Hey guys,
My dad his phone his screen was not responding anymore and he needed his contacts from the phone. (the device is an old htc touch). So after some research on the internet I have found a way to recover all the data (especially the contacts) from this windows mobile phone.
Why am I writing this ?
Well it seems that a lot of people have problems retrieving data from their pim.vol. Just like me I was searching for a solution and would like to share it.
What was the problem ?
Well first of all connecting to the phone was already a pain in the ass. Then recovering the data. And extracting the information out of the pim.vol.
What is the solution ?
First I tried on a windows xp and installed some drivers, but it was not working. Then I used my windows 7 and he downloaded the drivers for the phone + (and this is needed) windows device manager.
In windows device manager I syncronized the cellphone for retrieving all the data. I did not open anything because he was copying all the information into outlook. The contacts also syncronized.
After the syncronizing I opened outlook (2007) and there they were. All of the phone contacts were syncronized. Now I clicked file -> import/export.
Then I selected export to file and exported to comma seperated value (csv) (WINDOWS)
After this step I uploaded them into his gmail and they were syncronized and safe. Now if his phone crashes he always have a backup.
Related
I have a strange problem here, haven't seen it mentioned yet on the forums.
Calendar: creating and editing appointments gives "An unexpected error has occurred in this program".
Tasks: when I create a new task, it appears OK, but if I close and restart Tasks, the changes vanish! When I tick-off a task, I get the error "No program memory available".
Contacts: creating or editing contacts gives "No program memory available"
I am able to view entries without problems, but completely unable to create or edit...
There is plenty of memory available, 25MB storage + 50MB program. All other applications working ok, including Notes.
I have guessed that the problem might be in the Outlook databases.
I have tried:
1. Soft reset - no change
2. Restoring ROM backup - no change
3. Deleting the ActiveSync partnership and overwriting the device databases - no change
4. Hard reset - fixes the problem, But comes back as soon as I restore from ActiveSync backup. Sadly the only backups I kept were after the problem arose.
5. Deleting the Outlook databases using PHM PowerToys - but half of them I couldn't get rid of because "another application was using them", though apparently nothing else was running. Deleting the ones I could gave no change.
I DON'T want to do a hard reset and start again from scratch, because I lose a lot of data that will be hard to restore. E.g. a few very important progs that I haven't got the installers for, my SMS messages, the phone call history + timers, GPRS and network settings, and a huge number of program configurations, including photo contacts database, transcribe settings etc. (don't know of a way to back these things up).
I have an XDA2 (Himalaya/xscale/128MB) running PocketPC Windows Mobile 2003 Phone Edition. Please help! :x
Forgot to mention, I am able to create items on Desktop Outlook and sync them across. (I'm using ActiveSync 3.7.1)
I have also tried ScanPST.exe on Desktop Outlook, which finds no problems.
Not sure if it help, but I would recommend to export the files from Outlook on the PC, then delete Contact, Calendar and Tasks on the PC and synchronize - which should delete the data on the XDA as well. Then re-import the data on the PC from the exported files and sync again...
I was having trouble making outlook work. It just suddenly would not start up. All the typical advice, and a lot of nontypical advice, failed. Reinstalls failed. So, I have to move on and I proceed to sync up with a separate machine.. a laptop.
There are already 2 profiles that the phone is synced with, so it tells me I have to delete one. I delete both. They're just profiles, after all, and they don't actually work any more.
Now, all my contacts are gone. I've got a really bad feeling that I just told my phone to delete all my contacts.
I'm a programmer. If that's indeed what just happened, this is such astoundingly bad design that I'm pretty much ready to write off windows mobile as "crap"--especially given the fact that I did all this BECAUSE outlook randomly decided to stop working (the famous crash upon startup).
Is there anything, no matter how technical, I can do to get these contacts back?
I just looked at pim.vol in the phone root, and found some of the information in my contacts list, so it implies to me that it should still be there / recoverable. How can I make the phone / outlook / activesync sort this mess out?
hello i'm afaid i'm not much help. but i think i lost all my contacts as well! very very bad. i upgraded to outlook 2003. i deleted my sync settings and created a new relationship. i ran activesync. outlook/activesync deleated all my contacts!! i wanted my contacts to populate outlook...
i'm sick,
tom
malefactor said:
I just looked at pim.vol in the phone root, and found some of the information in my contacts list, so it implies to me that it should still be there / recoverable. How can I make the phone / outlook / activesync sort this mess out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Reinstall the PIMbackup in your phone and restore the Pim.vol or transfer the pim.vol to a miniSD card and get a card reader and backup to your PC.hope it'll do the trick.Secondly,it's been reported that the outlook 2007 is having sync problems with contacts on wm6,install outlook 2003 and check if it works out.
Good luck
I'm able to restore the prior pim.vol, finally. But all the contacts are still gone. The microsoft user groups (and microsoft employees that post in there) are quite silent about this - I even tried posting there.
Meanwhile, I have tried every version of outlook I can find. Nothing will actually run on my machine. It's only when you experience something like this that you figure out just how amazingly bad Microsoftware is; I spent about 2 hours trying to make Outlook work, doing everything from erasing all profiles and contacts, re-implanting / re-registering DLLs, to invoking it in every kind of safe mode.. complete uninstall + reinstall..
No dice. Outlook crashes upon startup without a single word as to why. I EVEN TRIED debugging it with visual studio. I'm not a wintel programmer, but it looks to me like the software branched to a nonexistent address (opcodes were garbage).
It is pathetic that Outlook can crash for 50 different reasons with the same failure characteristics, and it holds the user in contempt.
I won't use software like that if I can avoid it. I hope the googlephone buries windows mobile.
Hello,
I just bought my HTC and moved all my contact in there. I never synchronized it with my PC.
Recently, I created an outlook account, then i decided to erase it (the only one left). While doing this, the system prompted that it will launch activeSync and requested the synchronization of Contacts/Tasks/Calender. I accepeted because i thought my HTC was not connected to my PC anyway so it will not cause anything. Bad luck for me, it appears that it did erase all my contacts, calender, tasks (sounds like it synchronized it with empty files) !!!!
No i am in trouble because i lost all my contacts without any backup or having done any synch with my laptop !!!
PLEASE CAN ANYONE TELL ME if there is anyway to recover these data from my mobile !!!! Any place where these deleted items could be retrieved from ?Any recovery tool that i could use ???
PS: I have not performed any soft or hard reset of my mobile yet...
Thanks in davance for your help...
I wonder if doing a system restore on your PC to a date prior to deleting that outlook profile will do the trick?
contact
nope, a system restore "will not" do the trick!!
Sorry to hear you lost you contacts! I know how you feel... The best thing I have done was to sync with an exchange server. Now all that important data is there if I run into a problem. So whenever I flash a new ROM our screw everything up, I just connect to the Exchange Server and all is well.
I fortunately get to use the sever at my work so no $$ involved.
Hi,
I would like help in how to transfer my contacts and sms messages from my sony ericsson K310i (Java based) to Samsung I8000 OmniaII (Windows Mobile based).
As for transfering contacts, i tried copying all my contacts to sim in my K310 then copy to phone on the I8000, i get weird entries in the form
LastName;FirstName/M (M: for mobile, W for work)
and it recognizes all that as a single name, i.e. if i want to edit the contact, LastName;FirstName/M will all be in the First Name field.
I think there might be a solution using K310 and a PC but i don't have a data cable and it's hard to get one currently.
Any help would be appreciated.
transfer contacts to Omnia II
if you can save your K310i contacts to a .vcf (vcard ) file then there's a windows mobile utility "vcard expert" available from the microsoft & samsung app stores that will transfer your contacts onto your Omnia II with correct formatting.
You could send this vcf file as an attachment in email to yourself then save the attachment to your device and load into the app. So you wouldn't need any data cables to do the transfer.
Thank you for your reply, it helped even if not directly. i forgot to say that i'm missing the K310i data cable not the OmniaII one (so its impossible to export contacts from K310i as the only option available is via infrared), but your info regarding .vcf files gave a new terms to my google searches.
I found an old infrared adapter. I tried first the option to export via infrared from the K310i and got a .vcf file, which when imported in outlook gave me just the first contact (although i opened in a notepad and saw all contacts there), any solutions there?
I then managed to use "My Phone Explorer" to sync contacts with outlook, then sync OmniaII with new contacts.
Now the only thing remaining is that i need to transfer my messages to the phone. My phone explorer can export messages in .sms/.csv/.txt file formats. I tried imobiletool sms backup to restore a .sms/.csv files but without luck (the WM program will not even see the file. and the pc program will give "file validation error" when tried to import). Any insight as how to import .sms messages?
Edit: I found a program that can split the single vcf file into multiple files each one for a contact, callud suppcom vcard splitter. still outlook has no right to refuse the single vcf file!
Edit: Its damn annoying that all the SMS backup/restore programs i found only restore backups created by the same program...sigh, is there no standards or compatibilty between programs??
Anyone have a solution to transfer sms to windows mobile phone, please?
I have an XDA Argon running WM5. It has on it all my contacts, calendar etc. plus lots of Excel, Notes and other files. It used to synchronise with my notebook PC, but now whenever I connect it to the notebook either the notebook overwrites the data in the mobile, or vice versa. I have not therefore dared to synchonise it for over a year now, so both devices now have a lot of differences. Also I suspect the root of the problem is that somehow the timestamps (or whatever Mobile Device Center uses to control its sync process) have got messed up.
How do I, without risk of losing any data either in my mobile or in my notebook, get the two re-synchronised?
Either I need to back up both sets of data to somewhere I can restore from before trying to sync, or I need a sync process that will never delete or overwrite anything without asking for permission first. So far I've failed to find either solution. I can back up the files from the mobile to an SD card, but I can't find out how to back up the calendar and contacts. Is there a web service that will do it (without connecting to the PC)? Or can I create a new Outlook account and copy the mobile items to it in some way (without the risk that the PC writes the empty Outlook account into the mobile thus deleting everything)?
Hope someone can suggest a safe way out of this mess...
Thanks - Rowan.