsgroups mentioned about unplugging the handheld from the cradle, soft-reseting it, and putting it back to the cradle to start a clean ActiveSync session.
Since I set Pocket Outlook on the iPAQ to store attachments on the SD Card, another relevant theory from someone on the newsgroup microsoft.public.pocketpc is that the folder to store email attachments on the SD Card could be missing, and we should try to disable Pocket Outlook from storing attachments on the memory card, then soft-reset the handheld (with memory card put in place), and re-configure Pocket Outlook to store attachments on the card.
A good friend of mine who is a leading expert in Pocket PC in Thailand also suggested that, like his h2210 iPAQ, there could be an Inbox synchronization bug that if we don't have enough free space in the "storage memory" and the "iPAQ File Store", the handheld wouldn't sync email attachments properly, leaving emails with attachments in the "unresolved" state.
One more theory is that I could be experiencing a problem with ActiveSync 4.1, which is not supposed to be used with the h4150 which runs Windows Mobile 2003, as ActiveSync 4.1 was aimed at Windows Mobile 5.0 devices.
I followed every single suggestion. I even cleared up the iPAQ File Store to have 1.3 megabytes space and the storage memory to be almost 10 megabytes free. I also uninstalled ActiveSync 4.1 and entered Windows XP safe mode to remove ceutil.dll and rapi.dll under c:\windows\system32 and two DLLs two DLLs remaining in c:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync, which according to this thread is the trick to completely remove ActiveSync 4.1 and rollback to ActiveSync 3.8.
To no avail, all these tricks and suggestions do not help. After all, with 2 days of experiments, my Inbox still do not sync properly -- every single email with an attachment ends up being an unresolved inbox item.
Until now, I just had an MSN chat session with a friend who uses an h4150. After explaining the situation to him, he bet there must be something wrong with my Pocket Outlook.
Immediately, a hard-reset idea popped up. Here's what I did:
I unplugged the iPAQ from the cradle, used the iPAQ Backup utility to backup everything except the emails to the memory card, then did a hard-reset and restore everything (of course, except the emails) to the handheld. Then, I deleted the partnership between the Pocket PC and ActiveSync 4.1 and plugged the iPAQ back to the cradle to let ActiveSync overwrite everything on the handheld with the desktop content.
Like a charm, emails with attachments now synchronize properly. I tested this with the emails containing TXT document and JPEG pictures. Every email synchronize perfectly, as it used to be!
Thank you very much everyone for helping me on this problem.
Keywords: pocket-pc, windows-mobile, emails, troubleshooting
Update: Feb 14, 06 (Valentine's Day):
The Inbox items from Microsoft Outlook on the desktop (well, actually, an IBM ThinkPad laptop) have been syncing properly to the h4150 so far. Despite I now filling up the iPAQ File Store, leaving only 100KB space left, the emails with attachments still sync properly to the Pocket PC. Therefore, the following assumption from my expert friend (posted above and quoted again here) is not applicable to my case:
...there could be an Inbox synchronization bug that if we don't have enough free space in the "storage memory" and the "iPAQ File Store", the handheld wouldn't sync email attachments properly...
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