BS - Only trouble...

If BirdieSync 2.x constantly replaces your girlfriend's photo with your mother's one, this forum is for you...
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dbl
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 9:21 pm

BS - Only trouble...

Post by dbl »

Hello,

I looked for a solution to sync my new Samsung Omnia II with Thunderbird (v3.0.1) / Lightning (1.0b1) and found Birdie Sync. So I downloaded WMDC and BS 2.0.0.0 and installed it on my notebook with Vista.

But until now I have nothing but trouble. For security reasons I'm working with a non-administrator user account. But this mode isn't working with BS. There are many problems when doing this:
  • - During the installation no information from the mobile phone is returned. You have to enter the OS, processor information etc. manually
  • - No TB profile can be selected
  • - The TB executable is not found
  • - Clicking on "This Thunderbird" when selecting the TB directory uses slashes ("/") instead of backslashes ("\") for the path (I'm not sure if this would have any effects?)
Because of this problems I uninstalled it and installed it again within an administrator account. But after that TB in my normal user account did no longer start at all. CPU load was 100% but even after waiting for 15 minutes nothing happened anymore. So I had to kill the process. Following your FAQ entry and deleting the extension cache didn't help either. Even uninstalling BS under the admin account didn't revive my normal TB profile. I had to create a new one and copy all mails from the dead profile.

For test reasons I gave my user admin rights and installed the brand new BS 2.0.0.1 which I'd downloaded today. This time the installation went fine. But then other odd things happened.
  • - Synced events from my mobile showed up in Lightning but after changing to the mail view or restarting TB all events were gone as if they had never been synced... :(
  • - I synced contacts from my mobile into a newly created address book in TB. This worked and so I wanted to change some entries because I prefer the format "John Doe" instead of "Doe, John". In Samsungs "New PC Studio" I could use the field "Last Name" for this and so entered "John Doe" in it. But after syncing the entry it showed up as "John Doe," in the mobile's address book. So I had to enter "John Doe" in the field "First Name" and delete the field "Last Name". This worked.
Right now BS is unfortunately pretty useless for me. Maybe my depictions will help you to fix this problems so I could give it a new try. Until then I will uninstall it.

Regards,

Dirk

RobertRe
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Jan 12, 2010 5:37 pm

Re: BS - Only trouble...

Post by RobertRe »

dbl wrote: I synced contacts from my mobile into a newly created address book in TB. This worked and so I wanted to change some entries because I prefer the format "John Doe" instead of "Doe, John". In Samsungs "New PC Studio" I could use the field "Last Name" for this and so entered "John Doe" in it. But after syncing the entry it showed up as "John Doe," in the mobile's address book. So I had to enter "John Doe" in the field "First Name" and delete the field "Last Name". This worked.
This one is easy to fix. On Thunderbird/Tools/Birdsync menu, choose Contacts and then the Miscelaneous tab. What you are looking for is the Display Name. Uncheck the "Fill Pocket Outlook ...".

Birdy
Site Admin
Posts: 3118
Joined: Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:43 am
Contact:

Re: BS - Only trouble...

Post by Birdy »

Hello Dirk,

I'm sorry you had all these problems. Presently there are some restrictions when installing BirdieSync on a "standard user" windows account, without administration rights. It will be necessary to improve BirdieSync installer to manage "standard user" windows accounts. But it requires important modifications. I'll see it if it's possible to get an enhanced version soon.

By now the recommendation is to restart BirdieSync at the end of the installation, and do the same for Thunderbird if it was started by BirdieSync during the installation. Also in case of a reinstallation, it could be helpful to clean the extension manager cache as described in the FAQ.
- During the installation no information from the mobile phone is returned. You have to enter the OS, processor information etc. manually
I didn't reproduce the problem but I may have seen this behavior before with a "standard user" account
- No TB profile can be selected
- The TB executable is not found
This is weird, I couldn't reproduce this problem. I would have needed the logs to analyze it.
- Clicking on "This Thunderbird" when selecting the TB directory uses slashes ("/") instead of backslashes ("\") for the path (I'm not sure if this would have any effects?)
This is not a problem. Windows API handles quite well paths with a slash "/" (as mentioned in this page)
- Synced events from my mobile showed up in Lightning but after changing to the mail view or restarting TB all events were gone as if they had never been synced... :(
I would have needed to investigate on the problem. If no deletions are mentioned in BirdieSync history, that may be a temporary problem with Lightning. Were you synchronizing with a local or a remote calendar (which type) ?
CPU load was 100%
Could it be related to the previous problem ? If BirdieSync was uninstalled and you still have the problem, it's difficult to understand the origin of the problem. Maybe it could have helped to rename the current event and task database to force Lightning to create a new one.
- I synced contacts from my mobile into a newly created address book in TB. This worked and so I wanted to change some entries because I prefer the format "John Doe" instead of "Doe, John". In Samsungs "New PC Studio" I could use the field "Last Name" for this and so entered "John Doe" in it. But after syncing the entry it showed up as "John Doe," in the mobile's address book. So I had to enter "John Doe" in the field "First Name" and delete the field "Last Name". This worked.
Thanks Robert, you gave you the correct explanation. Unticking the option as you described it should fix the problem.
Birdy

dbl
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 9:21 pm

Re: BS - Only trouble...

Post by dbl »

Hello,

thank you for this hint! Now the name is displayed as I would expect it. Make it one less on my list... :)

TNX,

Dirk

dbl
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 9:21 pm

Re: BS - Only trouble...

Post by dbl »

Hello,
Hello Dirk,

I'm sorry you had all these problems. Presently there are some restrictions when installing BirdieSync on a "standard user" windows account, without administration rights. It will be necessary to improve BirdieSync installer to manage "standard user" windows accounts. But it requires important modifications. I'll see it if it's possible to get an enhanced version soon.
this would be great! I think there is a great need for security today. And with Vista and 7 it is much easier to work with a "standard user" account than with XP.
- During the installation no information from the mobile phone is returned. You have to enter the OS, processor information etc. manually
I didn't reproduce the problem but I may have seen this behavior before with a "standard user" account
Yes, this should be the reason. Because the information was displayed as I reinstalled BS with admin rights.
- No TB profile can be selected
- The TB executable is not found
This is weird, I couldn't reproduce this problem. I would have needed the logs to analyze it.
I think this problems are also related to (missing) user rights. I didn't have this problems either with admin rights.
- Synced events from my mobile showed up in Lightning but after changing to the mail view or restarting TB all events were gone as if they had never been synced... :(
I would have needed to investigate on the problem. If no deletions are mentioned in BirdieSync history, that may be a temporary problem with Lightning. Were you synchronizing with a local or a remote calendar (which type) ?
I am synchronizing with a local calender (standard TB/Lightning installation). But the problem is wierd and seems to be a little bit different from what I thought first: After restarting TB the events are displayed in the section "Events in... " but not in the calendar view below that section!? I didn't found any Lightning option that could have caused this behavior.
CPU load was 100%
Could it be related to the previous problem ? If BirdieSync was uninstalled and you still have the problem, it's difficult to understand the origin of the problem. Maybe it could have helped to rename the current event and task database to force Lightning to create a new one.
Hmm, I think the problem is that the BirdieSync uninstallation from TB didn't complete. Because after uninstalling BirdieSync from the OS I could not start TB to remove BS from it. There were still some entries in different TB config files. I thought about editing them manually but did back off from that step and decided to create a new profile.

Are there any log files that I could post to help you?

Dirk

Birdy
Site Admin
Posts: 3118
Joined: Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:43 am
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Re: BS - Only trouble...

Post by Birdy »

I sent you a new test version by email that should better handle installation on a Windows standard user account. In case of problems, please send your logs to support(at)birdiesync.com.
Thanks.
Birdy

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