Friday, March 24, 2006

Installing Palm Desktop on Windows XP

Next new laptop problem - Palm Desktop.

Numerous problems here.

Firstly, use the version on CD that came in the box with the device (a Treo 650 in my case).

If you use the one from Palms website, it won't contain the Media conduit. It mentions this clearly on their site. If you use the operator version from Palm PluggedIn, it won't contain the Outlook conduit(s).

Secondly, don't install that CD version over an old version.

It probably won't work, and give 'error 1714' or similar. Similarly, since this was a special build, the installer .msi files weren't available, so even a manual uninstall didn't work. See the palm support website for the fix, which basically involves downloading, installing and running a Windows Installer Clean Up program, which seems to compensate for the fact that the normal installer isn't very good.

Thirdly, install the Outlook conduit patch before you actually sync.

If you don't, you'll probably get a ton of duplicates and have to clean it all up manually (due to Outlooks lack of a cleanup, or in fact it's inability to create such a mess in the first place).

You'll also probably get a lot of errors in the hotsync log, starting with OLERR:0B-0004 and then a whole lot more - see this page. The proposal to use Outlooks detect & repair didn't seem to do much. See the palm support website on OLE errors, which suggests using the conduit update found here.

Fourthly, be wary of doing Bluetooth sync afterwards.

Always use the Wizard on the Treo to initiate the connection, the PC clients i've used are too stupid. After that - and i'm not sure if it was a glitch or what - but a post-sync look on my device indicated everything had been deleted.

I tend to use cable sync since it's faster, so cable synced, all ok again.

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