Windows 7 Shutting Down USB port/serial port??

• Thursday, March 01, 2012 10:11 PM

   

   
  

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  I have a bit of a unique situation.  

  A little background before I get into my issue: I work for a Aerial Applications Helicopter Company in Oregon, we are in the process of transitioning to a new Windows based GPS system to track our applications.  Up until now we have been using 10.1" Netbooks, but we are finding that the hinges begin to break down over time from the vibration in the helicopters.  Obviously since there is considerable vibration I take all of the computers and replace the hard drive with a Solid State, although our very first netbook worked just fine with a conventional spinning hard drive.  

  Anyway, a couple months ago I came across an affordable tablet PC, its the Skytex Skytab 9.7" Tablet with EXOPC UI, Windows 7.

  We've done a ton of trails and research and our GPS developer has reviewed his error log several times, and basically something in Windows is shutting down the power to the USB port after the helicopter has been running for anywhere from 2 - 5 minutes, then the GPS loses connection.  From what we can tell, its happening from vibration, and as I mentioned earlier, the vibration isnt that bad because we have them mounted very well and we've even used one with a spinning hard drive for a year and a half.   

  My question is:  what could possibly make Windows itself realize there is vibration within the computer and cause it to shut down power to the USB serial port?  The only thing that I can think of that would have any effect is whatever makes the computer realize when you change the orientation of the screen, just like a smartphone or iPad, but we have that set to manual.  

  I have found one thing I am going to try shortly, but there was an option in the BIOS under USB configuration - "Port 64/60 Emulation" - it was disabled, and from what I understand its just a tool for older computers to make a keyboard function properly?  I figured it wont hurt anything to try it out, so I am going to enable it, I did read somewhere on a forum that there is a small possibility if that Emulation option is disabled it can cause problems with other peripherals.

  Any help / advice would be appreciated! We of course have tried different drivers for our GPS receiver and antennae's, and different cables and none of them seem to be any different. 

  Thank you!

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