In Windows Vista, Windows Mobile Device Center is the new way to create partnerships with mobile devices and synchronize items such as contacts, calendar appointments and email with Outlook.

My first attempts to use Windows Mobile Device Center resulted in a lot of problems. Neither my T-Mobile MDA (aka Cingular 8125, aka HTC Wizard) or my Cingular 3125 (aka HTC StarTrek) would synchronize with Outlook 2003. Instead the synchronization would fail with with an unhelpful error of “The Server Is Busy”.

Some Googling showed me other people with Vista having similar problems, but no solutions, so I thought I’d post the steps that got things working for me.

By going to “Mobile Device Settings” and unchecking each category in turn I found the problem was related to contacts.  Within Outlook I created a new PST file (File->New->Outlook Data File), temporarily moved all my contacts there, and then closed the file.

Now, without any contacts in Outlook, I retried the synchronization and this time it completed successfully. The contacts from my phone were now in my list of Outlook Contacts.

As my original Outlook contacts were more upto date, I reopened the temporary PST file, copied them over the newly-synchronized versions, and started another synchronization. Again it completed successfully, afterwhich both sets of contacts were in sync.

Since using this initial workaround I haven’t had any sync problems on either device, so if you’re having similar issues hopefully this will get things working for you.

Enjoy!