Ever try to install a Palm Pilot on a computer on a corporate network? Its a PITA. For some reason Palm assumes that all people on a corporate network are running as a local administrator and aren’t being restricted in anyway. This is a very DUMB for them to assume. It also makes life difficult for those of use that have to install and maintain palm software.

After fighting with it for years, i’ve found the following to work best on Windows XP SP2 with any version of a Palm Pilot:

• Install the software that comes with the Palm m130. NOT the software you can download off of Palm’s website, but the stuff from the CD. The current version of Palm Desktop will Freeze at the splash screen on startup as a restricted user. If you contact Palm this is a known issue, with the solution of ‘give the user local administration privileges.’ The m130 software, however, runs just fine with one small drawback that i’ll mention later.

• Follow the installation as normal, entering the username on the palm and skipping the registration. Exit the install application.

• Sync the palm as Administrator. You may receive an error at this step with the newer palms, see below.

• Run Palm Desktop as Administrator

• Give “Domain Users” (or “Everyone” if you’re that sorta person) full permissions to c:\Palm, propagate the permissions through the directory.

• Move “c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\Palm Desktop” to “c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\All Users\Desktop” (or delete it). Give the users permissions to use it.

• Export “HK_CURRENT_USER\Software\USRobotics” from the registry and drop it somewhere the normal user can find it. Make sure they have permissions to it.

• Logout Administrator and in as the User (You will have to perform the follow steps of each user that will be using the Palm Pilot).

• Exit Hotsync, by right clicking it in the task bar.

• Double click the exported registry file to merge it with the users.

• Restart Hotsync from the Start Menu.

• Sync the palm as the User.

• Open up Palm Desktop, and you should be good to go.

So .. now that its installed and running, what is this one small drawback? On the newer Palm Pilots notes will not sync properly. The sync log mentions a database incompatibility, but this doesn’t seem to be an issue for any of my users.

Problems with newer Palm Pilots:

When you sync as administrator for the first time it finds the Palm and installs the drivers for it. If you have a newer palm (say a Tungsten E/2) it will not install properly because the disk that came with the m130 doesn’t have the right driver. Go through the install and point the New Hardware Wizard to the disc that comes with the newer Palm, you should be able to navigate to the drivers on there. Once those are installed, just sync the palm again and it should work.