Blackberry Connection Specific Error

Well, I just encountered yet another issue with my blackberry that lost me several hours and data related to synching between my Blackberry and my PC. Over the past week, I kept getting a "Connection Specific Error" when synching with the Blackberry Desktop Manager (which means that my calendar entries were not being synched between outlook and my device). I looked at the log, which just gave me an "Internal Error #4238" message just before cancelling the transaction at the bottom of the log (not very useful)

So, I went to google to find out what the problem might be and how to work around it. Although much of what was out there was close to being right (there seems to be data in one of the calendars that is causing it to crash), much of the focus was on how to delete calendar items in outlook. Unfortunately, my issue happened to be with one of the calendar entries on my device (and not on my PC). I finally figured that out by trial and error (but I could have seen in the progress of the synch that the crash was occuring when reading the device calendar and not the outlook calendar).

So, I ended up deleting all of my future entries in outlook after printing them out to manually enter later (which didn't fix the issue and ended up adding a lot of work).

So, how did you fix it

Well, I ended up having to figure out how to delete everything from my device calendar (which is fine, because I can just re-synch it from outlook). To do this, you will need to go to Desktop Manger on your PC (yes, you have to use your PC to clear your device's calendar!). From there, you double click on Backup and Restore (yes, not where you would expect it to be). Click on the advanced button to see the list of databases on the device. Scroll down to Calenar (in the right hand list) and select it. The clear button will ungray and you can clear the database by clicking on that. You can then re-synch if the problem is the same as mine.

Arrgh

The folks at RIM could have saved me a lot of time by any of the following:

1. Putting more information in the log about what stage of the synch it was on (device), and even what calendar entry that was causing the error.
2. Providing an option to turn on detailed logging from desktop manager
3. Making it easier to clear the database on the device (such as providing the option inside the calendar)
4. Providing better information on the web (most of the links in posts related to my issue had been removed from the RIM support site

Things to watch out for with HP All-inOne printers

I lost half of the day today, dealing with my HP C6150 all-in-one printer. I purchased a computer running Vista (and this is yet another thing that worked great on XP, but doesn't work well on Vista).

Networked Printer Uninstalling itself on Vista

Every once in a while, the printer just disappeared on the machine. You can see this both by going to the HP Solutions Center software (where it throws a dialog saying "No HP devices detected" and closes), or by going to the list of printers in control panel, and finding it missing. I searched all over, not finding any information to help me on this, so I ended up giving up and contacting HP technical support. I literally described the problem as my having to re-install the printer periodically.

Before I describe the wild-goose chase I was sent down (which by following them, caused my scanner not to work), let me send you the link to the critical update that fixes it. If you're running the C6150 All-in-One and accessing it through the network from a vista machine, download and run the patch linked to this page.

Here is what I was told to do:

• Perform a level-3 uninstall (which didn't follow the standard windows uninstall from control panel)
• Re-install the HP Software, but connecting using the USB port
• Finally, connect to the network and add a device using their software to do the network configuration

This required a at least one re-boot at each step.

Although I was finally able to print, I couldn't scan from the device (and the HP Software said that there was no network printer).

Second Issue that prevented scanning

So, the step of instlling the printer first as USB and then as network was the root of my next set of issues. I'm not sure why they had me do it (must be some other bug). However, the fact that there was both a USB and an ethernet print connection for the same printer and that the first connection was USB was causing the scanning software to not even try using the ethernet one. After much wrangling, I ended up going to the printers in Control Panel. THere I discovered the two entries: "HP Photosmart 6100 series" and "HP Photosmart 6100 series (copy 1)". By deleting the "HP Photosmart 6100 series" printer, and renaming the "HP Photosmart series (copy 1)" to "HP Photosmart series", I was able to scan from my machine.

All I can say is I sincerely hope this posting helps somebody doing a google search on this issue.