Troubleshooting

Despite all our efforts, you may encounter issues when installing or using Belcarra USBLAN for Windows. These issues fall into two main categories:

• Installation issues -- getting USBLAN installed.
• Runtime issues.
• Features not working as expected
• crashes (BSOD, etc)

This following provides information that can assist to diagnose these problems.

The Device Manager

A key tool is the Device Manager. It can be used to uninstall USBLAN, determine if a previous version of USBLAN is already installed, and to determine the current status of the device.

The Device Manager is accessible from the System tab of the Control Panel

Within the Device Manager there is a list of all the system devices. If your device was successfully installed, it will appear in the Network adapters tab. Otherwise, it will appear in the Other devices tab.. In either case, a context menu (right-click) on the device entry will have a Properties option.

The properties page has several tabs, including Driver and Details

• The General tab shows the status such as This device is working properly or the message seen earlier such as The device could not start (Code 10). 
• The Driver tab shows the precise name and date of the driver
• The Details tab allows many pieces of data to be shown. Currently, the only interesting item is
• Hardware ID’s ⇒ the precise matches by VID, PID and possibly interface # (MI_xx) this driver supports

When the device shows in the network adapter section, then the Device Manager has matched the USBLAN driver to the device. If there is a a triangle and a yellow exclamation mark, then the driver has failed to start.

Installation Issues

Windows has a complex process to select and activate drivers. This can fail for various reasons.

• Another driver for the device is active
• Windows has already marked the device as inactive 

A key sign of an installation issue is when the device manager reports problems. The installation process may terminate with a message like “This device cannot start” or a message window may appear at the bottom right of the screen saying that the device driver installation was not successful -- and a characteristic failure sound from Windows is heard.

To diagnose this situation, refer to information from the Setupapi file:   C:\WINDOWS\INF\SETUPAPI.DEV.LOG (Windows Vista and later)  C:\WINDOWS\INF\SETUPAPI.log (Windows XP)

Runtime issues

Once installation is successful (the device appears in the Device Manager and at least starts to enumerate), then the key tool is DebugView. The strategy becomes:

• identify failure scenarios
• increase DebugLevel to 2 or more
• capture DebugView logs

DebugView

The Microsoft application DebugView can be used to capture some debug information from USBLAN

The following page from Microsoft describes the DebugView application and provides a link to download it
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx

After downloading the DebugView zip file, unpack it. Inside, there are only 3 files, including the DbgView.exe binary. Copy this file somewhere convenient, and then create a shortcut.

Except for Windows XP, modify the properties of the Shortcut using the Advanced tab of the the Properties to “Run as administrator”, as shown here:


This procedure is vital to capture kernel debug data.

Running DebugView

Once DebugView is installed, two simple options are needed to make it useful.

• From the Capture menu select Capture kernel events (Control-K)
• From the Options menu select Clock time (Control-T)

These options will be blocked unless the DebugView program is running as an administrator.

DebugLevel

Belcarra USBLAN for Windows has a DWORD registry key called DebugLevel. If you encounter problems, this key should be created (if not present) and set to 2 or higher before capturing test data.

Crashes

If there is a crash (BSOD), then Windows will write a report into the directory %WINDOWS%\MINIDUMP.