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Comm
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Communication Problems Or How To Make Windows 98 Communicate and Other Trivia by John Woody |
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Comm
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Communication Problems Or How To Make Windows 98 Communicate and Other Trivia by John Woody |
| Broadband bandwidth has taken a break from this column
for a month. We will get back into it next month when all my data is delivered.
This column is used to play catch up on all those little communication
and near communication events and objects which seem to be the bane of
our existence, namely Windows 95/98, the operating system. As may be known
by some of you, I am not the greatest fan of Microsoft.
Personal ProblemAbout three months ago, I think, I attempted to load a version of Symantec WinFax Pro on my Windows 98 machine. The version I had was evidently not Windows 98 qualified. It did not setup completely ever in the three attempts I made at loading it. I then obtained a copy of the latest WinFax Pro version 9.0 and proceeded to load it. This was three months ago. Problems immediately developed between WinFax and Windows 98. These problems centered around the Windows 98 Telephone Application Program Interface (TAPI) and control of the serial ports (Com Ports). WinFax claims to be TAPI compliant, which may or may not be true. My 3Com/US Robotics Sportster v.90 analog modem immediately stopped communicating to the outside world. The first of the version 9.0 WinFax installs brought the "blue screen of death" to Windows the moment I attempted to setup and test the modem in the WinFax setup wizard. After about ten tries, i was able to get past this problem and have the program fully install and set up the modem, except the modem would not communicate with the rest of the world.The modem would check out as working properly in a Control Panel | System icon | Device Manager tab | click modem test. However, in the Control Panel | Modem icon | Diagnostics tab | More Info.. Button, I received a screen named {OpenComm} stated that the comm port was already in use or that the port could not be opened. This was and still is the outcome of my setup with WinFax installed or uninstalled and with a replacement analog modem. There is very little information available about TAPI as I have learned. I have now purged the machine of everything I can find concerning application use of Comm Ports. I now know a great deal about the Windows Registry. The problem has not been solved. I suspect that there are residue entries in the Registry that I have not found. The built-in Microsoft Fax application may have left Registry entries when I turned it off. This saga is not completed yet. If anyone else has experienced something similar to this let me know. I have had help from a Windows 98 Web site, whose URL is: www.waynesworld.com. Try it out and send Wayne an e-mail about where you got the URL address.
Windows 98 UpgradeSpeaking of the devil, Microsoft announced in March that a major Windows 98 upgrade will be released during the second quarter of 1999. This release will be called Windows 98 Second Edition and will incorporate both the Service Pack 1 and Service Release 1. As I understand it, both will cost us as users money. The Service Pack 1 is suppose to take care of the bugs in the original Windows 98 issue and the Service Release 1 is the new version of Windows 98. The combined release will be available to all users on CD for $89.00. This is a bit of a rip in that the Service Pack should be a free issue to solve the problems inherent in the original Windows 98 operating system. Combining the update and the new release will probably be a one-for-one trade out, one fix for one new problem. According to the articles I reviewed, there will be a Windows 98 after 2000 with a Windows 2000 Personal Edition release in 2003, if we are still around after the end of the year, read Y2K.New features include Internet Explorer 5.0?, Dial-up Networking (DUN), support for Universal Serial Bus (USB) and Internet Connection Sharing. What can I say, even GM got the Suburban right after 25 years, maybe Microsoft can get browsers right after five releases. We need an up-grade to the current DUN utility. Shared Internet Connections have been needed from the beginning of the Home Office, Small Office idea. The Shared Internet Connection allows one Windows 98 machine to share its modem and Internet connection with other machines in a network. Bandwidth will suffer, but it will provide cheap multiple connections for home use. USB will feature device swapping of peripherals. This can be done with the current USB utility, but is "enhanced". Other new features include WebTV updates for TV tuner cards, DirectX 6.1, NetMeeting 2.0, and support for asynchronous transfer mode networks. Microsoft has promised in this release to turn off the transmission of other Microsoft registration numbers back to Microsoft during the Windows 98 registration process. This is a security breach of broad magnitude. Microsoft stated that they did not do anything with the transmitted data. What the articles did not say was anything about the known problems with Windows 98, i.e., why does it crash twice a day. There was no mention of any fixes for known or early problems. But, these fixes will cost us the price of the operating system. There may be a cheaper download process before the release comes out.
Experience with USBI did have some experience with USB in trying to solve my WinFax problems. I looked at and tested a USB analog modem obtained from Altex. The USB port in my machine detected and connected with the modem without any problems. The modem fell into the Comm Port blackhole, so I did not keep it. The USB port worked without any problem. Just remember to turn the USB feature on in the system BIOS and then use a card or motherboard connection to complete the hardware portion of the installation. USB is the PC toy users dream because one can hook up as many as 127 devices on one USB channel. I may return to this modem device when the Comm Port problem is solved.USB works in a limited fashion in Windows 95 OSR 2.1 and works much better in Window 98 as I found out. USB functions under a specification standard which calls for two-way data channels and operates from 1.5 Mbps to 12 Mbps. Devices are plugged into the machine through USB cables and hubs which can be cascaded up to 127 devices. USB eliminates the need for ports, IRQs, and DMA channels. The Windows 98 standard includes three classes of drivers, WDM Streaming for digital video and audio, WDM HID for human -interface devices, and STI USB interface drivers for scanning and application launching. This is the subject of another column in the future.
Lessons Learned during the Comm Port SagaWindows 98 is unstable to a great extent. The Application uninstall utilities do not always clean everything up. Backup the Registry before doing anything with it. There are lots of extraneous entries in the Registry after applications and operating system utilities have been removed or shutdown. Make an emergency boot disk for your windows 95/98 machines and keep it up to date. Do not make a printed copy of the Registry unless you really need to.Learn to open the Microsoft System Information screen in both Windows 95 and 98. The only way I have found to open this utility in Windows 95 is through the Microsoft Office Toolbar. I am able to right click the MS Office icon and select {About Microsoft Office} then select {System Information}, which then opens the utility. This gives me the Windows 95 version of the old DOS Microsoft System Diagnostics (MSD) screen, which tells much about the operating system and machine. In Windows 98, use the {Start | Programs | Assessories | System Tools | System Information} to bring this utility up. The Registry file consists of two files, which have taken over most of the WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI functions. In Windows 95, this operating system data is stored in two files, SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT, and automatically backs each up as SYSTEM.DA0 and USER.DA0. A Microsoft Recovery Utility (ERU) located on the Windows 95 CD creates the emergency boot disk, which contains a copy of the Registry and other configuration files. A text file called ERU.TXT found on the Windows 95 CD under \Tools\Misc\Eru explains the details. Windows 98 improves on the backup security of the registry by making five separate backups. Each backup is compressed and placed into "cabinet" files named Rb0000.cab, Rb0001.cab, etc., in the \Windows\Sysbckup folder. Windows 98 runs a utility called SCANREG using the command line {scanregw/autorun} each time the machine is booted. This utility can be manually run any time you feel you need to back up the Registry, say before making a change to it by selecting {Start | Programs | Assessories | System Tools | System Information}, then select the {Tools} pull-down menu item and select {Registry Checker} from the menu. Follow the screen directions to make a manual back-up. To restore the Windows 98 Registry, hold down the Ctrl key while the machine=s power-on self-test is running to get to get a DOS prompt and then run SCANREG/RESTORE to get the good Registry back-up. This process is controlled by a text file named SCANREG.INI in the Windows folder.
V.90 ModemsTwo recent articles I have reviewed indicate that our current v.90 modems may be the last modems we will need to purchase. Many of the hardware manufacturers are building the modem functions into the motherboards in their systems. Also, the broadband technologies are getting cost effective enough to cause most of us to move to the high speed stuff like ISDN, ADSL and Direct Cable. By the way, the new modem I obtained was a 3Com/US Robotics Courier V.Everything modem. It=s lifetime warranty and upgrade policy sold me on the extra cost.
ConclusionWhat does all this have to do with Communication? Everything, in that if it doesn=t work, then you can=t communicate. As soon as my analog modems work again, I am going to get back into the computer-to-computer communication as part of the Small Office, Home Office series. I am itching to run some remote access applications like PC AnyWhere between two locations along with security controls to demonstrate that capability.John Woody is a networking communications consultant specializing in small office, home office networks, training setup, and internet connectivity.
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