Author Topic: "could not open communication port" after moving vws install  (Read 4019 times)

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Offline marklyn

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Re: "could not open communication port" after moving vws install
« Reply #25 on: March 01, 2022, 11:06:40 AM »
You could probably install StartWatch.  The developer made it free when he retired.  That's what I use to monitor my started programs.
I may have to resort to using SmartWatch if I can't get Task Scheduler to work. It's crazy.  It.should.just.work, right?  I'm still futzing with the settings in TS to see if I can get it to work upon booting of the machine.  Anyone have this working for loading VWS, I'd appreciate some advice.

Offline Garth Bock

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Re: "could not open communication port" after moving vws install
« Reply #26 on: March 01, 2022, 11:28:55 AM »
Before I suggested anything since I use VWS I thought I would run it on my test computer. It's a Win10 Pro with a local account (no M$ login crap). I tried to set up VWS with its own startup setting which didn't work as you found. So I made sure all the permissions were at the highest level and that had no effect. I had it in the Win Start folder with no affect. I then downloaded and setup StartWatch. It managed to start VWS after a reboot only one time. Now it says that VWS cannot be started and to check its filename and path. I had also added WeatherLink along with it and StartWatch starts it just fine. I checked Task Manager but there were no incidences of VWS running. So I put together a batch file and put that in the Win Start folder and got it to work but the CMD window won't close and I get a UAC prompt each time. The /NOUAC switch in the batch file has no effect. There is a way to modify the reg file listing for VWS to not prompt for UAC but this is extreme. I reached out to a programmer friend of mine and he said to just turn off UAC......yeahhhh...no that's not going to happen. Finally I went in and tested for compatibility and tried setting it to first Win7 and then WinXP but that didn't help. Today I will revisit StartWatch to see why it won't run VWS but will start WL just fine. Also I will see what typos my late night typing did in my batch file. I will keep working on this. I like VWS because you can configure your own desktop display. You can do the same with Weatherview32 (the author told me that V9 is in beta). On my weather computer I manually restart programs because the datalogger stores everything and I don't upload to a website because of the flaky DSL I have (Thanks CenturyLink...now when you gonna hook up the fiber you buried out front of my house 2 years ago? ) I will keep working on this.   

Offline marklyn

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Re: "could not open communication port" after moving vws install
« Reply #27 on: March 01, 2022, 11:35:32 AM »
Before I suggested anything since I use VWS I thought I would run it on my test computer. It's a Win10 Pro with a local account (no M$ login crap). I tried to set up VWS with its own startup setting which didn't work as you found. So I made sure all the permissions were at the highest level and that had no effect. I had it in the Win Start folder with no affect. I then downloaded and setup StartWatch. It managed to start VWS after a reboot only one time. Now it says that VWS cannot be started and to check its filename and path. I had also added WeatherLink along with it and StartWatch starts it just fine. I checked Task Manager but there were no incidences of VWS running. So I put together a batch file and put that in the Win Start folder and got it to work but the CMD window won't close and I get a UAC prompt each time. The /NOUAC switch in the batch file has no effect. There is a way to modify the reg file listing for VWS to not prompt for UAC but this is extreme. I reached out to a programmer friend of mine and he said to just turn off UAC......yeahhhh...no that's not going to happen. Finally I went in and tested for compatibility and tried setting it to first Win7 and then WinXP but that didn't help. Today I will revisit StartWatch to see why it won't run VWS but will start WL just fine. Also I will see what typos my late night typing did in my batch file. I will keep working on this. I like VWS because you can configure your own desktop display. You can do the same with Weatherview32 (the author told me that V9 is in beta). On my weather computer I manually restart programs because the datalogger stores everything and I don't upload to a website because of the flaky DSL I have (Thanks CenturyLink...now when you gonna hook up the fiber you buried out front of my house 2 years ago? ) I will keep working on this.
I 100% agree with your assessment and I will also keep trying to work on an autostart VWS.  I also tried all of the things you mentioned above with no real luck so I'm focusing on Task Scheduler for right now.

Offline marklyn

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Re: "could not open communication port" after moving vws install
« Reply #28 on: March 01, 2022, 12:11:59 PM »
I finally got it to work with Task Scheduler. Honestly, it might have worked before with mostly default settings, because after the system reboots and windows comes up, it takes about 2 minutes for VWS to be actually launched. I've tested it several times and it seems to consistently launch VWS, while taking it's sweet time.  The main thing I did was tick the box for any user login. I've included the exported xml file here in case anyone needs to look at the parameters.  Before I was using the trigger for windows restart.
(I had to zip the xml file in order to upload)