The Broken Modem
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Just when my SMS program’s completion level has reached 85%, the news broke out that this iTegno 3000 modem I installed on my office is broken. The modem can no longer be detected by the office server and my laptop. Strangely enough, this device could be detected by my home computer, which then opened the “New Hardware Wizard” to install the drivers for this one (I haven’t installed the drivers on my home computer).
The problem seem to lie in the device driver configuration in my laptop and office server. The same device driver is installed once for every USB Port. So in my laptop I actually have three modem devices installed for the same piece of hardware, “Itegno GPRS Wireless Modem”. The other two have #2 and #3 behind the name. Although they are installed on different COM ports (COM6, COM9 and COM11 respectively) in the end none of them could detect the modem.
It is yet unknown whether the modem or the drivers are causing this problem, because earlier this didn’t happen. If the modem is the cause, how come it works on my home computer? If it’s the driver, then it makes sense, but to fix the problem I would have to reformat my laptop and office server because removing the drivers doesn’t work. Usually when you remove the drivers, the next time you plug in the modem, the “New Hardware Wizard” would show up and let you reinstall. I’ve tried this on my home computer and it works, while on my laptop, the “New Hardware Wizard” doesn’t come up after I removed it. On my home computer though, unplugging and plugging the modem works fine, the computer can detect the modem each time it’s plugged in.
So yeah, conclusion: this modem is eternally undetected on systems where it has multiple modems installed. The strangest thing is the fact that previously the modem worked fine with this configuration. Could it be that the modem if half broken so this happens? There are some evidences to support this, because even the modem works on my home computer, sometimes it fails to initialize, and I have to unplug then plug it back in, then it will work fine. We’ll have to see after some more tests.
Fortunately, the iTegno technical support is really quick on this one. They replied my e-mails in no more than 1 hour, and they even contacted their Indonesian representative in Jakarta (the iTegno technical support I e-mailed is in Singapore) to call me. The problem hasn’t been fixed yet, but I hope, with the help of these good guys at the technical support, it can be fixed soon. Two thumbs up for the technical support though, this is the best technical support I’ve ever seen in Indonesia, and it is RARE for you to see this kind of professionalism in Indonesia these days.
