Techie Question

[LisaD]

I just visited my son's school and one of the teachers chased me down. Seems her Activboard is "acting up!" So I went in the room and here is what happened.

She has an Activboard 75 (the one with the IR "eye") and is connected via serial to her PC. Everything is physically connected as it should and the Activboard's lights are on. I looked at her task bar and there was a line through the icon. Aha! So I re-connected it through "find" and everything worked as is should. So far, so good. Case closed.

But when I did handwriting recognition, it didn't work (said it wasn't available.) So I restarted Activstudio. And then the pen stopped working.

Rechecking the connection showed it was still connected. I powered the board off and on and re-tried connecting with the icon in the tray and it showed it connected but the pen wouldn't work.

She said this happens off and on and they cannot figure it out.

I figured the best answer would be to ensure that she has the most recent drivers and software. She has driver 4.1.13.18 and Activstudio 3.6.14. (She doesn't have admin rights so we couldn't try that so I had to leave and I told her I would get back with her.)

Do you all think it is a driver issue? Just double-checking before I ask her to get her tech person to download it.

Could it be something to do with the age of the board? It's a pretty old one! Isn't there ways to update the Activboard's firmware? Is this something she should consider?

Anyway, thought I would ask before asking her to contact tech support. (I know, I know ..that's what she should do but I'm trying to be a helpful parent!)

Not a PC user so this is a little foreign to me!

Lisa

[markrobinson]

... Contact tech support :)

It is what a parent should teach their children

[Gerard Sweeney]

There's a few possibilities I'd run through.. Not all of them may apply to you, or even be possible to test but here goes:

If possible, uninstall the drivers and put on a different version. It sounds weird, but we sometimes go through phases where the driver packs in.. If it's V4, we put on V3 and vice versa. Putting on a different release of the same version doesn't always help, but V3 <> V4 works.

*Make sure the PC isn't running any other service which attempts to read the COM port. An example would be Palm's synch software which periodically polls the serial port and can result in a "port in use" block for other apps attempting to use it.

* Try replacing the PSU for the board. I mean the black "brick" that you connect to the COM port and mains. We've had a couple of instances where everything looks fine connection wise, but the PSU is on the fritz.

* Try a different PC temporarily

* Try a firmware update - carefully!!

* Swap coms cable with a different one.

* Try a different COM port on the PC, if you're lucky enough to have more than 1. Less likely nowadays (mutters something about progress)

* Try a USB adapter if a different COM port is not available.

* Uninstall and reinstall the COM port on Device Manager, and reboot at each stage.

* Reset the user's preferences - rename [My Documents]\ActivStudio or something when Activ isn't running - sorry, I'm at home so can't confirm folder name

There's bound to be others, but I need to go feed my twin 1 year old boys now - oddly enough, they're less than sympathetic that Dad's trying to help someone online :)

Cheers,
Gerard

[LisaD]

Thanks so much for all your help! I'll forward your ideas on !

Hope your babies are happy now!

Lisa