No UPS Panel under Power Options; how to enable?

[Ms. Linda A.W.]

I recently connected a UPS to my PC. The UPS has a USB connection to monitor
it's status. I plug the USB connection into my computer and Windows XP
recognizes the device as a USB APC UPS (is that enough initials ?). However,
when I go to the Power control panel, there is no "UPS" tab as there supposedly
should be according to the help.

I tried starting the UPS service to see if that changed anything, but it won't
start because it is not configured (!) Doh!

The UPS comes with custom software that can substitute for the XP UPS tab, but
I'd prefer to use XP's built-in tab as it seems to be better integrated with
the OS. But I don't see how to enable this.

I _had_ the UPS hooked up to a laptop (this is a deskside machine), and never
could get the UPS tab up either. In fact, looking at the Power tab, I'd say
that this system "thinks" it is a laptop as it is showing the status of the UPS
with a picture of a battery on a "Power Meter" page as though it were
an internal battery (I verified that the battery picture corresponds to the UPS
by unplugging the UPS from the computer -- and the battery status goes away).

So how do I get to a UPS display instead of (in addition to?) a laptop's
battery display. The reason I mention laptop, is that when I had the
UPC connected to a laptop, I couldn't access the UPS page -- only a page
for the batteries inside the laptop. It would have been nice to figure out
how to display both the laptop's batteries along with the UPS batteries.

However, now, I'm on a deskside unit (laptop died) and I still see no UPC
tab -- only the "Power Meter" tab.

Anyone know how to change this or what might be causing this?

Thanks,
-linda

 

[Ms. Linda A.W.]

I recently connected a UPS to my PC. ...

---
A bit more information -- My system shows the "HID UPS battery" under
"Batteries", which makes sense, but doesn't tell me why I can't configure the
UPS service to work with the battery.

Thanks again,
Linda

 

[R. McCarty]

XP has a Generic UPS control applet, however most all units ship
with monitoring/control software. You should have a disk with the
software. Once installed you can configure the Watchdog settings
to your liking.

 

[Lem]

---
A bit more information -- My system shows the "HID UPS battery" under
"Batteries", which makes sense, but doesn't tell me why I can't
configure the
UPS service to work with the battery.

Thanks again,
Linda

There is a KB article indicating a problem very much like this for
Win2k, but I would have thought it would have been resolved in WinXP.
See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=234966&sd=RMVP

 

[Ms. Linda A.W.]

There is a KB article indicating a problem very much like this for
Win2k, but I would have thought it would have been resolved in WinXP.
See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=234966&sd=RMVP

---
Sigh...It's a "feature" (from the KB article you suggest):

"NOTE: On laptops and desktops with a USB-connected UPS, there is no UPS tab in
Power Options."

Just plain broken, in my opinion, and obviously MS has been busy fixing
these outstanding bugs.

Doesn't anyone use UPS's on their computers? Aren't all computers running XP
or Win2000-Professional either "laptops" or "desktops"? So wouldn't
the KB article suggest that the UPS feature is turned off in "Professional" and
"home" editions of Win2000 and WinXP?

Why don't they just say not supported in XP rather than putting in dummy
help entries, or be specific that USB UPS's are not supported under Windows XP
or Windows 2000 Professional? I haven't seen a serial-only UPS in a while -- I
suppose they can still be found, but I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't updated
their UPS monitoring software to be USB compliant. Even Linux has had USB
support for some number of years.

Is there anyone else that would like to see Microsoft *fix* the bugs in their
current software, *BEFORE* coming out with a new version with new eye-candy
features, API changes or increased computing requirements.

There's just no incentive for a large SW company to fix bugs, since they
can argue that customers aren't willing to pay for bug fixes. But the reason
for that, is that the software bugs shouldn't have been there in the first
place, and releasing bug-fixes is only fixing faults in the product that the
end-users have already purchased.

Sigh...
Linda

 

[Guest]

When I purchased my UPS, I didn't get any software cd with the device, I had
to visit their website and download their power alert software, mine is
tripplite, although I started with an APC, it was the same deal, I had to
download the software

 

[Frank]

Some preinstalled systems leave out many drivers. (HP, Compaq,
Whatever)
I have 2 purchased copies of XP OEM and the APC power functions work.

Ms. Linda A.W. wrote:
|| I recently connected a UPS to my PC. The UPS has a USB connection
|| to monitor it's status. I plug the USB connection into my computer
|| and Windows XP recognizes the device as a USB APC UPS (is that
|| enough initials ?). However, when I go to the Power control panel,
|| there is no "UPS" tab as there supposedly should be according to the
|| help.
||
|| I tried starting the UPS service to see if that changed anything,
|| but it won't start because it is not configured (!) Doh!
||
|| The UPS comes with custom software that can substitute for the XP
|| UPS tab, but I'd prefer to use XP's built-in tab as it seems to be
|| better integrated with the OS. But I don't see how to enable this.
||
|| I _had_ the UPS hooked up to a laptop (this is a deskside machine),
|| and never could get the UPS tab up either. In fact, looking at the
|| Power tab, I'd say that this system "thinks" it is a laptop as it is
|| showing the status of the UPS with a picture of a battery on a
|| "Power Meter" page as though it were
|| an internal battery (I verified that the battery picture corresponds
|| to the UPS by unplugging the UPS from the computer -- and the
|| battery status goes away).
||
|| So how do I get to a UPS display instead of (in addition to?) a
|| laptop's battery display. The reason I mention laptop, is that when
|| I had the
|| UPC connected to a laptop, I couldn't access the UPS page -- only a
|| page
|| for the batteries inside the laptop. It would have been nice to
|| figure out how to display both the laptop's batteries along with the
|| UPS batteries.
||
|| However, now, I'm on a deskside unit (laptop died) and I still see
|| no UPC
|| tab -- only the "Power Meter" tab.
||
|| Anyone know how to change this or what might be causing this?
||
|| Thanks,
|| -linda
||
|| --
|| ---
|| Email: to send me email, then my address would be like
|| 'earthlink' was 'tlinx' and 'net' was 'org'