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Socket IO 8510-00054 L
Dual PCMCIA Serial Port
Hyper Threading Driver Fix

     Summary: I purchased a dual high speed serial card for PCMCIA for my new Toshiba laptop (A75-S229) with Windows XP home edition and the drivers installed first time out and worked fine. The next time I booted the computer, it either stalled prior to the login screen or powered down. Selecting the "Last good configuration" option, the computer would boot to windows but crash again should I power down, or lock up the mouse at the Windows desktop. Only the power switch could cycle the machine.

     Thank the gods for XP system restore, which let me revert the system to the last change before the card install, which fixed everything. I installed a single serial card (In my only slot!) and installed its drivers. I'm using a USB to serial converter and the system is happy. A web search provided many pages of people sharing my frustration, most of them pointing to a problem in Windows (Fixed in XP SP1) with multi function PCMCIA cards tied to the hyper threading behavior of the OS. (Multifunction cards are a must on at least this laptop because there is only one slot!

     Socket IOs service website was somewhat convoluted and provided a "Fix" driver zip which the system refused to recognize as containing valid drivers: Register my product and beg for mercy from Socket IO technical staff...

Q: I followed the packaged installation instructions and ended up with a non booting PC. I found (Reference Page: http://www.socketcom.com/support/support_serial.asp), reverted my system to the previous day to remove the just installed driver and then tried to install the indicated driver from the unzipped files (SktSioXp.inf etc). I pointed windows to the unziped file location to which it responded that it could not find any drivers there.

A: I looked up your computer model online and it looks like it has a HyperThreading processor. Our driver seems to have issues with that. If so we could try an alternate DIO driver to see if that will fix the problem. Go through these instructions to uninstall the card and then reinstall the card using the aleternate driver. Do this withouth a mouse plugged in. Once the card is installed, go ahead and plug your mouse in.

1a. Insert the Dual Serial card and do the following: (You may have to skip this step if you can't work with the card inserted)
1b. Right click on "My Computer” (It should on your desktop or in the Start menu)
1c. Select Properties
1d. Click Hardware
1e. Click Device Manager
1f.   Expand Multifunction Adapters
1g. Right-click on Generic Multifunction PC card and uninstall.
1h. Remove the card.
1i.   Once that is done, the card entries should be uninstalled and out of the computer.

2a. Now we have to clear any files out of your system that might conflict with the install.
2b. Click on Start > Run > Type "inf" > Click OK
2c. This should open your INF folder. Go to the files that begin with "OEM".You should have several and they should be in pairs. One should have a "pnf" extension. Double-click on the file that does NOT have the "PNF" extension and look for the name "Socket Communications". When you find the files that contain "Socket Communications", close it and delete both of the files that correspond with that number file. Go through the entire list of OEM files and delete any that say Socket Communications. Once you're done, close out of the INF folder.

3a. Next we need to clear out your registry to avoid any conflicts there.
3b. Start > Run > Type "regedit" > Click OK
3c. Follow this path FIRST: double click the folders in this order: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Enum
3d. Look for a folder called MF.
3e. Double-click on this folder to see if there are any entries listed that have socket as part of the name. If you do see these folders right clickand delete them. You may need to right click and edit the permissions for the folder to allow FULL CONTROL so that you can delete them.
3f.   Delete all Folders with socket in the title.
3g. Next continue by going down the folder list under Enum and look for PCMCIA.
3h. Double-click on this folder to see if there are any entries listed that have socket as part of the name. If you do see these folders right click and delete them. You may need to right click and edit the permissions for the folder to allow FULL CONTROL so that you can delete them.
3i. Delete all Folders with socket in the title.
3j. If you have other ControlSets labeled ControlSet001-009, you will need to follow the two paths above for each ControlSet looking under MF and PCMCIA for any socket entries. If you do find any delete them.
3k. Delete each entry under these folders for each control set.

4a. That should clean your system of any trace of the Dual card. Reboot and install the card with this driver: http://www.socketcom.com/ftp/HTfix.zip
4b. After you install the card with this alternate driver let me know if that resolves your issue.

Thank you,
Donnie
Socket Communications Technical Support

Conclusion: I'll let you know after I follow these rather lengthy instructions, I'm just happy to feel like I'm making progress!