A month ago, I purchased a FitBit Zip to replace the pedometer I’ve been carrying for a few years. The old one didn’t have the ability to upload activity logs, which is a feature I liked about the Zip. I installed the sync software onto my Windows 7 laptop, plugged in the USB BlueTooth dongle supplied with the Zip, created an account at FitBit, and starting carrying the Zip in my pocket. Easy-peasy.
What I discovered very shortly was that the sync client service was consistently crashing and dying every time I woke my laptop from sleep. This service is responsible for scanning for any paired FitBit device within radio range (like the one in my pocket) and uploading its activity logs to the FitBit site. Without it, the FitBit dashboard won’t show your most recent activity data until you intervene.
I followed the instructions in the panel to reinstall the sync software, even fully uninstalling and reinstalling from scratch, but there was no fix. The unhelpful support page at FitBit even stated that I should either manually restart the service or reinstall the software because of a possible conflict with other software on the system. This is untenable. So I put my powers of QA regression testing to the task.
When coming out of sleep, the FitBit Connect Service crashes with some variation of the following events in the Windows Event Viewer:
Faulting application name: FitbitConnectService.exe, version: 1.0.3.5511, time stamp: 0x5379f32a
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Some events are more verbose:
Faulting application name: FitbitConnectService.exe, version: 1.0.3.5511, time stamp: 0x5379f32a
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x7369446c
Faulting process id: 0x2334
Faulting application start time: 0x01cfb17aaf68a127
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Fitbit Connect\FitbitConnectService.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report Id: d9b9bdea-1d81-11e4-abcd-9696ce78bd84
Many of the events reference the file ntdll.dll, which I assume is an abstraction layer to the OS (since the sync software is written for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android):
Faulting application name: FitbitConnectService.exe, version: 1.0.3.5511, time stamp: 0x5379f32a
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.18247, time stamp: 0x521ea8e7
Exception code: 0xc0000005
At any rate, the service is crashed, is not restarted by Windows, and is therefore not available to perform the sync, as visibly apparent in the task tray icon:
So, until FitBit analyzes the code failure and issues an update with the bugfix, the workaround here is to get your hands dirty with Windows innards and make a small change to the FitBit Connect Service runtime parameters.
Open your Services control panel by pressing the Start button. In the search box, type “services”, and select “Services” from the results. In the Services window, scroll down until you find the FitBit Connect Service in the list, and double-click to open the service properties panel.
You may see that the service status is stopped. This is OK for now. Select the “Recovery” tab.
The item “Subsequent Failures” might be set to “Take No Action”. We want to change this to “Restart the Service” because we want Windows to continue attempting to restart the service until it runs.
Click the OK button, and then click the link in the Services panel to Start the service. You’ll notice the Task Tray icon menu is now changed to let you know the dongle is connected and that you can sync now.
This means the service is functional. To test the fix, put your computer to sleep for about a minute, wake it up, and check the Tray icon menu again.
When you open the FitBit Sync Main Menu, you should be presented with the actions that you’d expect.
I hope this workaround works for you. Let me know if it doesn’t.
Also, if you know me, and I know you, and you’d like to link your FitBit account with mine in a competitive friendship sort of thing, let me know in some offline manner and we can arrange a link. Thanks, everyone.