win10 CAT (and DAX)

Guenter, DK1RI

After installing Win10 Smartsdr worked fine - except :
- CAT will not start with the error massage
means : the service was not found...
Is there a problem with the .NET? I did not found a new one, which could be installed with win10.
The messages appears always after booting.

- DAX: I uninstalled SmartSDR a few times due to the problem above. After reinstalling DAX did not start up with a message like "devices are busy". Uninstalling did not remove the DAX devices. But doing this manually helps. So it is not a real problem, just a hint. I did not realized this behaviour with Win7.

Guenter

Jim Gilliam

Any chance another computer is running SmartSDR at the same time?

Walt - KZ1F

"Is there a problem with .NET?"

There are some of us that think there has always been a problem with .NET. In fairness, some would disagree. I am not one of those bravest (or most foolish) of souls that did the upgrade to Win10. Consequently, I haven't been paying seriously close attention to the myriad of complaints of Flex software not working after the upgrade. I believe, however, people have been successful completely uninstalling everything Flex, well, certainly 6000 related, and reinstalling everything then rebooting the computer.

Tim - W4TME

This error means that the FlexVSP driver which runs as a service is not running when CAT is started.

Try the troubleshooting processes in this HelpDesk article.
https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/205000829-Troubleshooting-FlexVSP-Not-Running-Error...

Jim KJ7S

I found that, in a couple of instances, (w10 betas and full release)that when I reinstalled SSDR, I did it once with radio off, then if the dax/cat etc. dIdn't work, I installed again without uninstalling and with the radio still on, and it worked...YMMV. Dax and Cat started with no problems.

Jim Gilliam

I am living the best of both worlds. One can Easily add a second SATA drive to almost any computer. Usually there one or two spare power connectors and the motherboard usually has at least two or three  unused SATA female connectors. A SATA cable costs about 79 cents and I am using a Samsung 250 GB SSD from amazon for about 100 dollars. I use the SSD for Windows 10 and the primary drive for Windows 7. It is so easy to set the BIOS to boot on either of the two drives. That way you will always have Windows 7 while you are getting the bugs out of 10. Also having a spare drive makes it easy to very quickly make backup images of both operating systems.

Jim, K6QE

Tim - W4TME

Let's not deviate too far into a philosophical discussions on the merits or lack there of related to Windows.  Guenter has an actual problem he is trying to resolve so lets focus our responses to helping out a fellow ham rather than waxing poetic.  Thanks.

Jim Gilliam

Very sorry, thought some might like having both worlds while resolving difficult problems.

N7BCP

I had a similar problem with windows 8'1, the cat service had not started by the time the cat client started. I disabled the cat client in startup and just waited a few minutes before starting the cat client.

Guenter, DK1RI

Tim,
Sorry, I did not mentioned before: VSP is not in the programm list. II tried to install manually as mentioned in your link . The install process run with no immediate error, , create a icon but the error was the same after reboot. repair is not possible, because there is nothing installed.
The second part of the link: the services.msc applet do not show a line " virtual serial port kit.
Larry:start cat later will probably not work, because vsp is not installed.
Quite late now, will be here tomorrow. tnx

Tim - W4TME

OK.  Is it possible that a PC security suite or firewall is preventing the driver from installing?  If you have one of theses running, temporarily disable it and try it again.

If that isn't the case or it doesn't work, I think we'll need to open a HelpDesk ticket and dig into this a little deeper.

Jim Gilliam

I had a similar problem if we are talking about FlexVSP. It would not install and Dudley directed me to start a couple of .dll files. That did not work and it turned out there was an unidentified corruption preventing the VSP flie from installing. I eventually did a reinstall of Windows 7 and that cured the problem.

Tim - W4TME

Yeah, the reinstallation of the OS is a bit of a "nuclear option" that we do not like to resort to using, but in some cases it is warranted.  One nice feature of Win10 is the in place "Recovery Refresh" option that will reverts any OS upgrade to a "clean" Win10 installation.  The downside is that this removes all of your previously installed applications and device drivers while leaving your personal data (Documents) intact.

Guenter, DK1RI

I do not want to go back to win7...
I have windows firewall control running. I shut it down, did a reinstall with same result.
Cat was working with win7, I updated to win10 and got the error message. I do not remember wether the Flex Comports 4/14 survieved the update.
Meanwhile some COM Ports were created by USB - serial converters; but now, there is no COM port at all (also no hidden one), because I deleted all of them. I tried the last SmartSDR reinstall without any installed COM port.
May be, the following helps:
I use the USB- Serial Converter with the terminal program HTERM for my MYC project. With one converter attached it worked ok with WIn10. Attaching a second one rusult in no function at all. The problem disappeared on sunday suddenly: I had not done any change. May be the reason was as win10 update.

I have another (newer but slower) Win10 Laptop. In will try this one and let you know.

Guenter

Guenter, DK1RI

I instaled SmartSDR on a Dell corei5 1,8GHz, which seems to be quite slow (I did not found the reason for this).
After some reboots and adjusting the firewall everything seems to be ok. No error message. Comports are created, Programmlist is ok. CAT and DAX is in the taskbar. I can open he CAT Menu and the Radio appears there.
I used COM4 in Easypal but switching to transmit is not working; also not  with firewall control disabled).

May be this is a minor misconfiguration only, but I do not want to follow this, I do not want to use this laptop, also because the graphic resolution do not match the second display I use to display SmartSDR.

So I would prefer to work with my other Laptop Sony VPCF22S8E.
Because I use the CAT only to switch the PTT (with Easypal, FreeDV etc) I can press the PTT button. But a solution of the problem would be better.

73
Guenter

Tim - W4TME

Guenter - it is not hard to revert back to Win7, remove all of the SmartSDR components using this procedure:https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/204975589-How-to-do-a-Complete-uninstall-of-SmartSD...

Do the Win10 upgrade again.  And then install SmartSDR.

it will be easier than trying to undo the mess that the Win10 upgrade caused.  ANd you will probably get it resolved faster as well.

Jim Gilliam

In future upgrades of SmartSDR, wouid it be possible to write a program that wouid do all of the uninstall procedures that you have carefully outlined?

Jim, K6QE

Tim - W4TME

In the future, I hope there are no more Windows operating systems upgrades that behave this way that would require this.

Jim Gilliam

In trying not to be too waxing poetic, perhaps we should all hold hands in prayer!

Burt Fisher

As good a company as Flex is, you don't seem to get which company has to work with which company.  I wish Microsoft had one percent of the customer service Flex has however. Does Microsoft even have customer service?

Walt - KZ1F

The difference is who is the end user. I can answer that about Microsoft, to them the end user isn't the individual, it is the companies like monster. com, U.S government agencies. BTW, ditto for Dell Computers.

KY6LA_Howard

You can get good customer service from MS but you pay for it as a Corporate Customer. On The Other Hand consumers don't like to pay so Customer service reflects what they pay.

Walt - KZ1F

Correct, I won't say here what that number was, in the case of MWW, but it was well well into the millions per year. Howard is correct on his second point as well. CA has thousands of engineers, around 10, many...most have corporate paid MSDN subscriptions $1,000/copy and 10,000 copies. This is the quantification of why would anyone with zero **** with the vendor ever use the vendors new or beta product. Supportability isn't an FRS issue, beyond does it work, the issue is owned by those individuals that either accept the risk or haven't factored in a realistic level of risk.

Guenter, DK1RI

I would like to go back to original problem.
Tim:
As you had written, I did a new install of win10 - but a little bit different. After lots of frustration going back to win7 I tried a clean install of Win10 from DVD. I extracted the activiation key from the update before. I read, it would not work with this key - but it worked. Then the installation was without major problems. And because I have my data and (most) programs on my personal (USB) cloud   installation of the other programms will take one houer only.
First programm I installed was SmartSDR and Easypal. Both are working now...

So: A clean installation from scratch is a good choice sometimes.

Mni Tnx
Guenter

Tim - W4TME

We only test and validate our products on "clean" installs of operating systems.  When you add an operating system upgrade into the mix, all bets are off.

I am glad everything is working well for you now.

K0UNX

THIS JUST IN from Kim Komando!  She issued a link to help resolve Windows 10 audio issues.  Here’s the link:
http://www.komando.com/happening-now/322321/how-to-fix-those-windows-10-audio-issues?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=notd&utm_content=2015-08-21-article_2-cta

Burt Fisher

Not uncommon