WD Smartware and Palm HotSync

If you run into the problem with Palm HotSync failing in Windows with the famous “blue screen of death” error in palmUSBD.sys driver, something about a page fault, it has to do with the way WD Smartware accesses and controls the USB ports on the machine.  Working with WD tech support, we found that a workaround is to go into Windows services and stop all of the WD services that are running.   There will be three, and unless you have a backup going, only the last two will be in “started” status.   Close WD Smartware if you have it open, right click on the services to stop them, then run your HotSync.   It should work now.    Then, you can just right-click on the services again and start them again, and it should be fine.

Interesting, they could very well be incompatible…