Blue Screen of Death Errors when Outputting Data to COM Port

[RhythmDoctor]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

RhythmDoctor....

OK, tested XP with MS Bluetooth stack using Broadcom dongle, pairing to a Holux GPS receiver.

Works fine for input. I could not verify that output is actually working, since there is only the Holux receiver on the line. It at least does not crash with MS stack.

Tried to install Toshiba 8.00.03 stack, but failed. Could not get MS stack to let go of the hardware. Toshiba stack might not be compatible with my dongle. Yada/yada... Any tips/hints?

Until I can get the Toshiba stack running, I'm afraid there is not much I can do to debug this BSOD.

Meanwhile, for your scenario, is there any problem with using the XPort solution until we sort this out?

Dave

Dave,

Thanks for your attempts. There is absolutely no rush. I have used XPort for two years, and now that you've fixed the incompatibility that was in 3.2.0, there is no reason at this point that I can't continue using it.

You are correct that Toshiba is probably only compatible with certain hardware. I had read that Toshiba had taken steps to ensure its software only ran on authorized hardware. My netbook's internal Bluetooth hardware is manufactured by Toshiba, according to Device Manager (it think - it's possible that it's referring to the driver).

My only suggestion for you at this point is to do any further attempts with Toshiba's latest drivers. For version 8 I believe that is 8.00.12. I had downloaded it here:

Download Toshiba Bluetooth Stack 8.00.12 Free - Bluetooth software and drivers for Toshiba notebooks

There is also a version 9 around but I did not want to wade into that territory because version 8 has done pretty well for me, and I doubt version 9 addresses any issues with the ancient XP OS.

As I mentioned in one of my updates, my vague memory is that MS stack worked OK but would not support full duplex on one COM port. So with your Bluetooth antenna you probably don't have the right hardware to test this out. I'm doing OK with my current setup, so I don't expect you to go out and buy any new gadgets for testing. You've already been a great help.

-- Rick

[EDIT: In case you are curious, you can click here for a more complete description of my setup from two years ago. It has been great having things go out on Bluetooth, since I can basically put my netbook anywhere on the boat and get the instrument data. I put it in the cockpit in good weather, and down below in the cabin in bad weather.]

[bobofthenorth]

I missed your earlier comment on my 3.2 crash thread (here). My situation is somewhat different in that I don't get the BSOD - just a MessySoft popup that says my program has quit and MS needs to close it. I did post the brief message that XP created in the error log the last time it crashed for whatever that is worth.

Having missed your message I didn't try your suggestion at the dock but I think it may have some merit & I will try it sometime. Not in the immediate future though because its summer cruising time right now and when we're not on the move I've got other fun things to do like varnishing brightwork.

[RhythmDoctor]

I had the same BSOD problem pop up unexpectedly again today. My boat's navigation system transmits GPS sentences on one Bluetooth transmitter, and AIS sentences on a second transmitter. I connect to both using Bluetooth receivers on my computer that is running O.

In this case I was testing a new Bluetooth dongle with my Dell E5430 laptop running Win 7 64 bit Enterprise. I had the Toshiba Bluetooth drivers configured for GPS on COM40 and AIS on COM41. I was running O 3.3.1117, since my intention was merely to test Bluetooth connections, not to begin testing of the new beta release yet. But stuff happened, so I have to report on it.

Previously (see prior posts on this thread), I experienced this BSOD problem using a MSI Wind Netbook running Win XP 32-bit, with GPS mapped to COM41 and AIS mapped to COM40 (reversed from today's configuration), also using Toshiba Bluetooth drivers.

So in today's test, I had the same problem on a very different computer configuration than before (XP vs. Win7, 32-bit vs 64-bit).

Previously I worked around the issue by running XPort to redirect GPS from COM41 to COM12. This time I cannot use XPort because I'm on a 64 bit OS.

There was one particularly noteworthy thing that I noticed just prior to the BSOD. My ownship icon turned grey, so I brought up the NMEA debug Window to see what was going on. I noticed that identical AIS sentences were coming in on both COM40 and COM41, and no GPS sentences were coming in at all (hence the grey ownship icon). At this point, I went into the Toshiba settings to confirm that I had mapped both COM ports to the same correct Bluetooth transmitters (I had), and when I went back into O the BSOD happened before I could do a screen grab.

However, I think this chain of events is significant. When I first launched, everything was fine, but at some point the COM ports got corrupted in O.

Actually, not everything was fine earlier. I did a screen grab from when things appeared to be working properly, and afterwards I noticed the beginning of a couple of significant problems.

First, note that the very top line of the debug window shows an AIVDM sentence coming in on COM40. This should be coming in on COM41. It seems to be the first step toward ALL AIS sentences coming in on COM40 instead of COM41. (Perhaps they were all coming in on COM40 at this point, but my screen grab only picked up one of them.)

Note that the filtered sentences on COM40 in the debug window are a result of the fact that I am outputting COM40 to autopilot, and filtering out all but the sentences that my autopilot accepts.

By the way, I ran WinDbg on the crash dump file, and it looks like this problem might be caused by the Toshiba driver, not O. But that begs the question of why the BSOD went away last summer when I was using XPort to remap the GPS COM port.

However, from this debug window you can see a second issue which I believe is a OpenCPN problem.. During my session on O I had changed settings for a UDP port (for transmitting sentences to a second instance of O) from localhost to 127.0.0.1, and you can see that O started transmitting to both, not properly releasing localhost after I changed it to 127.0.0.1. This could be a contributing factor for a UDP communications problem that I was discussing on another thread.

[bdbcat]

Rhythm....

See:
FS#1281 : Network datastreams remain active but "hidden" if address ro port are changed

Dave

[RhythmDoctor]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Rhythm....

See:
FS#1281 : Network datastreams remain active but "hidden" if address ro port are changed

Dave

Dave,

Thanks for the link. I really don't know my way around FlySpray, and would not have seen that. That issue explains a lot, because I think I had some early confusion about COM40 vs. COM 41, and may have traded my port assignments at one point during my session. That could have led to the problem I saw, with both GPS and AIS coming through on both COM ports at the same time.

I've done some more testing at home this evening, but it pretty much just reinforces what's already described in FlySpray, so I'll leave it alone for now.

If your recall from my prior messages (on this thread), there seemed to be something about COM ports higher than 40, and redirecting to lower COM ports using XPort made the BSOD problem go away. The latest Toshiba stack version (8.00.12) gives and option to override the COM port defaults, so I can map to lower ports. Call it superstition, but I'm going to reconfigure things with the lower COM ports going forward to see if it has a beneficial effect.