My Jasjar used to sync happily with my hp notebook (nx8220), running XP Pro SP2 and all Windows Updates. A month or 2 ago it stopped working. Since then I have reinstalled ActiveSync 4.1, deleted my partnership, removed USB ports from the DeviceManager, turned off power management on USB, checked my firewall settings (Windows firewall is off, ZoneAlarm is configured for ActiveSync to pass through), to my knowledge I have no VPN software installed.

I have exhausted other avenues to resolve this problem:
- Google
- Google groups (http://groups.google.co.nz/group/microsoft.public.pocketpc.activesync/msg/c0a6d351ef94e908?&hl=en&q=%22activesync+4.1%22+connection+fails)
- Club i-mate
- Microsoft website (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/help/activesync/default.mspx)
- MSDN

All that happens when I plug in the Jasjar via USB cable to HP is the Microsoft ActiveSync window pops up, saying "Connecting" and spinning the green circle, for ages, until it fails with "Not connected".

I am plugging directly into the laptop USB ports -- all 3 fail. There is no intervening USB hub.

I have tried a soft reset. I dare not do a hard reset -- there is too much data to lose.

Here's the last few lines of WCESMgr.log:

**** ActiveSync (4.1.4841 RETAIL) started, Cmd line: ''
04/30/2006 10:58:11.234 ERROR returned in function CMainFrmWnd::ReadWindowPlacement. hr: 0x80070002
04/30/2006 11:40:08.656 **** ActiveSync exiting
04/30/2006 11:40:08.656 **************** Logging Stopped ****************
04/30/2006 11:41:14.531 **************** Logging Started ****************
04/30/2006 11:41:14.531 Process C:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync\WCESMgr.exe  p(2588)
04/30/2006 11:41:14.531

And in my ActiveSync.log the only obvious error (which may not be significant) I can see is:

1: RegisterSerialUSB: Begin.
1: RegisterSerialUSB: SetupDiGetDeviceRegistryProperty failed with last error of 13
1: RegisterSerialUSB: SetupDiGetDeviceRegistryProperty failed with last error of 13

That file ends with:

=== Logging stopped: 2/04/2006  15:35:56 ===
MSI (c) (A4:C0) [15:35:56:562]: Product: Microsoft ActiveSync 4.0 -- Installation operation completed

successfully.

I have just downloaded and installed ActiveSync 4.2 beta (from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/downloads/activesync42.mspx) and installed it, after uninstalling 4.1, of course. It installed ok. But when I run it, there is still no connection.

One thing I noticed is that there is no app firing up on the PDA when trying to connect. I recall that there used to be an animated icon on the PocketPC indicating it was trying to link to the PC. But that is missing. When I fired up ActiveSync on the PDA and press Sync it momentarily displays "Connecting" and stops.

Still no joy. But I'm suspecting something on the Jasjar is wrong.