Port IO Problem ?

I hope somebody can help me on this problem, I have been searching for weeks now and can not seem to find an answer.

I have loaded a Windows 7 test machine to see if all my applications that I have written will run on it. There is one application that I have that we use the parallel port (LPT1) of the PC to control an interface(Hardware) we designed to switch between different machines that need to be monitored in diffents stages of the day.

Now here is the problem I am sitting with, I am using a driver called gwiopm.sys that does the memory mapping (needed since windows 2000) to do direct port io commands with the LPT Port, since Vista (thought it was th second windows ME so did not worry) I have no longer been able to do this as I get privileged instruction trying to communicate with the LPT Port (Trust Microsoft to stuff up something so simple).

Hope someone here can help me remedy this problem, as I am at my wits end and need to get it sorted out soon.

Hi MonsterKFX

Have you tried disabling UAC to see if that would allow you the priviledges you needed witht he ports. With UAC turned on, the older programs do not know how to work with it and usually fail.

Here is an article on the topic of enabling and disabling UAC (User Account Control)
Configure Windows 7 UAC

That's a good idea Clifford, you may be spot on there.

UAC Already set to nothing but no cigar. There must be a way to tell Windows 7 to ignore the friggin LPT Port. I do not know why Microsoft are doing all this security stuff, think it is just to stuff the users around. If you have a decent ativirus you should be allowd to take over control of what we want to. I have been contemplating moving all my apps to Linux, and at this rate I think Microsoft is going to loose at lot of their market, just because they have some moron that is worried about security more than giving the user the control.

Just checking - are you running the application as an administrator (by right clicking on the app and selecting "Run as Administrator"). I'd have thought that if UAC was disabled and you run as an admin that it should work ok. My appologies if you've already tried the run as admin tip, but it would be worth a shot if you've not tried already.

edit: BTW, are you using a 32 bit version of Windows 7? The 64 bit version may be problematic if you are using an old driver such as gwiopm.sys.

Using 32 bit ultimate version, have tried administrator option, even logged in as administrator, still nothing. Have set permissions on the the app and gwiopm.sys to allow everything. But think there must be a way to disable the security on the LPT port. Pity there is not a Microsoft representative here to help us out, but then again most of the time they know less than the users.

Is this query posted in the wrong section, as I am getting nowhere fast ?

It's in the right place, I guess that no-one can suggest anything further to help. I'm all out of ideas, but I wish you luck

I like this forum, but there is another Widows 7 forum with more people (url removed: please don't post links to competitors It's another good forum, but it doesn't help this site to have lots of links to it).

Yeah, but they banned him.