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paul100

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 10:47 pm

Joined: 23 Jun 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Midlands

I put this in the wrong place last night. Hope this will get some answers as I would like to install the new update!

I've downloaded and unzipped the Vista version of USB-Drivers-Vista and Topfields Tools giving TFDN-USB but with older versions of Drivers. They are in different Vista Directories at present.

Both your Notes for Installation and Topfield's are delightfully vague about how to Install these programs!

Topfield's says
"Please refer to the downloading sequence as below:
1. Please download the zip file Software download tool for USB (TFDN_USB), which includes the two driver files tfbulk.sys and tfbulk.inf from our website.
Extract the downloaded file to a separate directory (Please refer to the instructions of your zip tool). Our USB driver is currently supporting MS Windows 9.x, NT/2000/XP. To install the driver, please select the tfbulk.inf file [and] click the right mouse button. By choosing the Install menu point, the two driver files are copied automatically to the appropriate directories in your system.
After the driver installation explained above, execute the tool TFDN_USB.exe."

Selecting tfbulk.inf with right click under Vista does not have the "install" as an option.

A) what's the procedure for getting the USB driver for Vista correctly installed?

B) Do I just drag the TFDN-USB.exe (which does not come in the Vista Drivers package) to the right directory to get it to install the Vista drivers?

I remember I had trouble getting Altair installed under my old XP system. That's gone now and I cannot remember what I had to do!

I'm getting at bit ancient at this game now so will somebody have mercy and update the installation guide.

Incidently the link to Topfield's "How to upgrade Firmware" given in the Topfield Manuals Section is now a Dead Link.

Many thanks.

_________________
Paul100.
Topfield 5800/250G, Firmware 15.13.65T
Taps:Quickjump
JVC DRMV1, Samsung LE37R88BD , Sony DAV-DZ260,

failbetter

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 10:12 pm

Regular contributor Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 29 Location: Highbury N5

I was disappointed to see there's been no reply to this, as I'm having the same sort of problem. I've installed the Vista versions of the Topfield applications; I can start Altair OK with the Toppy off but when the Toppy powers up I get the blue screen of death. (And I haven't seen that for a while.)

I don't honestly know what driver the Toppy is using. I'm not sure which one comes with the Topfield apps I've installed. I've also downloaded the separate Vista driver but I can't tell if it's installed or not. When I right-click on the TFBulk.inf file and select 'Install' it says it can't be installed that way. The Toppy drivers don't seem to show in the Windows Control Panel Device Manager so I can't sort them there. With much difficulty I think I've removed the previous TFBulk drivers and repeated the install but the result was the same. I don't get a Wizard come up when the Toppy is connected so I never get the chance to tell it what driver to use.

How can I be sure to get the correct Vista driver installed?

Here's hoping...
Many thanks

_________________
Sara

Topfield 5800PVR, Panasonic LCD TV TX-32LXD52 and DVDR- DMR-ES10EB; Yamaha AVR - RX-V1500

aramil

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 5:45 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 574 Location: Sale Cheshire UK; TX:Winter_Hill

failbetter wrote:

The Toppy drivers don't seem to show in the Windows Control Panel Device Manager so I can't sort them there.

How can I be sure to get the correct Vista driver installed?

Here's hoping...
Many thanks

Open Control panel / Device Manager click on view and select Show Hidden Devices.

this will show all installed device drivers Delete the Any Toppy USB drivers from the list and close down device manager and reboot.

After rebooting connect your toppy via usb. this will trigger a driver install on vista but now vista knows which driver to use it will install it the vista update way (should be a notification in the taskbar) once done and all should be well.

Well it worked for me
Smile

Hope this helps

_________________
Toppy: TF5810; 1Tb EcoGreen F2 HDD; Fan cooled; AI=off, ST=off; Firmware: 5.15.09+ Patched; PC OS: Ubuntu 9.10-64bit / Windows 7-64bit; Slugged: 6.10 (266MHz)
TAPs: MyStuff 6.2, EPG2mei, Extend, secCache, MP-DisplayLite, SDS. rt2mei (on Slug).

failbetter

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:02 am

Regular contributor Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 29 Location: Highbury N5

Thanks for replying, but I did look in Device Manager for hidden drivers and I still can't see any Toppy ones. All the USB drivers are basically Microsoft or Intel ones, and I can't see a Toppy one anywhere else either.

Any other thoughts?
thanks

_________________
Sara

Topfield 5800PVR, Panasonic LCD TV TX-32LXD52 and DVDR- DMR-ES10EB; Yamaha AVR - RX-V1500

aramil

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:52 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 574 Location: Sale Cheshire UK; TX:Winter_Hill

failbetter wrote:

Did you go to view hidden in the menu?

should be one with a usb logo saying Topfield `first device`([i]serial number) using TfBulk.sys[/i]

If not then you have not got the driver installed.

If thats the case uninstall topfield tools & reboot

Download the tools again from Here

This has both XP & Vista included

Install and reboot then attach toppy.

You should get the vista driver loading notification in the task bar if it does not find the driver click "Have driver" (i think it is) find the driver file in the topfield tools folder in program files and add it.

Hopefully this should do it Smile

if not I can go through how to add legacy device drivers to Windows Vista it is just a little long winded

failbetter

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:56 pm

Regular contributor Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 29 Location: Highbury N5

Mmm, some sort of progress, but no proper result and I'm not sure where I am now.

I followed your procedure to reinstall everything, with restarts, but I still got the blue screen of death when I started Altair with the Toppy on.

In Device Manager, with the Toppy on, I could now see the Toppy - good. When I looked at the driver details, though, it had a date in 2003 - even though the driver I'd just installed was the Vista 2007 one. So I uninstalled the driver from within Device Manager, uninstalled the Topfield apps and re-installed them yet again. Then when I re-started and connected the Toppy, I got the taskbar New Hardware dialogue but it couldn't find the right driver. And when I pointed it at the downloaded Toppy Vista driver it said:
"Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.
Topfield 'first device' (VID_11DB&PID_1000) using TfBulk.SYS."

So there is no driver installed for the Toppy. In Device Manager, it is now listed as an unknown device. When I selected the Properties for that and used the button to install a driver, it gave me the same error above.

So, my Vista PC won't recognise the Toppy because it doesn't have a driver installed, but it won't install the downloaded driver, either as part of installing the application package or in its own.

Any further thoughts?

Here's hoping
thanks

_________________
Sara

Topfield 5800PVR, Panasonic LCD TV TX-32LXD52 and DVDR- DMR-ES10EB; Yamaha AVR - RX-V1500

aramil

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:20 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 574 Location: Sale Cheshire UK; TX:Winter_Hill

OK in control panel there is an " Add Hardware" which will allow you to add drivers manually. use Other/Have disk and find the driver file. if this does not work i would consider looking at having you vista install checked (BSOD) is quite rare unless there is conflicting hardware. or trying a different USB port.

Maybe have a look at http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm to check your system reg out to clean any errors

YorkshireJumbo

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 2:36 pm

Frequent contributor Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 344 Location: Yorkshire end of the M1

Hmmm. I seem to be having a similar problem. On my new Vista Home PC, it now says "have loaded software for unknown device" Shocked

but Altair still has a blank screen on one side.

The downloads page isn't too helpful - clicking on the "Topfield Tools" link brings up a new window, but the "download" and "guide" links are broken. The guide takes you to a page where clicking on the Topfield Tools guide takes back to the previous window. Confused

I wonder if it's the version of the DLL I'm using. I've installed these on both my old XP desktop and my wife's Vista laptop, but ISTR getting another DLL file for the latter...

I tried installing the software manually, but it says I'm up to date Confused

I did find it wouldn't even connect on one USB port, but brings up the weird message above on the identical port next door.

So I still can't connect using my desktop. I can always wait for the laptop, but I'd rather have it working

_________________
YJ - You may have speed, but I have momentum
Black Panther since Sep 2005 Firmware 5.13.65 (Patched - MS recommended)
AutoStart TAPs: PowerManager 2.0, MyStuff 5.62b suite, TF5000Display 1.53 & UKOZSurfer 0.11d

YorkshireJumbo

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 4:28 pm

Frequent contributor Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 344 Location: Yorkshire end of the M1

OK. I managed to get it working, thanks to a trick from my old desktop (that I'd forgotten Embarassed

). It didn't work plugged in to a USB2 port on the front of my PC, works plugged in to a USB 1.1 hub Confused

ISTR it was something to do with power supplied to the active extension and/or toppy.

paul100

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:04 pm

Joined: 23 Jun 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Midlands

Having started this heading , my report is a follows.
I followed the advice from wikibooks/topfield 5800/troubleshooting/USB driver.
This seems a bit longwinded but it work well enough. However Vista didn't give me a chance when I plugged in the Toppy and turned it on but started installing a tfbulk.sys from somewhere (unspecified!) without giving me a chance to specify the source.
I got the same sort of statement that failbetter gives ie" Topfield 'first device' (VID_11DB&PID_1000) using TfBulk.SYS." but did not have any failure. When I tried the route of updating the driver as suggested by aramil, Vista gave me a smart rap over the knuckles and said it had installed the most update driver , again without any specifics.
I then selected TFDN_USB ver 1.0.0.1, selected the relevant upgrade for my 5800 (tf5800_456_5.14.09Plus.tfd), put Toppy into Standby, turned it on again into the download mode (4 bars) and off it went OK. I had forgotten about the two sets of install countdowns that then occur which worried me a bit when it started.
Since then the Toppy has been working fine. I'll comment about small annoyances elsewhere.

Now I notice the my Vista has cleaned up the USB drivers and they are all back to the same Microsoft standard. I have a new Compaq Presario with Vista Home Premium. It has 6 main USB ports Type 2, Four at rear and two at front. The two fronts get all different things plugged in, cameras, memory sticks etc.

One comment though. PKUNZIP is not a free program, neither is Winzip officially. I only had Winzip installed but when I tried to unzip the pkzip file I suddenly found I had a PKZIP Reader installing itself! Where it came from I don't know.

So I still don't know whether I used the Vista Drivers or something else. The TFDN is old but seems to work. I haven't needed the complexity of Altair this time as I run without any TAPs.
Thanks everybody who has suggested things to try.

_________________
Paul100.
Topfield 5800/250G, Firmware 15.13.65T
Taps:Quickjump
JVC DRMV1, Samsung LE37R88BD , Sony DAV-DZ260,

failbetter

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 10:20 pm

Regular contributor Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 29 Location: Highbury N5

Again, some slight progress, but not all the way.

The Add Hardware Wizard refuses to load the driver from the Topfield folder in Program Files, or from the separate downloaded folder. I visited the Onecare site (didn't know about that - thanks) and ran the tool to clean up the registry as well as a couple of others. I also uninstalled Topfield, re-started, and re-installed it. And I swapped to a different USB port. The net result of all this is that Altair no longer crashes my machine, but it still won't talk to the Toppy because there is no driver installed for it - the Altair screen just stays blank on the left.

I think I'm going to have to give up and see if I can persuade a friend to let me install the Topfield stuff on their laptop and use that. I mainly want to do this to install the new firmware, but there seems to be no other way to do that...

Any other thoughts welcome. Thanks for your help so far.

_________________
Sara

Topfield 5800PVR, Panasonic LCD TV TX-32LXD52 and DVDR- DMR-ES10EB; Yamaha AVR - RX-V1500

failbetter

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:18 pm

Regular contributor Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 29 Location: Highbury N5

OK, problem not fully solved but I have now used an alternative route to update my firmware, which was what I wanted to do in the first place. In case anyone else might find this useful, what happened was this:
I found out about the HDFW TAP that allows you to update your firmware on the Toppy itself rather than using TFDN on your PC. So I first installed Wuppy (from the Toppy.org.uk site) as a way to transfer the HDFW TAP and firmware file to the Toppy (cos I couldn't install a driver that Altair could use). Wuppy installed its own driver OK and while basic functions worked fine it wouldn't complete any file transfers to the Toppy. In pursuing this problem on the forums I noted the suggestion that the TFDLL.DLL that comes with Wuppy is better than the one that comes with the Topfield applications. So I copied that DLL to \Program Files\Topfield and hey presto Altair then worked fine (using the driver installed by Wuppy). I could therefore abandon the Wuppy route and go back to using Altair to transfer the files. Then I just used HDFW to update the firmware. I still can't use TFDN on my PC but HDFW looks a more versatile and useful tool anyway.

I don't want to go through that again, but thanks for those who've offered help.

_________________
Sara

Topfield 5800PVR, Panasonic LCD TV TX-32LXD52 and DVDR- DMR-ES10EB; Yamaha AVR - RX-V1500

pdingley

Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 12:09 pm

Joined: 16 Aug 2008 Posts: 1 Location: Winchester

Hmmmm,

I'm fairly inexperienced in downloading to my Toppy, but fairly experienced with computers. Following my TF5800 falling over (failed PSU, but the guys at Turbosat have supplied a new one - even changed out the connectors free of charge) and getting back to life I thought I'd update the firmware as I've not done this for a year or two. Since the last time I have updated my PC (including the OS to Vista) and what seemed easy is now really really difficult. I siimply cannot get the USB drivers installed. Followed this thread and the suggestions made, but no joy.

I have tried to manually force installation of the tfbulk.inf via the Device Driver 'update driver' process and through right click 'install' on the file but the file is incompatible with Vista (Home premuim 32bit). Gave the Wuppy thread a go, but my computer simple hangs for a while then returns to Windows as if nothing has happened.

From this thread I guess I am not the only one, but at present I've been able to progress this at all. Sad

paul100

Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 6:02 pm

Joined: 23 Jun 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Midlands

pdingley, you have my sympathy! I have Vista Home Premium SP1 running on HP compaq Presario having 6 primary USB ports. I used one of the front ones ID 6.

However I found this procedure works for my two year old toppy (id 456).
1 Delete all toppy drivers from your system (search for tfbulk*.*)

2. Download from http://topfield.co.uk the Vista Drivers via USB Drivers for Windows Vista 32 from Downloads (the last item).

3 Store this where ever you keep your Download\programs and then unzip it. This requires the PKunzip reader. I found that when I tried to do this, the PKUnzip reader (which is free) downloaded itself and installed!
Store the result somewhere you know, usually a folder called Unzipped in My documents with a sub-folder USB_Drivers-Vista say. There should be three unzipped files, NcGen.sys 18KB dated 21/05/2007, TfBulk.inf 5KB dated 31/05/2007 and TfBulk.sys 13KB dated 31/05/2007.

4 Now download from Topfield.co.uk the TFDN_USB for Windows Vista 32 , unzip it and store it in a separate folder! PKunZip reader will do this.

5 Now delete the TfBulk.inf and TfBulk.sys from this new folder, just leaving you the TFDN_USB.exe size 228KB dated 24/04/2003. The two pdfs are in English and German. Page 10-12 of English shows what happens with TFDN running.

6 Download your chosen upgrade, I suggest the one from this site, 15.13.65NITfix for preference (my experience with the new version from Topfield is not good, unreliable recording for starters!).

7 Now connect your toppy on standby via the USB. Turn the toppy on and Windows will search for the Drivers, you may even get a chance to tell Vista where they are but as long as you only have the one set you'll be OK.
8 Vista will now tell you that it has installed the drivers and that "Topfield 'first device' (VID_11DB&PID_1000) using TfBulk.SYS" has been installed. This is out of the inf information.

9 Now put the toppy back into Standby. Select TFDN_USB.exe and run it. Navigate to where you installed your toppy tfd file and select it. Now select the Download Button and turn the toppy on.

10 Four bars should flash for a few seconds, the progress bar should whizz to the right and then say Download complete or End. The toppy will now start going through its install procedure and finish.

11. You can now put the toppy back into standby and disconnect the USB link.

12 Reconnect the toppy (I have to take mine to my PC upstairs), turn it on , navigate to factory reset, do the station search (what a time!) rebuild your Favourites list and there you are! One upgraded toppy.

I haven't tried to run Altair on this setup since officially it seems it's only for XP. But see above if you need it. I don't since I find now that the fully patched version does all I need and I have no need for TAPS. However in the past I have been very grateful to BDBs fixes!.

Happy downloading (I hope!).

_________________
Paul100.
Topfield 5800/250G, Firmware 15.13.65T
Taps:Quickjump
JVC DRMV1, Samsung LE37R88BD , Sony DAV-DZ260,

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