Help! ActiveSync "Attention required" when not admin

Hi,

I have recently taken my account out of the administrators group (now a
requirement from my employer). ActiveSync no longer resolves anything and
shows"Attention required" on categories.

If I am administrator, it works fine. Otherwise it doesn't doesn't sync
anything, and there is no indication of what is the problem..

This PPC has Pocket PC 2003 and the computer has Office 2003.

I have tried:

Reboot PC and PPC.
Restore partnership.
Reinstall ActiveSync.
Reinstall Office.
Checked for "no access" messages with Sysinternals Process Monitor. (There
are none)
And quite a few other folklore recipies from the Internet.

Is there any way to find out exactly what is causing this message and
failure to sync?

I am stuck. Thanks for any help.

-Ken

Steph
Fri May 02 15:00:35 PDT 2008

"Kenneth Evans" <someone@microsoft.com> of wrote:
>I have recently taken my account out of the administrators group (now a
>requirement from my employer). ActiveSync no longer resolves anything and
>shows"Attention required" on categories.
>
>If I am administrator, it works fine. Otherwise it doesn't doesn't sync
>anything, and there is no indication of what is the problem..
>
>This PPC has Pocket PC 2003 and the computer has Office 2003.
>
>I have tried:
>
>Reboot PC and PPC.
>Restore partnership.
>Reinstall ActiveSync.
>Reinstall Office.
>Checked for "no access" messages with Sysinternals Process Monitor. (There
>are none)
>And quite a few other folklore recipies from the Internet.
>
>Is there any way to find out exactly what is causing this message and
>failure to sync?
>
>I am stuck. Thanks for any help.

You are totally stuck, because Active Sync will ONLY sync when run by an
administrator account. It just will not work properly without. This
behaviour has been known for a long time, and Microsoft have been asked to
change it, but they never did. And now that ActiveSync has been superseded
by Windows Mobile Device Centre in Vista, they definitely aren't going to.

--
Those who are mentally and emotionally healthy are those who have learned
when to say yes, when to say no and when to say whoopee. W.S. Krabill
Steph Peters delete invalid from incm@sandbenders.demon.co.uk.invalid
Tatting, lace & stitching page <http://www.sandbenders.demon.co.uk/index.htm>

Kenneth
Sat May 10 21:29:15 PDT 2008


"Steph Peters" <xda@sandbenders.demon.co.uk.delete.invalid> wrote in message
news:ni3n14lt6etc2bkptko5n6d4fho9tk5gbt@4ax.com...
> You are totally stuck, because Active Sync will ONLY sync when run by an
> administrator account. It just will not work properly without. This
> behaviour has been known for a long time, and Microsoft have been asked to
> change it, but they never did. And now that ActiveSync has been
> superseded
> by Windows Mobile Device Centre in Vista, they definitely aren't going to.

Steph,

Thanks for the information. I wasn't able to find it Googling.

I did know that embeddedVisualStudio had to be run as Administrator. This
was because they saved the state in HKLM instead of HKCU. This was an
error, of course, but they wouldn't fix it then. It's probably the same
folks.

Given that that running as Administrator is a security problem, you would
think Microsoft would be more concerned. My employer recently had a severe
incident that shut down the computers for a whole division. A major cause
for the severity of the problem was that most of the uses in that division
were running as administrator all the time (as I do). They are now planning
to not let anyone run as administrator. When I tried that, I had more
problems than this one.

I use Vista and Windows Mobile Device Center at home. It works with my PPC
2003 device (which is still working just fine). It actually works better
than ActiveSync. The employer is not planning to switch to Vista any time
soon, however, so I have a problem. The main reason for using the PPC is to
keep the two desktops synced.

I suppose Microsoft won't be making Windows Mobile Device Center work on XP
either.

Thanks, and sorry for the delayed response,

-Ken

r_z_aret
Mon May 12 12:52:00 PDT 2008

On Sat, 10 May 2008 23:29:15 -0500, "Kenneth Evans"
<someone@microsoft.com> wrote:

>
>"Steph Peters" <xda@sandbenders.demon.co.uk.delete.invalid> wrote in message
>news:ni3n14lt6etc2bkptko5n6d4fho9tk5gbt@4ax.com...
>> You are totally stuck, because Active Sync will ONLY sync when run by an
>> administrator account. It just will not work properly without. This
>> behaviour has been known for a long time, and Microsoft have been asked to
>> change it, but they never did. And now that ActiveSync has been
>> superseded
>> by Windows Mobile Device Centre in Vista, they definitely aren't going to.
>
>Steph,
>
>Thanks for the information. I wasn't able to find it Googling.
>
>I did know that embeddedVisualStudio had to be run as Administrator. This
>was because they saved the state in HKLM instead of HKCU. This was an
>error, of course, but they wouldn't fix it then. It's probably the same
>folks.

Definitely not the same folks. And they are probably not communicating
with each other much (Microsoft is a large collection of largely
separate groups). But probably the same mindset about administrator.


>
>Given that that running as Administrator is a security problem, you would
>think Microsoft would be more concerned.

I'm pretty sure one design point for Vista was that folks would
_finally_ be able to do real work without being an Administrator. At
least one high-ranking Microsoft executive sure said as much, rather
strongly. I haven't paid close enough attention to say whether that
stayed a priority. I've heard mixed results about whether they
succeeded.


-----------------------------------------
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Robert E. Zaret, eMVP
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Boston, MA 02116
www.penfact.com

William
Mon May 12 18:26:27 PDT 2008

On 30 Apr, 15:10, "Kenneth Evans" <some...@microsoft.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have recently taken my account out of the administrators group (now a
> requirement from my employer). =A0ActiveSync no longer resolves anything a=
nd
> shows"Attention required" on categories.
>
> If I am administrator, it works fine. =A0Otherwise it doesn't doesn't sync=

> anything, and there is no indication of what is the problem..
>
> This PPC has Pocket PC 2003 and the computer has Office 2003.
>
> I have tried:
>
> Reboot PC and PPC.
> Restore partnership.
> Reinstall ActiveSync.
> Reinstall Office.
> Checked for "no access" messages with Sysinternals Process Monitor. (There=

> are none)
> And quite a few other folklore recipies from the Internet.
>
> Is there any way to find out exactly what is causing this message and
> failure to sync?
>
> I am stuck. =A0Thanks for any help.

One possibility (if you have all the bits in place), would be to
synchronise via Exchange Active Sync, rather than Desktop Activesync.
This will only do Contacts, Calendar, Email, and (perhaps) Tasks; but
that's better than nothing.

--
WH