De-installing before upgrading?

[Copperhead]

Is it needed to do a complete de-installation of the CopperLan package before installing a newer one?
Normally not, at least with the recent versions.

Some earlier version of the CopperLan package presented some trouble when upgrading:

• erroneous duplicate of the virtual MIDI ports (8 instead of 4)
• disappearance of the Ethernet interfaces in the selection list

If you don't experience these symptoms you can do the upgrade without removing the previous version.

[arakula]

Well... I'm not sure about this.

I had trouble with CopperLan since yesterday, when I installed a new version of VirtualBox (4.1.10) on my Windows 7 Profesional x64 machine. Before that, CopperLan could communicate just fine with a virtual Windows XP installation on the same machine, using a VirtualBox Host-Only virtual network adapter. After the VirtualBox upgrade, this didn't work any more, although everything looked OK.

"OK," says I, "let's reinstall CopperLan". I did it - but after reinstallation, the CPVNM service didn't start.

"F**k," says I, "well, let's deinstall and re-install it, then." I did this, even rebooting between the steps, but after reinstallation, the CPVNM service didn't start.

I did this twice, but no change - obviously, the CopperLan service refuses to come up again. I have no idea why, and the logged events don't help me much, either. Here's the event log details anyway.

Code: Select all

<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Application Error" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>100</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-03-27T11:25:40.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>23096</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>Sammy</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>CPVNM.exe</Data>
<Data>1.0.6.1</Data>
<Data>4f3bcb64</Data>
<Data>CPVNM.exe</Data>
<Data>1.0.6.1</Data>
<Data>4f3bcb64</Data>
<Data>c0000005</Data>
<Data>000000000004e8b1</Data>
<Data>918</Data>
<Data>01cd0c0c4940dbf6</Data>
<Data>C:\Program Files\CopperLan\CPVNM\CPVNM.exe</Data>
<Data>C:\Program Files\CopperLan\CPVNM\CPVNM.exe</Data>
<Data>94903114-77ff-11e1-b0c0-e8113225e389</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

Maybe you can make something of it. I can't.

Maybe some remainders of the previous installation cause the problem, so:
How can I deinstall CopperLan completely from the machine, so that absolutely no (possibly devastating) traces of it are left?

[CopperPhil]

Hi!

Well, I'm just thinking about a networking issue between the host operating system and the virtual machine...

In CopperLan, a localhost TCPIP connection (127.0.0.1) is used for inter-process communication beween the applications and the VNM (virtual network manager, the CopperLan service actually). So if you have installed CopperLan on the host and on the virtual machine you have to ensure that the localhost TCPIP networking is insulated between both operating systems, else there will be a big issue, surely!

I don't know VirtualBox, but usually in such application you can configure network bridging. Perhaps there is some option allowing to ensure that each machine (host & virtual) have distinct localhost network areas.

The VNM service is "CPVNM.exe", ou can stop/restart it at will, so you should be able to make some tries without rebooting.

Please check if this is the cause, then if the issue persists we'll investigate further.

/Phil

[arakula]

Well, I'm just thinking about a networking issue between the host operating system and the virtual machine...

The virtual machine is not turned on.
The virtual LAN adapter provided by VirtualBox on the host side has a configured IP address of 192.168.56.1, so no conflict with the 127.x.x.x range.
BTW, the same machine also has quite some other network "adapters" for various USB modems.

Besides, when I installed the same setup some weeks ago, it worked without problems.

Starting CPVNM from the Services Control Panel results in the same immediate death.

[CopperPhil]

well... it seems weird to me actually...

Can you check in the windows Event Viewer, application journal and others,if you see some error related to the CPVNM? If it crashes, there should be some entries...

In the meantime, I'll check if some course condition could make the CPVNM exiting without error reporting...

Then in order to check that nothing is broken, please uninstall CopperLan (Start Menu/AllPrograms/CopperLan/Uninstall), then reboot, re-install the last version and check if the service is running. It should...

[arakula]

Always crashes with a protection exception (c0000005), and always at the same offset 0x4e8b1 in CPVNM.exe (V1.0.6.1). And that's all I can get out of the event viewer - one "Application" entry with the details (like the ones I gave above in the "Code" section), and one "System" entry from the Service Control Manager that counts up the number of sudden deaths in CPVNM.exe.
That's the Vista/7 64bit version of CopperLan (installation file CopperLanSetup_VistaSeven64[20120215_1.0(7)].exe, to be exact).

[CopperPhil]

I just recompiled the 1.0.6 version and checked the map file, the crash address is related to an internal method doing some tweaking depending on the processor type... but this method is not used on 64 bits operating systems...

Sorry to ask this stupid question, but are you sure you have installed the 64 bits version of CopperLan? We have already installed bad version inadvertently, result is unpredictable...

[arakula]

100% sure.

[arakula]

And both CPVNM.exe and the DLLs in the C:\Program Files\CopperLan\CPVNM directory are 64bit executables, so there's no possibility of a "wrong installed type" error.

[CopperPhil]

We did a test with PC running Win7 64 and a former version of VirtualBox with a Linux VM. Upgrading VirtualBox succeeded, no problem detected.

Then we created a XP virtual machine with the network settings you mentioned. Then it seems that the network is not working on the VM.

Trying different network settings, still failing except for the NAT mode.

But in any cases, the CopperLan running on the Win7 host machine is still working.

So we don't have yet a solution for your host operating system... but what about your virtual machine running XP? Does it get connected to the internet? Does CopperLan run on it?