Could not connect Nokia 6303i via USB cable to Win...

Question

Hello guys in this forum
Hello driver development group
This is not a question for help, but more a question for sharing experiences. I recently bought a new Nokia 6303i, worked a little bit with it and finally I wanted to connect it to the PC to enter the contacts from my old phone with the computer keyboard instead of the phonebook keys.
Well, the installation sounded quite easy at a first glance: Download the Nokia OVI suite, connect the Nokia phone to the PC and go on. I did that way, but it just did not work.
The PC I'm using is an Acer laptop, Windows 7 64 Bit system, MS Office 2003, Visual Studio 2003/2005, Firefox, Thunderbird and VMWare Workstation, Comodo Firewall and free-av virus scanner installed. Nothing special, nothing I could not handle, especially no games or other special hardware drivers that could interfere -- most software is installed in virtual machines, so the main computer is rather "naked". I connected the phone to the PC in the "Mass storage mode" to get a drive letter, and installed the OVI suite from the SD card. Worked quite well, and finally I re-connected the phone to the Windows PC.
The phone was detected as "NOKIA" in the Windows explorer. I chose "PC Suite" on the phone and started the OVI suite - but nothing. OVI suite told me: "Detected device: NOKIA. Phone is not in PC Suite mode". Eeeh?!?
I tried it several times, but no chance. Although "PC Suite" was active on the phone, the phone was not recognized. Ok, I though, either a problem with the drivers or a hardware problem. So let's see what an older operating system would tell me. I switched on a Windows XP 32 Bit system in my VMWare virtualisation software and connected the phone. The phone connected but did not directly work. I had to use the "mass storage mode" setting to get a drive letter. I installed the OVI suite that was shipped on the SD card (which deleted itself from the SD card later -- baaad habit, I was hopelessly searching for it later on, but ok...). Then I disconnected the phone, reconnected, chose "PC suite mode" and... perfect, stable connection, OVI suite was working totally fine! So I disconnected the phone and closed the VMware machine again.
Ok, so a problem with Windows 7 64 bit. I deinstalled the OVI suite, downloaded the most recent version from the web which obviously was said to support Windows 7 64 bit, installed, reconnected the phone... nothing. Same situation as before.
I deinstalled OVI suite again and downloaded/installed the most recent version of PC suite -- which was said to contain all connectivity drivers including for Windows 7 64 bit. I connected the phone started PC suite and... well, phone detected, but used in "compatibility mode", although the "PC suite mode" was chosen on the phone. But ok, let's see what I can do in the compatibility mode. Full of hope I clicked on the "address book" in PC suite. The phone reacted, it said "PC suite mode activated". Hoping... Hoping... then it said again "PC suite mode activated". Eeh? It is already activated!?! 10 Seconds later: PC tolds me: "Phone could not be switched to PC suite mode. Shhhhh*t!
I googled as hell, and then I saw that I should use the PC suite cleaner before installing. Ok, PC suite deinstalled, PC suite cleaner used, PC suite reinstalled, phone connected... nothing, same behaviour.
Next tip I read: Install the connectivity driver manually. Ok, everything deinstalled (and I mean, everything! All components in the program list that were entitled to be from NOKIA: PC suite, the two drivers and something else I cannot remember). I downloaded the connectivity driver, connected the phone, phone was recognized as "NOKIA" like before. I installed PC suite again and... nothing. Same behaviour. Arrr*h!
The final tip that really helped: I read somewhere in the web that Windows 7 was using the wrong drivers. I took a look in the control panel, looked up the NOKIA phone in the device manager, took a look to the drivers, and indeed. The driver that Windows 7 was using was somehow from 2008!?! So that was an internal driver of Windows 7 and not the newly installed Windows 7 driver which I manually installed!
I clicked on the button "Update drivers" for the "NOKIA" phone and manually chose the connectivity drivers in the "C:\Program Files\NOKIA\Connectivity..." or-something-like-that folder. Suddenly the phone was re-recognized: "NOKIA phone USB parent". That was new!
But now, the PC suite on the PC did not recognize the phone at all andmore. Hmmm, a new look to the device manager revealed the reason: A couple of new devices were detected, but all with an exclamation mark. Drivers not found. But with a little bit of luck... I opened every such device in the device manager and told Windows to update the drivers. It asked me for a path where the drivers were saved, and here I just specified the path of the nokia connectivity drivers again (this "C:\Program Files\NOKIA\Connectivity..." or-something-like-that folder). That worked! Now I got one after the other the COM-port driver, OBEX and etc...
At the end I startet PC suite... whahoooo, it works! Phone connected and address book editable! Uff. Nice.
So a deep driver problem.
Then I did a near-mistake: I wanted to update the operating system on my NOKIA phone. I installed the phone update manager in Windows 7, left the PC suite, started the update manager and it immediately recognized the phone. I started it and in told me: "Do not touch the phone or anything", time 15 Minutes. I waited and waited and saw the phone screen disappearing, but ok. I saw the USB drivers being disconnected and trying to be reinstalled, but Windows did not recognize it. But I did not touch anything. Then, the Hiobs-message from the update manager: "Phone disconnected during update. Please swich on and reconnect". Whaaaaa?!?!?
Ok, disconnected the phone, switched off, switched on, reconnected. But Windows 7 did not recognize it correctly anymore. Some unknown devices in the device manager, only the "NOKIA phone USB parent" was still working correctly, and there was now an unknown device which I was not able to activate by specifying drivers manually (it was most likely a USB flash device what I figured out later). And the phone behaved strangely, sometimes crashing when hoovering through the menues... EEEhhh.....
Ok, emergency plan, phone nearly destroyed. I again turned on my VMware and connected the phone to the OVI software in the virtual Windows XP. Still worked fine. I clicked on the update menu item of OVI suite. OVI suite was detecting the phone software, downloaded the new version and started to update. Again it told me: Wait 15 minutes, do not touch anything. And I did. I saw Windows reconfiguring its hardware settings as new hardware was detected, and there were problems in installing a "USB flash device", but the software did not cancel. And finally: Update successful! Uff... I checked the phone (*#0000#), and it was ok. Uuuuh.
Then I switched off the virtual machine, conected the phone again to Windows 7, but there was still a driver problem. Most devices had an exclamation mark. I manually deinstalled all the NOKIA drivers in the device manager and actuivated the "Delete driver from system" checkbox whereever possible -- including the "NOKIA phone USB parent". I removed the phone from the USB cable and plugged it on again. Now windows re-recognized it as "NOKIA" phone, but again used its own internal -- wrong -- driver set. I switched the driver again as described above to the Nokia Connectivity drivers in the program folder, got again the "USB parent" and the unknown devices, manually specified the drivers for the unknown devices by using the path to the Connectivity drivers and finally I got the situation from before the update: Nokia PC suite running fine, I can access my contacts and do anything I like in Windows 7 64 bit.
That was a nightmare and took me about two days intensive research and testing. What a mess...
I hope I could help anyone of you with this when you have trouble installing the PC/OVI suite in Windows 7. And don't try to update the phone in Windows 7, it's dangerous at the moment!
Probably you guys from the driver development can take a more close look to Windows 7 64 bit and its own pre-installed drivers. Does anyone of you have similar experiences?
Best regards,
  Mighty Knife

Answer 1

Uhm, I'm experiencing the same problem with some Linux relase. Unfortunately I was unable to solve the problem if not installing a windows emulator. Maybe you're already familiar with it, but it seems the only solution. Through google I found this, I hope I made you a favor.
http://www.macwindows.com/emulator.html
Bye