How to install the PortTalk driver
permanently
(to run WinPic under Win XP with a user account)
This document describes how to install Craig Peacock's PortTalk driver under
Windows XP.
Under Windows XP (etc), you may want run WinPic with a user account later.
But to install the PortTalk driver, you need a administrator rights.
The driver only needs to be installed once (with an admin account),
but it can be used later with a user account.
More up-to-date information about PortTalk can be found on the
PortTalk website (look for the chapter "Starting
and installing the driver"). The following text describes how I (the author
of WinPic) installed the PortTalk driver under Windows XP in November 2005.
Notes:
-
Port Talk is not required under Win 95/98/ME. So ignore this document
if you run WinPic under one of those systems - use the option "I/O port access
already granted before start".
Furthermore, if the steps shown below sound too complicated for you, run
WinPic under Win XP with an administrator account. In that case, WinPic can
install, start, and stop the PortTalk service automatically.
-
Why use PortTalk for the PIC Programmer ? See FAQ,
"how to make WinPic faster".
-
Why run your PC without admin rights ? Because it's safer, especially if
you frequently surf the net. With admin rights, a malicious software (or
visitor) can do all sorts of things to your system, which you certainly don't
want.
To install the PortTalk driver :
-
Boot your PC with administrator privileges
-
Copy the PORTTALK.SYS to your /system32/drivers directory.
-
Click on the PORTTALK.REG file to load the required registry keys.
(for reference, the contents of PORTTALK.REG
are listed in the appendix, and a Regedit screenshot after the successful
installation)
-
Reboot the computer (this time with a normal user account).
-
Start WinPic (with "I/O Port Access Driver" set to "use Port Talk").
If the PortTalk installation was successfull, WinPic can access your PIC
programmer on the serial or parallel port now. If not, you will get an error
messages like the following:
-
PortTalk: No rights to access the SCM - try with admin rights
which means, WinPic could not talk to the PortTalk driver, and tried to install
that service itself through the Service Control Manager, which failed because
you are not logged in with administrator rights. Try again to install PortTalk
manually (as explained above) and check the registry entries this time.
-
PortTalk: You do not have rights to the PortTalk service database
-
PortTalk: The specified service name is invalid
-
PortTalk: Driver does not exist. Installing driver.
These three messages indicate that WinPic could communicate with the SCM,
but the SCM could not open the PortTalk service for various reasons. Most
likely, you didn't copy PORTTALK.SYS into the windows system directory.
If everything failed, don't despair ... use WinPic with admin rights. This
is better than not being able to program PICs at all ;-)
PORTTALK.REG can be downloaded from the
PortTalk website. It is basically a text
file, which can be processed by the Windows Registry editor to add a few
entries to the registry. It looked like this (in November 2005):
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PortTalk]
"Type"=dword:00000001
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"Start"=dword:00000002
"DisplayName"="PortTalk"
After double-clicking PORTTALK.REG, you can check if the contents are really
copied into the windows registry (it will fail if you have no administrator
rights). To check, open regedit, and look into
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ... SYSTEM ... CurrentControlSet ... Services .
You should see at least the four subkey values which were added by PORTTALK.REG
.
Links
Author: Wolfgang Buescher (DL4YHF)
Last modified: 2005-11-11 (ISO-date-format, YYYY-MM-DD)
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