If you read ebooks on your Pocket PC which have Digital Rights Management protection on them, you have to activate the MS Reader application from the Microsoft Reader web site. Don’t get me started about the MS Reader DRM but this tip is for those users who use the Reader ebooks. Every time you do a hard reset on your Pocket PC, the activation is lost and you have to go through the whole process of activation again. You also run the risk of exceeding your allowed number of activations (6) and losing access to your ebooks forever. There is a way to save your activation and carry it back to your Pocket PC after a hard reset which prevents the need to reactivate the Reader online. To save your activation do the following steps:

1. On your desktop, click on the Activesync icon which is in the system tray on the Taskbar to pop up the Activesync window.

2. Click on the “Explore” option in Activesync to navigate the folders on your mobile device.

3. Go to the /Windows directory of the Pocket PC and copy the following files:
- secrepid.dat
- secrep.dat
- secrep.dll
- secrep.xml
- Microsoft Activation.unload

4. Create a folder within the My Documents folder on your desktop PC. You can name this folder anything you want (just remember it).

5. Paste all the files listed above into this folder.

6. That’s it! Now whenever you do a hard reset on your Pocket PC, you can copy these files back into the Windows folder of your Pocket PC and your Microsoft Reader application will be activated automatically.

Note: Make sure you have your Windows Folders Options set to let you see hidden and system files or you won’t see the files you need to copy.