You may need to upgrade your PR3 firmware. My old PR3 needed the firmware updated so that it would run on a 64bit computer. Same at my club when I tried running a PR3.
I get the impression you don’t fully understand how COM port assignments work in Windows.
When you plug in a “new” USB device that needs a COM port, Windows will assign the next available unused COM port. It keeps track of those assignments in a registry entry, using various bits of information such as the device’s hardware ID and serial number, etc. Once a COM port has been assigned to a device, it will NOT be given to another device, even if that other device is plugged into the same USB port!
So if your PR4 has been assigned COM3, then of course COM3 will “disappear” from Device Manager if/when the PR4 is unplugged. And again, since COM3 has been assigned to the PR4, it will NOT be re-used for the PR3, even if the PR3 is plugged into the same USB port as the PR4 was. (The exception to this would be if the PR4 was actually uninstalled, rather than just unplugged. Then COM3 would again be available because the uninstall process would remove the relationship between COM3 and the no-longer-installed PR4.)
Since COM3 is assigned to your PR4 and COM4 is assigned to your LokProgrammer, the lowest COM port that could possibly be assigned to your PR3 would be COM5, although it could be anything 5 or higher. That’s why, in a previous post, I asked that you plug/unplug your device
That’s a good thought!
I’ve used 64-bit OS’s since Win7, so my PR3 was updated with the 64-bit fix long, long ago. So long ago it completely slipped my mind. Thanks for mentioning it!
I reconnected the PR4 and followed the Digitrax directions to download the mfc90.dll driver, and add it to the DigiIPL.exe folder. After making sure everything was set to COM3 I tried Decoder Pro again, and it worked first time!
https://www.digitrax.com/downloads/digiipl/
Thanks for comments and help! Didn’t mean to hijack the thread…[:$]
Hey that’s great! I totally forgot about these drivers.
Simon
Except… mfc90.dll isn’t a driver, it’s a Dynamic Link Library, as the .dll suffix indicates. Those are used when writing code so that the same code can be used in several places at the same time. For example, a dll might be used to open multiple windows of a specific size and shape that could contain different menus for different parts of the application.
And the mfc90.dll specifically is used by Microsoft’s Visual Basic, the programming language used to write DigiIPL. That’s why you put it in the DigiIPL folder, and not in Windows\System32 where actual drivers (with the .sys suffix) are placed. See for example this question/answer, in which mfc90.dll is missing in a situation that has absolutely nothing to do with anything even remotely DCC or driver related!
In my first post on this issue I explained that it couldn’t possibly be a driver issue because the error message you were receiving proved that your computer was communicating with the
That’s OK, I’m done too. It worked once, read and changed CVs, now back to 308. Since it won’t work with any decoders, I have double/triple checked all the connections, etc. I have to assume something has failed in the PR4 itself. I will look to find some other gizmo to connect my laptop to a programming track, but I’m spending too much time on what is clearly an unsolveable issue.
p.s. The Digitrax website’s instructions for the PR3/4 say that Windows 10/11 should automagically get the correct drivers when you install the Digitrax software, but then has (fairly lengthy) instructions on how to download the correct driver if the PR3/4 doesn’t work. In earlier versions of the instructions, it says that a driver must be downloaded and added to the correct place for the PR3/4 to work properly. So it’s not like I’m just randomly making something up re drivers, I’ve tried everything else and it hasn’t worked since changing to Windows 11. Unfortunately, the Digitrax instructions are still for Windows 10, so some of the folders and such have changed names, so it may be difficult to figure out how to do it. As I said, it may be easier in the long run to find another device to connect the laptop and the programming track. We’ll see.