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Unable to add a 2nd Gmail account on Droid X

I've been trying for days to find a solution to a problem that shows up when trying to add a 2nd Gmail account on my Droid X.

After entering the User ID/Password for the 2nd account, the system eventually, and always, comes back with the message "Can't Establish a Reliable Connection to the Server".

In my seaching attempts, I've discovered that this problem is fairly widespread, and has been around for many months, with a variety of phones and carriers, but I've not been able to find any solution, or response from Google acknowledging the problem, or offering a viable solution. The most common "fix" offered is to to a Factory Data Reset, which I consider a non-solution that misses the point entirely, and the variety of other proposed fixes look highly suspect to me. It may solve the probllem for an individual user, for the moment, but it does nothing to get to and resolve the root cause. I'm hoping against hope that the Froyo release will address this one, but I'm not optimistic, and I don't understand how Google has chosen not to offer hope or a real fix.

Comments

sHaY_j

You are indeed correct! It is a widespread issue and i've researched and saw that many customers had the second G-Mail account auto-forward all e-mails to the first G-Mail account. It worked for alot of customers going that route. Here's another option, Upon going into my gmail for the first account, touch the menu and one of the options should be, "Add account." Follow the prompts and add the second account. Try any of these steps and let me know if it works for you!

vicw926a4

Thanks for the response, Shaonte. Regarding your suggestions, starting with the second one. I've tried every route possible to the ADD ACCOUNT setup on the Droid X, all with the same end result, unfortunately.

I previously tried your first suggestion, forwarding all email from the second gmail account (my wife's) to the primary - it sort of works, but it makes for quite a mess in that it mingles all of the second gmail account emails into the first account. I quickly aborted that workaround as more trouble than it was worth.

In the meantime, I conjured up a slightly different approach to use as a workaround. I added in a little-used Roadrunner email account into the Droid X, and then set up the second gmail account to forward all of its emails to that Roadrunner account. It looks good so far. I am getting notifications on the Droid X of all new emails in that 2nd gmail account, actually the Roadrunner email account, and I can track the emails separately from my primary account. I can also flush them out of Roadrunner wihout having to peruse them carefully, and my wife's account is undisturbed. I don't consider this a true solution to this serious problem, but a pretty decent workaround, and it should keep me sane, at least until I find out if Froyo will resolve the problem.

I have no doubt, based on data which shows it present on a large variety of Android smartphones, on a variety of carriers, internationally, that this is a Google/Android programming problem, not Verizon, so I especially appreciate that you are acknowledging the issue, and taking the time to offer help.

Madmax24

I had the same problem adding a 2nd Hotmail account. I finally figured out that I was using the wrong port. Go back and look at the settings of your G-Mail that works and use the same settings for your 2nd account, except it must have a different account name.

vicw926a4

Thanks, but I don't think that's an issue with the gmail account setup. There is no port selection to be made, just USERID/Password for gmail.

Madmax24 wrote:
I had the same problem adding a 2nd Hotmail account. I finally figured out that I was using the wrong port. Go back and look at the settings of your G-Mail that works and use the same settings for your 2nd account, except it must have a different account name.

vicw926a4

I had planned to wait things out until the Froyo update, to see if it might fix the problem, but I finally decided last night to just bite the bullet, and do the Factory Data Reset, rather than wait and have more stuff to restore if Froyo didn't fix the apparent Google/Android software problem. I think it's a lousy way to fix it, kind of like taking a sledghammer to a 8 penny nail, but I was not able to find any other viable solution.

My point in updating this thread is to reassure any others coping with this problem, that it all went quite well for me, and it was successful in giving me the ability to have multiple gmail accounts.That ability is very convenient, compared to the workarounds, and should get even more convenient when Froyo arrives with more goodies in this area.

My large music and picture files on the MicroSD card weren't touched, and thanks to AppBrain, restoration of all of my Apps was relatively painless, although time consuming. I did to backups of Outlook, and temporariliy disabled my Companionlink syncs until everything was back in place, but there were no issues. I'm still tuning up my home pages to get everything where I want it, but I'm glad I put the problem behing me (I hope).

vicw926a4

In the Google Group forum for issue #8636, post #30 purports to a possible solution to this problem. I can't confirm that it works, since I have already done the Factory Reset on my DX, but for anyone still suffering with it, or using workarounds, this looks pretty easy.

It suggests that if you attempt to login the DX to YouTube, using the 2nd Gmail address, Google will automatically add that account to the phone. I don't know if it is necessary for that second address to actually have an account on YouTube prior to this.

Is this plausible? I don't know, and I can't confirm it, but here is a link to the forum:

Issue 8636 - android - Google sync: "Can't establish a reliable data connection to the server" - Project Hosting on Google Code

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