How do I kill the ActiveSync process? What do I gain if I do so?

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Q: How do I kill the ActiveSync process? What do I gain if I do so? A: First, the second question: what do you gain? 1, (often,) additional speed on the desktop 2, the ability to completely power off your PDA, even if it's connected to the PC Let's have a look at the first question first (I also discuss the second in this tutorial). At BrightHand, PPCT and microsoft.public.pocketpc.activesync, people (including me) have been posting reports of ActiveSync (AS for short) significantly slowing down the desktop Windows. ActiveSync, which is always running, has significant CPU usage even if it doesn't do anything. (If it does, for example, actively synchronizing data/files or, when the PDA actively accesses the Internet through the AS Internet sharing, the CPU usage significantly increases. The same happens if files are transferred through AS. This is perfectly acceptable, unlike the high CPU usage when AS doesn't do anything.) Some quantitive results of CPU usage to illustrate the point: P4 2 GHz: 9% Athlon 1.8 GHz: about 7-8% P4 3.2 GHz, WinXP Pro SP2: about 0.5% PIII 450 MHz, AS 3.8 and 4.0, WinXP Pro SP1 and SP2 (measured on two PC's): about 8-9% with both configurations 2.4GHz PIV/Win2k Pro: between 0 and 1% This means that, in the worst case, AS can waste as much as 9-10% of your CPU cycles – your desktop computer will become significantly slower if AS is running in the background, even when it doesn't do anything. Incidentally, as can clearly be seen, it can't be plainly stated 'high-end desktop computers won't have slowdown problems because of AS' – the situation is far more complicated. See for example the case of the 2GHz P4, which still suffers from 9% AS CPU usage. Therefore, if you own a very fast computer, you still may want to check out how much CPU cycles are wasted by AS. How can you find out how much CPU AS on your Windows computer wastes? It's pretty easy: on most Windows versions (screenshot shown on XP), just press Ctrl-Alt-Del once (pressing it twice may result in prompt rebooting on older Windows systems like Win98!), switch to the Processes tab, make sure the processes are sorted by their name (so that you can easily find wcescomm.exe ) by clicking Image Name just over at the list. Now, scroll down to wcescomm.exe : Click for screenshot Scrutinize the number shown in the CPU column for at least 10-15 seconds. If the (rough) average of the values shown is significantly more than 0 (say, around 6-10%), then, you should read on; otherwise (if it's around 0%), you may want to choose not to bother. What can be done to stop this? There're several methods of combatting this problem. Please note that, contrary to what some people say, switching AS to manual synchronization (Options/Schedule/Desktop Schedule switched to Manually) won't help – wasted CPU cycles will remain. You can't switch off your PDA either while it's connected to your Windows desktop – it'll wake up after five minutes (even if you switch to manual synchronization). Therefore, you have the following choices to reduce the CPU load to 0%: The worst choices - remove the PDA from the cradle (absolutely the worst you can do) - unplug the USB cable from your desktop computer when it's not needed (slightly better choice, especially if the plug is easily reachable) A better choice In the above-shown Task Manager, click the End Process button while wcescomm.exe is highlighted and click Yes. This will make sure the process is killed. Then, when you want to restart AS (to, say, make a resynchronization or an application install), just go to Start Menu/Programs and just click Microsoft ActiveSync to restart it. The best choices These are all free applications that stop and/or (re)start AS. KillSync: this stopped both AS 4.0 and 3.8 in my tests without problems. It isn't able to restart AS, however; to avoid doing that, you may want to use Resync. That is, you'll need to execute KillSync to stop and Resync to start the AS connection. I've also tested ActiveSync Toggle (tested version: V1.0.2.1). It had problems with AS 4.0: it was never been able to close AS 4.0. First, even when I swicthed my PDA off, it reported it being still switched on. Of course, deactivating the by default enabled "Don't disable if PDA is connected" helped this. After deactivating this checkbox, it was able to shut down wcescomm.exe of AS 4.0; however, after this, it still reported and the main window still didn't allow for restarting the application. That is, it can only be used to kill wcescomm.exe ; you'll still need to restart AS in the Start menu. With AS 3.8, it wasn't able to kill the process with disabled "Don't disable if PDA is connected"; with leaving it in its default enabled state and switching off the PDA manually, it worked just OK, in both directions. That is, with AS 3.8 (and previous versions), you may want to use it. Please note that some ActiveSync plug-ins (or, in some cases, AS itself) don't like if you terminate the ActiveSync this way. If you encounter problems like this (for example, AS doesn't see your PDA('s) after restarting), consider getting a USB cable extender or putting the USB cable of your cradle in a front USB socket of your PC and just pulling out the USB cable when the AS connection is not needed. Then, however, you won't be able to use USB charging. I've also posted a (slighly older) version of this tutorial to PPCT, iPAQ HQ, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox, BrightHand. ADDITION on Nov. 5, 2005: I've played with this problem even further and found out that it's the best to make use of the delayed invocation of ActiveSync upon cradling to avoid it connecting. This way, you can cradle your Pocket PC (with all its additional advantages – for example, being on charge) but don't need to keep it on (and it won't automatically switch on either), which also means the desktop-side ActiveSync won't consume any CPU cycles either. This is a much cleaner solution than killing the AS process on the desktop PC (see the problems outlined above) and is also much better than pulling out the USB cable from the desktop PC (or a cable enhancer) all the time you don't want the PDA to automatically switch on every five minutes and consume CPU cycles on the desktop. All you need to do is that, after cradling your Pocket PC, quickly switch it off. This way, you will switch it off during the delay of the ActiveSync invocation/connection. Note that, if you choose to do the same after having synchronized your PDA with the desktop, then, some people say you don't even need to remove the PDA from the cradle – just power it off and, after powering it again (which will, in effect, terminate the AS connection), quickly switch it off. In my practice, however, this didn't work – my PDA's, occassionally, woke up after doing this. That is, to be absolutely sure it won't wake up (and that your desktop CPU cycles aren't unnecessary taken), always recradle your PDA and immediately switch it off before ActiveSync "kicks in".