HotSync Problems
3Com’s studies indicate that a huge percentage of technical-support calls the company receives are about HotSyncing. No matter how well designed the PalmPilot may be, HotSyncing involves hooking up to a desktop computer—a beast hundreds of times more complex and balky. As you’ll see in this section, nearly all of HotSync troubleshooting procedures involve work on the PC, not on the PalmPilot.
The First Steps to Take
If you can’t get a local HotSync (where the PalmPilot is directly connected to your computer) to work, double-check the cabling and HotSync settings described in Chapter 6. If HotSyncs still don’t happen, here are some additional troubleshooting experiments to conduct.
Turn off any startup programs or system extensions that may be interfering with your ports. Fax software is especially suspect, because its purpose is to monitor your serial ports constantly.
Quit any telecom programs that may be running (America Online, Internet software, and so on).
On the Macintosh, if you’ve connected the cradle to the printer port, make sure AppleTalk is off. (To do so, choose Chooser from the Apple menu and click AppleTalk Inactive.) And if you have a Wacom drawing tablet, consider turning its control panel off when HotSyncing to avoid sluggishness.
On Windows, if you have an internal modem or PC card modem, it may be assigned to the COM port you’re trying to use with your PalmPilot. (You’ll see nothing plugged into the actual COM port, but the port is “stolen” by the ...
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