Windows Mobile 5 Sync & The Missing Synch

This may be of interest to owners of Windows Mobile 5 PDAs who are hoping to sync with Windows running on Parallels Desktop. I discovered that every time I connect my handheld the USB connection is grabbed in the Mac OS by The Missing Sync. This is despite my blocking USB connections in the Missing Synch control panel. I took this up with the (always very helpful) guys at Mark/Space and this is their response:

<<This is something we are hoping to fix in a future release however I'm not sure when that will be. One of our developers posted the following in response to this issue on our mailing list:

We have a kernel extension in System/Library/Extensions/
MissingSyncWM.kext that handles WM5 device connections.

You can issue the kextunload and kextload commands from Terminal (see
man kextunload / man kextload). We're looking at having our
preference work a little bit better with USB connections, but don't
have anything right now.>>​

So unless anyone on this forum (or at Parallels) has a solution, it looks as though there is no way to connect a Windows Mobile 5 to Active Sync in Windows XP. I would be interested to know if other users have had similar problems.

 

It looks like the person from Mark/Space gave you a solution.

You have to open a shell and type
sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingStncWM.kext
before you want to sync to Windows. Then
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingStncWM.kext
when you finish so you can use Missing Sync.

 

Thanks for this. Since I've never used Terminal I was a bit reluctant to try it. However, armed with your helpful comments I decided to give it a go. However, after issuing the command (as above) am prompted for password. This doesn't appear to be the password I use for the Mac. Anyway, the command fails every time. Forgive my ignorance on this, but it is new territory for me.

 

The password for the 'sudo' command is admin password, so if you are a user of the Macintosh with administrative priveleges, then your user account password will work.

If you are the ONLY user of the Macintosh, then you should definitely have administrative priveleges. This is the case on my machine; I am the only user and my user account password is the same as the sudo password.

If you have a non-admin account on a multi-user Mac, then unfortunately I don't think you can load and unload kernel extensions (ask the machine's owner to give your user account admin priveleges).

I hope this helps, let us know if you have any more questions!

Also, once you get more comfortable doing this, and you verify that it works, you can probably set up some Automator actions or maybe an AppleScript that can automate the kernel extension loading/unloading when you want to sync with Windows.

 

Hello,

Thank you but this process doesn't want to work on my mac :

mac-caryl:~ Caryl$ sudo kextunload System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext
Password:
kextunload: /Users/Caryl/System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext: no such bundle file exists
can't add kext (file access/permissions).
mac-caryl:~ Caryl$

I don't understand, my password is good and the command seems to be good too....
Could you help me ?

Thanks in advance

 

You forgot the slash before System. It should be:

• sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext

 

Thank you very much....I'm sorry because that was very simple....

It works fine now. The mac find the bundle.....

You're the best !!

 

It is always the simplest things that become the most frustrating.

I am glad your problem is solved!!

 

I can't get the terminal command to work

I have a macbook, with Parallels 1884, running Windows XP home, with a cingular (HTC) 2125. Missingsync for windows mobile 5 is running, and works well for syncing my mac based Entourage to the phone, but I can't see the 2125 in Windows. I tried the directions on this thread, and initially it worked, at least enough to erase my phone, then it told me that the usb connection was not working. Following is the Terminal screen shot I get:

Last login: Sat Sep 9 21:23:43 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
Peppers-MacBook:~ danielpepper$ sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext
kextunload: unload kext /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext failed
Peppers-MacBook:~ danielpepper$
Peppers-MacBook:~ danielpepper$ sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext
kextunload: unload kext /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext failed
Peppers-MacBook:~ danielpepper$
Peppers-MacBook:~ danielpepper$ sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingStncWM.kext
kextunload: /System/Library/Extensions/MissingStncWM.kext: no such bundle file exists
can't add kext (file access/permissions).
Peppers-MacBook:~ danielpepper$


I keep using the password that I first opened the mac book with, and which works for all of my admin.

What next?

Thanks

Pepper


I have been trying to upgrade the firmware, but kept getting the message

 

I know the missing sync kernel extension is unloaded fine for me, but something else is still tying up the USB port, stopping parallels grabbing it.

Any idea how to tell what else is using a usb port (running 10.4.7 on a MacBook Pro)

thanks
charles

 

You have a typo here (MissingStncWM instead of MissingSyncWM). And if it fails, it could just mean it's already unloaded. You can cut and paste the commands below.

duo:~ cgalpin$ sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext
kextunload: unload kext /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext failed
duo:~ cgalpin$ sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext
kextload: /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext loaded successfully
duo:~ cgalpin$ sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext
kextunload: unload kext /System/Library/Extensions/MissingSyncWM.kext succeeded

hth
charles

 

Charles,
Thanks, but still no go. I had figured out the typo earlier, and my phone is recognized on the xp virtual machine enough to start the firmware process, but then after a message that the update program is verifying info from my phone, another box pops up telling me that the USB is being used for something else, and I should just wait a few secs. Heard that one before.

You sent me a list of unix commands. I don't know the unix shell at all, so wasn't sure if it was to be pasted as a paragraph, or simply one line at a time. I tried the whole thing, and just the first line, and get a message that 'command not found".

Should I just go find a friend with a pc to do my phone rom upgrade?

Thanks

Daniel Pepper

 

Hey Daniel,

The commands should be pasted one line at a time. Also, sorry if you already know this but you did mention you are new to the command line, but Charles included his shell prompt, as well as the standard output from the shell.

I will copy exactly what Charles wrote, but I will make bold the text that you are actually supposed to paste in to the shell (one line at a time), and put in italics the standard output (the feedback from the shell). The part that is not bold or italics is Charles's command prompt; yours will be something different.

Notice that the first command is the same as the third; Charles included the first one to show what happens when you try to unload a kernel extension that is not currently loaded (the shell reports that the command failed). Also, not included in Charles's quote, don't forget that the first time you invoke sudo you will be asked to enter your password.

I would highly recommend a beginning UNIX tutorial, nothing major, just something to get you comfortable poking around the command line. There are some written specifically for Mac OSX, but any old one will do because the basics that you will be starting with are pretty much the same across different versions of *nix. I don't feel the need to plug any specific companies at this point, but if you are hacing trouble finding such a book, let me know and I will recommend some specific titles.

Before Mac OSX came out, I thought UNIX were ancient greek castrati and GNU was a muppet-like newscaster
Now, I spend more time interacting with the command line than the aqua interface on my mac.