Today was one of those strange days at the office where small technical issues have arisen to take up most of my day.
Weird Networking Issue: I had to show one of my users how to use the LCD projector for a scheduled training session that is occurring on Friday morning, as I will be out of the office. Everything was in working order with the exception of the Ethernet cable connection in the conference room. The conference room is served by two connections to the network–Ethernet (or wired) or wireless. When giving a training session, I much prefer the use of a wired connection on the host machine. This ensures that a Flash or some other streaming presentation should go ahead smoothly. Wireless, for all of its ease of use, has those moments where it just plain will not cooperate. The problem that cropped up today is a laptop that refuses to get an IP address for the wired connection. I can plug the laptop into any Ethernet jack in our office and get connectivity. No error messages at the server nor on the client, it just plain refuses to reach the DHCP server from this connection. Even stranger, the problem remains on a reboot. It is even stranger given that the machine should have had an existing DHCP lease.
Fun with Treos: There are a couple of users at our firm that use Palm-based Treo 650 Smartphones. As such, they like to sync their phones with our Exchange server to get their contacts and calendar entries. Our partner complained about this not working as it should have, as he was not seeing any of his calendar entries. Further investigation revealed that the Outlook Conduits were not installed on his laptop. I found the conduits and installed them, and upon my first HotSync I was greeted with a cryptic error in the HotSync Log:
Outlook Calendar
OLERR:03-0010
OLERR:0D-0028
OLERR:0D-000A
OLERR:0D-0004
OLERR:0D-0001
- Desktop overwrite HH Sync
Outlook Calendar synchronization failed
After the sync, the phone would get stuck in a boot loop. To resolve the problem I had to perform a Hard Reset to remove all data from the device just to get it working again. I still need to determine what is causing the problem, but something tells me it is something either in Outlook or in the backup data on the device. Of course, with clear error messages like the one above, I should have no problem fixing this problem. 
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For problem #1 I’d look at the traffic (i.e. use a packet sniffer) on the DHCP server and verify that the DHCP REQUEST Packets are actually making it to the server. While that won’t solve your problem it might explain it if no DHCP REQUEST packets are generated.
If all else fails maybe assign that device a static IP.
Not a bad suggestion, but I would make the argument that I only have one DHCP server responding to these requests. Additionally, another machine worked just fine. Nonetheless, I agree that looking at the traffic is key. As a developer friend I know would say, let’s look at the traffic.
Besides, I know that all too well. Time to crank up some Ethereal/WireShark.
You might only have 1 DHCP server that you know of on the network. Or the device might not even be generating a DHCP REQUEST. Either way sniffing the traffic will help you narrow down what might be the root cause.
I’ve had this type of problem before. The workaround was to just switch the other end of the cable to a different port on the switch. Turns out another tech, for whatever reason, went into the switch and was overly agressive with the packet filtering on a few ports.
What software are you using for the treo sync? We’ve never had a problem with the pocketmirror software.
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[...] Around the end of August, I commented about how I was having a problem getting a Treo 650–Cingular’s version–to sync its calendar with a user’s Outlook calendar. I was getting the error referenced in this forum thread at TreoCentral.com. Absolutely nothing I did seemed to resolve the problem, but I was able to sync other Outlook items–Contacts, Tasks, and Notes–to the Treo with no problem at all. [...]
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