Technical Note #1620
Troubleshooting Scenario #1
Application affected: Highway 101 Date Created: 9/25/96 Version Number: 3.0 Last Modified: 9/25/96 File Date(s): all Created By: Mike Rimov Type of Note: Troubleshooting Additional Info:
Keywords: modem troubleshoot windows workgroups com port US robotics USR
Summary:
This technical note is used as a training guide, an a real-world example of how to solve a more difficult installation issue.
We will examine a user's system and outline the steps taken to correct the problems.
Details:
In our example, John Doe has a Pentium 120 MHz, US Robotics Sportster Internal 14.4k Modem (Older style, not SI), Windows for Workgroups 3.11. 16 Mb RAM.
When Installing Highway 101, he had the software attempt to detect his modem. Highway was unable to locate the modem. When he finished installing the software, the modem would sometimes dial out, but he would always get the message "Login Failed"
Solutions:
The fact that Highway couldn't find the modem tends to point to an IRQ conflict. (This is different than Highway not finding an exact match for the modem).
During the interview process with the end user, it is discovered, that he installed the modem himself. This can often be a problem because most users take the modem out of the box, and install the modem without changing the COM ports to make way for the built in serial ports.
We had the end user find which comm port his mouse was on by having him watch the boot sequence until the mouse driver gave the message "Found Mouse on COMx" (in this case it was COM1). It was also determined that a serial mouse was the only Serial Port device installed on the system.
Since the system board was a newer design, and the Serial Ports were based on the motherboard, and not an IDE I/O card, we then had the end user enter the System Setup and disable Serial Port #2, and set Serial Port #1 to Base Address to 03F8h and IRQ 4.
We then had the end user adjust the modem's IRQ and Base Address settings to 02F8h and IRQ 3 (Standard for COM2). (See Tech Note 1553 - Standard COM Port Addresses and IRQs for more information on the proper settings as well as Tech Note 1616 - COM Port Troubleshooting using MSD for more information on locating the current settings for Modems).
Once we had the IRQ conflict resolved, we had the end user re-install the software. Highway 101 Setup could now locate the proper COM port that the modem was on since the modem and built-in serial port was no longer conflicting.
Now when connecting with his Service Provider however, John was receiving wierd messages about connecting to Compuserve.
Our next step then was to search out and remove all potential winsock.dll files. As we suspected, there were approximately 4 winsock.dll files that were not part of Highway 101!
The winsock.dll file that Highway 101 installs is located in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory and is as follows:
FILENAME FILE SIZE (BYTES) FILE DATE winsock.dll 31,429 4/23/96
Once the duplicate files were removed, and we were down to the winsock.dll that was installed by Highway 101, John Doe started having problems saying that he could not log in properly. This led us to the following steps:
- We had John turn all scripting off, as described in Tech Note 1570 - Switching Netscape's Scripted Login to Terminal Window.
- We clicked the tab "Show Script when Running"
- We discovered that when connecting, we got garbage. To remedy this, changed the Modem BPS rate (as described in Tech Note 1551 - Changing your Modem BPS rate) from 38400 (In this case) to 19200.
- We then clicked ok, and had Highway write all the changes.
After this, John was able to connect and even run his Compuserve account over TCP/IP through his PPP connection to his service provider.
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