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Conflict and Workaround: GPSProxy, HP iPAQ hx2490, and the Virtual COM Port Driver

My younger brother has been wanting to use GPSProxy + Garmin Que on his HP iPAQ hx2490 Pocket PC which runs Windows Mobile 5 (WM5). We'd had no luck during the past few months trying to get this configuration to work.

First there is a serious conflict between the Thai language software SmartThai such that GPSProxy fails to load when SmartThai is enabled -- i.e. its shortcut exists in \Windows\StartUp folder. We disabled SmartThai and got GPSProxy successfully loaded but the next problem is that its Virtual COM Port driver always fails to load.

The problem is that the HP iPAQ Bluetooth Software takes up all available COM ports, and GPSProxy Virtual COM Port cannot be loaded nor initialized. I tried several hacks, which include using a registry editor to delete a virtual COM port key allocated by the iPAQ bluetooth software. Unfortunately, these keys are protected by the operating system and cannot be deleted.

Well...today...by chance...we found a way out.

The solution:
  1. Turn off Bluetooth before launching GPSProxy.

  2. Once GPSProxy is launched then turn on the bluetooth signal. In this way, the iPAQ Bluetooth software will spare the COM ports allocated by GPSProxy.

  3. Now we can start the Proxy Engine flawlessly.

We've tested this workaround many times this evening, with both GPSProxy V1.16 and V2.2. So far it works!

In fact my younger brother told me that he's had this kind of conflict between the iPAQ Bluetooth driver and some Internet-enabled software. Disabling Bluetooth before launching a software is his favorite trick!

Hope this workaround is useful for you!


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