WMDC starts Outlook in background then fails to sync cos Olk is ru

Having eventually persuaded my Pocket PC (WM 5.0 with patch to read Vista
file formats) to sync with my PC (Vista Ultimate 32, WMDC 6.1) I am left with
a wierd and annoying problem.
With outlook closed (check in Task Manager) I start WMDC and connect to my
Pocket PC (turned on). After making the connection it tries to sync, but I
get an error saying the files are in use by another program which I need to
close.
I can see in Task Manager that Outlook has been started in the background,
so I close it in TM.
It appears WMDC has started Outlook in the backgroung and this makes the
sync fail!
Then I sync again, and it completes with no errors.
Is there a way to fix this?
--
Hopefully