Recently, I have been searching for the right 3rd-party software to allow me quick access to closing all running programs. This is a problem curiously built in to the Windows Mobile 5 OS. Why would MS think that when you told your device to close a program that you really meant 'minimize' it instead? If they wanted to distinguish between the two actions, there should then be TWO icons in the upper right. A down-arrow for 'Minimize' (which is what you get from the X that is there now) and the current X for 'Close'. As in Stop. End. Shut it down.

But then, aren't 99% of the problems we all experience in Windows operating systems traceable back to some desk-jockey making an arbitrary decision rather than programming a way for the user to decide? It seems like they must have a room where that guy sits, and then another room where 10,000 tech support agents sit and figure out work-arounds for all the problems people call in with because of what that guy in the first room would not let them do for themselves.

I decided to try out Spb Pocket Plus. It has a function that actually CLOSES all running apps. And accessing it is as easy as adding an icon on the Pocket Plus Today Screen. Tap the icon, and any running application gets shut down. Using it after every program I run allows my Axim battery to last more than all day. Since I charge it every night, I never have to worry about the battery running low.

Making ActiveSync work with Outlook and a Windows Mobile 5 Dell Axim X51v:

These procedures were performed on a PC running Windows XP Home SP2, a Dell Axim X51v running Windows Mobile 5.0, Outlook 2002, from the Dell Setup CD, and ActiveSync
4.1, downloaded from Microsoft. If you have some different version, there might be different risks involved for you. ( I did get it working with ActiveSync 4.0, but I recommend 4.1)

I make no guarantee that, if you try this, you will succeed. I also will not be accountable for making your computer unusable.

Do this at your own risk.

(The following was assembled from entries in the log I keep for my PC, named A364).


During the hell that was making this thing work, I encountered a sync error known as the dreaded Support Code 85010014. Although I never found out exactly what the definition for this code is, I did find out that hundreds of people have dealt with it. My A364 PC log, over the past 3 days, describes the hell I went through eliminating the cause of it.

The cause is some elusive problem with Outlook. The Dell Axim X51v comes with a CD that contains installations for Outlook 2002, and ActiveSync 4.0. I later downloaded 4.1, as it is said to fix a lot of bugs in the 4.0 release.

The manifestation of this Support Code is that ActiveSync, when first set up, may appear to be syncing your handheld, but at the end of the process, when it should say “connected and synchronized’, it shows a URL-type blue link that says "status". When you click that, you see the error message.

The fix can be rather convoluted. After combing many links on the internet, Dell's own Support forum, and other forums, I read about people who found apparently different ways to fix the problem.

For me, installing Outlook 2002 on A364 meant “over top of Outlook 2000 (part of Office 2000) currently installed”. I actually got ActiveSync working twice. The first time was before A364 subsequently developed major instabilities, and ultimately made me do a fallback to a previous Drive Image, and rebuild A364 back to the same level of installed apps, but this time make it stable.

The first time, I told the Dell CD to install Outlook 2002 and it said it was going to remove Outlook 2000 first. That was probably the best choice, because I did not have all that much difficulty getting things working. The second time around, after the rebuild of A364, I decided to remove the currently installed Outlook 2000 by using the Office 2K setup and un-checking Outlook.

Outlook, and in fact Office and WinXP themselves, have the bad tendency to want to hang on to old data after something is removed. It seems that going this route must not have correctly eliminated the right files on Outlook. After doing that, I had the Dell CD install Outlook 2002 and ActiveSync. But I kept getting the Support Code error.

After a lot of research and trying several uninstall/reinstall episodes to no avail, I finally got it to work. This last time, I applied a sort of panacea of everything I had learned. I am not sure which of the included steps was actually the solution, but the result was positive.

Please read this entire procedure through before attempting it.

The underlying theme is that you may need to do any or all of the following:

-**COMPLETELY Uninstall and re-install Outlook and ActiveSync **


-Run the Install/Repair on your current Outlook installation – (does not work for some)

-Make sure you have Outlook completely set up and openly running on your PC the first time you ActiveSync the Axim.

-You can get it working with the ActiveSync 4.0 from the Dell CD, but I strongly recommend you update to 4.1 in the end, as it is supposed to fix “several bugs” in 4.0.

-Make certain to plug the cradle (or cable, if that is what you are using) directly into a USB port on the PC. Don’t use a hub! ActiveSync doesn’t connect well through a USB hub.

**The gory details of a “Complete” Outlook un-installation**:


As I mentioned above, Outlook, like most of Microsoft’s products, tries desperately (and usually succeeds, thus – the problem) to hang on to any and all settings from a previous installation. So if your current installation isn’t working…. neither would the new one, if you don’t do something about it.

The thing to do is to try to eliminate every possible source of re-integrating “old data and settings” into the new installation of Outlook. Here are the steps I took to that end.

Make sure you aren’t running any other programs.

First, a few more facts I uncovered along the way, so you know what your dealing with. Some more excerpts from notes I kept along the way:

“Upon each and every single installation of Outlook, 2 log files get created in C:\Documents and Settings\<(your PC login name)>\Local Settings\temp. They are named (for my installation) “Outlook 2002 Setup (000x).txt” where x is apparently the number of times you have installed Outlook 2002. One is typically 4KB. The second, using the same name, but adding in “Task (000x)” just ahead of the txt suffix, is an incredible 6MB+, and grows with each successive installation. If you open this txt file in notepad, and then select All and copy it to Word, using a standard Times New Roman 12 point font, it is (ready for this one?) 1,252 pages long!!!!!!!!!

I think I have just uncovered one of the major “data preservation” areas for Outlook!

If you have the stomach for reading this sort of thing, you will find all sorts of information regarding the options you turned on or off during setup, file path names, etc. I can’t imagine what they needed 1252 pages of log file for!? But I’ll bet eliminating these would be one way to prevent Outlook from expecting to find a PST file in a specific place, for example (causing your new installation to possibly import the wrong set of records) or hanging onto settings from a prior installation that went sour. I will archive them to a zip file far away from C: just to be sure.”

(It later turned out I never needed them. But saving them would be prudent in case you might need to undo this procedure.)

At this point, I did something I don’t think you need to repeat. I actually dug through the entire Registry file of my PC looking for “Outlook” and “pst” just to see what was stored there. I found a lot of entries for the two, but nothing that appeared to have any information pointing Outlook to a location to get a PST file, or hanging on to previous settings.

1- Archive your Outlook Personal Folders entire content to a PST file and save it somewhere safe.
2- Either copy the aforementioned Outlook Setup text files to a remote location, like a floppy disk, or hide them in a Zip file somewhere far away from where you run Outlook. The point is to make them inaccessible to the new installation. If you leave them in their natural state, Outlook will find them, no matter which hard drive you move them to.
3- Uninstall (from the Control Panel) Outlook and ActiveSync
4- Open Windows Explorer
5- In Tools/Folder Options/ View – Check the following (you may want to reverse these changes when you are finished)
a. Display the contents of Systems Folders
b. Show hidden files and folders
c. UNCHECK – Hide protected operating system files

6- Back in the main Windows Explorer view:
7- – Search your entire PC for “outlook”

This is the dangerous part. If you have Outlook installed as part of Office, for example, and you delete the wrong things, it could affect Office. You might have to reinstall Office. However, I did not have any problems after doing this.


8- If you used the zip file option, you will likely see the Outlook log files discussed above when you get to the “search” part. But they will now show as residing inside your zip file in the location you stored them to, if you saved them on your PC. They should not show up as being on C: as they did originally. You can leave them alone in their zip file.
9- Every other place that you find an Outlook folder – unless you see something inside it that looks like it is obviously needed by Office (if installed) – delete the Outlook folder.
10- Delete the folder from which your installation of ActiveSync was running, if it did not already disappear after the un-installation.
11- Hard Reset your Axim.
12- SHUT DOWN your PC - NOT RESTART – There really is a difference.
13- After at least 10 seconds of hard drive inactivity, Start your PC.
14- Install Outlook 2002
15- Install ActiveSync 4.1
16- Start Outlook 2002, and set up your email account. You do not have to import your archived PST folder yet, if you would rather wait until after you see if things are working.
17- With Outlook 2002 up and running:
18- Plug your Axim directly into a USB port on your PC.

I could NOT get this working by using my powered USB 2.0 Hub that handles my other peripherals. Once I started plugging my Axim cradle’s USB plug directly into the back of my PC, it worked just fine.

My setup was up and running at this point. I hope yours is too. If luck was with you and it is, you can now import the Outlook PST backup archive you made, and your email, Contacts, Calendar, etc, will be restored.
If you get ActiveSync working, but still get some kind of error, try un-checking all but 1 item in the ActiveSync Tools/Options/ Settings menu. If it syncs OK then, add them back in one by one until you find the item causing the problem. Then you know where to start for a solution

This site is dedicated to the Axim X51v experience, and what the folks in Redmond left out of Windows Mobile 5.

I am a new Axim X51v owner, and have spent the past 3 weeks working to customize my Axim to attain the same level of function I grew to take for granted owning 4 Palm OS PDAs. What I miss the most is a decent replacement for the plain vanilla calendar applications provided by both Palm an Microsoft. Having been a user of the DateBook line of Calendar (or Datebook, in Palm parlance) replacements, I came to appreciate the custom colors, icons, and alarm sounds, each assigned by category, that I was able to create and use.

I regained most of that for my new Axim by acquiring Pocket Informant ver. 4. But they left out the ability to assign alarm sounds by category. So my search continues.

I have been testing a possible contender, but it is still in BETA release for Mobile 5. 'alarmToday', a WM5 Today screen plug-in, was designed to give just that level of alarm customization, with other added benefits, like having your alarm volume override the main volume setting of the Axim.

But it has not yet proven itself reliable; at least not to me. So I am still vigilant for something that can fill the void.

I have also faced and defeated the evil that is Outlook and ActiveSync, and made them peacefully co-exist on my system. After a lot of browsing, and reading postings from a great many X51v newbies , as well as other PDA and SmartPhone owners, some of whom gave up in disgust, the common thread to any solution found was in Outlook. It seems to be most guilty in the issue.

For me, a complete and thorough rousting of all files, folders, and things related to both Outlook and ActiveSync, followed by a fresh re-installation of the two, brought them into harmony. I firmly believe that most of these folks had an Outlook installation that was somehow flawed, and that is why they failed. Outook is very persistent, and will hang on to every shred of information it can find. It will actively hunt this down when reinstalled. So if you leave behind traces of the prior installation when you are installing it anew, there is risk of "re-infestation" of the problem.

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Flight Mode

Shortly after I got the Axim, I was transferring some files over from my Palm OS PDA by Bluetooth. After that, I wanted to use the built-in Wi-Fi feature again, having already set up the wireless access to my LAN, but found that it had now been disabled. Not being able to get it to come back on, I chatted with an online Dell technician for about an hour, while trying his suggestions. Finally, he said I had to Hard Reset the device. I did that, and got my Wi-Fi back.

Later on, I turned on Bluetooth again to transfer more files. My Wi-Fi got disabled again. Looking for any possible way around another Hard Reset, I hit upon a discovery that immediately fixed the problem.

Being new to the Windows Mobile OS, the concept of tapping and holding an icon is something new to me. In the Palm OS 5 I had been accustomed to using, you generally tapped an icon and got a result or opened some file, and moved on. But in the WM5 OS, tapping and holding something can get you a dropdown menu, a text balloon popup, etc. So out of curiosity while exploring the new Axim, I had tapped and held on many icons and links just to see what lay underneath them. I remembered having done this on the little tower icon you see when you turn on the Wireless Power with the Axim’s side button. You get a text balloon when you tap and hold the tower icon, telling about Connectivity. In that text balloon is a blue underlined link labeled “Turn on flight mode?”.

As I searched the Axim for possible remedies for my lost Wi-Fi, I tapped and held the tower icon (now indicating disabled wireless) and the balloon’s link wording had changed to “Turn OFF flight mode?”

What? How did it get turned ON? What IS flight mode, anyway?

Figuring it had to be better than no Wi-Fi, I tapped the link, and my Wi-Fi immediately resumed!

Thirsting for more info on this, I poured over and searched through the following resources:

The printed Axim User Guide
The online PDF Axim User Guide
The Dell Support website
The Dell Forum
Microsoft’s Windows Mobile website
Microsoft’s Knowledge Base

(At that time, I didn’t know any of these Axim blog sites existed.)

Unbelievably, I found not a single reference to the words “flight mode”!

What was this “feature”, and why had Dell technicians known nothing about it? For that matter, why was it not described somewhere? I wonder how many unsuspecting Axim owners have wasted countless hours Hard Resetting and reinstalling all their files when all they really needed to do was click on a link?

When you do click the link that turns Wi-Fi back on, it also turns the Bluetooth feature on. The LED in the Axim’s upper right corner clues you in to this. It flashes blue for Bluetooth, green for Wi-Fi, and alternates blue and green if they are both on. I figure it would save a bit of battery life if you turned the Bluetooth feature off when not needed, so I tap the Bluetooth symbol in the lower right corner of the Today screen, and it opens the Bluetooth On/Off dialog.

Occasionally, I have a little trouble getting Wi-Fi turned on and Bluetooth turned off when returning from flight mode. Some times I have to tap on the “Turn on flight mode” link again, and then go back and tap “Turn off flight mode” a second time. But then it usually settles down and works OK.

I have to assume that flight mode has something to do with disabling radio transmitters on aircraft, probably in compliance with some regulation.

Since that time, I ran across a blog site describing someone’s intent to pioneer a requirement that new mobile devices include the ability to be forced into flight mode when you board an aircraft, by the device receiving a kind of radio signal from the aircraft. Interestingly, they go on to say that the device would also have to flash a green LED so airline personnel could tell that flight mode had been enabled, and any internal wireless transmitters were turned off. That would be a problem on the current Axim, which flashes a green light to indicate the wireless transmitter is ON.

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I welcome any comments or suggestions from fellow Axim-ites.