Windows Mobile Device Center

After upgrading to Windows Vista, setting up the communication between Vista and my HTC Touch was a PITA ! And I would like give the entire credit of this pain to Vista !

On Windows XP, Activesync did a very good job in syncing with the smartphone and I also managed to synchronize over Bluetooth. When I plugged in the handset (via USB) to the vista upgraded laptop, the windows mobile device center opened up and showed the connection status as "Connected".

The dialog box looked something like this:

Open "Windows Mobile Device Center" and you are treated with a dialog box with 2 check boxes (as shown above)

The "Waiting" status actually turned into "Connected" and the Storage card of the mobile phone (with the HTC Touch Photo) was also listed in Windows Explorer. Vista just gave me a feeling that everything was setup with no issues. However I couldn’t sync contacts/notes etc and I couldn’t even explore the device.

Initially I thought that the unlocking of the "SIM Locked" phone might have caused this problem and I even did a hard reset on my device. I started WMDC with lot of hope only to see the dreaded box again 🙁

It took a lot of time for me to realize that the connection was never setup properly. (I found this out from the Activesync status report on the handset)

I went through a lot of forum threads and none of them had a concrete solution for the above problem. In one of the threads I read about running Windows Update after connecting your handset.

On doing this, Vista update suggested that there was an "optional" update for Windows Mobile Device Center. After I ran this update, I was presented with a totally new looking Windows Mobile Device Center.

• Programs and Services allowed me to get updates of WMDC.
• Pictures,Music and Video option allowed me to import pictures and music from the handset
• File Management allowed me to explore the device
• Mobile Device Setting allowed me to setup a "Sync" partnership with the device.

So all that was required to fix the problem was to run Windows update ! But wait ! I ran windows update and the WMDC update never showed up !!! This is why I blamed vista in the first place for the pain it caused. The update showed up only when I connected the device which in a way was weird.

So if any of you guys are having trouble setting up WMDC, run the Windows update after connecting the device ! I even managed to "Sync" over bluetooth with no issues.

Let me know if any of you have still trouble setting up a sync partnership between your handset and WMDC running on Vista !