On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Tom Messenger wrote: >Hoping someone on this list knows the answer to this... > >We have a software ap running on a notebook computer with Windows2000 >system. There is a pcmcia card with a serial port stuck in to interface to >external hardware. The customer has it setup to startup automatically into >the application program. > >The problem is that about 10% of the time, the program starts up and either >hasn't found the plugin card yet or it somehow gets configured wrong. Then >the program runs but won't allow comms. The user must exit the program and >restart it. > >It appears to be simply due to how windows starts up and how/when/where it >recognizes the plugin card. If this is so, does anyone know how to control >this behavior so the card is found 100% of the time? Write a wrapper that tries to access the card and keeps trying until it succeeds, then when it succeeds it runs the app. It can also take other action if the card is not detected, like, reboot (again), and/or write a log. These things are extremely common on Unix (not because the OS fails to recognize something though ;-). On DOS/W32 the easiest wrapper is a batch file with a ERRORLEVEL conditional goto after the test program to jump aruond the application to be run if the test failed. On NT you would use shell scripting I think. hope this helps, Peter -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu