No Sync of contacts+calender since upgrade to iTunes 7.7 and/or iPhone 2.0

Question

Windows Vista, Outlook 2007, iTunes 7.7, iPhone 2.0
After Upgrading to iTunes 7.7 and iPhone 2.0 neither my contacts nor my calender syncs anymore.
Often (but not allways), when connecting iPhone to my PC, I am getting the error "iTunes was unable to load provider data from Sync Services. Reconnect or try later"
When this happens, most of the time (but not always) my entries for syncing calender,contacts etc. under "Info" are missing. In these cases synching is not possile at all.
In those rare occasions, when the entries are not missing, ...
... synchronizing takes > 30 Minutes (much longer then before the update)
... new calender and contact data in Outlook are ot syncronized to iPhone and vice versa
Note:
1. De- and Re-Installing iTunes (íncl. Apple Mobile Device Support, Apple Software Update und Quicktime) did not solve the problem
2. Resetting the sync history did not solve the problem
3. Deleting data backup did not solve the problem
4. When Syncronizing at a different windows user I do not receive the error "iTunes was unable to load provider data from Sync Services", but still: syncing does not work!
5. On my iPhone there are 2 calenders: Home and "Outloook Calender"
6. There were backups of two different iPhones in my iTune (which I have deleted)
7. All podcasts were gone from my iPhone - after resetting the sync history there were transfered by to iPhone
8. Right after the update, iTunes wanted to update each contact in Outlook (which I did not allow) - after resetting the sync history this message did not appear again
Anyone any idea? I love my iPhone but when I cannot trust that data is not in synch between Outlook an IPhone its not much more than a mobile phone!

Answer 1

I ran into this the first immeidately after upgrading to 7.7 (at least the calendars, I didn't have much of an issue with contacts). Long story short, I think it has to do with the "Home" sub-calendar it creates. Removing this and redirecting new events back to Calendar does not resolve the issue. It seems that whatever it does, corrupts the Outlook Data File (PST file) permenently.
Fortunately for me, my profile at home is very simple and I only use it to sync personal events and contacts. I tried a number of "fixes" including resetting the sync history in iTunes, rebooting multiple times etc. What fixed it for me was the following (though I would only recommend it if you know what you are doing as you can mess up your entire outlook profile if you don't). This is the short short version of these instructions... if you don't know how to accomplish these steps I'd suggest asking someone that does. BTW, this only deals with a simple profile with calendars and contacts. If your profile contains a lot of additional personal information that the iPhone does not support (notes, etc.) you will need to export these folders into individual files for later import into the reconstructed PST file.
1) Disconnect the iPhone and close everything down (iTunes, Outlook, etc), make a backup of your PST file just in case things go wrong.
2) Create a new data file and set it as the default.
3) Open iTunes (before connecting the iPhone again) and click the Reset Sync History button in the preferences.
4) Open up outlook just to make sure the new profile is working, then close it again.
5) Connect the phone to have it sync your contacts and calendars back to outlook.
6) The sync of both contacts and calendars should work correctly now.
Again, please note that these instructions left a lot of detail out concerning the individual steps. If you need help with these I'd suggest seeking out someone that has some experience with this process for help to reduce the risk of losing data in the process.
The bottom line for me was that it seemed that recreating the PST file and reimporting the data (not just copying the whole file into a new one) fixed the issue for me. Obviously, one would hope that Apple devises a better solution than this in the long term.