Tuesday, July 16, 2002
iPAQ Sync and Charge cable problems?
Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 12:18 PM
I haven't seen this problem myself, but it certainly sounds like it could be common enough to affect many of your systems. David Topps had a message I thought was worth passing along:
"We have had a lot of trouble trying to get USB charge & sync cables to work with our iPAQs and some laptops. We have tried cables from several different manufacturers with same results in each case. The problem only seems to plague certain laptops but is absent for most - Toshiba and some Dell laptops seem to be most affected. The cable makers deny problems when they have done testing. It has been a very frustrating situation, especially since many of our traveling staff would dearly love not to lug cradles and power bricks for the iPAQ with them on the road."<!>
"I think I figured out what the problem is! What happens is that under certain circumstances, (most often when first connecting) there is a mild power surge and the iPAQ demands too much current from the USB port. As a protective response, the laptop disables the USB port and takes it off the list of available hardware devices. This is why uninstalling and reinstalling the USB port temporarily fixes the problem. Because the operating system thinks the USB port is no longer there, it fairly messes things up for other apps. However, the charge light still goes on for the iPAQ because Windows is not capable of physically shutting down that part of USB functionality.
This also explains why the cable works at first but then not after a few attempts and it explains why it only happens for some laptops. Some are more tolerant of the current drain on the USB port while others are not. Although the Charge n Sync was working at first, it would just have been a matter of time before it would have triggered such an action i.e. it was not specific to any particular cable or device connecting. Interestingly under Windows XP, the error messages are much more informative and give you the choice of disabling that port or not.
If you always turn off the backlight prior to connecting the iPAQ to the cable, this might help to some degree but I have found that even if I turn the backlight off, sometimes it turns back on again when ActiveSync first fires up. I reckon that this little problem has been troubling a few people out there so I thought that this might be worth posting."
"We have had a lot of trouble trying to get USB charge & sync cables to work with our iPAQs and some laptops. We have tried cables from several different manufacturers with same results in each case. The problem only seems to plague certain laptops but is absent for most - Toshiba and some Dell laptops seem to be most affected. The cable makers deny problems when they have done testing. It has been a very frustrating situation, especially since many of our traveling staff would dearly love not to lug cradles and power bricks for the iPAQ with them on the road."<!>
"I think I figured out what the problem is! What happens is that under certain circumstances, (most often when first connecting) there is a mild power surge and the iPAQ demands too much current from the USB port. As a protective response, the laptop disables the USB port and takes it off the list of available hardware devices. This is why uninstalling and reinstalling the USB port temporarily fixes the problem. Because the operating system thinks the USB port is no longer there, it fairly messes things up for other apps. However, the charge light still goes on for the iPAQ because Windows is not capable of physically shutting down that part of USB functionality.
This also explains why the cable works at first but then not after a few attempts and it explains why it only happens for some laptops. Some are more tolerant of the current drain on the USB port while others are not. Although the Charge n Sync was working at first, it would just have been a matter of time before it would have triggered such an action i.e. it was not specific to any particular cable or device connecting. Interestingly under Windows XP, the error messages are much more informative and give you the choice of disabling that port or not.
If you always turn off the backlight prior to connecting the iPAQ to the cable, this might help to some degree but I have found that even if I turn the backlight off, sometimes it turns back on again when ActiveSync first fires up. I reckon that this little problem has been troubling a few people out there so I thought that this might be worth posting."
