Tris’ Blog

I have a battered Orange SPV M3100 (HTC Hermes), which normally syncs fine over my USB connection at work, but is currently being somewhat sporadic with my Vista laptop.

Sometimes, nothing will happen. The mobile will draw power from the laptop, and you can even establish Internet Connection Sharing, but the phone will not be detected for syncing or file transfer.

So I decided to give Bluetooth a go. No wires! What could possibly go wrong?

Firstly, Toshiba’s Bluetooth stack was no help at all. When pairing the laptop and mobile, it would give “Connection refused” errors. So much for always installing the official drivers! Waste of time. I uninstalled the stack and let Vista manage it. Much simpler interface, and this time the pairing worked.

Now, I ran into a “Gotcha!” here. You have to explicitly enable Bluetooth connections in Sync Center’s configuration. But then you have to RE-ESTABLISH THE PAIRING! You see, when the mobile first connects, Vista doesn’t offer ActiveSync as an option due to it being disabled, and it will not detect it after the fact either!

Nothing too complex, just annoying.

Then it’s just a case of going into the mobile’s ActiveSync software, and selecting “Connect via Bluetooth” in the menu. Once done, Sync Center picked it up and it all “just worked”.

I still don’t know why the USB connection is no longer working though. USB is explicitly enabled for syncing on both the laptop and the mobile… grr…