iomega USB CD-RW and LeCroy scope

[Skogsgurra]

I know. I should turn to iomega support with this question. And I tried. But after waiting 20 minutes on their 24/24 7/7 hotline, I turn to my fast and well-informed friends on Eng-Tips.

This is what happened: I am a very satisfied owner of a WaveSurfer 454 scope. It is a 500 MHz beauty with four channels, colour touch screen and with embedded XP and lots of connectors for anything you can imagine. It has everything - except a CD reader.

So, I got myself an iomega CD-RW with USB interface. There was a leaflet saying that I should install SW before I installed HW. But what could I do? There is no internal CD reader so I had to use the iomega to install the SW. I decided to try - after all, it shouldnt do any harm if it didn't work. Right?

WRONG!!! It made my scope completely inoperable. I now have blue screen detah with a message saying something about a missing entry point in services.exe. It seems to be impossible to get around it. Restart, power cycling, disconnect everything - nothing works. I think that it is very close to a criminal offence to ship "bombs" like this. There should at least be a warning telling you that these things could happen.

I lost my interest in computers when Windows was introduced. DOS wa OK. I could do things there - but Windows. No.

Please. How do I get out of this situation? I need my scope urgently and my engineering friends are as bad as I am on this. Anyone?

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

I know nothing about the scope, but I see it has embedded XP. Is it possible to boot up in safe mode somehow? If so, you may be able to recover back to a previous configuration or something like that. Best of luck, sorry to hear that it bombed.

Wheels within wheels / In a spiral array
A pattern so grand / And complex
Time after time / We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see / Their effects.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Thanks analog,

I guess that it is what I should do. How can one do that?

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

Not trying to pass the buck, but I really know nothing of these scopes. Are there any details in the manual, I believe LeCroy has them available online. If of no help, I would contact LeCroy tech support first. I would think they have some hooks or handles into the XP to restore it to proper operation. I assume they downloaded XP into it somehow and stored it in flash or hard disk. Just all speculation on my part, but basic recovery steps.
Good luck

-Pete

Wheels within wheels / In a spiral array
A pattern so grand / And complex
Time after time / We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see / Their effects.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Contacted them. They are "working on it"...

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

skogs:

If you do get the scope to recover, have you thought about using USB mass storage devices instead of CD-RW? No driver should be needed. Nowdays you can buy one with 1GB of storage for under $100.

Just an alternative idea



Wheels within wheels / In a spiral array
A pattern so grand / And complex
Time after time / We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see / Their effects.

 

[IRstuff]

For less than $200, you can buy small USB hard drives with up to 30 GB of storage and full-size drives with over 160 GB of storage.

TTFN

 

[Skogsgurra]

Thanks to both of you.

I got a "Manual Addendum" from LeCroy today. It describes how to recover. But it didnt't work. It seems that the system gets lost before I get to the point where I shall press F4, which is the way to enter the recover routines that are stored on the internal drive. So I hope that they are "working on it" a little more.

And, yes. I do have a 1 GB Sony Memory stick for my camera. And a USB adapter for it. It should be possible to do something with that. Once I get past the blue screen of death...

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

skogsgurra:

Have you got your scope up and running yet?

Wheels within wheels / In a spiral array
A pattern so grand / And complex
Time after time / We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see / Their effects.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Yes, thanks AK2D.

I had to take a series of pictures to be able to read the opening screens (the DOS screens). And when I studied the photographs, I saw something that I didn't know about. It said "F8: Last known good configuration". So I pressed F8 when the scope booted and suddenly it all worked the way it should.

But I haven't dared to connect the iomega any more. And I haven't installed Word or Excel either.

Happy new Year. Or read HgTX's Seasonal Greetings in thread1088-111064

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

Cool, glad to hear it!

Yes, DOS, the good ol days. But 'progress' marches on....
I had a hunch that you should be able to roll back embedded XP to a previous config, I just have never had to do it on an XP machine and did not know what key to press at boot up.

I must say that I have been running XP at home for 2 years, no BSOD's, no lockups, just one instance where it took a minute to recover from an unsuccesful install and run of one of my son's outdated Win16 games. Pretty amazing. But I do perform regular drive/file/OS maintenance and updates, so that may be part of it.

Happy New Year to you too.

-Pete



Wheels within wheels / In a spiral array
A pattern so grand / And complex
Time after time / We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see / Their effects.