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Old 04-28-2009, 01:18 PM   #1
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Vista and VMSpc

We've been running Street Atlas and VMSpc on an HP laptop with XP Home for the past several years. We bought the USB to serial adapter through Silverleaf to allow us to connect their cable to the laptop. Everything has run fine.

The laptop is now 4 years old and I got nervous about it, so I ordered a new HP laptop but this one is AMD Dual Core 2.2 running Vista 64bit. Without a driver for the USB serial adaptor, Vista will not allocate a Comm port and VMSpc won't run. I went to the manufacturer's websit (BAFO Technologies), selected the Vista 32/64 driver and installed it. The installation proceeds without error. When, however, the cable is plugged in, Vista recognizes it as new hardware, starts the install process and then either:
- blue screens with a buffer overflow error or
- hangs with horizontal color bars across the display.
A power off/on is the only recovery. One such failure resulted in Vista having to go through a long Recovery operation.

It is clear to me that the driver is not 64 bit Vista compatible. I researched the Microsoft website and found another manufacturer's cable/driver that MS says is 64bit Vista compatible. I downloaded and installed the driver and have ordered the cable through Amazon. There is no guarntee that the cable is not going to crash Vista or that if the cable completes the installation, the result is going to work with VMSpc. I won't know about either of those until the cable gets here.

I had written to a second manufacturer and they also claim Vista64 bit compatibility. It was more difficult finding a supplier for their cable, however.

In case anyone else is struggling through this problem, at least you will know that you aren't alone.


Charlie
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Old 04-29-2009, 05:59 AM   #2
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From day one, there have been many problems with driver and hardware compatibility with Vista. Most manufacturers have overcome this while some continue to struggle today.

Your approach to solve the problem seems right and I hope you arrive at an easy answer. As a suggestion contact HP Tech support about this. They would know a lot about hardware compatibility on their computers. I have done this many times with problems on my HP and they always had the solution.
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Old 04-29-2009, 09:54 AM   #3
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Thanks for the suggestion about HP support. If, when the cable arrives, it doesn't work, I might do just that. I guess I've become rather jaded about most technical support. Our company has been nearly taken over by India technicians and the combination of their language problems and, in many cases, total lack of technical background so that all they can provide is reading from a written script, has lead me to bypassing tech support in general. It is good to hear that HP doesn't have those problems. BTW, poor tech support is one of the reasons I wouldn't even consider Dell.

In talking with Silverleaf, the problem with compatibility on USB serial adapters apparently is greater than any one computer maker and not isolated to Vista.
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Old 04-29-2009, 10:09 AM   #4
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I forgot to mention that I like to use the HP Tech Chat feature as it gives you a printed copy of the exchange. Also I like their email Tech support too even though it is a little slower.
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Old 05-04-2009, 02:09 PM   #5
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Update - Fixed

The Keypath USB serial converter that I ordered arrived today. As I indicated before, I had previously downloaded the Vista 64 bit OS driver for the Keypath. When I plugged in the cable, Vista immediately found it and completed the installation. I plugged in the Jib box connector from VMSpc, launched that application and, after setting the correct Comm port, VMSPC displayed engine data. This was only a static test (engine was off) but I'm pretty confident that if the engine hours and miles display propertly, the rest of the gauges will, too.

So, the source of my frustrations was yet another software making declaring that they made a compatible driver when they didn't. I wish that there were just a little honesty about such things.

Charlie
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Old 05-05-2009, 12:34 PM   #6
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Charlie,

Make sure when you use the serial adapter to plug it into the same USB port each time. If you plug it into another USB port than the initial install, it will assign different serial port and this is where most of the problems start, when you have multiple serial ports assigned. This has been my biggest frustration with the serial port adapter. So I put a sticker on my laptop above the USB port that was initially assigned to VMSPC.
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Old 05-05-2009, 12:42 PM   #7
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Thanks, Harry. Being a creature of habit, I've always plugged all of the USB cables into the same locations. Life is just easier for me to be consistent. I'm happy to know that I've dodged a bullet in doing so. Even with my consistency, Windows always seemed to flipflop Comm 5, Comm 6 for VMSpc under XP. I'd hook everything up, start the engine and then have to fix VMSpc while I was waiting for the air to come up. Making sure the tach is registering is one of the first things that I do. BTW, the USB port that I use for VMSpc is the only one that is on the left side of the laptop so it is easy not to get things mixed up.

I'm anxious to try the new HP on the road now. Street Atlas 2008 performace is very much improved over the way that it ran on the old HP laptop. There never was any conflict that I could see between VMSpc and SA. Moving from a 15" display to a 17" display is also an improvement. SA displays almost the same as if it were on a standard 14" laptop, with the way that I set things up.
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