In this month's edition, two of our editors come to the rescue for some troubled readers. Claire Pieterek offers some tips when an inability to HotSync leaves one user cold, and Jason Perlow writes a prescription for a fellow with a bad case of Palm envy.

However, it never connects to the handheld. Ultimately, the Palm device gives me the "connection could not be established" message. I have checked my serial port (even reinstalled it), and Windows says it's working properly. I don't have another serial device to plug in and test. I have a second cradle at work and that synchronizes fine with HotSync 3.0.4. In fact, I was very pleased with the speed, so it's not the unit.

It might be the cradle, it might be the PC, but since they both make gestures that they're trying to work together (like the HotSync beep and the HotSync window on the PC), I'm just as confused as before. Any clues on where or how to troubleshoot? Thanks.

Dan Amrich
San Mateo, CA

Senior technical editor Claire Pieterek responds
Well, Dan, HotSync problems can be tough to diagnose and troubleshoot, but here goes:

First off, let's check something that's easily overlooked. Is "Local" checked in HotSync Manager? If Local isn't checked, and if there are no check marks next to Modem or Network, you will get the Time-out error. I found this out after installing a lot of new hardware into a PC. Of course, I thought it was the hardware. Boy, did I feel stupid when it was something as simple as this!

The next thing to try is backing the speed down in HotSync Manager. Right click on the HotSync Manager icon in the system tray and then select Setup. Click on the Local tab and then pull down the Speed menu. Choose something pretty slow, like 19200 or 9600 baud. It's a drag, but a slow synchronization is usually better than none at all.

Make sure you have the right port number. You've probably got USB, an internal modem, and maybe even an IR port in that new PC. You might have to make sure that HotSync Manager is pointing to the correct port, since HotSync Manager 3.0.4 officially provides support for USB and IR synchronizations.

You might also want to check on the brand of motherboard used in your new PC. I corresponded at length with a fellow Palm device user last year who'd gotten a new PC and could not perform a HotSync. It turns out he had a Tyan motherboard. If I remember correctly, he ended up swapping motherboards before he could synchronize. As long as we're talking about odd hardware problems, Palm, Inc.'s Web site mentions an issue with inability to synchronize on COM4 if the PC has an S3-based video card. See http://www.palm.com/support/helpnotes/desktop/com4s3.html for details.