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Recovering lost Blue Tooth / Palm synching System
I've been syncing my Palm Tungsten and phone via Blue Tooth (BT) for months with never a hitch until this morning. I kept getting an error from my Palm that the port was in use by another application. That happens sometimes and I've found that one of three things will fix it. First, turn off syncing (in the HotSync application) and turn it back on. Second, unplug and replug the BT dongle. Third, do a soft reset of the Palm.

None of that worked this morning. I verified that the Palm and BT dongle worked by moving to another computer. I tried configuring BT using another account on my iBook. I tried throwing away the BT prefs. I ever restarted the iBook. Then, and only then, did I think to check out the BT menu widget. It thought there was no BT connected.

On a couple of ocassions I've run into problems that were solved by turning the computer off all together. That's what I did - and BT once again worked. I guess this isn't so much as OS X tip as it is a cautionary tail. When all else fails turn off the machine. A restart isn't a cold start.
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Recovering lost Blue Tooth / Palm synching
Authored by: roxeteer on Jun 02, '03 01:06:31PM

Not that it would really matter, but it's "Bluetooth", not "Blue Tooth".



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Recovering lost Blue Tooth / Palm synching
Authored by: emdub on Jun 02, '03 03:41:41PM

killing the blued process works for me whenever I have BT problems. It starts up right after you kill it and it seems to start off "fresh".

You have to kill it as su though...



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Recovering lost Blue Tooth / Palm synching
Authored by: emarmite on Jun 02, '03 08:08:04PM
I have had similar problems communicating with my P800 and Bluetooth for GPRS. I get a less informative error dialog titled 'BTFailTitle' with text of 'BTCheckSecurity'. I can't find anything meaningful about this on any newsgroups or web pages. Even posting on the Apple KB results in nothing.

I suspect the driver software for the D-LINK DWB-120M module. I've tried everything (including killing blued processes) but nothing works. Occasionally, deleting and renewing the association between the handset and the laptop works but mostly it means a reboot. I've experienced this with 10.2.3 thru' 10.2.6.

Would love to find a way to avoid all this hassle, it's all very Windozey.

M.

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Recovering lost Blue Tooth / Palm synching
Authored by: shotton on Jun 03, '03 06:32:25AM

The problem is that many USB->serial adapters have drivers that map the physical device to a device file in /dev whose name changes upon a reboot. That is, the device name is generated on the fly and can be different from boot to boot, depending on the order that the OS hears from USB devices on the various busses as they are initialized.

I don't know if there is a way to write device drivers under Mac OS X that map to fixed /dev files, but since every USB->serial device (e.g., Keyspan PDA adapters, etc.) I have gets remapped to different name on reboot, I'm guessing it's not easy. But if it is possible, these vendors should be encouraged to do it because their current behavior is user-unfriendly to say the least.

Your problem happens because the device name changes and is apparently being hard-wired into a preferences file for your software. You may be able to avoid the problem by plugging the USB device directly into one of the Mac's USB ports (not the keyboard or any other hub). The problem seems to be greatly aggravated by intervening USB hubs.

Alternately, trashing the prefs and restarting should get the proper device name saved again (until the next time Mac OS X decides to rename the devices on you).



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Recovering lost Blue Tooth / Palm synching
Authored by: emarmite on Jun 03, '03 07:38:44AM
I don't think this is the cause of my particular problem, although it could explain the original posting's root cause. I'm not rebooting when this happens. In fact, sometimes I can lose a connection and then attempt to reconnect and, pow, it happens.

Cheers

M.

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Recovering lost Blue Tooth / Palm synching
Authored by: emarmite on Jun 03, '03 11:05:45AM

Bluetooth 1.2.1 update available today (3 June) via Software Update may (hopefully) sort this problem out.

Good luck!



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