OK this is a real struggle for me.

Bought new laptop with Vista. Had issues so removed Vista and added XP. Ok that was not to bad. Needed parallel port. Added PCMIA/Parallel and that is fully functional. All programs on lappy.

First connect to EBL/ECU and my laptop screen starts flashing a toolbar(preferences-time date- etc). using a usb/serial adapter purchased at a computer warehouse store. serial has a red light lit on it. if i click on toolbar it will stop flashing but then stuck on toolbar. While flashing the cursor appears to be wandering and hard to control. seems the data being transmitted is somehow corrupting? Whats Up seems fine as long as not attached to ECU.

Any test I should be doing? comments?

 

Try unplugging the USB/serial adaptor then booting up the laptop. Once fully booted plug the USB/serial adaptor in.

If XP sees any activity on the serial port during boot up it thinks that the user has plugged in a serial mouse. I've seen this on my laptop with XP. What a stupid OS.

RBob.

 

I have a vista computer and EBL. I could never get the usb to work for me. I have express34 port on my laptop and ended up buying a express34 serial port adapter. Vista takes getting used to but works just fine. If you don't have any luck try a pcmcia serial port adapter should work like a champ.(I understand you changed your OS)but all will be well.

 

Update. Serial to USB working. EBL/Whats up is working fine. Datalogged and created new .bin with LearnVE1. Also Innovate software and datalogs fully functional. BUT the "fully functional" PCMIA/Parrallel cannot detect the Prominator for reasons UNK. I will check with them and ask for direction.

 

A minor procedural addition......
Having had so many "problems" with USB/Serial adapters with anything and everything from ALDL, to GPS units...
So that windows ( most any version since W95 ) consistantly assigns the same com port to the USB adapter, plug in the USB adapter but with NOTHING connected to the serial connection, then boot up windows. Windows will consistantly assign the same com number to the adapter this way. AFTER windows is running, and the mouse well behaved, then connect the serial connection to the adapter.
Beware of re-boots !
It's a legacy "feature" going back to Win3.x and possibly earlier, that if windows finds a serial port, and ANY type of serial data during boot, it assumes it has found a Microsoft serial mouse, and trys to use that mouse.
There's a registry hack that can fix this, but I'm very hard pressed to remember it.

Strange that this doesn't happen so often with real serial ports.