Minipac USB not recognized

[jlfreund]

Hi,

I've had a minipac running in my Win2k cab for about 6 months, and it occasionally (once or twice a month) fails to be recognized by the system.  There is always a simple work-around: reboot, unplug/replug to my USB hub, uninstall and search for new hardware in the system devices list.  So I don't have an exact description of the problem -- basically it's just flakey: bootup and get a question mark in the system devices list and controls don't work; leave the machine running and come back and controls don't work, etc.

I've searched and read about a lot of similar problems on this board with suggestions such as get a replacement board, get a powered hub, get a USB 2.0 hub, run some iPacFix registry cleaner, run the WinIPac programmer, etc.

A friend who was building his cabinet along side mine with the same parts told me he couldn't get his minipac to be recognized on his WinXP box, but it runs great under Linux. 

So I'm wondering if anyone can judge whether the minipac just has USB problems in Windows and I should live with it, or if minipac USB should work great, and I just need to try to diagnose the problem and try various solutions, like try different USB hubs, different minipac boards, etc?

Thanks,
Jason
 

[AndyWarne]

Downloading and installing the latest version of WinIPAC from www.ultimarc.com/download.html should cure this problem. If not, drop me an email
andy@ultimarc.com

[jlfreund]

Thanks, I had done that last week at a time when the minipac had a question mark.  But I didn't see anything in the WinIPac that would fix it (like a device driver).  I found the option to write key settings to the device, but I figured I didn't want to change my key settings and figured it wouldn't be recognized anyway if I tried since the device had the question mark.

When you say download and try the latest March 2007 WinIPac, do you mean that using the program to update the key settings (after I've worked around the question mark problem and the device is recognized) will also update some kind of USB-related firmware at the same time that could help my problem?

Thanks,
Jason

[AndyWarne]

The installer for the new version should have given a notification that an older device driver was being removed, and prompted for a reboot. This is the point at which the fix, if this applies to your board, would be done. But it sounds like something is not right so we can deal with it by email.
Andy