Here’s another one of those public service announcements for a very specific problem. Skip it if you haven’t had problems not being able to synchronize your Treo with a PC. In some cases an error message will appear “USB device not recognized” or somesuch. Here’s what worked for my Treo 650, after lots of messing about with more complicated solutions that didn’t (thanks to Palm for some of these, as well as some forums here and here):
- First off, try removing the USB cable and sticking it back in again.
- Try sticking the cable in a different port.
- Try a different cable. The cable that comes with the Treo is notoriously unreliable.
- Soft reset the Treo and try again. (Worked for me.)
- Take battery out of Treo and leave for a few minutes.
- Try synchronizing via Infrared. If this works, at least you’ve got a backup and you know the problem is not terminal.
- Reboot your PC and try again.
- Try cleaning the connector on your Treo. This can get dirty. Be careful. Use an eraser or a soft cloth. Or lick it.
- Reinstall your Palm Deskop (rebooting after uninstalling before reinstalling.)
- Hard reset the Treo.
My rule of thumb with fixing things like this. Try the simplest first. Don’t follow radical advice of people on forums (reinstalling Windows XP, drivers for your motherboard, replacing parents) unless you’ve tried every possible simpler solution first. Remember the simplest answer is probably the right one.
I always find that it’s the pins on the sides of the power plug stub on the connector to the Treo. I’ve had two Seidio cradles and two cables go out. Buy a new cable and no more pesky “USB port not recognized.”
Cleaning helps, too — but it’s generally a hardware thing.