System ported to W7 64bit

[Richard Naninck]

Well, that's good news.
Go look in your windows logbooks to see why HB crashes. Find the specific reason (dll) and see if it is always the same reason.
This is how I found my HB crash. I located the faulty dll, replaced it with my old XP version and all was fine.

[Steve Horn]

"...your windows logbooks"?

Where can I find those? I don't have any experience debugging this kind of stuff. I expect things to actually work. Imagine that.

[Richard Naninck]

Uhh, my version is in Dutch so the actual English name maybe different but press the start button and start typing 'log' and see what pops up in your start menu. It should be easy. Or google windows logbooks to get the answer. This is the easy part the rest is supposed to be somewhat more difficult..

[Steve Horn]

Thanks for the clue. Will look into/for it tonight.

On the velleman k8055, the doc says you talk to it thru calls to its dll. And it gave some examples, the closest to my understanding of which was in VB. So I should think there would be a way to call its subs using VBS. I need to look into that too. Good thing winter is approaching... (Never thought I'd say that.)

[Richard Naninck]

If you can talk to the unit through the dll using VB, you also can talk to it through vbscript. The unit works with the standard software on W7 64bit, so don't worry... you will be fine in the end.
If you need help on starting the vbs, let me know.

[dlmorgan999]

This is very encouraging Richard. I'm running on very old hardware (still on the original PC I built back in 2005!). I've been wanting to rebuild for quite a while but I was worried about getting drivers for my various hardware.

Now my hand is being forced. My HB server was acting strangely a few days ago and now after trying to reboot, it won't even pass the power-on self test (side note: after having had an automated home for so long, I'm currently going through withdrawl!). I'm hoping it's just a bad power supply. In any case though, this has motivated me to build a new PC and start moving HB to it.

I have a number of serial ports like you (I think I have 18 or so). Additionally I have a USB-UIRT and the USB caller ID box (I can't remember the model right now, but it's the one that Scott recommended). I think that's about it.

I've been toying with the idea of building this as a virtual machine to run on my VMware ESXi server. Serial ports pose a problem in that scenario as VMware supports motherboard serial ports, but not the add-in cards. I've seen USB multi-port serial adapters and I'm thinking those might work. There are a number of nice things that come along with running this as a VM, but given the importance (to me) of HB, I may just stick to the known and build a new box.

[Steve Horn]

I had the same problem with my old HB server. Would not boot or pass POST. My financial planner slash PC wizard suggested unplugging the data cable to the HD and see if would pass POST. It did. I then replugged the HD and it booted normally and its been running ever since. But I decided to move to a new box anyway.

[dlmorgan999]

After closer inspection, I discovered at least a couple of blown capacitors on the motherboard (not surprising given its age). I just ordered all the parts to build a new PC. Now I just hope I'm able to get the entire configuration working on the new box.

[Richard Naninck]

So you are without HouseBot these days. That hurts
I have two sets of identical hardware to overcome just that problem. My system is loggin all kinds of data on an hourly basis and I don't want dbase holes in my data. Furthermore it just control too many things now that I have become used to as comfort so I choose not to do without if I can help it.

[Steve Horn]

Agreed! While my HB was down while I was migrating to the new box, I had to revert to manually turning on/off lighting, and using fistfuls of remote controls. Arrghhh. Still need to deal with the velleman K8055 driver speaker switching issue.

[dlmorgan999]

I've been without it for a week now, and it's driving me crazy! I've done so many things with HB and I've had it for so long (6-7 years) that I'm very accustomed to it. My home theater is so involved that over the weekend, I elected to watch a movie in another room rather than trying to remember how to manually turn everything on.

I thought I had good redundancy (mirrored HD and a nightly full backup using Windows Home Server) but I like the idea of duplicate hardware. I may have to consider that.

[Steve Horn]

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I thought I had good redundancy (mirrored HD and a nightly full backup using Windows Home Server) but I like the idea of duplicate hardware. I may have to consider that.

The RAID Concept taken to the extreme - redundant everything. If you do a DIY build or buy a refurb, the hardware is not that expensive. Aggravation insurance?

[dlmorgan999]

Exactly! I bought all the hardware for the new build (excluding the OS as I already had an unused copy) for $550. To me, that would be cheap aggravation insurance.

[Richard Naninck]

For me dual hardware was simple because I had a second media pc based on the exact same hardware. Now I don't anymore but together with a friend of mine we share the same hardware. Two things that need to be in stock are: a second motherboard and a second CPU. Both of those cannot be bought after a few years and if you don't want downtime you simply need an extra set and it costs maby 150$ together. Spread over two homes it's a 75$ investment. Other PC's in the house carry the power supply and memory (4 x 4GB) can never be the issue nor can the system harddrive be because I have just too many old 500GB drives doing nothing at moment..
My old hardware just ran old. W7 didn't have the mobo drivers for it so I had to replace it anyhow.

[dlmorgan999]

My new hardware will be here tomorrow and I'll work on building the new PC over the weekend. One question I have is this. As long as I install in "Program Files" as opposed to the x86 folder, should I just be able to copy pretty much the entire folder structure for Meedio from my old PC and everything will come up correctly?