Laptop GPS World

I have installed Garmin Mobile PC on both my desktop and laptop.

Both have basically the same configuration of mobile PC and MS office.

The desktop install shows Contacts and all of the entries that are in
Outlook. The laptop install does not see Outlook or even have the Contacts
icon. I have tried the reinstall route with Garmin Mobile Pc but to no avail.

What have I missed here? What can I do to correct this?

Thanks

Do the laptop and desktop have the same version of Windows, including service packs? The same version of Office, including service packs?

...ken...

Yes.

Both the laptop and desktop have xp sp3. The laptop is a new clean install; the desktop is an old install but has been updated to sp3.

Office 2003 is updated to SP3 on both.

Thanks

Well I'm not sure why... but after doing an Outlook repair, Garmin saw the contacts.

Both Office and Garmin were installed in the last two days. Garmin was deleted and reinstalled more that once after the Office install.

I guess that there was some hook or something that wasn't quite right and it was caught with the Outlook repair from the Outlook "HELP" menu.

Thanks for the help, Ken. You got me to try something that I had not thought of.

I'm glad you got it working. Sometimes a well-timed "dumb" question can cause a slightly different look at things.

Seriously, with a problem like yours it's usually the result of some small difference between the installations.

How did the SP3 update for Office 2003 work out? I've chosen to stick with 2003 because it serves my needs perfectly and gives me no problems but I've held off on the SP3 update.

I've also been holding off the SP3 update for XP, simply because I've been too lazy ... not ready to do a proper full backup of the system and not prepared to do any tinkering that may be needed afterwards. If it ain't broke....

...ken...

I had never noticed the repair function in Outlook Help before, but after you asked about SP3, I started looking to see if I could see any differences in the installations. I didn't see any but did see the repair option and tried it. Obviously a hook or some other little thing that needed installation to make it work.

I have had no problems with SP3 in either Office or XP. On my desktop I just installed SP3. All went well and I have had no problems at all. After installation, I did go and recheck all of the recommendations on Black Viper's site for tweaks et al. Other than that I have not had to do any other tweaks. All programs still run well.

On the laptop it was a down grade from Vista with a clean slipstreamed install. So far so good. I haven't noticed any real speed difference, I just wanted to run one OS and not have to worry about learning and remembering two.

Did you create the XP slipstream on the laptop or the desktop? Did you use nLite or something else?

How did it go finding all the necessary XP drivers for the laptop? I've helped a couple of folks try to downgrade from Vista to XP on their laptops and it has always been a hassle trying to find the necessary XP drivers. In a couple of cases there simply weren't any. I have been very hesitant to consider downgrading my laptop to XP for that reason.

...ken...

On the laptop I did a slipstream install. I used nlite. It all worked well. On the desktop I just installed the update. It made a 300-400 meg uninstall folder that I deleted after I determined that everything was working OK.

As far as the laptop clean install, at notebookreview.com there was an excellent post on down grading from Vista to XP. I just bought a lenovo and the article deleneated exactly what to do and where to go to get the right drivers. I have also seen one about putting XP on a Toshiba. I would assume that there are other posts that talk of the same things but for other computer brands. The big concern that I did see was that some of the newer brand laptops that come with Vista don't have drivers that are compatible with XP. So you have to check it out beforehand.

Thanks for the info, gunnermac. I'm planning to create a slipstream of both XP SP2 and XP SP3 on my desktop before I upgrade my two desktops to SP3. I'm doing the SP2 slipstream to make it easy to revert if anything goes sour on SP3. The last time I tried to create a slipstream I used BartPC and it didn't work so well when I tested it on a spare system. I'm planning to use nLite this time so I'm glad to hear it worked so well.

I think I'll leave my laptop on Vista until/unless it should annoy me too much. I use my laptop so little for anything serious that I'm treating it as a Vista learning experience for now. Besides, it's golf season and golf season around here is short enough that I try not to mess my computers up too much in the summer. In winter my motto is, if it ain't broke it must be time to change something.

...ken...

From what I have read, the stuff modified or added in XP SP3 will have no effect whatsoever in the consumer market. I don't think I will bother with it. There is a note that some AMD powered computers can experience a problem with it due to an Intel dll on the computer maker's image. HP was mentioned specifically (Marvin!).

Terry

I've been always a bit hesitant to buy PCs with non-Intel CPUs

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

Me too, however this particular problem is due to the computer maker using the same image for both Intel and AMD products in their line up.

Terry

I have an opposite question - how could I disable this integration between garmin and outlook?

This feature is absolutely useless for me:

1. To get access to Outlook contacts Garmin loads Outlook as background process, waisting memory and slowing down system performance.

2. I'm not using Outlook contacts to keep information, I'm using Microsoft Business Contact Manager for Outlook, which keeps contacts in separate database. Since Garmin unlike other apps can't select optional contacts database, there's no sense to have such "integration".

If you feel brave, move or rename the Outlook dlls in the GarminMobilePC folder. I see 3 of them; QueOutlookAddin.dll, QueOutlookPC.dll and QueOutlookAddinShim.dll. If it causes other problems, put them back.

Terry

Attached Images

GMPC Outlook.jpg (52.7 KB, 4 views)

Another simpler approach is to start GMPC and get it running as you want. Then open Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL on XP), go to the Processes tab, highlight OUTLOOK.EXE and click the End Process button. Outlook won't restart unless you select the Contacts tab.

I see that Outlook can use quite a bit of memory but I can't see how it slows anything down. It doesn't show that it is using any CPU cycles.

Terry