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More Info... (Win95/98/Me)

This little section gives screen shots & describes the use of this applet. A similar result can be obtained with any OS by sending "ati0i1i2i3i4i5i6i7i8i9" (no quotes) to the modem from a Terminal program whilst NOT online.
Contents
How to get there
This applet should be used whilst the modem is NOT in use.
    open My Computer
    open Control Panel
    open Modems
A screen shot of my own system is shown at right. What is being shown is not the modem itself, but rather the modem software driver which allows the computer to talk to the modem. Windows® gives these drivers a name which normally (not always) is similar to the modem.

Points to check:

  • Is there more than one modem driver? Unless you know exactly what you are doing there should be just one modem driver to one modem. Having, as an example, two sets of drivers on the same com(munication) port can cause both drivers to be inoperative.
  • "Cannot Detect Modem" Duplicate and/or multiple modem drivers is almost certainly the reason for this message. In particular, you will find that the modem listed within the General page of DUN Properties is one that is either not working and/or missing. Fixing this falls into easy & difficult varieties:
    • Easy Fix: if a driver upgrade has caused a name-change, there should only be one driver here, & it is a simple matter of re-selecting the correct driver within the General page | Connect using... section of DUN Properties for each connectoid.
    • Worrisome Fix: Sometimes one of the multiple drivers works, & selecting that one as in the easy fix will restore connections
    • Difficult Fix: Much more often, none of the multiple drivers will work properly. It is tempting to use the 'Remove' button on the General page of Modem Properties for the none-working drivers, but usually these will reload from it's INF file the next time the machine is started, and the Registry & Hard Disc are left littered with rubbish even if the INF file is also removed.

      Much better is to search out an uninstall file for all the drivers, restart the machine & reinstall the modem from scratch. This can be a long, tedious affair, so good luck, but remember - some form of registry corruption almost certainly caused extra drivers to reload in the first place, and that needs fixing, or it will all happen all over again.

    • Wierd Fix: It may be that the problem is actually due to corruption in DialUp Networking, & not multiple drivers at all, in which case start here.
  • Check the COM port Some old communications software does not work unless the modem is on Com ports 1, 2, 3 or 4.
 Modem Diagnostics

Another issue to consider is Interrupt Sharing:
  • If the mouse [or anything else] is on ports 1 or 3 then the modem wants to be on ports 2 or 4.
  • If the mouse [or anything else] is on ports 2 or 4 then the modem wants to be on ports 1 or 3 (but also see below).
A typical symptom of this problem would be a fatal exception or system freeze whenever the serial mouse was used during connection [PS/2 mice do not occupy a com port]. This is because ports 1 & 3 share the same interrupt (4 in my case), as do ports 2 & 4 (9 in my case). This can cause endless problems.

An obvious question with interrupt sharing is - why? Briefly, in the early days of the Windows platform interrupts were in short supply, and the designers used interrupt-sharing to be able to provide 4 communication ports. As the hardware evolved a way was found to provide more interrupts but, in the interests of backward compatibility, Com port interrupt-sharing was maintained.

Fortunately, soft modems usually contain a virtual Com port & with plug 'n' play will obtain an interrupt that does not clash with the standard interrupts enumerated above. The More Info... button (below) can be used with each Com port to determine if your system is suffering interrupt clashes - each Com port with a device attached must have a unique interrupt and unique address. Devices on Com ports which share interrupts and/or addresses must not be used at the same time.
 
Obtaining the Info
Highlight the com port that the modem is on & press the More Info... button. A little dialog will come up and, if everything is OK, in a few seconds the dialog as at right appears:

The first point about this from a trouble-shooting point of view is that it has appeared without error messages and that lots of information is shown - success! (some of the Responses may well be "error" - this is normal).

The second point is the actual information.

Modem More Info...

Port Information
Soft Modems
Soft Modems add a further twist to the tale, in that they often implement the UART and/or com port in software (a virtual UART and/or virtual Com port). This will be a disaster if the computer's CPU is too slow, or if there are system-errors.

A correspondent has pointed out to me that some soft modems are softer than others, in that Controller-less modems move only the controller functions (e.g. AT command parsing and Compression/Error correction functions) into software, whilst other soft modems put the whole damn lot there, consisting sometimes of nothing more than a PCI interface & DAA on a board. This means that virtually every function of a modem is handed to the cpu to perform, and some cpu's are not up to it.

AMR (Audio Modem Riser), CNR (Communications & Networking Riser) or MDC (Modem Daughterboard Card) modems are yet another variant. These cheap little devils (beloved of OEM computer suppliers) contain a DAA (Data Access Arrangement) on the card - allowing access to the telephone network - and, basically, that's it. The motherboard contains a DSP (Digital Signal Processer) chip which is used by the modem software, but everything else is soft, soft, soft.

One difficulty is to know that you have a soft modem, as some manufacturers seem shy of identifying their modems as such. Clues include:

For those who like rules:
Soft Modems - Operating System Errors
The final issue, particularly with the soft-soft modems, is the integrity of the operating system. As these modems rely on the OS to do the business-end of a modem, any endemic systems errors will have direct impact on the functioning of the modem. Cynics will say that this is a good reason for not putting a soft modem into a win95/98/Me OS (drivers to host soft modems on Linux are now appearing - see the PC-Tel 1789 56k HSP as the first example; see also Ambient MD563X-HaM, Lucent Mars, & Smart Link HAMR5600TM).

PCI Bus (includes AGP and/or ISA) Problems Soft modem operations are time-dependant during connection and make heavy use of the PCI bus. There are known problems with certain graphics cards and sound cards which will intefere with this use of the PCI bus.

Clues & ways to check for OS errors are:

ATI Responses
These are "AT" [for attention] and "I" [for information] commands 1-7 sent to the modem by the computer. The response is the result sent back by the modem to each command sent. Any Terminal program can also be used to produce these results whilst NOT online.

Of particular importance are ati3, ati4, ati6 and ati7. Importance & result varies modem-to-modem, but generally ati6 gives clues to the modem chipset & ati3 gives the modem driver version. Please note that some manufacturers deliberately put non-informational responses into these information commands.

In What's My Modem? these responses are used to help identify the modem. Another way to obtain a print-out of these responses (Windows® only) is to use the program called mdu.exe. This was developed by & is copyright BVRP Software, & can also be sourced at modemhelp.com. It principally sucks info from the Registry but will also print out the ati responses if the com port is selected.

Errors with More Info...
Then the computer cannot communicate with the modem & at least a potential reason for not working has been discovered. A typical error message is
Finding Programs loaded at system boot
Program Loader Section Location
StartUp menu <Windows> \Start Menu\Programs\StartUp
<Profiles> \Start Menu\Programs\StartUp
autoexec.bat   C:\
config.sys   C:\
msdos.sys   C:\
winboot.ini   C:\
wininit.ini   <Windows> folder
winstart.bat   <Windows> folder
win.ini load=, run= <Windows> folder
system.ini boot section <Windows> folder
control.ini Userinstallable.drivers <Windows> folder
registry HKey_Local_Machine Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
registry HKey_Local_Machine Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
registry HKey_Local_Machine Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices

Errors with More Info...(cont.)
Ctrl+Alt+Delete - the 3-fingered salute
Windows is notorious for system crashes and, with Win95/98, this is the almost-last-ditch solution to escape from such a crash. It brings up a list of the tasks (programs) running on the computer and gives options to end a specific task, shut the computer down or cancel the dialog. With winNT it is the means to log-on, which shows that some Windows®' programmer, somewhere, has a twisted sense of humour:
  • hold down the Ctrl key on the left-side of the keyboard
  • whilst you hold the first key down, press and hold down the Alt key
  • whilst you hold the first two keys down, a single press of the Delete key
Depending on the state of your system it may take upto 20 seconds for this dialog to appear.

Windows® attempts to detect programs which are not responding to system-requests, and marks them as such in the task-list. If you End-Task such a program a second dialog will probably appear after yet another delay, and confirming this dialog will actually kill the program. DON'T KEEP WORKING! Windows® often suffers collateral damage from a dying program, so close all open programs and shut down/restart the computer.

There are two programs in the task-list which must not, ever, be closed down:

  • Explorer - this is Windows Explorer
  • Systray - this is the System Tray, where the time sits
It is also worth saying a few words about the way that Windows saves files. You may think that having pressed "Save" that that is the end of the matter - the last 4 hours of work is now safely on the disk. Hah! how innocent you are. Windows® treats most such instructions as requests which it then completes in it's own good time (this does depend on the programmer). Memory is much faster to work in than from Hard-Disk and so, as far as possible, everything is kept in memory. The file in memory will be marked as closed and, when it has a quiet moment, Windows will write it to disk. This is why it is so important to go through the Windows® Shut-Down procedure - all files in memory are closed and written to disk. It is also the reason that the 3-fingered-salute dialog contains a Shut-Down button - at least all files saved to date can be written to disc.

And finally, at the top of this little section it was said that the 3-fingered-salute is the "almost-last-ditch" solution to escape from a win95/98 system crash. The last-ditch solution is, of course, to switch off the power. If the paragraph above is re-read it will be realised why this is not recommended. If you have an ATX system even this will seem not to work! The power-button on these systems needs to be held in for 5 seconds before the power is cut. And don't worry - it fooled me the first time I came across it.