6600 and iSync NSSyncConduitException errors

I've had intermittent problems with my Nokia 6600 and iSync's calendar/todo synchronization, but having found a workaround... I'm happy to share rather than complain further... Further, a recent discussion with Ted Leung reminded me that writing this up would be a GoodThing...

Back in January I bleeding edged myself and picked up a Nokia 6600 (bleeding edge in a US sense, that is - the phone had been out for the rest of the world for some time...) from a local vendor. I wanted to take advantage of the increased storage and improved PDA functions, as well as do some GPRS tethering in a pinch. More on those experiences in a future post.

Exercising the storage would be my ongoing address book, pulled from the Newton through various PalmOS devices, Outlook revisions and others to the present day. At that time, configuring the phone to use iSync involved grabbing Emory's pulled together conduit elements and hoping for the best. And for the most part, the beast worked for me - some occasional flakiness, but nothing untoward.

Then a month or so later, Apple released their updated iSync which included a proper conduit for the more recent Symbian phones, including the 6600. I grabbed it and installed and had few problems. I would make updates on one of my devices, they'd get copied hither and thither, and all was well in my digital yet wireless lifestyle.

Until one day it wouldn't sync the calendar. In the iSync log was the error

#timestamp# Error Conduit #devicename# generated exception NSSyncConduitException: An exception has occured. Please try to sync again..

which is useful in telling you something is broken, but not that useful for figuring out what IS broken. Especially since trying again just repeats the error, over and over. Various people have logged items comparable to this in the discussion forums at Apple, but none of the workarounds seemed all that palatable.

In my experience, other devices would sync properly, and other attributes involving the 6600 were fine (I could transfer files via bluetooth, and changes were appropriately propagated in the Address Book/Contacts as well).

I played around with a number of solutions, thinking I must have had some corrupt data. I deleted recent entries, I added them in different places, all to no avail.

Desperate, I started removing filesystem items on the phone, starting with deletion of the iSync.ini item. This didn't help, so my desperation increased.

Ultimately I came upon the solution (or at least a workaround more acceptable than resetting all my devices and hoping for the best). I decided to get rid of the calendar in total. Using the FExplorer utility, I found the Calendar data (which also includes todos) on the Nokia at C:\system\Data\Calendar and deleted it.

Having done so, the error went away - but no data was put onto the phone, even as changed. iSync apparently still felt it knew the proper state for the phone. To get beyond this, I turned off the various calendars in iSync (Work, Personal, etc) to be synchronized with the phone, and then turned them back on, forcing iSync to delete and remove them from its view of the phone's contents.

One by one as I did so, the calendars were recreated on the phone, and all was right with the world again.

I've actually had to do this twice. My current theory is that something in the creation of a repeating scheduled item on the phone (or modifying a repeating item via the phone) is the sneaky culprit, but this is purely anecdotal.

Posted by esinclai at May 16, 2004 01:06 PM |