How to connect a Windows Mobile PDA to Windows 10

I have managed to get my PDA working properly with Windows 10.

For transparency when I posted the original question I had upgraded a Windows 8.1 PC to Windows 10, I have since moved to using a different PC that had a clean Windows 10 installation.

These are the steps I followed to solve the problem:

  • First of all I installed Visual Studio 2008.
  • Then I installed Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1
    • http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3182
  • Then Windows Mobile 6 Professional and Standard Software Development Kits Refresh
    • http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6135
  • Then Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit
    • http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17284
  • Finally I opened up the Mobile Device Center, went to Mobile Device Settings -> Connection Settings and made sure DMA was selected under "Allow connections to one of the following" Connection Settings

Unfortunately the Windows Mobile Device Center stopped working out of the box after the Creators Update for Windows 10. The application won't open and therefore it's impossible to get the sync working. In order to get it running now we need to modify the ActiveSync registry settings. Create a BAT file with the following contents and run it as administrator:

REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RapiMgr /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WcesComm /v SvcHostSplitDisable /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Restart the computer and everything should work.