Craig Smith
That was easy!
- Joined
- May 25, 2001
- Messages
- 1,147
Well everyone, here's the latest on what I found with Windows XP.
First off, no matter what operating system you use, if your laptop says Toshiba on it, put it in the trash. Seems like every time I talk to someone with some funny laptop problem, the unit is made by Toshiba. Today was no exception.
We have a Toshiba laptop in from a customer. Equipped with Windows XP and no serial port. A Belkin F5U-109 adapter was with it. As near as we can tell, this adapter simply won't work with a FAST system. Tried all sorts of stuff on the Toshiba, on Lance's XP-equipped Dell (which is the brand to get), and on my Win98-equipped Dell. Nothing we could think of made this adapter work. This is particularly odd in that the customer uses this adapter with his programmable MSD stuff.
Went and bought a Belkin F5U-103 adapter. Tried it on the Toshiba, no luck. (At this point things got ugly with the Toshiba.) Loaded it on Lance's laptop and it worked perfectly!
So now that we know the F5U-103 works, we tried to get the strange Toshiba problems figured out. At this point, every time I plug the adapter in, the laptop reboots, and won't boot back up unless you disconnect it. After a couple tries at getting around this, the laptop got to the point where it would not boot at all, no matter what you did. Further investigation revealed that an entire directory of system configuration files deep within Windows has somehow vanished. We had to reload Windows XP just to get this laptop working again.
Once we got the laptop back up and running, we again installed the F5U-103 serial adapter, and it works like a champ! Whatever was preventing it from working in the first place is a mystery, but it was obviously deep-rooted and quite serious.
As I learn more about other adapters I will share this info.
First off, no matter what operating system you use, if your laptop says Toshiba on it, put it in the trash. Seems like every time I talk to someone with some funny laptop problem, the unit is made by Toshiba. Today was no exception.
We have a Toshiba laptop in from a customer. Equipped with Windows XP and no serial port. A Belkin F5U-109 adapter was with it. As near as we can tell, this adapter simply won't work with a FAST system. Tried all sorts of stuff on the Toshiba, on Lance's XP-equipped Dell (which is the brand to get), and on my Win98-equipped Dell. Nothing we could think of made this adapter work. This is particularly odd in that the customer uses this adapter with his programmable MSD stuff.
Went and bought a Belkin F5U-103 adapter. Tried it on the Toshiba, no luck. (At this point things got ugly with the Toshiba.) Loaded it on Lance's laptop and it worked perfectly!
So now that we know the F5U-103 works, we tried to get the strange Toshiba problems figured out. At this point, every time I plug the adapter in, the laptop reboots, and won't boot back up unless you disconnect it. After a couple tries at getting around this, the laptop got to the point where it would not boot at all, no matter what you did. Further investigation revealed that an entire directory of system configuration files deep within Windows has somehow vanished. We had to reload Windows XP just to get this laptop working again.
Once we got the laptop back up and running, we again installed the F5U-103 serial adapter, and it works like a champ! Whatever was preventing it from working in the first place is a mystery, but it was obviously deep-rooted and quite serious.
As I learn more about other adapters I will share this info.