Vista Survival Guide

Vista has a few things going for it, like better memory management, but I think any of us who have made the switch have had more than our share of headaches.

Home Domination supports Vista as of build 170, which came out on 11/29/2007.  However there are some things that just don't work quite as nicely as they did in XP.  So this page gives you some information on how to deal with the issues.

Manually Disabling the X10 Service

The biggest problem with Vista involves the CM15A and the CM19A.  Home Domination does it's own communication with these devices rather than relying on the X10 Service that comes with Active Home Pro.  However, this can conflict with X10 Service.  Sometimes it works fine, other times it doesn't.  In XP, Home Domination will automatically disable the X10 Service, and restart it again when the program closes.  In Vista, this does not work because of the increased security.  So you'll need to manually disable the service when it clashes with Home Domination.  You can restart the service when you're done using Home Domination, however there's no need to restart the service unless you want to use Active Home Pro.


To disable the service, you can go to Control Panel, then Administrative Tools, and then double click on Services.  You'll need to have administrator rights to do this, and it will ask your permission to continue.  Then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the list and look for the "X10 Device Network Service".  Then right click on it and click "Stop".  It will take a few seconds and then the service will stop.  To restart the service again (when Home Domination is no longer running), right click on the service and click "Start".

The most common problem that happens is that Home Domination will appear to never start, although macros and switching will happen as normal.  When the service is stopped, sometimes the main control window will just magically appear and all will be well.  Other times, you may need to bring up Task Manager (right click on an empty place on the task bar and select "Task Manager", or hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and select "Start Task Manager"), then click on the "Processes" tab, and find "HomeDom.exe".  Click on "HomeDom.exe", then click the "End Process" button and when the confirmation message is displayed, click "End Process".  Then restart Home Domination as normal.  At this point, it should come up just fine.

 

VA11A

While this isn't a Home Domination problem, it is a problem that's tough to get around.  I found a post here:  http://www.x10community.com/forums/index.php?topic=13179.msg68678 with a solution that may help.  It worked for me.  I'm using the 32 bit version of Vista.  I rather doubt it would work with the 64 bit Vista, although I'll be happy to eat my words.

Just in case that link goes away at some point, here's a re-print (with thanks to Dave):

Some of this may need to be done as the administrator. 

1.  After installing the drivers along with ActiveHome/Iwitness or Vanguard or with X10Drivers.exe, plug in tha VA11A
2. Vista will attempt and fail to install the drivers.
3. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\X10\DriverInstall\VA11A Video Capture"
4. Open the file CA506AV.inf in Notepad and find the following section:  [Note from Harry:  You can edit files that are normally not allowed to be edited by right clicking on Notepad and selecting "Run As Administrator" then opening the file.]

[SPCA506AV.CopyDrivers]
CA506AV.SYS
STREAM.SYS

[SPCA506AV.CopyCodec]
IYUV_32.DLL
MSH263.DRV


5.  Change that section as shown below... (add semicolons in front of 3 lines...

[SPCA506AV.CopyDrivers]
CA506AV.SYS

;STREAM.SYS

[SPCA506AV.CopyCodec]
;IYUV_32.DLL
;MSH263.DRV


6. Save the file, and close notepad
7. In the device manager (Right-Click on "My Computer" and choose Manage) Expand the USB section and find the VA11A that should show up there as a non-working device.
8. Open the device, and chooose "Re-install driver".  Tell vista you want to locate the driver yourself, and browse to the folder above.
9.  Vista should warn you the driver is unsigned, but allow you to install anyway.

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As an option, you may want to edit the .inf file *before* plugging in the VA11A...  I suspect that would work also, but did not try it myself.   You would still get a "install failed" message when vista attempts to install the "audio" portion of the capture device.  That shouldn't matter, as the VA11A doesn't support audio anyway.