USR Control Center won't detect USR5686E under XP Pro

[Brett]

I have an Asus P4PE with a 3.06 Ghz P4 running WinXP Pro SP1. I have a
USR5686E attached to Com 1. Win XP recognizes the modem, the XP modem
diagnostics run fine and the modem works for faxing and Internet
access. However, the USR Control Center software, the USR modem
identification sofware and USR flash utilities do not see the modem.
When I start Control Center it continues to try and detect the modem
until I kill it with the task manager (it hangs). Control Center will
find the modem if I set the compatibility to Win98/ME, but then it
hangs when I pick the configuration option.

This 5686E is properly identified by Control Center on another machine
running Win XP, and when I tried a different 5856 on the "problem"
machine, it wasn't detected either. I've upgraded drivers, software
and firmware, changed countless settings, played with the bios
settings, swapped cables, but no matter what I do, Control Center
won't "see" this modem on this particular machine. Any ideas or should
I just forget about using Control Center on this one machine?

Thanks

 

[Brett]

I'll answer my own question for future reference since I couldn't find
an answer searching the news groups. I received this response from USR
support (less than 24 hour turnaround):

Currently there is an issue with Control Center not detecting our
modems on
Pentium 4 systems. There is no current resolution. The conflict is a
relatively
new development. U.S. Robotics is aggressively researching this issue
and should
have a resolution in the near future.

Even though Control Center is software for the modem, it is not
required for the
modem to work properly. The biggest use of Control Center is for the
updates.
Although this is nice, all updates can be downloaded from the support
site for
the modem. The other option it has is a Terminal program for
programming the
modem. Again, although nice, Windows has a built in Terminal program
that works
just as good as the one in Control Center. It is called
Hyperterminal. The
third option that I have seen used is the PCM Upstream vs. Download
speeds.
This can be nice if you upload a lot of files, but we have found that
most of
the Internet Service Providers do not have PCM available through them,
so the
function can not be used anyway.

If there was something specific you were trying to accomplish through
Control
Center, let us know. We will be more than happy to show you another
way around
if possible. Thank you for your patience.

 

[Brett]

I'll answer my own question for future reference since I couldn't find
an answer searching the news groups. I received this response from USR
support (less than 24 hour turnaround):

Currently there is an issue with Control Center not detecting our
modems on
Pentium 4 systems. There is no current resolution. The conflict is a
relatively
new development. U.S. Robotics is aggressively researching this issue
and should have a resolution in the near future.

Even though Control Center is software for the modem, it is not
required for the modem to work properly. The biggest use of Control
Center is for the updates. Although this is nice, all updates can be
downloaded from the support site for the modem. The other option it
has is a Terminal program for programming the modem. Again, although
nice, Windows has a built in Terminal program that works just as good
as the one in Control Center. It is called Hyperterminal. The third
option that I have seen used is the PCM Upstream vs. Download speeds.
This can be nice if you upload a lot of files, but we have found that
most of the Internet Service Providers do not have PCM available
through them, so the function can not be used anyway.

If there was something specific you were trying to accomplish through
Control Center, let us know. We will be more than happy to show you
another way around if possible. Thank you for your patience.

 

[Chuck]

I'd swap the two modems and leave well enough alone. If USR says there is a
problem, there is, and you may have isolated it to a combination of a
particular revision of the modem and a specific PC component, such as a
motherboard.