PCI MAX driver trouble and a fix - work in progress

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pcs
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PCI MAX driver trouble and a fix - work in progress

Post by pcs »

Just got a friendly email today from Steve, he found a workaround which helps the driver problems
without having to move the card to another PCI slot.
I am also looking into this while I'm updating the driver for the 2007 version.

To sum it all up for now:
1.) Try the 2006+ driver first. If it doesnt't work, take 2004 from our site (support section)
2.) You can try the below described fix, but it involves working with registry and is not for the faint hearted.
3.) We are finally working on driver for 2007+ so expect a new driver these days (this time for real)., that is if
Bert the forum spammer lets us use the forum. Otherwise we'll close the forum and you can all thank him.


Hi Marko!

I have a little fix for people having trouble with the PCI Max card being detected as a network card in Windows.

It seems that once this happens, Windows refuses to re-check the PNP info for the card, and instead refers to its own registry settings from the first erroneous detection. This is what necessitates moving the card from slot to slot.

The solution is simply to delete the bad entry, and restart or rescan for hardware changes.

On my machine, it came up with the following registry entry:


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_6159&DEV_0001&SUBSYS_00010001&REV_00

As you can see, the Vendor ID comes up as "6159" which is invalid. The PCI Max I received, when correctly detected, comes up as VEN_E159 (Tiger Jet Network). I don't know why the error occurs, but the solution is to simply delete the bad key, rather than move the card to a new slot.

However, this requires the user to find the key using regedit.exe, and change the permissions to allow "Everyone" to delete it.

It can then be removed manually or scripted.

I used regedit scripted from a command file containing just one line to invoke regedit and open a .key file:

regedit /S removeerroneouspci.key

The file "removeerroneouspci.key" has just two lines:

REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_6159&DEV_0001&SUBSYS_00010001&REV_00]


It should be possible to change permissions and delete the key using Microsoft's newer "regini.exe", but I am not familiar with the syntax, and regini is more platform dependent and must be downloaded in a toolkit from Microsoft by the user.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Steve, Canada
Last edited by pcs on Sat Aug 18, 2007 8:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Marko - PCS Electronics
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Failed Locking Device

Post by Herman »

Installed PCI Max2007+RDS and came up with the error Failed Locking Device & second error Access violation at address 004696FF in module 'Pcimax2007+.exe'. Read of address 00000070. We remove the key and insert the new key as said in the previous solution in the forum, but still give the same error, even run install.bat afterwards, tried also drivers and software from PCIMAX2004, 2005, 2006, give the same error even removed the card to other pci slot, still the same errors.

Any advice will be great!!! For a solution, maby PCS need to review their drivers.
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Post by pcs »

In this case it could be a HW problem with the card. I suggest testing it in another machine and
contacting me directly, if not successfull.

So far it seems the new 2007 driver has fixed the sw problem with the drivers.
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Marko - PCS Electronics
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Post by Vibe »

So far it seems the new 2007 driver has fixed the sw problem with the drivers.
And where would these new 2007 drivers be located..??
The CD that came with my 2007 didn't contain a single driver for 2007.
Got a download link..??

Thanks In Advance
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Post by pcs »

Best regards,
Marko - PCS Electronics
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Post by sjmoore »

Hi, I am the Steve who found the above fix on my PC - but it doesn't work for me any more.

The Device Vendor ID coming from the card is 6159, and no amount of uninstalling/deleting and rebooting will correct it.

This means the PCImax software can't find the card no matter what I do. (versions 2004 thru 2007+)

Changing the Vendor ID in the pcimax.inf file allows me to establish windrvr6.sys as the driver, but the application is apparently still looking for the E159 Vendor/Device ID.

Entries can be added to the HardwareID and CompatibleIDs keys in the registry to alias the card as VEN_E159, but the software still can't find it. The implication is that the software is looking at the Device Instance ID (i.e. the main PCI key) which comes from the card itself and cannot be changed.

If there is specific reference in the application code to the E159 Vendor ID it needs to be removed and abstracted to find the value specified in the .inf file.

I really like this card when it works, and I hate to see an otherwise great product suffer because of these annoying problems. I was a software developer myself for 14 years, so I can sympathize with your difficulties, but you simply have to crack this nut before you go forward. It may well be that the EPROM code in the card has somehow been corrupted in production, but if you can address that with PC software it beats the hell out of sending cards back and forth halfway around the planet for repair.

Any assistance you can give me would be great. I live in a small town and everybody has been listening to my station for over a year. I hate to disappoint them, and I just can't seem to get this thing going.

Many thanks

Steve
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Post by pcs »

Stephen,

I will be working on this device ID thing this week. What I plan to do
is include a number of various inf files to cover all bases. Next thing
will be to make sure driver finds the card under all circumstances.
I hope to have a new much more robust driver by monday.


Sorry about the pain you have to go through :(
Best regards,
Marko - PCS Electronics
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Post by sjmoore »

Thanks Mark.

The way Windows and the BIOS handle these things is very confusing. For instance, after deleting every reference to Jungo and PCI Max and the driver class ID in the registry, and forcing the BIOS to update ESCD, Windows still came up with Jungo/PCI MAX 2007+ (VEN_6159) for the card on reboot. It is likely that the BIOS did not really update the ESCD entry for the card, but I can't tell without a low-level monitor.

Regardless, removing the main PCI registry entries, AND moving the card over a slot, successfully detected the card as E159, and I am up and running again!

This may help those who have moved the card through all available slots and can't get their PC to re-detect it. I am not sure how Windows persists this data outside of the registry, but it seems to do something pretty funky. BTW I am running Windows 2003 Server.

Very best regards,

Steve
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I've updated the driver

Post by pcs »

Ok, I've been looking into this more and have updated installer to delete all suspect
registry entries automatically at install and uninstall.

In theory it should work like that: If you get stuck, uninstall the PCI MAX 2007+ program, turn the PC off
to ensure complete reset of pcimax card, install the 2007+ driver again and you should be fine.

If this does not fix it, try the same, but at power off also move the card to another slot.

(If it still isn't working, contact me via our contact us page - technical support and I will work with you to solve the problem).

You can also try manually removing these registry entries:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_E159&DEV_0001&SUBSYS_00010001&REV_00
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_6159&DEV_0001&SUBSYS_00010001&REV_00
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_E159&DEV_0001&SUBSYS_00014001&REV_00
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_6159&DEV_0001&SUBSYS_00014001&REV_00

Marko
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Post by pcs »

I've got a possible fix, anyone willing to test it simply download this file,
unzip it anywhere you wish and run it.

Important notes:

This will only work if your pcimax card has been installed and shows
in system manager, but you are unable to run the program since
it reports that the card cannot be found and asks you to move it to
another slot.

Install 2007 driver first (if not yet) and than run this program (if the original
does not work as expected).

Than post your results here.
http://www.pcs-electronics.com/software ... lusfix.zip

This will finally bring us closer to final and complete solution.
Best regards,
Marko - PCS Electronics
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Tried updated 2007 drivers and same situation

Post by SteppedUp »

Hi Marko,

Definitely appreciate your continuing to run this down, as I really like the PCI Max 2007's potential.

But I'm still in the same situation:

With card out of the box, clean out all the registry keys for pci max, pcimax, jungo, and 6159 (6159 actually turns out to be in ControlSet001 and 002 as well as in CurrentControlSet (and it looks like I now have a CurrentControlSet2 as well with just Enum/PCI/VEN_6159...).
Uninstall the software, double-check the registry, run WISE registry cleaner.
Reboot. Install the new 2007 drivers uploaded on August 17th.
Turn computer off, install card in a completely different slot, and turn the computer on. Card gets detected as a "Network Controller" and I point it to the new drivers on the C drive.

Windows says it can't install because "The hardware was not installed becaue the wizard cannot find the necessary software."

Check the registry and the 6159 key is back in there.

Sorry for the bad news...let me know what other steps I should take to get this fixed!
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Post by pcs »

No worries, I am fully dedicated to solving this problem now and
I am closing-in to the final solution. Won't stop until I get there.
I'm pretty sure a major break-through is just days away.

Than we'll have a solid driver that covers all bases.

Give me a few days and please try any test any driver versions as soon
as you can, your feedback is invaluable.
Last edited by pcs on Tue Aug 21, 2007 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by pcs »

http://www.pcs-electronics.com/software ... sta_en.exe

This might even work in Vista, but I don't have any Vista machines to test it.

Feel free to give it a try yourself and keep me posted about your results.
Best regards,
Marko - PCS Electronics
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Not quite there...but progress!

Post by SteppedUp »

Hi Mark,

Definitely looking better!

After uninstalling the software, cleaning all keys from registry (jungo, pci max, pcimax), taking the card out, etc. Reinstalled.

It does recognize the PCI Max card now, but is now getting an access violation error via two pop-up messages:

1st: Unable to open PCI Max Card...yada dada. Click OK
2nd: Access Violation at address 00469787 in module 'Pcimax2007+.exe' Read of address 00000070.

So I tried that 2007+fix file you uploaded above just on the off-hand it might work...same problem.


Feedback on the latest installation program:
I had to make a folder called \Pci Max 2007+ in C:\Program Files, and drop the install folder in there. Otherwise, windrvr6.inf wasn't be found during installation.
On reboot, the system indicated that it had found New Hardware PC MAX 2007...before I had completed the hardware installation. So, I canceled it. Of course it wasn't installed already, so no dice. Wiped out everything and tried again, and same thing. Finally wiped everything again, and I just continued installing it and it seemed to work at least to where it recognized the card.



Anyway, it's almost there, and I'm looking forward to the next round!

[/img]
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Post by OblioV »

pcs wrote:http://www.pcs-electronics.com/software ... sta_en.exe

This might even work in Vista, but I don't have any Vista machines to test it.

Feel free to give it a try yourself and keep me posted about your results.
Mark: This changed my symptoms, but did not fix my problems. When I click on the PCIMAX2007+ icon, I no linger get the error messages, and the card initializes and starts transmitting at the defaults (100 MHz and Mono) but I never see the program window itself, so I can't set anything.

Then if I click on the PCIMAX2007+ icon again, that's when I get my error messages (Unable to open PCI Max card . . . Access violation at address 00469787 in ,odule "Pcimax2007+.exe" Read of address 00000070.)

This is all very strange - it worked once for several weeks and now won't work at all. I am getting very frustrated.

I am running Windoze 200 Pro with a Matrox dual-monitor video card, if it will help troubleshoot.

OblioV
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Post by pcs »

Hello!

Your program is set to appear in the taskbar (right bottom area in windows). You will find its
icon there, click it and voila, you're broadcasting :)

I should change default setting to disable taskbar. It was picked-up from my personal
settings at the time of compiling this setup.

All in all, we finally have a working driver! I have received multiple positive emails!

:D :D :D :P :P :P :lol: :lol: :lol:
Best regards,
Marko - PCS Electronics
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driver seems to working - with same symptoms as obliov

Post by SteppedUp »

Hi Mark,

Great news - I think this driver is working, but does seem to go directly into taskbar mode - as I have the exact same symptoms as Obliov:

When I click on the PCIMAX2007+ icon, I no linger get the error messages, and the card initializes and starts transmitting at the defaults (100 MHz and Mono) but I never see the program window itself, so I can't set anything.

Then if I click on the PCIMAX2007+ icon again, that's when I get my error messages (Unable to open PCI Max card . . . Access violation at address 00469787 in ,Module "Pcimax2007+.exe" Read of address 00000070.)

Thanks a million for all of your hard work - it's gotta be tough doing this by yourself, and my hats off to you!
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Post by pcs »

Hey, you can get it out of the taskbar by clicking the icon there.
But it is confusing, indeed.

There should be a check whether instance is already active with
error message saying "another instance of this program is already
active, check the taskbar".

Yep, work is very intensive here, most of the stuff is my own design
including board layout, Windows software, firmware etc.

But it is fun as well.
Best regards,
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Post by pcs »

Just recompiled the install package with new default settings,
also fixed some small details, such as 2006 being shown
in few places (relics from model 2006). Also changed
default rds settings

Anyway, it will now show on your screen and not in taskbar.

Now we need someone to test this in Vista :)
Best regards,
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Not sure what to do

Post by SteppedUp »

Hi all,

After trying the latest version, still same access issue. At this point, unless someone can spot something wrong with my installation procedure:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=d2frfs ... l=en&pli=1

I'm thinking about giving up. Hate to do it...but if it's working for everyone else but my computer, maybe there's some sort of basic incompatibility that I've been fighting.

I'm going to ponder that thought while I eat dinner and see if anyone posts any obvious screw ups that I did while installing.

Thanks
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