My trusty old Thinkpad X41 has been replaced by a Sony VAIO SZ58GN as my company has migrated all users from XP Pro and Office 2003 to Vista Business and Office 2007 over the last 10 days.
The transition has been pretty seamless so far, and the only difficulty I am facing is with Nokia's PC Suite for my E61. The VAIO has the pre-installed Toshiba BT Stack 5.10.10 (SO).
I downloaded the latest version of PC Suite (6.85.14.1) and installed it. No problem. After running the connection wizard and pairing the phone (and clicking PERMIT several times in Windows Defender), everything was fine, I had the normal 2 icons in the System Tray, and the sync proceeded perfectly, in the normal way. Upto this point, everything was perfect.
BUT - after every restart, I have ONLY the grayed-out Sync icon in the tray, and no Phone icon. Right-clicking the Sync icon and choosing Phone Selector, cannot see the phone. Starting PC Suite from the Start Menu gives the PC Suite Home Screen, but still cannot see the phone, even after repeated Refresh clicks in the Phone Selector Connect screen.
If I unpair the phone, re-pair again from the Connection Wizard, it works again. Till shutdown, when the whole cycle repeats.
If I uncheck the Enable On Startup option in the Sync icon's right-click menu, and reboot, and then, after the machine has completed loading,
open PC Suite from the Start Menu, and then click the Sync option EVEN THOUGH THE HOME SCREEN SHOWS CLICK HERE TO CONNECT TO A PHONE, then the Sync window opens and shows Connected to my E61 even while the PC SUITE Home Screen shows no phone connected, and sync happens perfectly. The Sync icon remains colored in my tray even after exit till shutdown, but still no Phone icon in the tray.
Nokia says that they only support Toshiba's Bluetooth Stack version 5.10.12 or higher. Sony insists that 5.10.10 is the latest. I have not installed the downloaded Toshiba BT Stack 5.10.12 version as I believe that is only a trial version that expires after 30 days, and Toshiba does not offer licensing options to individual users. Sony's past record of updating drivers is reported as being poor in most forums (I wouldn't know - our company had always used Thinkpads earlier, this is our first batch of machines from Sony).
While my kludge method of syncing does work, it is irritating - does anyone here have any idea WHY the Phone icon in the tray shows up and works on the first load after installing PC Suite and pairing, but never thereafter? And why the Sync icon works and connects to the phone automatically if loaded AFTER startup from PC Suite's Home Screen, but never if it loads as a part of startup?
I have not yet tried to install applications, or backup, or to use as a bluetooth modem, so I don't know if these will work when the Home Screen shows no phone connected (after all, Sync works, so these also may, but at this time these are untested) as none of these functions are critical right now for me. Ditto for firmware update.
Is this a known problem? Google doesn't produce much to refer to. Is Nokia working on a fix? Any suggestions that I could try to fix this? I do not want to uninstall the Toshiba BT stack as it is working perfectly with all my other Bluetooth devices. Is there any way to use the downloaded Toshiba 5.10.12 installer to modify the pre-loaded Sony install of 5.10.10 to 5.10.12 without making it a 30-day trial or needing a new licence?
Thanks in advance for all suggestions,
BillyB