Microsoft stopped supporting Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC)

“My handheld device (Trimble Nomad) and my computer will not connect, apparently a result of a recent Windows update, despite numerous uninstals, installs, repairs. I have tried copying my data to a flash-drive but I don’t know how to then open it in CMT Forester. The job shows on the flash drive as a .fix file. Can you help?”

Microsoft stopped supporting Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) with the Windows 10 version 1703 update.

There are several files associated with each CE-CRUISE 10 job. The two essential files you must transfer to the CMTForester folder on your PC are: the .pmp file and the .crz file.

You could try to fix the issue with Mobile Device Center on Windows 10 as follows.

1) Add 2 registry entries as shown below by putting them in a text file
then right-clicking on the file name (such as WMDC-Reg.bat) and selecting
“Run as administrator”

REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RapiMgr /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WcesComm /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

2) Restart the PC.

3) Click on the Windows Start icon and right-click on
Windows Mobile Device Center.
Select “Run as Administrator”.
Now WMDC 6.1.6965 in Windows 10 version 1703 runs, but it shows
“Disconnected”.
Click on Mobile Device Settings then click on Connection Settings.
Mark the check box for “Allow USB connections”.
Unmark the check box for “Allow connections to one of the following:”.

4) Right-click on Windows Start icon and select “Computer Management”.
Double-click on “Services and Applications” then double-click on “Service”.
Scroll down and look for “Windows Mobile-2003-based device connectivity”
and “Windows Mobile-based device connectivity”. Double-click on one of these
services to view its properties. Click on the “Log On” tab then
select “Local System account” as the log on mode.
Do this for the other mobile-based device connectivity service as well.

Restart the PC.

5) On a PDA running Windows Mobile 5.0, tap the Windows Start icon
then select “Settings”.
Tap on the “Connections” tab.
Unmark the check box for “Enable advanced network functionality”.
Select “USB Settings” then select “Transmission as Serial Interface”.
Now connect the PDA to the PC via USB.
The Mobile Device Interface in PC-series will show that the
PDA and the PC are communicating properly.

WMDC may still show “Disconnected”. It will show “Connected” after a restart.

On PDAs running Windows Mobile 6.0, after selecting “Connections”,
tap on “USB to PC”.
Mark the check box for “Enable advanced network functionality”.
If successful, connect the PDA to the PC via USB and verify that PDA and PC are able to communicate with each other.

 

Should the above steps not work for your system, or should another future Windows update wreak havoc again, you could copy the job files from the PDA to a flash drive then copy them from the flash drive to your PC.

For FieldCE-GIS and FieldCE-SURVEY, copy the files ending in .pmp. (If you are using the old Z33 system with FieldCe-SURVEY to record raw data for differential correction, then also copy the .raw, .def, .ftr and .fix files.) For CE-CRUISE 10, copy the .pmp and .crz files.

You could also try using Bluetooth to transfer files between the PC and the PDA. If your PC is not Bluetooth enabled, you can get a USB dongle to add the Bluetooth capability to your PC. However, it’s a rather clumsy process to move the files yourself through the finicky Bluetooth connection.