SyncMyPortable™

Keeps your portable audio devices synchronized with iTunes®!

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Frequently Asked Questions about SyncMyPortable

Have you checked the program's Help file? If not, that's a good place to start - and it's full of tips on how to get SyncMyPortable working harder for you!

Just click on in the main SyncMyPortable popup menu to access the program's Help file.

Do you have the latest Release (Version 1.18.0042)? Here's how to check:

1.) Select About from the main SyncMyPortable popup menu

2.) On the Information page, your Release number are displayed
e.g. Version 1.18.0042 - January 01, 2007

If you don't have the latest Release, download it now!

If you do have the latest Release:

Check the FAQ list shown below - if your question's in the list, you're in luck!

Still puzzled? Send us a Support Request - we'll get back to you as fast as we can.

Want to suggest a topic for this FAQ or a new feature idea for the program? Let us know!

Click on any question to get an answer NOW!

The easiest way to enter your license details is to 'copy and paste' the relevant sections of the e-mail message into another application window (such as Notepad), then copy and paste from there into the registration boxes. Thereafter, it is vital that you click the OK button to close the Register SyncMyPortable dialog box, and then immediately click the OK button to close the About dialog box. You should then see a message that your registration has succeeded.

Here are the exact steps required:

1. Open the e-mail message that you were sent when you purchased the program, and copy the user name, product code, and activation key portion of it onto the clipboard (i.e. just select all of the text and choose "Copy" from the message's "Edit" menu or use the Ctrl+C shortcut keys to copy the highlighted text onto the clipboard).
2. Open the Notepad application by selecting it from the "Accessories" program group on the Windows Start Menu (e.g. Start | (All) Programs | Accessories | Notepad).
3. Paste your registration information from the clipboard into Notepad (e.g. select "Paste" from Notepad's "Edit" menu or use the Ctrl+V shortcut keys to paste in the text from the clipboard).
4. From within Notepad, copy ONLY the user name portion of your registration information onto the clipboard (be sure to include your complete name, the space, your e-mail address, the parentheses surrounding your e-mail address, and the seat license information if it was provided).
5. Start the SyncMyPortable program by clicking on its Desktop or Start Menu (Program Manager) shortcut.
6. While SyncMyPortable is running, right-mouse-click on the "SyncMyPortable" icon that appears in your System Tray (i.e. down by your system clock) and select "About" from the popup menu that appears. NOTE: If you have evaluated the program and your trial period has expired, SyncMyPortable's About dialog is automatically displayed when you first launch the program.
7. In the About SyncMyPortable dialog box that appears on your screen, click on the "Enter Reg Info" button.
8. In the Register SyncMyPortable dialog box that appears, paste in (from your copy and paste in step 4 above) the user name information into the appropriate field.
9. Repeat the copy and paste steps for your product key and activation code.
10. Once you've pasted in all three lines of information (e.g. the user name, product key, and activation key), click the OK button in order to close the Register SyncMyPortable dialog box.
11. Click the OK button to close the About dialog box. At this point, you will receive a message indicating that you have successfully registered the program. NOTE: You MUST click the About dialog box's OK button right after closing the Register SyncMyPortable dialog box or else your registration process will NOT be successful! If your registration information is accepted by the program, it will tell you so right after closing the About dialog box.

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Q02: After synchronizing my Sony Ericsson K750/W800 with SyncMyPortable my audio/video files don't show up on my phone

There is a bug in the R1N0035/R1NA005 and older firmware of the K750 and W800 Sony Ericsson phones that can corrupt the phone's Memory Stick® after attempting to transfer files to the phone via it's USB Fast Port® connecter (e.g. when using SyncMyPortable). The result is that the newly copied files either don't show up properly on the phone, or even worse, all of the data on the Memory Stick gets corrupted and appears to be erased after the file transfer.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A BUG IN SYNCMYPORTABLE, BUT RATHER A BUG IN THE PHONE'S FIRMWARE!

Sony Ericsson has now corrected the problem in their latest R1AA008 (and later) firmware release for these phones. Therefore, if you are experiencing the problem, you should try updating your phone's firmware to the latest release. Sony Ericsson offers a free Update Service on their web site (http://www.sonyericsson.com) that allows you to upgrade the phone's firmware using the USB cable that came with the phone. More information can be found here:

Sony Ericsson Update Service for the W800

Sony Ericsson Update Service for the K750

Alternatively, you can work around the problem by using an internal or external high-speed USB 2.0card reader/writer in order to transfer files to your phone's Memory Stick instead of using the phone's built-in USB Fast Port connector. A big advantage to using a high-speed card reader/writer to transfer files to your phone's Memory Stick is that the transfer speeds are MUCH faster than when using the phone's built-in USB Fast Port connector. You can pick up a high-speed USB 2.0 card reader/writer that works with the Memory Stick Duo Pro for under $20 from your local computer supply store. Here's the one we use with our own K750 and W800 phones:

SanDisk MobileMate™ Memory Stick™ Plus 4-in-1 Reader

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Q03: Transferring a large number of songs to my portable audio device is very slow

Attempting to copy a large amount of audio (and/or video) files directly to your Sony Ericsson Walkman® phone, PlayStation® Portable, Pocket PC, PDA, or other portable audio device that can be accessed as a Mass Storage Device (i.e. a device that appears as a drive letter in Windows Explorer/My Computer) via the device's built-in USB or FireWire connector can be quite slow due to the device's inherent low transfer speed.

If your device uses a removable memory card (such as a Sony Memory Stick®), you can drastically increase the transfer rates by simply using a high-speed card reader/writer to transfer the files to the memory card/stick instead of using your device's built in USB (Fast Port®) connector. You can pick up a high-speed USB 2.0 card reader/writer that works with most types of memory cards/sticks from your local computer supply store for under $20. Here's the one we use with our own K750 and W800 phones:

SanDisk MobileMate™ Memory Stick™ Plus 4-in-1 Reader

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Q04: Will SyncMyPortable work with my phone or portable audio device?

If your phone, Pocket PC, PDA, portable audio device, etc. can be accessed as a Mass Storage Device (i.e. as a device that appears as a drive letter in Windows Explorer/My Computer) and stores its audio and/or video files in a specified folder on the device (such as "MP3", "music", "audio", "video", etc.), then it should work just fine with SyncMyPortable. Pretty much any phone, Pocket PC, PDA, portable audio device, etc. that plugs into a USB or FireWire port on your computer (or has a removable memory card that can be inserted into a card reader/writer) will work.

If however, your portable device appears in Windows Explorer/My Computer as a dedicated audio device or mobile device (without a drive letter), then it will not work with SyncMyPortable. Some portable devices (Pocket PC’s, PDA’s, Smartphones, etc.) have a setting or program that will allow you to switch their connection protocol to Mass Storage (if you're using a Pocket PC or Palm device checkout Softick's Card Export II). This will force the device to appear as a drive letter in Windows Explorer/My Computer and you will then be able to use it with SyncMyPortable.

To get SyncMyPortable to recognize the phone/device's Mass Storage Device (if it can't auto-detect it for you), open up the SyncMyPortable Preferences dialog box (select "Preferences" from SyncMyPortable's main system tray icon popup menu) and then use the "Browse for MSD audio files folder" button in the "Audio Files Location (AFL)" section to locate the folder on your phone/device's Mass Storage Device where it stores its audio and/or video files.

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Q05: I just downloaded SyncMyPortable and tried running its installer but it won't install because a file is missing - DAO360.DLL???

DAO360.DLL is part of Microsoft's DAO 3.6 Object Library. If you don't have DAO 3.6 installed on your machine, then you can download it from here (8.95 MB):

http://www.TheOfficeMaven.com/runtimes/DAO 3.6 Runtime.exe

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Q06: How come SyncMyPortable wont work with the music I've purchased from the iTunes Music Store?

Music and/or video files that are purchased from the iTunes Music Store are delivered in a DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected AAC format (using a file type extension of .M4P, .M4B, or .M4V). Since the music/video is protected, it doesn't do any good to have SyncMyPortable copy it to your Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, Sony PlayStation Portable, or other portable audio device as it won't be playable by the device's music/media player.

If you'd like to pursue using your protected iTunes music with SyncMyPortable, then there are freely available programs that can remove the protection restrictions for you. The one we recommend is called JHymn and it's a free (open source) program that can be used to remove (or "scrub") all of the DRM restrictions from your iTunes Music Store purchased music without any loss of sound quality. You can find out more information on using JHymn (and download it for free) from here:

http://www.hymn-project.org/

Once you've used JHymn to remove the DRM restrictions from your protected iTunes music, you can then use the unprotected music with SyncMyPortable.

NOTE: iTunes 6.0 Warning

It appears that if you make any music purchases using iTunes 6.0, from that point on you must use 6.0 — and then JHymn won't work for you anymore. JHymn will have to learn how to perform the iTunes 6.0 protocol before this problem is likely to be fixed -- so hang on, it could be a bit of a wait.

In the meantime, you may wish to delay upgrading to iTunes 6.0 so that you can continue to free your music until a new solution is found.

Alternatively, another (albeit poor) workaround is to use iTunes to burn your protected music onto a CD and then import the music off of the CD back into iTunes. Doing this will automatically remove the DRM protection from the music. However, it may produce unprotected music with a slightly lower sound quality than the original. See the following for more information on this:

http://hymn-project.org/jhymndoc/jhymn_faq.php#rip

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Q07: How come music copied to my portable audio device doesn't appear in the device's music/media player?

It's possible that the music files are being placed into a folder on the device where they aren't being properly recognized by the device's music/media player. When you plug the device into a USB or FireWire port on your computer and access it as a drive in Windows Explorer/My Computer, what folder (or sub-folder) is the device using for storing its audio files? Most devices use a folder named "\MP3", "\Music", "\Audio", etc. The documentation that came with your device should give you an idea of where the files need to go (they may even need to go in the root folder of the device and not in a folder or sub-folder). Once you know the proper folder, go into SyncMyPortable's Preferences dialog box and use the "Browse for MSD audio files folder" button in the "Audio Files Location (AFL)" section to point SyncMyPortable over to that particular folder on your device.

By default, SyncMyPortable organizes the audio files on your device's Mass Storage Device (MSD) with the following folder and file naming convention:

%AFL%\<Artist>\<Album>\[<Disc Number>-<Track Number> ]<Title>.<File Extension>

If your portable audio device requires a different folder organization scheme, or it requires that the audio files be placed in the MSD audio files folder's root directory (e.g. %AFL%), then you can modify the way that SyncMyPortable organizes the music on the MSD using the "Organize audio by category" setting in SyncMyPortable Preferences and adjusting the Category1, Category2, and/or Category3 values to match the requirements of your portable audio device (see the SyncMyPortable Help file for more information on using this feature).

Also, makes sure that the audio file name format is set to a format that is recognized by your device. By default, SyncMyPortable names your audio files with the following name format:

[<Disc Number>-<Track Number> ] <Title>.<File Extension>

If your portable audio device requires a different (or specific) file naming format, then you can customize/change the audio file name format in SyncMyPortable's Advanced Preferences dialog box.

Lastly, make sure that the audio files being copied to your portable audio device by SyncMyPortable are in a format recognized by your device's music/audio player. iTunes defaults to importing music into its Library in AAC/M4A format. If your portable audio device can only play MPEG/MP3 formatted audio files, then the AAC formatted audio files may not appear in your device's music/media player. Therefore, you'll need to change the encoder settings in iTunes Preferences to always import music in MPEG/MP3 format, or you can use SyncMyPortable's Preferences, to have SyncMyPortable automatically convert all of your audio files into MPEG/MP3 format before copying them to your device.

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Last update: 06-Jan-2007

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