[fixed] Minidisplay plugin comes with not digitally signed driver hwinterfacex64.sys (3 Viewers)

[megabte]

Peoples, I am still seeing this as an issue with a vanilla mediaportal 1.6 install. Can someone please specify what exactly to do to fix it. To confirm the 1.6 install still puts the unsigned 1.1 driver in c:\windows\system32\drivers, and causes event log errors and the minidisplay does not work.

 

[greybox]

What minidisplay do you use?

Peoples, I am still seeing this as an issue with a vanilla mediaportal 1.6 install. Can someone please specify what exactly to do to fix it. To confirm the 1.6 install still puts the unsigned 1.1 driver in c:\windows\system32\drivers, and causes event log errors and the minidisplay does not work.

 

[rsbrux]

I have a Futaba DM-140GINK minidisplay, and also have the unsigned version of hwinterfacex64.sys installed under MP 1.9.0. I upgraded from 1.7.1 to 1.9.0, but I did a complete reinstallation for 1.7.

 

[rsbrux]

I now have a completely fresh installation of MP 1.17 running under a completely fresh installation of Windows 7 Pro SP1.
It still (or again) exhibits the same problem.

 

[Sebastiii]

@Stéphane Lenclud any idea on this ?
Thanks

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

any idea on this ?

Nope, then again I'm not really sure I understand the issue.
@rsbrux
Is it that you get a one time warning or do you get that warning dialog whenever you start MP?
Which driver are you using in MiniDisplay configuration?
I'm thinking I could probably add support for your display in CIC , that could fix your issue.
However without access to the hardware and/or specs that could be tricky too.

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

I located the driver for Futaba DM-140GINK in MP1 source code, it's in DM140GINK.cs.
I found some C source code for that display too see:

• Bug #302919 “lcdproc: Futaba dm-140gink VFD device needs driver” : Bugs : lcdproc package : Ubuntu
  
• https://launchpadlibrarian.net/38339360/lcdproc-0.5.3-dm140_henlar_v0.2.patch

However online searches to try and acquire such a display yield not result so I guess it's not available anymore.
I also could not find the documentation on the Futaba web site. That would make things tricky to support it in CIC.

Anyway I don't think the existing MP driver needs hwinterfacex64.sys so I'm not sure I understand the problem.
Looking at hwinterface.sys Windows process - What is it? it says this is the driver installed by inpout32.dll.
So I'm thinking this gets installed the first time inpout32.dll is loaded I guess.
Looking at MP1 git repository it does contain a version of inpout32.dll, possibly used by some mini display drivers so I guess if this gets loaded it will install that SYS file.
However since Futaba DM-140GINK is USB it should not need inpout32.dll which is used for LPT communication.
Nevertheless it could be that our inpout32.dll should be updated by one that provides a signed driver as I believe it is available there:
http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/inpout32/
But I'm reluctant to do that update by fear of breaking something since I can't really do any testing not having the hardware to test it.
We could also decide that we don't support in LPT hardware and remove all that stuff from our repository.
I seriously doubt anyone is running LPT hardware this days. I did try it myself lately and ended up using Arduino micro controller instead of parallel port cause they are just so unreliable to do GPIO these days.

Hope you guys are following

 

[Sebastiii]

Thanks
I'm pretty that it is not used anymore too

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

Thanks
I'm pretty that it is not used anymore too

I could not find any reference to inpout32.dll in our code base.
However it does get installed probably cause the installer picks all the DLLs in that folder.
What's puzzling is why and how does the DLL gets loaded.
Only when the DLL is loaded should the SYS be installed.

I suggest we just remove inpout32.dll from our repository and see what happens.

 

[Sebastiii]

I now have a completely fresh installation of MP 1.17 running under a completely fresh installation of Windows 7 Pro SP1.
It still (or again) exhibits the same problem.

So can you explain again the issue please ?
1- Does minidisplay works but showing up error in event manager ?
2- Can you try dll from what explain @Stéphane Lenclud to see if it works ?

Thanks.