When I went Vista back around beta 2 for the first time on my primary laptop there were a couple of must haves in order for me to stay Vista on this machine. One was that I must be able to use my Cingular 8125 (when needed) as a DUN modem another was my dev tools must work. I was able to get both of these things running given some helpful tips from people out on the web.
So fast forward to Vista RTM, turns out it wasn’t as easy this go round using my phone as a DUN modem. I wasn’t expecting the hoops given the process hadn’t changed, prior, since Beta 2. Why the change on RTM? I don’t know. The steps are the same but the usbmdm.inf that I’d been using since Beta 2 no longer worked. I received the following error when installing the modem driver: “Can’t find specified file”. This happened even though I pointed the installation at the correct usbmdm.inf.
Seeing as it was somewhat of a pain I figured I’d share the steps involved in connecting a Windows Vista laptop to your GPRS mobile phone. By the way, I can confirm that the general steps also work for the T-Mobile MDA too. Credit due: Mark (who has the T-Mobile phone) actually found the links originally and got his phone running as a DUN modem on his XP box before I did it on Vista.
So before you get started search for usbmdm.inf and usbser.sys using your search provider and download the files. This site will not provide a download of these files for obvious reasons. A good search hint is “WM5 Modem Driver.zip”. As an aside: I’ve been using Live Search lately and its winning big points with me. Can’t say I don’t use Google still but needing it less and less. I’ve even gone without the Google toolbar for quite some time now opting to use the Windows Live Toolbar instead - a topic for a later post perhaps. So here goes...
Driver Installation
1. Place the usbser.sys in the C:\Windows\System32 folder.
2. Now for the interesting part: as pointed out in a cryptic Microsoft KB article you need to make a modification to the usbmdm.inf file. Open it in notepad and make the following changes. Comment blocks starting with “; MGO” are placed above the actual changes. In Figure 1 there are two changes: 1) the ServiceBinary value was hardcoded to point to the C:\Windows\System32\ folder and 2) the usbser.sys,,,0x20 line was commented so that the usbser.sys file will be taken from the location chosen during the installation process.
Figure 1 ServiceBinary Section
Figure 2 Strings Section -
3. Close and save the usbmdm.inf.
4. On your Windows Mobile (5.0) phone go to Start --> Programs --> Modem Link and choose Activate. Note: modem link settings should not need to be changed.
5. Plug your phone into the computer using the USB connection. Note: your phone should not be plugged in to the machine until this point in the process and the prior steps are completed successfully. The Add New Hardware wizard should be kicked off automatically.
a. When prompted by the Found New Hardware dialog choose Locate and install driver software (recommended). Choose continue at the UAC prompt to run with elevated privileges.
b. Choose Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.
c. In the dialog scroll down and pick Modems from the list of device types.
d. When prompted choose Have Disk and browse to the usbmdm.inf file that you modified earlier.
e. Highlight the description that you entered in the Strings section of the usbmdm.inf and choose Next to install the modem.
Modem Settings
1. In the Control Panel choose Phone and Modem Options.
2. Double-click the modem or highlight it and choose Properties. Note: when you go to the Advanced tab to enter the initialization commands it will appear grayed out (read-only). This hung me up for a minute the first time doing this in Vista (this step is not needed in XP). Go back to the General tab and click the Change settings button. If you are running as normal user (UAC) then you will be prompted to run with elevated privileges.
Figure 3 The modem you installed will be listed here
3. On the Advanced tab set the Command initialization commands to AT+cgdcont=1,"IP","wap.cingular","",0,0.
Figure 4 Extra initialization commands
4. Hit OK on the modem settings and OK on the Phone and Modem Options.
Connection Setup
1. From the Windows Vista Start menu choose Connect To and in the Connect to a network dialog choose Setup a connection or network.
2. From the Choose a connection option choose Setup a dial-up connection and hit Next.
3. Choose your modem from the list of devices.
4. The following settings should be used for the Cingular 8125. Note: you can find numerous posts out there for other providers settings.
a. *99#
b. WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
c. CINGULAR1
d. Cingular GPRS (the name is up to you)
Figure 5 ISP dial up settings
Your done! Test your connection by hitting the Connect button and browse the internet. Hope this helps…
Note: the Cingular 8125 and T-Mobile MDA are both HTC phones. HTC has a number of upcoming phones that will get us full-touch-screen junkies begging the wives again. ;-)