If you have a Dell notebook computer, or your computer has a 3Com EL90X driver, you may experience some serious problems with getting CE to synchronize. The problem may actually be a bug in the driver which is exposed by CE Services. The information below explains the problem and the solution.
Uffe K. Mortensen posted the following problem on microsoft.public.windowsce:
Our company's helpdesk just upgraded my office PC to a brand
new docked
Dell latitude cpi PC running Win95. Everything fine, until I put in the
MS Windows CE 2.0 Services CD rom to install ActiveSync for my HPC.
Disaster stroke then:
The device/interrupt settings became corrupted on the PC and the PC
could no longer run Windows - except in 'safe mode'! It seems the
setup.exe install ActiveSync, but also corrupts the device settings
(amongst others?) in windows.
For those who asked: The versions used are all 'out of the
box': w95
4.00.950B, BIOS level A02, PCI drivers MS 4.00.1117. After installing CE
services, device configurations becomes currupted (hard to analyse in
safe mode, but includes strange interrupt settings, modem devices (COM,
LPT) that makes no sense, etc). Windows stops brutally with 'Windows
protection violation error' written on a black screen. The system cannot
even re-boot with the usual ctrl-alt-del, and can only run in safe mode
after power reset.
Uffe finally got this fixed, here is the solution:
Problem solved!
Thanks to the good advice I received here the problem is finally cured!
For those that might run into the same problem, here is the solution:
The Dell computer has a problem with a driver 'EL90X' for 3COM devices.
Both Windows CE 2.0 and 2.2 are ok, but happens to trigger the bug in
the 3com driver and violently crash Windows 95 for good (device tables
becomes corrupted and cannot be recovered).
The fixed 3com driver can be found and downloaded at the Dell
site.