Installing The Blue Heat
Since the PCI slot is Plug and Play compliant with Windows XP, Windows will automatically detect the new Blue Heat/PCI hardware, and the Found New Hardware Wizard will prompt you to install the new device.
- After the Hardware Wizard begins, select Install from a list or specific location (Advanced), and click Next.
- Insert the Blue Heat driver diskette into the floppy drive.
- Select Search for the best drivers in these location.
- Select Include this location in the search and specify the exact location of driver (i.e. A:\WinXP)
- Click Next → Next.
- When the installation is complete, click Finish.
- Windows will then detect and install the serial ports. This may take a few minutes depending on how many ports you have.
Finding Your Blue Heat/PCI Driver Version
For troubleshooting purposes it is often important to determine which device driver version is being used. Many problems may be corrected by simply installing an updated device driver on your system.
- Go to Start → Settings → Control Panel → System
- From the System menu, click on the Hardware tab.
- Click on the Device Manager button.
- From the Device Manager, a list of devices will be displayed. Double-click on the Ports (COM & LPT) icon.
- Select One of the Blue Heat ports, which is now listed underneath the Ports (COM & LPT) category.
- Right-click on one of the Blue Heat ports, and select Properties.
- Select the Driver tab.
- Click on the Driver Details button.
- You will now see a list of four files. Look for the file:
C:\WINNT\System32\DRIVERS\ctibhxp.sys - Select this file.
- Once the file is selected, at the bottom of the screen there will be a line:
“File version X.X.X.X”, where X.X.X.X is your driver version.
Change the COM port mapping
- Go to Start → Settings → Control Panel → System
- From the System menu, click on the Hardware tab.
- Click on the Device Manager button.
- Double-click Ports (COM & LPT).
- Underneath Ports (COM & LPT), you will now see several ports (depending on your card) with the “Blue Heat” name listed.
- Select a port whose COM number you would like to change.
- Right-click on the port, and select Properties.
- Select the Port Settings tab.
- Click the Advanced button.
- You will now see a drop-down menu that contains the number of your COM port. Here you can change the COM port values for a selected port. If you have an Blue Heat adapter with an RS-485 interface, this is the location where you can change the Transmit and Receive buffers, as well as choosing Full Duplex, Half Duplex or Multi-drop Slave mode.
Uninstalling the Blue Heat
To successfully uninstall the Blue Heat from a previous installation, follow these steps to ensure the complete removal of driver components from your system.
Step 1: Remove the Blue Heat from the device manager
- Go to Start → Settings → Control Panel → System
- From the System menu, click on the Hardware tab.
- Click on the Device Manager button.
- Click on Multi-port Serial Adapters.
- Select “Connect Tech Inc. Blue Heat”.
- Right-click and select Uninstall.
Step 2: Remove System files
The following files must be removed from your system:
- C:\WINDOWS\INF\oem#.inf (2 files)
- C:\WINDOWS\INF\oem#.pnf (2 files)
- C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ctibhxp.sys
- C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ctiports.dll
The # sign represents a number between 0 and 9. This number will change from system to system. Please make sure to open the .inf file to ensure that they are Connect Tech .inf files before removing them.
You will have to delete the .pnf file which has the same identifier as the .inf file. For example, if you delete oem3.inf and oem4.inf, you will have to delete oem3.pnf and oem4.pnf.
Testing the Newly Installed Ports
You can perform a simple loopback test with a terminal program (i.e. HyperTerminal or SerialTest) and a loopback connector to ensure that the newly installed ports are functioning.
Connect the loopback connector to the port you want to test and run HyperTerminal. When you type a character, you should see it on the screen, which means that the port is working. If you remove the loopback connector, the characters that you type should not appear on the screen.