Re: ActiveSync 4.1 USB Forever Connecting Problem Fixed - Cisco VPN Co

It's probably not "broken", really. The whole purpose of a firewall is to
prevent things from happening like external devices connecting to network
ports on your machine, where they might be able to do some sort of damage.
In a VPN situation, the whole idea is to prevent other, insecure, networks
that the computer (your PC), might be attached to from penetrating the
private network, as that's assumed to be behind security perimeters and
individual machines inside that perimeter might not be particularly secure.
The VPN therefore carefully blocks anything that might 'get through', as
part of its job.

Since ActiveSync running on the mobile device is trying to do exactly that
sort of thing, connect to a network service running on the PC from a network
outside the security perimeter of the VPN, it makes sense that a firewall
would block it, unless you can somehow set an exception. If your company
doesn't want you to set *any* exceptions, you'll have to stick with IR or
Bluetooth to sync with those machines.

Paul T.

"BBF" <BBF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:351E055D-E0F1-4805-B88D-706D4F67F844@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I had the ActiveSync 4.1 forever "Connecting" problem connecting to my USA
T-Mobile MDA (HTC Wizard) using USB. Previously I had ActiveSync 3.8
installed on the machine and it was working perfectly with my Audiovox
SMT5600. But like most people here, I was forced to upgrade to ActiveSync
4.x to sync with my new WM5 device... what a nightmare.

I had upgraded my old Windows 2000 SP4 machine (it's an old VAIO laptop
that
doesn't have Sony driver support for Windows XP) at home from ActiveSync
3.X
to 4.1 and everything went smoothly. The IPAQ 3510 and the SMT5600 I had
syncing with it before using USB still synced properly, although the
profiles
were deleted and new ones were created on the PC side. Also the MDA
synced
perfectly with it using USB. I also tried a new ActiveSync 4.1 install on
a
Windows XP SP2 Home laptop and that synced with the MDA as well...

Then I upgraded my work machine (Windows XP SP2 Prof) to ActiveSync 4.1...
that's when the problem occurred. The install went smoothly, but when I
connected the MDA to the USB cable, I'd just spin the ActiveSync logo and
display "Connecting" forever. I looked at the ipconfig.exe results and
the
WM5 network adapter had gotten the address 169.254.2.2 and the routing
tables
looked correct, yet I could not ping 169.254.2.1 (my MDA.) I tried an IR
sync with and that worked perfectly (at least IR connections still
worked.)

I even tried installing ActiveSync 4.2 Beta and that didn't help much,
other
than instead of "Connecting" showing forever, it would eventually time out
and offer a web page with some help. After reading that web page, I
realized
that ActiveSync 4.X didn't always work well with Firewalls, Virus Scanners
and VPN software... but I had already disabled the Windows Firewall, the
Virus Scanner and the Cisco VPN Client didn't look like it was active
(didn't
show up in the Task Manager Process listing, or had the icon in the task
bar...)

That's when I got suspicious about the Cisco VPN Client (Version
4.6.04.0043), since it was in the startup... maybe it was still running...
So I started up the Cisco VPN Client and went through the options and
realized I had the "Stateful Firewall (always on)" option checked. When I
unchecked the option, my ActiveSync 4.2 Beta immediated connected with my
WM5
device. Problem solved!

I don't know what the most recent version of the Cisco VPN Client is, but
since it's installed on my work laptop, I'm not privy to upgrade that
piece
of software, so don't have access to the registered area of the Cisco
website
where upgrades are located. I don't know if the stateful firewall feature
is
still broken in the most recent version of the Cisco VPN Client. (Note
that
unchecking that option also fixed some other network problems I had with
talking through USB to Ethernet network adapters that were attached after
computer had booted.)

Hope this will be of some aid to others with the forever connecting
problem
with ActiveSync 4.1 or 4.2 Beta.



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