Bad Wolf Posted March 6, 2013 Share Posted March 6, 2013 i have one of the very early elite units, i have just tried to connect my windows 7 pc and had no connection. i have changed the com port as described in other posts - i have also tried it with Windows XP, Windows ME and Vista - all report same issue - no coms - any suggestions as i've had the elite for quite a few years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted March 6, 2013 Share Posted March 6, 2013 Have you read the manual, in particular the troubleshooting section? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad Wolf Posted March 6, 2013 Author Share Posted March 6, 2013 yep - read the manual - read the and tried the posts - strange thing is i have upgraded it to V1.3 in the past but it won't talk back the Railmaster - maybe it's an early Hardwear problem. totally flumuxed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted March 6, 2013 Share Posted March 6, 2013 So if I can confirm some details with you. You have connected the Elite to your computer. You have gone to Device Manager found the Elite listed under ports and confirmed its port number? You have set Railmaster Controller 1 to this Port number? And you are getting no communication between them? Given that the answers are yes, then it seems to me you have either a faulty cable or a faulty Elite. However, the first thing I would do is upgrade the Elite firmware to v1.41 and try again. Do make sure you follow the update instructions to the letter. And all the information on the forums tells me that the Windows version you are using is quite irrelevant. Railmaster and the Elite upgrade work on all of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
96RAF Posted March 7, 2013 Share Posted March 7, 2013 @bad Wolf Does your Elite work OK when used direct to the track and not via RM. If not then try a reset of the Elite via the built in menus. If so the problem is outside the Elite. Try a different USB cable as they can be flaky. Your pc should bing-bong when it detects an external device via USB as well as showing it in Device Manager as said above. Also make sure you are plugging the Elite USB cable into a pc main USB port and not a hub port. Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterLive Posted March 15, 2013 Share Posted March 15, 2013 Bad Wolf said: i have one of the very early elite units, i have just tried to connect my windows 7 pc and had no connection. i have changed the com port as described in other posts - i have also tried it with Windows XP, Windows ME and Vista - all report same issue - no coms - any suggestions as i've had the elite for quite a few years I have had the same problem. Much extensive testing done on several machines. I am using update 1.3 on the elite. My elite is on its way back to Hornby as Hornby suspect faulty usb on the elite. Wish I had tried update 1.4 before returning. Will update this note when elite returns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 A final thought from just having read the manual troubleshooting tips - make sure your Elite is running in Standard mode not Classic as RM can't talk to it in Classic. It used to start in Classic from new or after upgrade and needed to be changed. Not a problem since 1.41 though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDS Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 Thanks Fishmanoz! I referred back to your posting of the 6th march at 16:06 on this topic, this afternoon because my Elite and Laptop that had been communicating well a week ago, did not communicate when I got them out today. I found that the Laptop had decided to use Comm Port 4, rather than Comm Port 3 that I used a week ago. When I set Railmaster to Port 4, communication again! Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 Well done RDS. That's a good lesson for everyone too. Just because it worked last week and had a particular configuration doesn't mean it will work the same this week. Particularly if you have changed the hardware connected to your computer, or plugged the Elite into a different USB connection, Windows may just decide to allocate the Elite to a different port, or the old port may be no longer available because it is now being used by your new external hard drive. A good upgrade feature for RM would be for it to at least report that it can't see the controller. After all, it tells you now if there is an unreliable connection to handhelds. Even better if it could search through the ports until it can see the controller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 And RDS, for others and me, what thread was that post in? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDS Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 @Fishmanoz If I have understood your question correctly, it was in this thread - 4th post down. I agree that it would be a good feature for Railmaster to report that comms have been lost. I have started to compile a (short) list of other aspects I would like to see. I wonder if it would it be worth trying to get a consolidated list together in a thread on this forum to forward to Hornby? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 Thanks, must be forum blindness, looking here was the first thing I did and I didn't see it. A desirable features list might be good. Why don't you start one. Then it will have to be forwarded as you say as they don't read these forums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDS Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 @Fishmanoz I will start a new thread and see what responses we get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Culp Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 I recently had a problem getting my Windows 7 laptop to correctly recognise the elite when connecting to Railmaster. Although it sometimes appeared to work at first each USB port stopped functioning or wouldn't work. The problem turned out to be the way my version of Windows was set to install drivers. It was set to automatic and quickly chose is own driver rather the one I tried to encourage it to use. This even continued after I tried to uninstall the old one, browse to a folder with a new correct one etc. the solution was to 'turn off' the automatic install , set it to manual, delete the old driver, and install a correct one. You can download a set of drivers from Hornby's site Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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