Link Pick: Microsoft Activesync Troubleshooting guide

How many aggravating hours have you taken to get your Windows Mobile device synced up to your PC and watched and listened to the connection wizard go boop, boop, boop, and never connect? What is going on here?

Well I'll tell you. ActiveSync uses TCP/IP ports for connection. And most new Antivirus products are coming with a built in firewall, not to mention the good old Windows XP Firewall (which already knows about these ports, yay).
Turns out that the ActiveSync processes use the following ports which need to be open in your firewall application:

Inbound
990
999
5678
5721
26675

Outbound
5679

If these ports are not open.. No tickie, no workie, no sync.

Here is a link from Microsoft page on troubleshooting your ActiveSync 4.x connectivity and my pick for the week:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/help/activesync/default.mspx

I found this out when we upgraded our network to the new version of Trend Officescan which snuck in it's own firewall service and our directors telephone all of sudden stopped syncing. After several maddening hours of reinstalling activesync, getting a new phone and cradle and still not working, I had to count back the hours and figure out exactly what changed. Didn't figure for trend to throw that curve at us but you live, you learn.

Oh and here is another gotcha... if you unplug your cradle with a Smartphone be sure and plug it back into the SAME USB PORT that you unplugged it from or you'll end up going through the whole device recognition, syncing wizard again.