Windows Mobile Device Center Compatibility with Windows 10

No kidding!

The amazing thing is I CAN sync Outlook with my smart phone  (MICROSOFT Windows 10 to ANDROID) but I CANNOT sync my PDA (MICROSOFT Windows 10 to MICROSOFT CE).  Microsoft can talk to a third party but not to itself!

May explain why so may people still using WinXp like me on a second PC. Microsoft do not seem to bother much about legacy user base and backwards compatibility. You could create a WinXP virtual machine under Win10 if you have an XP CD and licence.

Ed

I think I may still have a valid XP CD but too much of a hassle to start creating a virtual machine for one application.  What I can't understand is that it worked fine under Windows 10 until updates were applied earlier this year.

We've recently encountered this same problem with Windows 10 workstations. Prior to upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, we had no problems with Windows mobile devices (running Windows Mobile 6.1, 6.5, and earlier versions of 5.x prior). These devices when connected to the workstation would be detected and the WMDC would activate. In the Windows XP days, this would work equally with the MS ActiveSync Mgr tool.

Now, with Windows 10, it works the first time, but after disconnecting the mobile (handheld) device, and subsequent reattachment of the mobile device would do nothing.

At first we thought that this may be a USB connection issue and/or USB driver, USB device, etc.

Then we compared a Windows 10 workstation side-by-side with a Windows 7 workstation similarly equipped and configured.

What we learned was that unlike Windows 7, the Windows 10 OS was crashing the WMDC tool. If we manually launched WMDC again on Windows 10, it would detect the mobile device connected via USB and activate accordingly. However 98% or the time after disconnecting the mobile device, WMDC would go away, but never come back (unless manually launched). In the case of Windows 7, the WMDC would also "appear to go away" when the mobile device was disconnected, but it would always come back up when the device was reattached.

So for now, until Microsoft applies a solution, we are having our users simply manually launch WMDC prior to (or after) connecting a mobile device. 

(Note: we did attempt to uninstall WMDC on the Windows 10 workstation and then re-install it, but we ran into WMDC install problems trying to negotiate the installed MS Office Outlook (64-bit). Other forums suggested WMDC install process needs to find Office 32-bit instead. This effort against MS Office install and WMDC install is proving to be problematic, and not worth the effort at this time. Opting on the manual launch of WMDC is working for now).