XP sending signals by serial

Hi,

I've just upgraded to XP Professional at work, and now I'm seeing a bit of odd (and very annoying) behaviour. Whenever I connect to my Empeg with a serial cable, it starts switching tracks every second or so. I'm assuming that XP is trying to talk to my Empeg by sending a signal down the serial cable every so often.

I can prevent this by connecting to it with, for example, HyperTerm, since this seems to grab the COM port and prevent anything else from using it.

I'm guessing this is just an XP problem - but does anyone have any ideas why it's doing it, and how I can stop it?

Cheers,
Bryan.

Hmm.. Interesting.
I have XP Pro as well and it doesn't do that with my unit, though I do have a Mark I instead of a Mark II which is what I assume you (as well as most people) have.

I Have XP and I don't have that problem. could be your hardware?

I use XP Pro and have never seen this. The first thing that comes to mind is HotSync. You might have a USB Palm, but HotSync Manager may still be listening on the serial ports. However, I would imagine HyperTerm wouldn't work anymore if HotSync was listening on those ports. OK, the HotSync idea may be a little far fetched...

Guess it could be - when I say that I didn't have the problem when I was running Win2K, the only bit of hardware that's common to my setup then is the main hard disk...

I have got an IR adapter plugged into the other COM port, so it may be that the sync software I use with my phone could be misbehaving.

Well, I've got into the habit of starting hyperterm before I power it up now anyway, but it's still a pain.

Bryan.

Bryan i'm almost positive thats your problem. Even though its using a different com port, poorly designed software will leak information to the other comport. I had the same problem somewhat. I have an X10 device that remotly controls my lights in my house, when i loaded the "firecracker" software that controlled the Serial dongle, it would mess up my other comports rendering them useless.

Pete

I've brought another serial cable in from home (the one I got with my Empeg originally), and this one doesn't cause it to happen so I guess there's something screwy with the cable I was using. Bit odd that it never happened before, though, 'cause I've been using the same cable for well over six months with my old PC and Win2K.

I can probably find someone to blame around here, though - it's a home-made jobbie that seems long enough to connect to my car out in the car park...

Bryan.

rule of thumb, don't go any longer than 50 feet with RS-232 serial.

Hi.

rule of thumb, don't go any longer than 50 feet with RS-232 serial.

Yeah, but I have used a RS422 serial cable (with one converter to RS232 on each end) as long as 150feet to connect my empeg. Worked great.

I probably won't ever do that again though. It was only a test to check the cables, and my empeg was the only serial device that was available at that time (apart from my PC obviously).

cu,
sven