Having problem registering a driver on Vista

[BadMouth]

Gonna give this one more shot before reverting to XP, moving up to Win7, or finding an alternative method to rotate my monitor.
I'm trying to use Vista because I already have a copy and it supports DirectX11 which I'd like to have for Demul.
I'd rather not buy a copy of Win7 until I build a newer pc.

I'm trying to use inpout32.dll and a few other things so I can use the parallel port pins with mrotate.
I've followed a few tutorials for loading unsigned drivers, but I always get this message and I don't seem to have gained any control over the parallel port.


One of the things I came accross said that Avast antivirus had prompted them to delete DllRegisterServer and I have been runing Avast on this PC since it was previously my primary computer.
I searched my Vista DVD for it and came up empty.

Anyone have some insight? 

[Howard_Casto]

Your pc will most likely need to be put in permenant test mode, which will help with a lot of issues,  UAC will also need to be disabled completely. 

Finally, unless you are running the 32 bit version of vista, you'll need to use inpout64.dll, not 32.... 32 just doesn't work well with 7/vista.  In general you can't just use the same dll regardless.  There are vista-specific dlls out there. 


Out of curiosity how many pins do you need and how are you controlling them?  The parallel port isn't exact future-proofed anyway, so it's best to go ahead and use a usb solution if at all possible.  A teensy can be had for as little as 16 dollars and it has several i/o pins and is easy to code for. 

[BadMouth]

I have UAC turned off.  Had it in test mode, but it didn't make a difference.
I'm also not sure that this error message would prevent the driver from working.

The 64 bit package I downloaded included both inpout32.dll and inpout64.dll
I assumed I was supposed to use inpout64.dll, but then I got an error message from mrotate that it couldn't find inpout32.

From what I understand upon doing more research is that the inpout32.dll included in the 64 bit package is for 64 bit Operating systems, but is for 32 bit programs being run on 64 bit OSs.  inpout64.dll is for 64 bit programs being run on 64 bit OSs.
 

I'm far from a programmer, but I'm capable of following instructions.  I've hit stumbling block after stumbling block on this one.
I think the problem lies in DllRegisterServer missing or stupid Vista ownership of it being assigned wrong.
Troubleshooting is made even harder in that all the programs I've found to test the printer port don't work on 64 bit OSs.

A USB option would be much less hassle.  I can get by with two outputs and a ground if I wire the limit switches into the power.
Just need rotate left, rotate right, and ground.
I have an LED-Wiz that I hadn't planned on using on this cabinet.

Not sure if it would come into play, but I'm using SGT's "all in one gamelist" method where all games appear in one list regardless of emulator.
Mala launches a batch file and that launches the appropriate emulator based on which folder the rom was found in.
Because of that, it would probably be best to use the rom name that Mala passes (%1) and get the rotation data from MAME.xml or Mala gamelist (both contain all info regardless of emulator).

[Howard_Casto]

You can use a 32 bit dll on a 64 bit system BUT if I'm not mistaken the 32 bit version of inpout doesn't work in vista.  The reason you are getting an error with mrotate is because the program wasn't written to use the 64 bit dll.  You can't just swap them unfortunately. 


I seriously doubt it's a registration problem btw... it might be a permissions problem, but in win xp and beyond all you have to do is sit the dll in the same folder as the program calling it and windows will automatically find and use that dll unless it's manually registered in another location. 

I wouldn't use a led wiz if you weren't planning on using it for anything else, that' s a waste of money.  You can get avr's for just a few bucks these days and if they support arduino anybody can code for em. 

I"m not sure what that error message is about btw.  tabctl.ocx is an old active x control commonly used in vb6.  Unless that dll has some really strange coding, I dunno what one would have to do with the other.  It's a generic file though, you might want to just download one and put it in your system folder to see if it helps.  Also dumb question but you are launching the command line as administrator right?  Because you can't always register stuff via regsrvr unless you do. 

[yaksplat]

if for no other reason than things like this, VB6 needs to die already.

[BadMouth]

You can use a 32 bit dll on a 64 bit system BUT if I'm not mistaken the 32 bit version of inpout doesn't work in vista.  The reason you are getting an error with mrotate is because the program wasn't written to use the 64 bit dll.  You can't just swap them unfortunately.

 

The original inpout32 did not work on Vista64, but this is supposedly a 64 bit version with the same name.
Someone else (I'll have to research who) got mrotate working with Vista64, so it is possible unless Windows updates closed some loophole it was exploiting.
Here is the x64 author's page if you're interested (if not, I understand    )
http://www.highrez.co.uk/Downloads/InpOut32/default.htm

I seriously doubt it's a registration problem btw... it might be a permissions problem, but in win xp and beyond all you have to do is sit the dll in the same folder as the program calling it and windows will automatically find and use that dll unless it's manually registered in another location. 

Not sure why, but DaOldMan explicitely states that with 64 bit OSs, it won't work with inpout in the same folder as mrotate, even if it's in both places.

I"m not sure what that error message is about btw.  tabctl.ocx is an old active x control commonly used in vb6.  Unless that dll has some really strange coding, I dunno what one would have to do with the other.  It's a generic file though, you might want to just download one and put it in your system folder to see if it helps.  Also dumb question but you are launching the command line as administrator right?  Because you can't always register stuff via regsrvr unless you do.

tabctl.ocx is one of the files that inpout32/64 came with that I'm trying to register per the instructions.
Yeah, I'm launching the command line as adminsitrator.

I've tried so many things at so many different times, it all blurs together. 
I should probably start over from scratch and try again.

I may just start experimenting with installing directx11 on XP.
I came across a tutorial that involves copying a bunch of files over from Vista, but it sounds like BS and I've never heard of anyone else pulling it off.

.....or I could just install a switch to rotate and do it (gasp)..........manually. 

[Howard_Casto]

if for no other reason than things like this, VB6 needs to die already.

Oh how wrong you are.  Most of my apps are in vb and this issue has NOTHING to do with visual basic. 

[Howard_Casto]

What in the world did you download?  Because I just looked at the site and tabctl.ocx isn't included with the dlls at all!

Also did you download and install the proper vc++ runtime as described on the page, because vc6 uses that stuff as well. 

[Howard_Casto]

Wait... sometimes I forget myself. 

Mamehooker can do parallel port i/o and it actually uses the inpout32.dll..... I don't have a parallel port on this system but I just tried it in win7 64 and it didn't error out.  You might want to try that to try and narrow down the problem.  If by some miracle it happens to work mh supports command line usage, so you could use it in place of mrotate

[BadMouth]

What in the world did you download?  Because I just looked at the site and tabctl.ocx isn't included with the dlls at all!

Also did you download and install the proper vc++ runtime as described on the page, because vc6 uses that stuff as well.

It was probably in with DaOldMan's other needed files downloaded from the download section here at BYOAC.

Pretty sure that I attempted to download the runtimes, but already had them. 
I printed out the page I linked to earlier and will cross everything off as I work through it this time.

Thanks for your help.