Nuts About Nets

Wireless Diagnostics & Troubleshooting

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Reinstallation Guide


This guide provides instructions for re-installing the AirSleuth-Pro spectrum analyzer, WifiEagle channel analyzer, AirHORN channel/signal generator products — including the hardware drivers and application software.

Please read the preliminary comments below and then carefully follow the instructions. The order in which the operations are performed is important.

Preliminaries

  • The latest version of the application software can be downloaded from www.NutsAboutNets.com
  • You will need administrative privileges in order to remove and re-install application and driver software on your computer. Please login to an account on your computer that includes "Administrator" rights before proceeding with the re-installation.
  • Do not attempt to replace the original driver supplied with the product with a replacement that has been downloaded from the Internet – it will not work. Furthermore, Windows registers and caches drivers and associates them with a particular device. So, once the wrong driver has been associated with the wireless device this must be undone before re-installation will succeed.
  • USB ports are known to go bad. Also, since USB wireless devices draw power from the USB port then a defective port may not supply sufficient power. If you are experiencing problems installing a USB wireless device then switch to a different USB port. Also, if you have another machine available, then it would be informative to learn whether the product can be successfully installed on a different machine.
  • Device Manager is a Computer Management tool that manages devices and their drivers. To launch Device Manager, from the Start menu right-click on 'Computer' and select 'Manage' – which launches the 'Computer Management Console'. On the left panel, under 'System Tools', select 'Device Manager'. After Device Manager opens then select 'Network adapters' in the middle panel. When this expands it will list all network adapters (both wired and wireless) currently attached to the machine.

Instructions

If it becomes necessary to repeat the installation from scratch then follow this procedure:

a. Attach the wireless device (USB or PCMCIA) to the machine.

b. Go to Device Manager, and under Network Adapters find the wireless device in the list.

NOTE: If you are not sure which wireless device to select, then detach the AirSleuth/WifiEagle/AirHORN device from the machine and when the list refreshes one of the devices will be missing – this is the one you want. After the list refreshes then re-attach the device.

c. Select the device that will be uninstalled by Right-clicking and when the popup menu appears select 'Uninstall'. A dialog box then appears warning the device will be uninstalled and asking you to confirm this action.         Windows Vista: Select the CheckBox to 'Delete the driver software for this device'. When uninstall completes then all drivers associated with this device should have been removed.

d. Detach the wireless device from the machine.

e. From Windows' Start Menu, find the application's folder in the list of programs and select its 'Uninstall' menu item. When 'Uninstall' has completed then the application and its support files should have been removed.  Alternatively, from Control Panel use the 'Add or Remove Programs' applet to uninstall the application.

f. Using File Explorer (or rmdir /s from a CMD prompt) completely remove the installation folder.  For example, if you installed AirSleuth-Pro using the default installation location, then you would remove the folder C:\Program Files\NutsAboutNets\AirSleuth.

g. Re-run the installation program and carefully follow the instructions in the Quick Installation Guide that accompanied the product. The latest version of the application software can be downloaded from www.NutsAboutNets.com. It is most important the setup program be run *before* attaching the wireless device. If the device were to be attached first then Windows will find a generic USB driver and associate that driver with the device – and the application will fail. By running the setup program first then the correct drivers are put in place such that when the device is subsequently attached for the first time then Windows will find our drivers first before looking for generic ones. In the event you need to manually update the drivers then use the ones that came with the product (e.g. \Program Files\NutsAboutNets\<application>\Drivers\…).

h. Re-attach the wireless device. Two information bubbles should appear – the first one reports 'Installing Device Driver Software', and the second includes the name of the device with the message 'Device driver software installed successfully'.

j. If that appears to go well, then return to Device Manager and verify the device is recognized and working. You should then be able to launch the application.

Additional Notes:

1. When launching AirHORN a message box reports the following error:
'Err_Init_NDIS_Failed: Failed to initialize NDIS protocol driver'. This occurs when the wrong software driver has been downloaded from the Internet (e.g. Atheros AR5007UG Wireless Network Adapter). Reinstalling the application by following the above procedure will fix the problem.

Let’s get started on your wireless project…