Several months ago, my iPAQ stopped synching with my IBM laptop (running Windows XP). Now every time I connect the cradle to the laptop and I place my iPAQ in the cradle, both the PDA and the laptop acknowledge that they are trying to connect but Activesync gets hung up on "Connecting..." until the iPAQ screen turns off, at which point it says "No partnership." It never actually engages and starts synching.

I tried uninstalling Activesync, rebooting and reinstalling the latest version but have not had any luck. The first time I tried to sync after that, I got a "Communications Error" saying that they were not able to sync because of a "critical error." (I didn't write down the rest of the message and have not gotten it since that first time.)

Any suggestions? (I am not technologically savvy.)

I have the iPAQ h3955 running Pocket PC version 3.0.11171 (Build 11178). Processor is Intel PXA250.

(FYI: After reading another post, I tried changing my device name, but that did not work. Plus, I tried both the USB and serial port - produced same results.)