The KESSLER Wireless Design software is not maintained anymore. Orders and support are not offered anymore. Registration keys for the software are available for free for the time being.

Introduction

Since Microsoft is using IrDA communications subsystem with Windows 98, the IR support for Nokia Cellular Data Suite versions 1.2, 1.2a, 2.0 and 2.0a is disabled by default, if installed on a PC using 98. This technical note introduces how Windows 98 can be changed back to support Windows 95 IR method.

In Win95, Ir-ports are detected as Generic Ir Serial Ports. It can be made to work in Windows 98 by removing the Ir. network adapter and changing the MSPORTS.INF file to enable a Generic Ir Port to be added to the system. A small alteration to the registry is also needed. Although this is quite easy to do, please remember that it does involve changing the registry and things could go wrong with your system.

If you want to use Upload via IR to 61xx in my software without the Data Suite, then you need to follow this note until step 8 only.

Setup

Note: After the procedure is finished IrDA functionality is removed so IrDA devices no more work with 98!

  1. If you see a small Infrared Monitor icon in the tray area then right-click it and deselect Enable infrared communication.
  2. Open the Control Panel, and select Network. Highlight the infra red device listed and then click on remove. Click OK on the network box, when asked to reboot answer NO.
  3. Backup the file MSPORTS.INF, you should find it in the WINDOWS\INF directory. If you have Windows set to hide all system and hidden files then you will not be able to locate the file. You can see all files by selecting View/Folder Options from the menu in Windows Explorer and selecting the option to Show all files.
  4. Open the file in notepad by double clicking on it and find the following section.

    [Std]
    %*PNP0400.DeviceDesc% = LptPort, *PNP0400 ; Printer Port
    %*PNP0401.DeviceDesc% = EcpPort, *PNP0401 ; ECP Printer Port
    %*PNP0500.DeviceDesc% = ComPort, *PNP0500 ; Communications Port
    %*PNP0501.DeviceDesc% = ComPort, *PNP0501 ; Communications Port

    ; No; *PNP051x devices are now supported in IRMINI.INF
    %*PNP0510.DeviceDesc% = InfraredComPort, *PNP0510 ; IR Comm...
    ; %*PNP0511.DeviceDesc% = InfraredComPort, *PNP0511 ; IR Comm...

    Change it until it looks like the above. i.e. remove the semi-colon from begining of the second from last line.

  5. Now find this section, it should be near the end.

    [Strings]
    MS = "Microsoft"
    Std = "(Standard port types)"
    PortsClassName = "Ports (COM & LPT)"

    *PNP0400.DeviceDesc = "Printer Port"
    *PNP0401.DeviceDesc = "ECP Printer Port"
    *PNP0500.DeviceDesc = "Communications Port"
    *PNP0501.DeviceDesc = "Communications Port"
    *PNP0510.DeviceDesc = "Generic Ir Serial Port"
    ;*PNP0511.DeviceDesc = "Generic Ir Serial Port"

    Again change it until it looks like the above by removing the semi-colon for the begining of the second from last line. Save the file.

  6. Reboot and enter the BIOS Setup. Make sure that the Infrared port is enabled (very often disabled in the notebook setup). Check also how the Infrared port is defined. People are having all sorts of problems getting Windows 98 to detect a Generic Serial Port until they discover that BIOS has different options for IR. Setting it to SIR or ASK-IR may solve this problem.
  7. Boot Windows 98 and it will now detect a Generic Ir Serial Port and use the Windows 95 drivers.
  8. Configure windows so that Infrared Monitor is not running (see step 1) and reboot.
  9. Install NCDS 2.0 with cable.
  10. Reboot.
  11. Using Regedit make the following changes into the registry for the software to make it work with IR

    Before modification (DS uses cable)

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Nokia\DTP2V3]
    "UseIr"=hex:00
    "UserPortIR"=""

    After modification (DS uses IR)

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Nokia\DTP2V3]
    "UseIr"=hex:01
    "UserPortIR"="COM2"

    (if COM2 is your physical IR port)

  12. Reboot.
  13. Be sure that Infrared Monitor does not run. The Data Suite now should work with IR.

If you decide to restore the cable support, just edit the registry as it was before modification (see step 11).

User Feedback

If you have problems getting Windows 98 detecting your Ir-Port as Generic Ir Serial Ports then you maybe want to try what other users did:

"The problem was that windows 98 didn't detect my infrared port as an Generic but as an SMC infrared port. So after removing the Smcirda.inf file from the inf directory. Windows detected the port as a generic IR port and now all is functioning properly. For some reason, the SMC port is detected earlier than the modifications to the MSPORTS.INF file." [Franc van de Westelaken]

"I used your instructions along with the additional feedback about removing SMCxx.inf, but it would still install the SMC IRDA support. I eventually removed all the SMC*.* from my windows directory, along with removing the SMC* entries in \windows\inf\infrared.inf - Upon reboot, my machine said it could not find a driver for the device it had found. I then manually selected the Generic IR Port from devices available. After it warned that the Driver was not the right one, which I ignored, I rebooted and it worked a treat! [..] PS: This was all done on my new Toshiba 4600 Satellite Pro, which incidently has no bios options related to IR port compatibility." [John Nayler]