“CasaTunes stopped talking to my Russound” was a phone support problem. When this happens it is most likely a serial port issue. Of course, make sure your serial port cable is connected and go to “Device Manager” to make sure the port is installed and not disabled.
If this started when you added other software that uses serial ports it is most likely caused by the new program taking over the port and not releasing it. To troubleshoot, do the following (suggestions are in order, so that you should try the first suggestions first):
- Try to reconfigure your other program to use another serial port. You may need to purchase a USB to serial adapter to add another port.
- Try closing any software that you added when this problem started and reboot, making sure that the other software does not start automatically.
- Try going to an earlier Windows Restore point that you created before you added the other programs (you DO use Windows restore points, don’t you?). This is how our customer resolved the problem. His next step is to re-install one of the new programs at a time and see which one caused the problem. He will then need to talk to the company responsible for the program to find a resolution, which in this case will most likely be simply to add another serial port for this other program.