It’s handy to have my agenda up to date and available anywhere. That’s why there are syncing tools that allows me to replicate the content of my agenda onto my mobile device, and that is where problems come around the corner.

I use Lotus Notes since that is the main platform in use at the office and the location where all my appointments and contacts are stored in. But very frequently I experienced problems synchronizing while using Lotus Notes on a Windows XP platform. The problem is that Notes crashes after the first successful sync attempt. Every time!

I did a lot of searching on the net and found two solutions that helped me to resolve this nasty problem.

Basically I found 3 solutions which are described in this article...

1. Add the location of the notes.ini in the Windows registry
2. Check the Lotus Notes crash files for invalid calendar entries
3. Cleaning Calender entries containing very long subject of location fields i.e. remove alarm on long recurring anniversaries (covered in solution 3)
4. Disable conact sync and remove all anniversaries

Solution 1

Add the location of your notes.ini file into your laptop windows registry.

Create a file with the following content.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Nokia\PCSync\Settings]
"WarnMinimize"=dword:00000001
"LastApp"=dword:00000010
"notesini"="c:\notes\notes.ini"

If your Notes installation is on c:\notes just copy the five lines into a text document.
Rename the text document you just created into Notes-ini-Regkey.reg

Double click the Notes-ini-Regkey.reg file and confirm you want this key to be entered into the registry.
This solves the problem in many cases but not in my case unfortunately.

Solution 2

Below is a more complex solution, but it solves the problem in many cases.

Check the Lotus Notes crash files for invalid calendar entries, and recreate them.
I noticed that Notes crashed during Calendar synchronization so I checked the log files that are created during the crash. If you dig into these files you can find what entry is causing the crash. I assume your Notes installation is located in c:\notes. Otherwise look into your own install path.

Look in the folder C:\notes\data\IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT, and look for the newest created file “nsd*****.log”. This is the latest Notes client crash log.

The next thing to do is searching for the following line in the log file.
"FATAL THREAD with PARAMETER DATA".

A lot of stuff is in there so don’t get confused and don't try to understand it, I don’t understand it either ;-)
Search and look under "FATAL THREAD with PARAMETER DATA" for the following lines;

Parameter 1:
0642e9b0 49006E00 67006500 20006A00 61007200 | I.n. g.e.  . B. i. r. |
0642e9c0 69006700 00002020 6A006100 72006900 | t.h. ..   B.i. r.t. |

The example shows a birthday entry I have created (first 16 characters). Go into your Notes calendar and delete that specific entry.
It might not the only error entry, so look through the file to see it there are more.

Start PC Suite again and initiate a sync. If it crashes again repeat the actions above.

Now you might ask : Do I need to do it over and over?
Yes, you do, but my experience is that all crashes occured due to the fact I created anniversaries in Lotus Notes (repeating 100 years).
That definately introduced the problem.

Avoid Lotus Notes crashed during sync and add the anniversary in you phone contact entry and sync with Notes. You will have the anniversary in your calendar too.

Solution 3

WHAT IF... these actions do not solve the issue either?!!!!

Is there a solution if neither of these actions solve the issue you might ask...
I think I have pin pointed the problem.
Avoid having a lot of texts in your Calender subject or location fields, use the "Description" or "Personal" notes section instead....
Avoid attachements into invites. It everything worked fine and suddenly Notes crashes... check if you received an invite which has very long Calender subject or location fields, edit and shorten them. Move text to "Description" or "Personal".

I had crashes due to a lot of text in the mentioned fields and attachements. PC Suite simply cannot deal with a lot of text in these fields.
Eventually thats what happens if you have long recurring birthdays too. A very long list of birthday dates is built which comes down to the above.

Solution 4

If nothing works, NOTHING.. remove contact synchronization in the Nokia suite config. This always solved my sync problems.

After these actions I can sync without problems, and I guess/hope you too ;-)

Unfortunately either Nokia or Lotus Notes are unable to align their solution to one another, it's a crappy implementation.