Anyone else have issues with the USB expansion card on Windows Vista?

xenon

xenon

Owner of Canada Corals
Ever since I switched from RS232 to USB it's been sketchy.

I thought it might have been my PC acting up but I recently got a new laptop and its acting the exact same way.

I can’t keep it connected for longer than 5mins. I need to unplug the USB cable and plug it back in but sometimes that does not work. Then try and use a different USB port. Eventually all USB ports no longer recognize the USB card.

I have uninstalled and re-installed the USB driver for vista so many times I have lost count. I am thinking about installing XP on my laptop and dual boot two operating systems just so that I can get a solid connection to the Profilux.
 
Yes me to, gave up on the usb as no matter what I did it was not stable. My son makes PC for a living and even he could not get it to work correctly, sometimes you had to reboot the PC to do any changes.
Cheers
Pete
 
I have a degree in computer science so I am not a newb when it comes to computers.

I know for a fact the Vista driver needs work. I have not tried it on windows XP yet.

The only other option is getting the wireless network card. I just cant justify the price on those suckers!
 
Unless you need the serial connection for something
else you could get a usb to RS-232 (serial) adapter.

The one I under staand that works well with Vista is the

Keyspan USA-19HS

It is the one I carry to talk to routers and the like, it works
well under XP though I have not personally used it on Vista.
 
Install the latest driver as mentioned on 3 seperate threads

if you have done that then follow the normal support route and email us.

if you have an issue we cant repsond unless we know about it and the route of support as posted here is email.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14385953#post14385953 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by AQD_ottawa
Install the latest driver as mentioned on 3 seperate threads

if you have done that then follow the normal support route and email us.

if you have an issue we cant repsond unless we know about it and the route of support as posted here is email.
Click to expand...

Email sent. Thanks!
 
We need to start a Poll to find out if people are having issues on a PC or laptop.

Mike is saying these disconection issues are strictly laptop related due to vista's unique port sharing feature on laptops.

I have used the GHL USB card on a PC and laptop with the same exact results.
 
Dan that is not what i said please if you are going to bring email correspondance into a forum please be factual

here is my email

Hi Dan

It depends on what your issues is.

If it is disconnection when using the ProfiLux control on a lap top then sadly this is vista at its best and its unique port sharing! I get them same issue with my camera and any other friggin devise long term connected to a lap top.

I have yet to come across any issues pc based.

-

USB a its best can be finicky, the drivers for USB are made NOT by GHL but licensed by Microsoft, sadly not even GHL have control over that one.

Most issues reported back to GHL are found to be a conflict between different USB devises installed on the computer, for some reason there is a higher rate of lap tops having this issues than PC, I am no comupter geek so have no idea why, but was told by one user somethign to do with the way windows shares its USB ports.

If there was a big issue this forum would be littered with tech support cases and GHL would be working flat out to resolve. GHL cant control what is on everyones computers.
 
Last edited:
Hmm.. I read your email again and I don't see any difference.

Disconnection when using the ProfiLux control on a laptop is a unique port sharing issue in vista.

I had the same problems on my PC. I would love to hear if anyone else has these same issues on their PC as well.
 
see edited above

As the email reads "I have yet to come across any pc issues" that meaning I do not have one single USB disconnection issue on our support database, not saying there are not any, just none reported to me "as yet"

If people do have connection issues then have a look at other USB devises that they may have installed, conflicts are not uncommon, and not isolated to GHL either, I have two cameras that hate each other on my pc!

As only posted today

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1575241

Q. I cant figure out a setting so the profiLux must be faulty!

A. More and more of these sort of posts are appearing on the forum. And if you follow the thread through 99.999% of the occassion the issue is resolved. So i ask of you, please do not post such statements, if you can not work something out, contact us either by forum or by email, just because you cant work something out does not mean the devise has a fault
 
Last edited:
I see what you are saying now.

I should uninstall anything that requires a USB port and see if that resolved my issues.

Then I can install them one by one and see whitch device is causing the conflict.
 
A question to all PC experts:
is there no option to give an usb-device a fixed COM-port number in Vista?

Let me tell what we do: We use a ready-to-use USB interface in our PLM-USB-card with Prolific chip and ProfiLuxControl just accesses the virtual COM-port which is provided through the Prolific-driver.
So we have no chance to do any troubleshooting, we can just hope that this chip and this driver and the used operating system like each other.
I know there are some problems with USB and Vista, but we can't do anything to solve them.
(BTW: USB is not the only problem of Vista - all our workstations in our production still have XP because Vista is good for hearing music or playing games - my opinion)
 
I just finished formating my laptop and restoring the OS back to the way it was configured the day I bought it.

I installed the ProfiLuxControl II V4050 software and then the "PL2303_Vista_Installer" USB driver. Once I plugged in the USB cable it detected the card and said it was successfully installed on COM Port 4.

I was able to connect but a few minutes later I got a connection error. I was not able to reconnect so I unplugged the USB cable and waited 10sec then plugged it back in.

error1.jpg


This time it would not even recognize the USB card.

error2.jpg
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14392512#post14392512 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Matthias Gross
A question to all PC experts:
is there no option to give an usb-device a fixed COM-port number in Vista?

Let me tell what we do: We use a ready-to-use USB interface in our PLM-USB-card with Prolific chip and ProfiLuxControl just accesses the virtual COM-port which is provided through the Prolific-driver.
So we have no chance to do any troubleshooting, we can just hope that this chip and this driver and the used operating system like each other.
I know there are some problems with USB and Vista, but we can't do anything to solve them.
(BTW: USB is not the only problem of Vista - all our workstations in our production still have XP because Vista is good for hearing music or playing games - my opinion)
Click to expand...

I work with Vista almost everyday and in production
environments and yes t has it's fair share of troubles,
most of my clients have stopped rolling it out.

I have a USB to Serial adapter (as listed above) I'll have to hook
up and test to get youa real answer but I am fairly sure that
there is a way to hard set the serial port to a specific com port
since I use that function when I program routers and the like.
 
Last edited:
Yes there is a way. (at least with my stand alone adapter)

1. First of all it should be mentioned that you should install
the drivers first before you ever hook up the USB device.

2. Re-read line 1

After the driver is installed you did read lines 1 and 2 right.

Go into device manager
(right click on my computer, properties, device mgr option on left)

Ports

Your adapter (not sure what the Profilux one is called)

Right click on your device and select properties

Select the port settings tab,

Click on the advanced button.

You should see a box that lets you select the com port.

Select the desired port.

Ok your way back out through the screens


I'm not 100% sure if the chipset used in the Profilux adapter will
allow you to set it up the same way but it still should allow this.

If not than then Matthias will have to get the usb chipset
manufacturer (Prolific) to get him an updated driver for that
chipset since they do not supply one to end users.

Hopefully this helps
 
Last edited:
Thanks so much for your help Harry!

I don't have "Ports" in my device manager. I plugged in the usb cable and it keeps connecting and disconnecting over and over without even touching the cable. lol

This is what my device manager looks like.

error3.jpg
 
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